Why are you the perfect leader to take the Green Party into the Assembly elections?

Personally, my values and beliefs are in alignment with the party, I believe in equality for all, sustainability for our communities and decision making being made at the appropriate levels and empowering the communities. I also have a very strong scientific background, in environmental science and climate change.

What would be a great night for you on May 5th?

Definitely confident we’re going to win seats, probably between one and three, the more the better, the more voice we can give the Green Party in the Senedd the better.

You’re the youngest leader of UK party, do you see this as an advantage or a disadvantage?

I think that a lot of people are really quite tired of mainstream politics. Young people feel disenfranchised, they feel like a lot of people in politics don’t speak on behalf of them, and don’t really relate to them very well. What I offer as the new leader in being a slightly younger person is perhaps a bit of freshness and a bit more of an ability to talk about the issues that are really important to the younger members of our community and get them really involved in politics and excited about what’s going on.

There’s a lot of students from England, what would you say to them to encourage them to vote in the Welsh election?

I think as many people as possible need to register to vote, that’s the first thing. Wherever you’re located at time, you should definitely vote for the Wales Green Party.

Which one of the current Welsh parties in the Assembly do you have most in common?

I think a lot of people see that there are commonalities between us and Plaid for example, but we are a completely separate party. We stand for very different things, our stance on nuclear is very different. We have our own issues we talk about, and our own issues we bring to the forefront of politics.

What other policies make the Green Party distinctively different from Plaid Cymru?

I think we look more into the long term. The Wales Green Party recognises that the way that we work our society at the moment, this constant fixation on money and on growth, is not actually something that can sit alongside a sustainable future. We need to be looking in a different direction, we need to be looking at what is good for people, what is good for our communities and what works and is sustainable for them in the long term. Plaid Cymru look more at what’s going on right now and what are the quick fixes. So what are the smaller things or changes that we can do to try and poke our environmental record in a better direction. We recognise that we need to flip the problem on its head and look at our society in a different way.

Who would you work with? Would you rule anyone out?

If there are other parties that hold the same issues in the same way to the same heartfelt nature that we do, then there is no reason why we wouldn’t work with them but its important that we keep the issues that make us distinct and stay strong on them.

What other main issues will you focus on in the run up to the election?

We’re going into the elections with two other main priorities which are health and education. We’re seeing not only problems with our environmental record in Wales, not cutting our emissions enough, we’re also seeing massive cuts to our public services that are really damaging to our communities. What we’re putting forward as a party is a system that allows equal access to health for everyone across Wales, especially in communities that are really rural that need that access to services. We need to stop the closures of local hospitals. We need to stop the reduction of GP services in rural areas. Similarly with education cuts, where I’m from in Powys, we’ve seen loads of local schools close down and pupils now have to travel massive distances to get their education. The Wales Green Party believes that people deserve equal access to both education and health.

Every party in the Assembly and the Diamond Review have all admitted the current system of tuition fees is unsustainable in Wales. Do you think its unsustainable?

I think the system as it is doesn’t seem to work for everyone, and i think there are problems with it being cross-border, so in terms of funding students to go to universities in Wales that might work, but actually now that a lot of students have to pay to go to universities in England, then its a system that needs to be refined and worked out. We really need to be getting away from the idea that people need to pay for their university education, that should be shouldered by the state. University education should be open to everybody and shouldn’t leave you with massive amounts of debt that you then carry on into the beginning of your life.

Official Green Party policy states that they aim to bring an end to all tuition fees in Wales, and for Welsh learners who choose to study in England.

After the NUS refused to include your party in a hustings event, do they take you seriously enough?

I think the NUS like many media outlets are in some ways struggling with the diversification of politics. They’re very used to having four voices and four voices only. The fact that lots of people are really upset with mainstream politics, they’re sick of it, they’re sick of all 4 of these parties and what they talk about has meant we’re seeing an opening for other parties like the wales green party, although a smaller party than those 4 main ones, we really need to get our voices heard because we do resonate with so much of the population.

Has the NUS become too politicised?

I don’t know if there’s such a thing as too politicised, more people need to be more politicised. I think at the moment because there’s a disengagement with politics then often people are afraid to be too political. There needs to be more engagement. One of the things that is good about the constant discussion on what is going on is its heightening people’s engagement in politics. there needs to be a recognition that almost everything we do has an element of politics to it.

The Welsh Assembly has power over so many things that govern our day to day lives. If you look at the current Welsh Government, there’s a lot of things they could be doing that they’re not. We’ve got a plan for energy efficiency measures across Wales that don’t join up the dots, they don’t tie in energy efficiency improvement in peoples homes and a quarter of people in Wales are in poverty, those two things can help each other out if you insulate homes, bills go down and you reduce the amount of energy you use. We launched our LGBTIQ+ manifesto, we want to talk about reversing the blood donation ban on gay and bisexual men, and that is something they have power over in the Welsh Government.

How important do you think policies concerning the environment are at the moment? Do you think the UK or Welsh Governments are taking environmental issues seriously enough?

I would say that environmental issues should be one of the main focuses that we have currently. Climate change we have known to be a problem for a very long time now and it is only escalation in its seriousness. We need to look at much much much quicker and more stringent targets on cutting our emissions.

We need to be looking something along the lines of 0 per cent emissions by 2030. Something along those lines, something very radical. We have very high emissions in the UK and in Wales; we have a responsibility to to the rest of the world to tackle those emissions and to take climate change seriously.