Some campaigns I support

Since becoming a candidate I have agreed to support the following causes (sorry for lack of detail!). I've also offered qualified support to a number of others:

• CND's opposition to replacing Trident.
• CAMRA's manifesto (beer and pubs)
• Crisis' No One Turned Away (homelessness)
• Cancer Research's Cross Cancer Out campaign
• Barnado's and others A Stitch in Time campaign
• The Royal Statistical Society;'s Data Manifesto
• The Public Service Users Bill
• Traidcraft
• The Frack Free promise (FoE and Greenpeace)
• The League Against Cruel Sports' five animal welfare calls.
• The Living Streets Manifesto
• Compassion in World Farming
• Breast Cancer Campaign
• The OneKind pledge
• The Campaign for the Preservation of Rural England's manifesto.
• The Local Goverbnm,ent Association's four points
• The RSPB's I'm Backing Bob campaign
• The Disability Benefits Consortium's 5 asks
• The CTC
• The Terrence Higgins Trust
• The Empty Homes Agency
• The LGBT Whip
• London Cycling Campaign's demand to remove TSRGD
• The Tibet Society's demand for human rights for Tibet.
• The ASI

Concerning the Countryside Alliance

The Countryside Alliance was formed to defend the countryside and, in particular, to stop parliament from making foxhunting illegal. In this election it’s presented candidates with a manifesto which it summarises as follows:

• Digital Communications: Full digital connectivity for rural communities to ensure they can compete economically and socially.
• Food and Farming: A fair market for British farmers and producers through proper country of origin labelling.
• Rural Communities: Fair government funding for rural areas; local affordable housing; and reduced VAT on domestic repair, maintenance and improvement work.
• Rural Services: Protection for rural services, in particular local post offices and the Royal Mail’s Universal Service Obligation (USO).
• Wildlife Management: Proper engagement by government and its agencies with those who actually manage the countryside; wildlife management to be based on principle and evidence, and repeal of the Hunting Act.

In the manifesto itself the Hunting Act occupies less than one page out of 6. Perhaps the CA has accepted the inevitable?

Since it’s my policy to reply to all letters I read the manifesto. Now Enfield North is a largely urban constituency so it has limited relevance to – though we do include farms, parks and riding stables. But all greens should care about the countryside, above all because it provides much of our food – and may have to provide more in future. 

I therefore replied to the Executive Chairman, Sir Barney White-Spunner, as follows:

Sir Barney,

….  I'm pleased to say that as a Green Party PPC I'm very sympathetic to most of the points you raise. For instance digital connectivity, food labelling, more affordable housing and support for Post Offices all seem consistent with our policies.

Issues of government funding are difficult. My own constituency faces rising numbers, increasing house prices and serious poverty in some parts. I don't generally agree with the government but in this case we are 'all in this together'. In my view these problems cannot be solved without fundamental social change – change we shall not get from the mainstream parties. 

There's one issue on which we will not agree. I welcomed the Hunting Act and would not vote for repeal.

Though most Britons live in cities we would not live at all without the work of farmers and growers. Greens understand the value of the countryside both for food and for recreation. We need a prosperous, healthy countryside.

For humane and sustainable farming

As a member of the Green Party, I support Compassion in World Farming’s (CIWF) charter for a sustainable and environmentally friendly farming system. This would be good for human and animal welfare, and for the long-term viability of our countryside.
 

The need for sustainable ways of life, that is, ways that leave a healthy world for our grandchildren, and maybe their grandchildren, is a top priority for all green activists. In the case of farming that leads the Green Party to support sustainable agriculture and farming practices that help conserve and enhance the land for future generations.

It is our policy to phase out all forms of 'factory farming' and support a transition to small free-range units, mixed rotational farming and extensive grazing. We support the highest levels of animal welfare in farming and aim to ensure that the ‘Five Freedoms’ listed in the Animal Welfare Act are applied to all farm animals.

In addition, we support localisation and a shortening of the food chain, to reduce fossil fuel use and the vulnerability of the global food supply to climate change and rises in the price of fuel.

We recognise that high rates of consumption of meat and other animal products in richer countries, and rising demand elsewhere, means that an increasing requirement for animal feed competes with food production for direct human consumption. Globally, the combination of increasing population and prosperity on the one hand and of climate change and soil degradation on the other will drive up food prices. It will also create actual shortages and wild price fluctuations. 

The UK must prepare for this by developing farming systems that are more productive yet less dependent on fossil fuels and sustainable.

The Green Party will encourage healthy and sustainable consumption patterns, including a shift towards more plant-based foods. On good land arable farming produces at least three times more nutrition per acre than grazing – sometimes much more. This shift would enable an increasing world population to be fed sustainably and would help to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss.

Like CIWF, we believe in working with nature rather than against, because we recognise the fundamental connections between human society and the rest of the biosphere.

Protecting the countryside

I'm supporting the manifesto produced by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE).  The manifesto advocates:

•  Increasing delivery of the right housing in the right places by investing in affordable housing to meet local needs, and providing incentives for custom-build and small-scale house builders, prioritising building on brownfield sites.

• Support local aspirations by introducing a community right of appeal against speculative development which conflicts with agreed local or neighbourhood plans. 

•  Prioritising smarter transport choices, including supporting community-led transport, better public transport networks and local freight distribution hubs, over road expansion

• Ensuring that new energy infrastructure minimises local impacts through incentivising renewable energy on buildings and brownfield sites, and adopting a precautionary approach to fracking.

• Promoting the resilience of the food and farming system by strengthening policies to protect the best farmland from development and to foster the growth of local food economies, from ‘field to fork’.

• Enhancing people’s experience of the countryside, by committing to monitoring rural tranquillity and dark skies and strengthening the policies created to improve them.

These demands are entirely consistent with Green political philosophy. For instance, we strongly supports London's Green Belt, and want planning policy to continue to direct new development in smart, compact neighbourhoods rather than sprawling out onto our countryside.

Indeed, most of the CPRE’s demands concern planning and here we see that successive changes have limited the ability of local planning authorities to make the decisions they think right for their communities.

Local planning authorities have suffered some of the deepest cuts in local government, which is threatening their ability to plan London well. I am standing on an anti-austerity platform, and so would stop further cuts to councils. The Green Party agrees that local councils should have a much more proactive role in the development process, including assembling sites for development and developing more of the plans.

They should also engage citizens more meaningfully in the development of policy, co-producing plans rather than 'consulting' on plans that have already effectively been set in stone.

Finally, planners need to retrofit our existing communities so that they are resilient to climate change, and meet the needs of those let down by some of the more poorly planned areas of the capital. We fully support the concept of ‘Lifetime Neighbourhoods’ and would like planning policy to aim for everyone to be within 5 minutes travel of essential local services.

We believe that local planning authorities need to be better resourced to carry out this essential role, to ensure that London becomes more liveable and resilient, and meets our needs for new homes without sprawl.