Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Caroline Lucas, MP, co-leader of the Green Party, 5.03.17

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS


SOPHY RIDGE: Now we heard earlier from companies in Brighton who worry about a rise in business rates and say that it could even take them under.  Now while I was in town I sat down with the co-leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, who has been fighting against those rate rises and I started by asking her what exactly she wants the government to do. .  

CAROLINE LUCAS: I raised this at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, in fact I was the only MP that did but what I want her to do was first of all make exceptions for small and micro businesses and particularly to have an extra fund for them.  I want her to look at the number of businesses that are included in the rate relief scheme and also crucially, and a bit of a longer term, we need to have a complete review of business rates altogether, it is a perverse system that often really does impact small businesses hard and I think we need to look again in terms of having a land value tax system or a system based on revenue turnover rather than on the rental values.

SR: The problem is all this is going to cost money and we’ve already got a social care crisis, a crisis in the NHS, where’s it all going to come from?  

CAROLINE LUCAS: Well I think it’s going to be a rebalancing away from some of the bigger companies, don’t forget this is a government that has been consistently reducing Corporation Tax and that often helps some of the biggest companies most of all so let’s look at the bigger companies paying a bit more so that the smaller businesses, the businesses that a city like Brighton absolutely depends on are able to prosper and thrive because they are the ones that are really the wealth generators, the generators of jobs.    

SR: I am keen to talk to you about Brexit now and the House of Lords defeated the government this week, they backed an amendment to the Brexit Bill that would guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK.  What do you think it says about the level of scrutiny provided by the House of Commons that this is happening in the Lords instead?

CAROLINE LUCAS: Well I think it’s a damning indictment on what happened in the House of Commons and I think what we’ve seen is a complete absence of robust opposition on this issue. The tragedy was that Labour essentially, although they put forward a set of very good amendments, also said prior to doing that that come what may they would support the triggering of Article 50.  As soon as they had raised the white flag on that, as soon as they had given their unconditional support for triggering Article 50 come what may, any leverage they might have had to get those amendments passed was completely gone and as a result we have had the House of Lords being the ones who are standing up for the right of EU citizens to remain.  The House of Lords were likely to be standing up for proper scrutiny in the Commons.  That is farcical, what we should have is a real opposition coming from Labour working with the other opposition parties, myself, the Lib Dems, the Nationalists, so that we can have a common position because if we had that we could have stopped the extreme Brexit for which Theresa May has absolutely no mandate.

SR: So you blame Labour then for effectively rolling over and allowing the government to get their way on Brexit?   

CAROLINE LUCAS: I completely blame Labour for rolling over and backing the government.  I accept of course the outcome of the referendum, it says that we are leaving the EU but there is a wealth of difference between a soft Brexit where you could remain part of the single market, where free movement could continue, where you have got social and environmental protections and the extraordinarily extreme Brexit, the cliff edge Brexit, that the Prime Minister is currently pursuing without any opposition coming from the official opposition.  

SR: Some people will look at what you have just said and think, well you’re just a bit of a sore loser, you’re not accepting the result of the referendum where people voted to leave the EU.

CAROLINE LUCAS: People certainly voted to leave the EU and that’s not in question but the issue of whether it was an extreme Brexit or a softer Brexit wasn’t on the ballot paper and if you’re taking the Prime Minister seriously when she says she wants to bring the country together, well there are four nations in the United Kingdom.  Two voted to remain, two voted to leave so one might argue that if you want to try to keep the country together the best way to do that would be to pursue a softer Brexit which would mean you could actually bring people together in a much more effective way.

SR: Let’s talk now about the future of your own party because the Greens are bumping along at about 4% in the polls, there was supposed to be this great left wing uprising with people like Bernie Sanders in the US picking up votes but you haven’t benefited from that, why not?

CAROLINE LUCAS: Don’t forget that 1.3 million I think people voted for the Green Party in 2015 in a voting system which is absolutely inimical for smaller parties so in spite of the fact that most of those people knew that under first past the post they weren’t going to elect a Green Party person, 1.3 million people still voted Green in 2015.  

SR: But you don’t seem to have built on that base those do you?  

CAROLINE LUCAS: I think we are.  Look, let’s not forget just to come back to the voting system for just one second because I think it is so instrumental to what we’re talking about.  If we had had a system of proportional representation, 1.3 million voting Green could have led to somewhere between 20 and 24 MPs.  That would have been a very big difference.  I think now what we’re seeing is more people actually looking twice at Jeremy’s leadership because for whatever reason unfortunately he has not been able to deliver the kind of radical change that he had talked about, and they want a party that is consistent about what it stands for and that will be very clear in its opposition to government policy from everything from the business rates hikes through to Brexit through to for example infrastructure.  At the minute Labour supports Heathrow expansion, it supports Hinkley the nuclear power station, it supports HS2 – it’s the Green’s that are providing real opposition suggesting a difference way forward based on green energy, based on local transport links and so forth.

SR: Do you think what the problem is, is that if you are left wing you’ll vote for Jeremy Corbyn and if you want to stop Brexit you’ll vote for the Lib Dems so what’s the point of the Green Party?

CAROLINE LUCAS:  The point of the Greens – and first of all I would challenge both of those assumptions that you’ve just made but the point of the Greens is that you have got consistent leadership on policies, you know where the party stands on everything from nuclear weapons to nuclear power through to real investment in green energy through to the kind of jobs that you could get if you insulated every single home in the country, bringing people’s fuel bills down, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, addressing climate change.  You’d have true sustainability at its heart there as well.  

SR: So are you looking to make alliances then with other left wing parties?   Not standing in elections for example.

CAROLINE LUCAS: This is a question that I think is rightly being answered at local level so there may well be some local areas where there is sufficient agreement and trust between the different parties to have a situation whereby perhaps one party will soft pedal or another party may perhaps stand down but it is absolutely down to the local level to decide that and for us, for the Greens, the big prize for that is about changing the voting system.  We have just recently had the referendum where the rallying cry was taking back control, I think we should start by taking back control of our democracy.  

SR: And are those conversations going on already with parties like the Lib Dems or even with Labour?

CAROLINE LUCAS: Certainly at a local level lots of those conversations are going on and the think tank Compass is acting as a kind of moderator if you like, a chair of many of those meetings and up and down the country these issues are being debated because more and more people recognise that the first past the post, their voice doesn’t count.  They are looking at Labour and recognising frankly whoever the Labour party leader is, the chances of them winning an outright majority at the next election is vanishingly small so instead of fighting amongst ourselves is there scope for us to be working together on certain issues and if there is, I think it would be irresponsible not to actually address that.  

SR: You’ve talked a lot about the voting system which clearly doesn’t help smaller parties like your own.  The thing I often wonder is, do you find it quite lonely being the only Green MP in the House of Commons?  

CAROLINE LUCAS:  I’d certainly like there to be more alongside me, that’s for sure but actually what I do find is that what’s possible is that you can work with other MPs from other parties around issues of shared concern so for example we have just managed to get through now an agreement from the government that they will introduce statutory personal and social health and economic education.  I put down a Private Members Bill on that issue but I have also been working with MPs right across the political spectrum to really push the government on that and actually what I think it means if you are on your own, you have to work well with others and that’s how you get things done.  

SR: That was the Green Party co-leader, Caroline Lucas, in her Brighton constituency.