Greens pledge on more jobs

Published: 22 April 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

THE Green Party are partly staking their claim for more seats at the Town Hall with a promise to meet unemployment head on.

Members going to door to door with the group’s local manifesto will promise more apprenticeships and will demand that Camden’s contractors are only offered deals if they offer a chance to young people struggling to find work.

The party believes a programme of work to make homes in Camden energy efficient could create job opportunities.

There is also a pledge to make sure all workers in the borough receive the London Living Wage rate, a basic pay packet of £7.60 an hour which some workers at the Town Hall – such as cleaners – don’t receive.

Highgate councillor Maya De Souza said: “We are looking to create a fairer society and when it comes to paying for the London Living Wage at the council, that would cost an extra £1million but when you work it out it’s only a couple more pence on everybody’s council tax every week. I think we can afford it.”

The Greens, she added, are the only party locally being honest about the need to raise council tax to pay for public services.

“We have to look at public services and see how we can protect them,” she said.

Two of the three sitting Green councillors are standing down from the council, but Cllr De Souza said last night (Wednesday) she is still hoping her group can make gains. 

The parliamentary candidates in the borough, writers Beatrix Campbell and Natalie Bennett, are both also standing in council elections on the same day. It is thought Kentish Town, Somers Town and Bloomsbury are targets.

Cllr De Souza denied the party was broadening its policy ideas because the larger parties had marginalised it by getting wise to green ideas.

“We are still unimpressed with what they are doing in terms of the environment,” she said. “Climate change still informs all of our thinking. We can’t go on thinking we have enough resources to do whatever we want. If you look at the election campaign so far, you haven’t heard the other parties talk about the environment at all.”