Greens Vow To Roll Back NHS Privatisation

The Green Party has pledged to end privatisation in the NHS and re-nationalise the railways in its manifesto.

The party also vowed to ban fracking, stop airport expansion and halt major road schemes, while promising cash for energy efficiency measures and flood defences.

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Party leader Natalie Bennett told activists at the heart of the manifesto was "a vision for a fair economy".

She said: "That fair economy demands the end to austerity.

"It demands we restore and enhance the essential public services to all, but particularly the most vulnerable.

"That fair economy is paid for by the rebalancing that we so desperately need, to see multinational companies and rich individuals paying their fair share in taxes as they are simply not paying now."

Ms Bennet added that a fair economy meant every worker should be paid a living wage.

"It is really not a radical statement to say that if you work full time you should earn enough money to live on," she said.

"And yet we are the only UK party who is saying the minimum wage should immediately be lifted to a living wage and should reach £10 an hour by 2020."

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Ms Bennett also underlined the party's commitment to safeguarding the NHS, and pledged to remove all private operators from the service.

She said: "Behind that is an understanding of what privatisation has really meant for so many of our public services.

"It's meant the cutting of the pay and conditions of workers, it's meant the cutting of the quality of services and it has meant the shovelling of public money into private hands."

Caroline Lucas, the party's former leader and the only Green MP in the last parliament, also spoke at the manifesto launch and argued tackling climate change was not "some luxury that is only possible when there are good economic times".

She said the environment was not something that could be ditched during tough times "like that extra cappuccino on the way to work".

Green Party plans for a free nationwide retro-fit insulation programme would tackle both the "scandal of cold homes" while creating more than 100,000 jobs, she said.

Ms Lucas told the audience the money was there but it came down to political choice.

"It's nonsense to say we can waste billions on new roads or on HS2 but we can't afford to keep people warm in their own homes," she said.

For every £1 spent on energy efficiency measures, £1.27 was returned to the economy, and Ms Lucas insisted it was the only way of reducing energy bills while also helping the environment.

She also argued that the prospect of a hung parliament and a minority Labour government opened the way for the Greens to realise its manifesto goals.

She said: "That would give us a real opportunity to push Labour on the policies we know the public wants and which are at the heart of our manifesto - whether that's scrapping nuclear weapons or reversing the privatisation in our NHS, whether that's returning local schools to local control or bringing rail back into public ownership."

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