Of course not. Being green covers every area of life. In summary the Green Party manifesto can summarised as follows.

The banking system

The Green Party would not bail out bankers with taxpayers’ money, but fight for a fair financial deal, with community banks, credit unions and mutuals, providing realistic loans.

We will fight to introduce a High Pay Commission to ensure bankers and highly paid executives are not rewarded for failure.

Health and the NHS

Over £1billion of public money is wasted on privatisation despite quality of care suffering when hospitals and surgeries are treated like profit-driven businesses rather than public services.

Greens oppose cuts, closures and privatisation and demand a full programme of locally accessible services. We will provide free social care to the elderly, abolish prescription charges, re-introduce free eye tests and ensure widely available NHS chiropody. We will also fight to restore free dental care and provide everyone with an NHS dentist.

Pensions

Under The Green Party all pensioners would receive a non-means tested pension of £170 per week. We would also provide free care and support for those living independently..

The Green Party would introduce free home insulation for all, with priority for pensioners and those living in fuel poverty.

Housing

Britain has a shortage of affordable, good quality housing to buy or rent.

The Green Party will make it easier for people to get on the property ladder, to protect home-owners and to eradicate homelessness by:

Building new council homes, supporting the development of housing co-ops, bringing back into use 300,000 long-term empty private sector homes, renovating 37,000 empty council homes to help cut waiting lists, giving social housing tenants greater control over the management of their homes and neighbourhoods, improving the quality of housing stock to help reduce household bills and helping people at risk of repossession keep their homes via a Right to Rent scheme.

Jobs and a living wage

Our priority is the creation of an extra million jobs and training places. A £44bn package of measures would include workforce training, investment in renewables, public transport, insulation, social housing and waste management.

To reduce inequality The Green Party will fight for a National Minimum Wage of 60% of net national average earnings, currently £8.10 per hour.

Transport

Train fares in England are some of the highest in Europe. The Green Party would re-nationalise trains to improve service and lower fares.

We would divert £30bn from road projects into public transport. We would spend £1.5bn subsidising public transport to reduce fares up to 10%. This would strengthen communities, reduce crime, improve health, reduce traffic fatalities and create 160,000 jobs.

The Green Party today launched its Older People’s Pledge for the 2010 general election (1) – with, at its heart, the promise of support for the National Pensioners’ Convention’s demand for a £170-a-week basic state pension.

Gateshead Greens unveiled this pledge today to show the Green commitment to all aspects of life – especially those for whom life is tough due to low incomes in retirement.

Andy Redfern, Green Candidate for the newly-formed Gateshead constituency said: “After a lifetime of hard work and contributing to society, pensioners deserve better than having to scrape by on an inadequate state pension. It’s only fair that the basic state pension should be enough to live on – that is why Greens would make sure that all pensioners receive a non-means-tested £170 per week, as well as free social care for all who need it, as is currently offered in Scotland.”

The figure of £170 per week is calculated as the minimum required to keep the basic state pension above the official poverty line, according to the National Pensioners’ Convention, in its Pensioners’ Manifesto, which calls for a range of measures to improve conditions for older people (2).

A spokesman for the NPC said today:

“The NPC welcomes the Green Party’s commitment to improving the basic state pension for Britain’s 11 million older voters and hopes that other parties will see the economic and moral sense in tackling pensioner poverty. This is something no political party should ignore.”

The Greens have spelled out how the £170 basic state pension would be funded (3).

End the default retirement age, say Greens

In addition to raising pensioners above the poverty line, the Green Party’s Older People’s Pledge promises to end the default retirement age, so that people would have the freedom to go on working and contributing to society if they wished to, free from discrimination on the basis of age.

Michelle Mitchell, Age Concern and Help the Aged’s Charity Director, said:

“We welcome the Green Party’s focus on older people and desire to address the challenges of ageing as we head towards the general election. Abolishing the default retirement age and increasing the basic state pension are absolutely key to improving the retirement prospects for millions of older people.”

The Green Party has also pointed out that under its policy of free insulation for every home in Britain, pensioners would benefit from warmer homes and would be less reliant on winter fuel payments.

Notes

1. The Green Party’s Older People’s Pledge is below in full.

2. The NPC’s Pensioners’ Manifesto can be downloaded here: www.npcuk.org/publications.htm.

3. There are roughly 12 million pensioners living in the UK and a further 1 million living abroad. Paying a single rate of £170 per week, and a couples rate of £300 per week, will cost £110bn per year. The current basic state pension, plus certain other specific pensioner benefits like Pensions Credits paid to those of pension age (which would become redundant if the basic pension rate was raised to the level we propose) costs £70bn. For the remaining £40 billion, the Green Party would abolish tax relief on pension contributions (£20 billion), and the national insurance rebate on employer and employee contributions to private pension schemes (£19 billion). The final £1 billion would come from increased income tax receipts from pensioners.

4. In 2009-10, the full basic State Pension is £95.25 a week. For a married couple who both qualify, it is £190.50 a week. From April 6 2010, these figures will rise by 2.5%.

In advance of Alistair Darling’s 2010 budget, the Green Party wants to see three key provisions included:

- a non-means-tested state pension, set at £170 a week (1)

- a nationwide programme to insulate homes which would create 350,000 training placements over the next year (2)

- an end to the zero-rating of VAT on new dwellings, putting them on a level with conversions and renovations of existing dwellings, raising £5bn in 2010 and £7.5bn by 2013

The Green Party welcomes Labour’s adoption of a long-standing Green policy idea, the idea of a People’s Bank. The Green Party would provide initial funding of £2.5 billion over the next Parliament to assist communities in setting up such a network.

The Green Party’s leader, Caroline Lucas, said, “Our manifesto, to be released just after the call of the general election, is a practical and realistic plan to move towards a more equal society, fight climate change and protect public services.”

Lucas continued: “Unlike the other parties, we will argue that increases in taxation for the better-off are required. We will raise taxes fairly and explain them honestly.”

“Labour’s plans depend upon wishful thinking about how quickly the economy and tax revenues will recover. They are unwilling to tell you about the cuts and tax increases coming later. The Conservatives will cut public spending, but have not put forward a plan that adds up to remotely enough cuts without tax increases to cut the deficit.”

“In contrast, the Green Party will be open about what we would cut, what we would defend, and about the fact that we need to raise taxation from 36% of GDP in 2009-10 to around 45% in 2013. This would halve the gap between government expenditure and revenues by 2013-14 (as the Labour government proposes) and progressively close the gap thereafter.”

Notes:

1) There are roughly 12 million pensioners living in the UK and a further 1 million living abroad. Paying a single rate of £170 per week, and a couples rate of £300 per week, will cost £110bn per year. The basic state pension costs £56bn, and when certain other specific pensioner benefits like Pensions Credits paid to those of pension age are abolished, the total saving will be almost £70bn. For the remaining £40 billion, we would abolish tax relief on pension contributions (£20 billion), and raise a further £19 billion from abolishing employer national insurance contributions and employee national insurance rebates associated with pension schemes. The final £1 billion will come from increased income tax receipts from pensioners.

2) This proposal would involve workforce training for jobs in energy conservation and renewable energy, including grant-funded conversion courses for skilled engineers from other industries. In particular, we would spend £5 billion in the next fiscal year, creating 350 000 training places, offering opportunities to 700 000 unemployed people, in particular the young unemployed.