By Jerome Whittingham, North Staffs News editor.
All 44 seats on Stoke-on-Trent’s City Council are being contested in Thursday’s local elections.
North Staffs News approached four local political party press and media spokespeople via email, offering each an opportunity to present their party’s views to our readers and subscribers by answering four set questions.
We contacted the press offices of Stoke Conservatives, Stoke Labour, Stoke Liberal Democrats, and the North Staffordshire Green Party.
North Staffordshire Green Party provided full answers to our questions.
Stoke Liberal Democrats replied: “I’ve received the questions and forwarded to our Chair.” No answers were received at time of publication.
Neither Stoke Conservatives nor Stoke Labour replied to our invitation, despite several emails over several days.
So, you may well question ‘who wants your vote in this week’s local elections?’
We asked:
What would a council led by your party implement or prioritise to make the people of Stoke-on-Trent WEALTHIER?
North Staffs Green Party replied:
“One of the things the Green Party would advocate for would be for the city council to trial a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This would be a payment given to every adult regardless of income that would given them the means with which to meet the cost of living. Additional payments would be made to groups such as retired people or the disabled that recognise their specific needs. UBI would replace most current means tested benefits and has the potential to increase the disposable income of households and save the taxpayer money through cutting bureaucracy.
“This is a radical idea, although UBI schemes have been trialled successfully in other countries, though not maintained over the long-term. What is increasingly clear is that with the advance of AI and the widening gap of inequality to maintain livelihoods and ensure people a decent quality of life we need to look beyond the old, failed welfare models.”
What would a council led by your party implement or prioritise to make the people of Stoke-on-Trent HEALTHIER?
North Staffs Green Party replied:
“The key thing we need to do to improve the health of people in Stoke-on-Trent and across the country is to restore the NHS, reversing years of Tory austerity and ending the creeping privatisation. The Greens would invest massively in recruiting and training more nurses and junior doctors to relieve the pressure on services and end the divisive and dangerous strikes by resolving a dispute over wages and working conditions that has been exacerbated by government intransigence. Most importantly we would give local authorities a real say in how services are planned and put a duty on them to give the public a meaningful role in this process.”
What policy or initiative would a council led by your party prioritise to mitigate the city’s impact on our climate or speed our achievement of net zero carbon emissions?
North Staffs Green Party replied:
“The first thing we would do is call on the council to honour the promise to act on climate change it made by declaring a Climate Emergency in 2019.
“As a policy priority the Green Party calls for our natural environment to be recognised as a national resource. Through the creation of an Environmental Protection Commission, we would bring together the current enforcement agencies into one body, we would also strengthen existing laws and make damaging the environment a specific crime.
“Locally we would require every contract the council enters and every policy it puts into practice to be assessed for its impact on the environment. If either are found to be damaging, then they would not go ahead until the harmful elements have been removed.”
What message do you send to young residents of the city that may be voting for the first time?
North Staffs Green Party replied:
“The message I would give to first time voters is that their vote and their voice matter, people can change things for the better when they work together through the democratic system. Democracy is precious and also fragile, it is only as strong as our willingness to participate and to hold politicians to account.”
Turnout
Voter turnout, as a percentage of those eligible to cast a vote, was 30.25% in the 2019 local elections in Stoke-on-Trent.
On Thursday, voters are required to present Photo ID at polling stations in order prove their eligibility to vote. This and the apparent apathy from local parties to engage with the electorate that we have experienced may return an even lower turnout. If this proves to be the case, many will question whether the outcome of the local election is democratic at all.
Please use your right to vote.
