Ben Foley is the Green Party candidate for Luton South.

Full statement

In May, he was one of the first two Green Party councillors ever elected to a Bedfordshire unitary council. Ben has lived in the county for more than 20 years, moving here to commute by train to Leicester. He has strong connections to the University of Bedfordshire. Over the last 20 years Ben has brought up two children in Bedfordshire, who attended state schools and have now started at university. "This year we had the hottest day ever in this country. The warmest winters’ day ever too. Globally we have just had the hottest ever October. I'm standing because we need to take action right now to deal with the climate emergency. The climate breakdown we are now experiencing is killing people, whether through floods in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, through wildfires in Australia and California, or through desertification. In addition, people are already being displaced from places as close as Andalusia in Spain as drought makes farming impossible. We must act for the sake of our children, our nieces and nephews, and their children. If we love them, we must give them a planet fit to live on. Tackling this needs a transformation now - the investment of £100 billion a year that the Green Party is proposing."