The radical policy comes alongside a raft of youth-targeted proposals.
Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley has today called for the abolition of the Home Office alongside a raft of radical policies aimed at young people.
In a speech to the party’s conference, Bartley said that the closure of the controversial government department formed part of the party’s commitment to creating a fairer immigration system, closing all migration detention centres and halving the prison population.
The policy would see the formation of a Ministry of the Interior to manage law and order and a Ministry of Sanctuary to oversee migration.
The proposal to shutter the Home Office came alongside a raft of other policies including:
- The introduction of a climate chancellor to judge the environmental impact of government decisions and a minister for future generations to represent young people in government.
- A “Future Generations Act” that would require the needs of young people to be taken into account before Government decisions
- The formation of a “Young Person’s Select Committee”, made up of representatives from the Youth Parliament, with the power to scrutinise the government.
For the first time, the Young Greens will have a speech at the party’s conference in Newport.
Bartley also reiterated the party’s support for lowering the voting age to 16, while highlighting the party’s plan to raise funds for investment in renewable energy through a carbon tax, reduce C02 emissions to net zero by 2030 and back a People’s Vote on the outcome of Brexit.
Bartley said: “There is an imperative to fight not only the threat of Brexit but the conditions that have brought us Brexit. We will fight to remain in Europe and fight to transform Britain.
“We need a decisive break from business as usual, and we are ready to make the leap. The Green Party has always been on the right side of history. The time is now to shape our future.”
Earlier this week, the party announced that it would divert billions of pounds earmarked for the HS2 rail project into a nationwide upgrade of local transport.
The party is proposing that £70bn is invested over 20 years on a “local transport revolution”, with an additional £10bn to be spent on returning land already purchased for HS2 to local communities and creating nature reserves.
The party also announced this week that it would ditch the Conservative’s £6.5bn plan for new roads, instead using the money to fund free bus travel for all.
Joe Evans is a freelance journalist and editor. He is on Twitter: @joeevanswrites
One Response to “Green Party conference: Co-leader calls for abolition of the Home Office”
Gary
One thing I have noticed over the past few years is the types of policies that smaller parties like the Greens, SNP etc have come up with. Many might describe them as ‘radical’ or even ‘populist’ and criticise them as unworkable.
Look at what the SNP have done in Scotland, for example, with prescription charges. Aware of how much the system cost to implement they did away with prescription charges entirely and actually saved money in doing so. The added side effect is that those who would have had to pay, including prt timers, zero hours contractors and those with seasonal variations in their hours now can afford to get the medicines they were previously unable to get due to excessive charges. We have an improvement to health whilst ALSO saving money!
Sadly the main UK parties have failed to even LOOK for policies like this. This and many others where the government could ‘spend to save’ in the longer term are simply avoided. In fact, for many years until just LAST WEEK the Labour Party was DEAD AGAINST the ‘free prescription charges’ idea, particularly in Scotland! Suddenly, after the conference, it’s a GOOD idea and has, finally, been adopted for England. No doubt Scottish Labour politicians will be unhappy.
The underlying reason for Labour’s failure to even look at these ideas has been, certainly in Scotland, their vitriolic hatred of SNP and anything that even comes from the SNP, even if it’s something Labour would otherwise have adopted and agreed with. The Scottish system of government was set up specifically to avoid an antagonistic government style and promote coalition governments. This has failed due to Labour’s inability to work with the largest party (SNP) and they have done their utmost to hold everything back. This has backfire spectacularly and left Labour placing fourth in Scotland in ost wards.
I’m hoping that Labour will, for once, LISTEN to the public and go ahead and adopt policies that benefit the PUBLIC rather than those who have shares in banking and finance.
When Labour remembers that it is the party of the people, for the many and not the few, it will again regain support. It may take decades to rebuild trust in Scotland however but Corbyn & McDonnel are popular, whether they can overcome the right wing PLP is another matter…