As a passionate educator, I believe our current school system is too often not working for both children and teachers.

Full statement

As a Green Member of Parliament, I would push for our schools to be better funded and have a more flexible, child-centered way of teaching. This is especially important for children with Special Educational needs, like mental health, who currently do not have the necessary support. The cost of living is on all our minds, so I would push for Universal Basic Income, a system where everyone has enough to live on, with extra support for people with disabilities. In the meantime we urgently need to increase the Minimum Wage and Universal Income payments to ensure everyone has enough to live on. The Green Party MPs would also reform how disability benefits are awarded, so the system supports those most in need. As a Green Party MP, I would champion ways to make sure everyone has a warm, safe, affordable place to live. In Coventry we have a high level of rented accommodation often with high heating bills, so I would push the Government to require all landlords to insulate the homes they own making them cheaper to heat, and I would push for all new homes to be built to a high level of energy efficiency, so that we do not need to retrofit even more housing stock in the future. While we need new homes, we also need green spaces and these are just as important within cities as they are in the countryside. We need to protect both the spaces we have and also make sure they have as much biodiversity as possible. Nature is important for the health of both the planet and ourselves, lack of green spaces is shown to have a negative effect on our mental health. Therefore we must find more inventive ways of incorporating more nature into our built environment, for instance tree-lined streets are cooler in the summer than those without trees, and limiting hard-standing can help deal with rainfall and flooding.