Green Party

The Labour Government today missed a golden opportunity to create huge numbers of jobs in emerging industries, says the Green Party.

Adrian Ramsay, Green Party Deputy Leader and Parliamentary Candidate for Norwich South, said the budget is a "major disappointment". He added: "The Government has not taken up the costed proposals the Green Party produced in November for a green fiscal stimulus. The Government is doing far too little. With the necessary investment in green initiatives we could create hundreds of thousands of jobs in measures such as free insulation for homes and schools, investing in renewable energy and creating an economy based on local production, re-use and repair."

Dr Caroline Lucas MEP, the Green Party's leader, today told Radio 4's The World at One that the Government is throwing away the potential to create hundreds of thousands of extra jobs by failing to invest adequately in insulating buildings, in solar energy and other renewables, in upgrading the electricity grid, in public transport and in new skills training.

Dr Lucas said: "Britain is lagging behind other countries in the 'greenness' of its so-called 'green stimulus' plan, against the advice of its own advisors." She pointed out that the government's own watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), had proposed a £30bn package very similar to the Green Party's Budget proposals - and which SDC calculated would create 800,000 jobs.

She described the chancellor's 'green stimulus' as "one-tenth or less of what it should be" if the UK were to meet serious emissions targets and maximise the job-creation potential of sectors like energy, where renewables sustain far more jobs per megawatt than either nuclear or coal.

On scrappage, Caroline Lucas disagreed that this would create significant numbers of jobs, but proposed a better way forward. She said the way to go was to build the cars to last, and refit and improve them over time. This would reduce the associated energy while significantly increasing the amount of labour involved, by comparison with new manufacture.

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