The Green Party's leader put forward her views on education, pay and the NHS in a live debate with young voters.
The Green Party’s leader put forward her views on education, pay and the NHS in a live debate with young voters
Last night Green Party leader Natalie Bennett was the first politician to appear on Leaders Live, a new debate series that gives young people the chance to put questions directly to leaders.
Broadcast live on YouTube, the series is created by Bite the Ballot, an organisation that empowers young people to make informed voting decisions.
Bennett’s appearance was significant as she has been omitted from the BBC’s scheduled debates that will mark the run up to the general election.
You can watch the full debate here.
The questions that the audience asked Bennett showed that jobs and education are at the top of their list of worries.
When asked who she proposed would cover the cost of the free higher education the Greens have promised, Bennett pointed to rich individuals and multinational companies who do not pay their taxes.
She stressed that there is a need for society to be “rebalanced” and that multinationals need to take responsibility for contributing towards society.
The issue of equality also informs the Greens’ policy on drugs.
Bennett was adamant that drugs “should be treated as a health issue, not a criminal justice issue”, and said that the amount of discretion given to police means that more people from minority backgrounds are arrested for drug misuse than people from other backgrounds.
This, she said, is despite the fact that more privileged people are no less likely to be using drugs.
Bennett also pledged to end zero-hours contracts, and stated that her party was “absolutely opposed” to unpaid internships. Alongside workers who currently receive a minimum wage, interns, she said, should be paid the Living Wage as a minimum.
The NHS was also a key issue in the debate. Bennett warned that the UK is ‘racing towards’ an American style privatised health system, and criticised the private finance initiatives (PFI) which are holding the NHS hostage with huge interest rates and service charges.
Campaign group Drop the NHS Debt estimate that by 2020-21, the annual costs of the 118 NHS PFIs will be £2.14bn. Saving 46 per cent of that would release about £1bn a year.
As part of the Greens’ plans for the NHS, Bennett promised that more detail on mental healthcare would be added to their manifesto. She criticised the way that mental health problems are regarded as less urgent than physical ones, and pledged parity of esteem for people with mental illness.
On education, Bennett said that no school run by a faith group should receive government money. She predicted that in the event of this becoming legislation, many faith schools would choose to come into the secular system rather than become private.
The school system also face criticism from the Green leader over its competitive nature. Bennett said that the system should be based on cooperation, and shold include a more practical curriculum covering things like relationships, health and nutrition, in order to give pupils an “education for life”.
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
49 Responses to “Natalie Bennett: We have to ban zero-hours contracts”
Nick London
Ps from your posts sounds like you had a fab job. Life well lived. Very jealous.
uglyfatbloke
Well, it’s been interesting! Concerts/ballet/Opera/Musicals/etc…10 years as an unmarried mother (relatively unusual for a bloke even today) followed by a Ph.D and lecturing in history/theory of war….I suppose it’s been what you might call varied.
It’s had its ups and downs like everything else, but I would n’t swap it for anything else….I suppose I’d be a bit more cheerful if Gordon Brown had n’t utterly and completely screwed my pension, making me totally reliant on my wife having a decent job, but such is life.
Michael Humphrey
I work full time in one company and have a zero hours
contract for work with another to alllow me to work in the evenings and at weekends so my ZHC is not exclusive.
It is certainly a pain not to know how much, if any, extra work I am going to get and I’d like more transparency about how hours are allocated but given I work in a customer-led area I don’t see a better way.
I accept the power is on the employer’s side: they could withhold work from ‘bolshie’ individuals so the likelihood of the ‘workers’ standing together to improve pay and conditions is low.
Rather than totally ban ZHC look at exclusivity clauses, the impact on
state benefits and how the worker/employer relationship can be made
more equal including some transparent structure when allocating hours so
prejudice, discrimination or simply favouritism is harder to do unseen.
Dawnk
My daughter used to work for a leading resturant chain who offered her a 0 hours contract . She would turn up at 12 at the start of her shift and be expected to sit around and wait if the resturant was not busy. Sometimes waiting several hours before she would be paid her £3.79 per hour (old enough to work and pay taxes but not to get a living wage). Therefore, she would be at work on location for 4 hours and only get paid for two. How is that moral or right. How can people on 0 hours contracts have any financial security or build a future, as more and more companies use 0 hours contracts. In every example I have heard of, they offer the staff the same hours every week how can this be justified. There is NO benefit to the workers as Vince Cable would like to state, just exploitation of the young, female and immigrant workers. No wonder it is so hard to get people off of benefits, who could accept a job on these grounds and not be in dire straights before long. We are not talking about bank workers who just want a bit of extra money, these are workers who need to have money to live and for their families. They may be able to have more than one job, however, this is usually because they have to because they are not being offered enough hours or money in one job. Stop partonising us and get rid of 0 hours contracts for jobs going back 10 years would have had been permanent hours with the rights that go with it. Explotation and trapping families in Poverty is what it is. You can still have bank workers but for the appropriate roles and conditions. I feel that this is exactly what is wrong with this country today, the bridge between those who have making decisions for those who have not.