A summary of the main highlights of the Green party’s pledges should it win the general election on 7 May

The Green party leader, Natalie Bennett, and former leader Caroline Lucas have launched the party’s manifesto at a theatre in Dalston, east London. Here are the document’s key points:

The economy

Abandon GDP and the pursuit of growth as the measure of economic success. Instead use a measure of Adjusted National Product (ANP), which would take account of capital and environmental depreciation and include the value of things not currently paid for, such as unpaid work at home.

The plans in the manifesto require borrowing of £338bn in real terms over the parliament, compared with the coalition’s plans to borrow £115bn. They say public spending and taxation would provide a surplus on the current account of 2.7% by the end of the parliament.

Peter Walker: This is arguably the Greens’ key distinguishing feature, more so even than the environment: a wholesale rejection of austerity while also questioning the more general growth-above-all consensus view on the economy.

Tax

Introduce a Robin Hood tax (a financial transaction tax) and controls on bank lending.

Introduce a wealth tax of 2% a year on the top 1% to raise £25bn per year.

Raise the additional top rate of income tax to 60% and increase corporation tax from 20% to 30%, raising £12bn per year.

PW: While the Greens confidently predict a deficit falling to £21bn a year in 2019, much would depend on their new taxes bringing in the ambitious sums forecast. No one really knows how much a wealth tax – an annual levy on those with assets of more than £3m –would actually raise. Even the manifesto says of the wealth tax, “the potential yield is uncertain”.

Green party manifesto: what Labour says, only more so Read more

The environment

Protect, expand, properly fund and improve non-vehicular access to national parks.

Increase national spending on recycling and waste disposal by about 50%, an extra £4bn a year.

Aim to recycle 70% of domestic waste by 2020 as a move towards a zero-waste system. Follow Scotland in banning waste food and other organic material being sent to landfill.

Break up large vertically integrated companies so that they can’t both produce energy and supply it to customers.

Cut energy demand by a third by 2020, a half by 2030 and two thirds by 2050.

Provide a free nationwide retrofit insulation programme, concentrated on areas where fuel poverty is most serious.

Provide £4.5bn over the parliament to support research and development into less energy-intensive industrial processes.

Preventing new building on flood plains.

PW: The insulation programme is a key element on the Green programme – a commitment of £45bn to properly insulate homes around the country. The party sees it as both an issue of social justice and eminently practical, creating jobs and saving energy costs in the long term. But it’s a very big spending commitment.

Animal protection

Introduce a ban on cages for hens and rabbits on farms, with mandatory CCTV in slaughterhouses, and ban the production and sale of foie gras.

Introduce tougher regulations on animal transportation and end the overuse of antibiotics.

Ban the importing of exotic pets.

End the badger cull, the use of snares, the practice of grouse and other ‘sport’ shooting, the use of animals in circuses, the use of whips in horse racing, the importing of fur products. The party would also conduct a review of horse and greyhound racing.

End all non-medical experiments using primates, cats and dogs; and end government funding for animal experimentation.

PW: Animal welfare remains a policy area where Green traditionalism still reigns, allowing papers to pen speculative headlines about an end to the Grand National and pet rabbits. But this is mainly for the core members – grouse shooting wouldn’t be a “red line” in whether or not to support Labour.

Science and Technology

Increase government funding on scientific research from 0.5% to 1% of GDP over the next decade and ensure that the results of publicly funded research are published freely.

Equalities

Reinstate funding for the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Require all police forces to have quality and diversity liaison officers.

Apologise to and pardon all men convicted of consenting adult same-sex relations under anti-gay laws that have now been repealed.

Require 40% of all members of public company and public sector boards to be women.

Increase the budget for the disability living allowance/personal independence payments by around £1bn a year and return to a system where a GP assesses whether a person is fit to work, rather than an external contractor.

Lower the voting age to 16 and raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14.

Health

Repeal the Health and Social Care Act.

Stop further private finance initiative (PFI) contracts and end the sale of NHS assets.

Immediately increase the NHS budget by £12bn a year.

Provide the right to an assisted death “within a framework of regulation and in the context of the availability of the highest level of palliative care”.



Education

Integrate grammar schools into the comprehensive school system, and integrate academies and free schools into the local authority system.

Remove charity status from private schools.

Have class sizes of 20, costing £1.5bn over the parliament.

Abolish Sats and league tables.

Restore the education maintenance allowance for 16- and 17-year-olds.

Abolish tuition fees, costing £4.5bn over the next parliament and £8bn a year in the long run. Cancel student debt issued by the Student Loans Company.



PW: The Greens are arguably the most genuinely radical of the main parties when it comes to education, not least the idea that children need not start school before a Scandinavian-style age of seven, albeit with free provision before then, a plan which would cost £8bn a year by the end of the parliament.

Housing

Give the Bank of England the powers it has requested to limit the size of mortgages in relation to the property value and the borrower’s income.

Introduce higher council tax bands.

Scrap the government’s help to buy scheme, saving £600m a year.

Build 500,000 new social rental homes.

Abolish the bedroom tax.

PW: Housing is another very Green area of difference. Building those half a million new social homes and the other plans would be forecast to cost almost £9bn a year by 2019.

Work

Increase the minimum wage to the living wage of £10 an hour by 2020, and to £8.10 an hour this year.

Phase in 35-hour weeks.

Ban zero-hours contracts.

Introduce a maximum pay ratio of 10:1 between the best paid and worst paid in any organisation.

Benefits

Raise child benefit from £20.70 a week for the eldest child (plus £13.70 for additional children) to £40 a week for each child.

Introduce a citizen’s pension of £180 a week (£310 for a couple), paid regardless of contribution record.

PW: The citizen’s pension is the centrepiece of a radical approach to benefits which, the Greens’ own manifesto calculations say, would cost an extra £50bn a year by the end of the five-year term.

Democracy

Reform the House of Lords to become an elected body chosen by proportional representation.

Introduce state funding for political parties.

Transport

Bring the railways into public ownership.

End the national major roads programme, saving £15bn. Put the money saved into subsidising public transport fares.

PW: Rail re-nationalisation is the centrepiece of one of the Greens’ favourite policy areas. Other plans include an end to most road building, with massive spending instead on public transport, walking and cycling.

Defence