In response to the Pre-Budget Report, Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party, said:
"The middle of a severe recession is not the time to be making cuts."
"We need bold and ambitious projects to address both the recession and the climate crisis. In Kirklees, Green Party councillors successfully proposed the UK's first free insulation scheme for all householders, regardless of income. In winter, this keeps people warm in their homes. All year round, this type of scheme saves people money on fuel bills. The government included a boiler scrappage programme in the PBR, but the government needs to require firms to manufacture white goods which are far more efficient across the spectrum."
"Darling is fond of reciting numbers of jobs, but we need to focus on the kind of jobs that are being created, not just raw numbers of jobs created since 1997. We need jobs that pay a living wage and jobs that fit into a green economy."
"The new economics foundation, in July 2008, said that we had only 100 months to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere before we hit a potential point of no return. We're at 85 months and counting. The Greens are the only party calling for a 10% reduction per year in emissions, and the focus of the PBR should have addressed this."
"Alistair Darling could have focused on the idea that with investments in onshore and offshore wind, improved public transport, localised agriculture, energy efficiency, and in reskilling hundreds of thousands of people, we can remove millions of tons of carbon from our economy, and simultaneously create public savings of billions in reduced benefits and increased tax intake."
"On a day when Boris Johnson is testifying to Parliament about the PPP of the Tube, this PBR could also have been an opportunity to renounce policies of part-privatisation and PFI for the last decade. Instead, we see more outsourcing of 'inefficient prisons' ... that will mean more private profits for firms, like Serco. Serco already runs private prisons, the Docklands Light Railway, the London Cycle scheme; pathology labs, the Flexible New Deal, the AWE, Merseyrail, and a six-year contract with Ofsted in the Midlands. We need more public control over public services, not more outsourcing."
"The Green Party also wanted to see serious funding put towards community policing, youth projects, and alternatives to expanding our prison estate. Pilot projects on restorative justice would have the primary aim to restore and improve the position of the victim and the community, and offenders being required to make amends. We need high quality youth centres to provide an outlet for young people outside of school hours. The Greens want stronger communities and more "bobbies on the beat" - but what can be just as useful are officers that the community can approach, that they know by sight, and know by name, for intelligence-led community policing."