The Creen Part has published its manifesto today. It would be hard to imagine a more stark contrast than the one between the Green Party and Conservative Party manifestos. Whilst the Tories are keen to ramp up sanctions and slash spending on disability benefits in order to fund tax cuts, the Greens want to give all disability benefits claimants a 5% rise, end sanctions and work towards introducing a universal basic income.
The Greens say that they would:
- Restore the value of disability benefits with an immediate uplift of 5%.
- End the unfair targeting of carers and disabled people on benefits.
- Increase carer’s allowance by at least 10% a month.
- Oppose plans to replace Personal Independence Payments (PIP) cash payments with ‘vouchers’, and in the long term reform intrusive eligibility tests like PIP.
- Increase Universal Credit and legacy benefits by £40 a week.
- End the unfair five-week wait for benefits which is pushing people into debt.
- Abolish the two-child benefit cap and lift 250,000 children out of poverty.
- Ensure that pensions are always uprated in line with inflation and keep pace with wage rises across the economy.
- Scrap the bedroom tax.
- End benefit sanctions.
- Introduce a Universal Basic Income, although this would be the work of more than one parliament.
