Response to Pre-budget report
24 November 2008
News from the Green Party | www.greenparty.org.uk
For immediate release, 24 November 2008
GREENS: RESPONSE TO PRE-BUDGET REPORT
- Government accused of returning to the same debt and over-consumption that caused the economic crisis in the first place
Responding to Alistair Darling’s Pre-Budget report this afternoon, Dr Caroline Lucas MEP, Leader of the Green Party said:
“The Chancellor’s plan to cut taxes to promote a consumer-spending boom is short- term thinking in the extreme. Even if it works, it will simply ship money abroad, as most consumer goods are imported, rather than supporting jobs here in the UK.
“More seriously, it also represents a return to the vicious cycles of debt and over-consumption that caused the crisis in the first place. Not only is this economically unsustainable, it is environmentally unsustainable as well, driving a major depletion of natural resources and growth in climate emissions”.
Her comments come as the Green Party today launched its own “Pre-budget report for a Green New Deal”[1]. The report, drawn up in collaboration with members of the Green New Deal group, would create half a million new jobs in energy efficiency and renewables, cut energy bills, and deliver long-overdue improvements to the UK infrastructure.
Dr Lucas continued:
“The paltry number of green jobs anticipated in Darling’s report is put to shame, by comparison to the Green Party’s package, which would stablilise the economy by investing in new green infrastructure, creating over half a million new jobs in the next 12 months.
"The government’s plans are incoherent and unsustainable. By putting capital spending into increasing motorway capacity, diluting the incentive to buy more efficient vehicles, and encouraging more aviation, Gordon Brown has shown his environmental incompetence, as well as his economic recklessness.”
ENDS
1. For a summary and copy of the Green Party PBR report, see: http://www.greenparty.org.uk/mediacentre/releases/2008-11-21-budget.html
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