Caroline Lucas: Food poverty is the biggest indictment of the Tory Government Caroline Lucas has said the Green Party will be the party to tackle gender inequality by reversing cuts to services […]

Caroline Lucas has said the Green Party will be the party to tackle gender inequality by reversing cuts to services for domestic violence victims and challenging Theresa May’s “extreme” social policies.

The co-leader of the Green Party said the Conservative Government pretends the UK has such a financial problem that “we can’t properly ensure women have enough money to put food on the table for themselves and for their kids”.

Speaking to i, the MP for Brighton Pavilion said there is “a complete absence of any real balance in terms of priorities” when it comes to Tory spending.

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“At the same time, we can afford to have a first-strike nuclear weapons drop, according to Theresa May this week. We can afford high-speed rail; we can afford a massive new expansion of airports.

“The Green Party’s priority would be making sure that women’s basic needs are met.”

The Women’s Equality Party has added another dimension to the forthcoming election. Just two years after launching, the party already has 65,000 registered members and supporters. It could be argued that their existence suggests no party has done enough to address gender inequality.

The Green Party already campaigns for gender equality

But Ms Lucas disagreed: “I struggle to find a single issue that the Women’s Equality Party is campaigning for that we are not already there doing.

“I completely respect their right to be there and to make that their focus, and that’s helpful across the board because it means that all parties are rightfully kept on their on toes. But honestly, when it comes to the Green Party, I don’t see any area where we are not already there.”

Ms Lucas said the party has made closing the gender pay gap an integral part of their party policy for decades. “It is absolutely intolerable that women are paid less than men for the same work of equal value.

“When it comes to women on public and private boards we have been at the forefront of arguing that there should be a minimum of 40 per cent and that there ought to be parity.”

She said the Green Party holds the same belief when it comes to women in public life, such as in Parliament, and supports the 50/50 campaign to get more women MPs in Parliament.

“In my constituency I am always talking to schools and others trying to encourage women, to say that there should not be a glass ceiling and together we can try and tackle this.”

Women are hit harder by cuts

Ms Lucas said Green Party policies focusing on investment in public services would particularly help women.

The biggest issues for women in this agenda are the “austerity agenda” as cuts disproportionately affect women, such as cuts to rape crisis centres and to domestic violence centres. “These things sometimes seem to happen under the radar and yet their impact on individual women’s lives is massive.”

Ms Lucas said the Green Party would reverse any cuts to domestic violence centres and would properly fund services to support victims of rape and domestic abuse.

Food poverty is the biggest indictment of Tory Government

The Young Women’s Trust recently published research showing almost half (46 per cent) of the 300 young mothers they surveyed were regularly skipping meals in order to feed their children, while more than a quarter had used a food bank.

Ms Lucas said voters must consider what kind of country they actually want to see in the future when they head to polling booths on 8 June. “This idea that we are now the fifth or sixth richest country in the world and yet we have a record number of people who are now dependent on food banks – over one million food parcels handed out last year. That is the biggest scandal, the biggest indictment of this Government that I can think of.”

She branded proposals by Ukip to ban the burka and introduce mandatory medical checks for girls deemed at risk of female genital mutilation Islamophobic. “We would make sure that there is an absolute programme of much more awareness about it in schools and in health care centres and so forth. We would absolutely want to do everything we can to stamp it out.

“We would take advice from communities most affected by it. But what we certainly would not do would be to impose something as draconian and as intolerable as mandatory genital inspections. The idea that Suzanne Evans from Ukip can possibly think that is acceptable – I’m still reeling from that, frankly.”