The government is failing to increase the number of Mother and Baby Units, despite a planned increase of 500 places in women’s prisons. In answer to my written question I discovered that they keep no records of how many women and trans men are pregnant in Britain’s jails, nor do they have any idea of how many pregnant prisoners in individual facilities.
Continue reading “Pregnant prisoners shouldn’t be treated this way”
The manufacturers of the cladding and insulation also knew they had problems with materials but carried on marketing them anyway. Are the Government going to let them get away with murder?
Our Government’s “hostile environment” can take most of the blame for the fact that we have left people behind in Afghanistan. I do not understand why we have an asylum regime that deliberately erects barriers and unnecessary bureaucracy every step of the way. Even before the fall of Kabul, the number of refugees who had been waiting more than a year had grown to more than 50,000.
I do not understand why we have not had the time or resources to answer the multiple cries for help from people stranded behind the Taliban roadblocks. I think it is because we have put up our own roadblocks behind the desks in Whitehall; it seems that civil servants pick through details and create blocks that are not what the majority of British people would want.
Continue reading “Second Reading of the Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill”
Did you see all the progress we made with the Environment Bill this week? Eight government defeats with eight great amendments covering everything targets to principles; and from soil health to air pollution and human health. There is more to come next week with Natalie’s attempt to create UK support for the offence of Ecocide.
Continue reading “Green success in Lords, now lobby your MP”
I am astonished that the Government do not understand rather better the need for our heritage. They make a lot of fuss about statues at Oriel College but somehow, other wonderful monuments do not seem to play any part in their thinking. Why is there no understanding that these monuments contribute not only to wildlife, the landscape and the soil in lots of ways but to human happiness? Luckily, the plans for the monstrous Stonehenge road have been turned down by a British court. Continue reading “We cannot keep trashing our heritage”
The government’s decision not to review the expansion of Heathrow, despite the obvious impacts on the climate emergency, is just one of the backward steps on the journey to COP26. The backward steps are the big decisions on climate change that can be categorised as ‘business as usual’ and won’t appear on any government media release. The £27bn road building programme, the thousands of homes and buildings being constructed that don’t meet zero carbon standards and the large number of waste incinerators. Even the fact that we are holding an inquiry into a new coal mine in Cumbria, or dishing out development licences for oil and gas exploration is bizarre when the science is telling us that the Greenland ice sheet is going to disappear and the seas rise by at least 7m (the palace of Westminster is 6m above sea level).
Continue reading “Heathrow expansion and other backward steps towards COP26”
I have tabled the following amendment to the Environment Bill that would enable Metro Mayor to set tough air pollution standards for their area and give local authorities more power to act on sources of bad air such as wood burning stoves.
Continue reading “Give Metro Mayors more power to act on air pollution”
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I know that the Green Party’s 450 or so councillors sitting on over 140 local authorities, along with thousands of other environmentally aware councillors from other political parties, would be able to achieve a huge amount with these new powers—in particular, the ability to prohibit inappropriate activities that would be detrimental to biodiversity. Continue reading “Environment Bill Committee Stage Day 6 – Planning”
We currently use water in an extremely illogical way. Clean, drinkable water is flushed down the loo when there is a really obvious alternative: to not use it. The separation and capture of grey water should be routine, and the Government should make it a requirement in building regs, because the benefits are so blindingly clear.
When we combine the separation and reuse of grey water with the separation of sewage from drainage, we have a much more sustainable water system. I hope that not very long into the future we will look back on the idea of using clean water to flush our toilets and then mixing it with rainwater, before spending huge amounts of money getting the sewage back out, as illogical and disgusting. Continue reading “Environment Bill Committee Day 6 – Water”
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb 