Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel here!
Back in October, recently elected Brighton Pavilion MP, Siân Berry, sat down with News Sub-Editor Jade Montana to give an exclusive on her time in office thus far…
How has your time in office been so far?
It’s been really exciting actually! We are four Green MPs which is a real change from just Caroline on her own and we’ve spent alot of time together…
I think with a new government starting who are just finding their feet there’s lots of opportunities to make changes happen so its been really great and Brighton has been an amazing place to spend my time when I’m not in Parliament!
Green’s achieved their four-seat target in the election, did the party have a change of strategy given the growth in Parliament?
Oh definitely! Because we are a group we have more rights to be able to speak in debates, we’re able to sit on committees… we’ve won a place on the renter’s Rights Bill committee with Carla Denyer (co-leader of the Green Party) sitting on that in a very intensive way and arguing for lots of changes including changes that have come from student groups and young people.
Keir Starmer’s New Government
The Labour Party also gained massive success in the election as the Green’s predicted. You have personally spoken about the dangers of a Keir Starmer government – do you have any comments on his premiership so far?
I mean these votes were such a groundswell of support from the public and you could tell his party and the backbenchers particularly didn’t want to be marching through the Lobby to vote for some things and I think that has made people feel a bit less enthusiastic about the leadership style of Keir Starmer than they were pre-election. I think there has been a kind of iron hand put on to the backbenchers that they must vote a certain way.
I think it’s a bit worrying from the fact that he’s got this huge majority, he could be more relaxed about allowing some of the backbenchers to work more to their own conscience. His approval ratings are very low so I think people are very concerned that this isn’t going to be the best version of Labour that they hoped and it might be one of the worst versions.
Israel’s Genocide
The Green Party was the first English political party to label the Israeli government as committing genocide – can you summarise why you done this?
As a party we don’t do it lightly. We’ve always taken a strong stance for Palestinian rights, we’ve wanted there to be a strong two-state solution there for a long time and this conflict has been heartbreaking to see break out. We talked about it and we’ve written it into a statement of policy from the Green Party as well and we did it in all seriousness because this is the most serious situation we’ve seen in Israel and Palestine for a very long time.
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Student Living Concerns
Students coming to The Badger complaining of landlord neglect, rising bills etc. What do you have to say to students suffering this treatment?
The way to live affordably is to share a house and rent from a private landlord and there’s far too much poor housing, far too many issues around repairs not getting done and people scared to say anything because they fear eviction – this is why the Renter’s Rights Bill is so important as it will take away the ability of landlords to do retaliatory evictions and it will try to raise the standards they will need to register as a professional.
What about immediate support for students not knowing how to afford to make it through Christmas in Brighton – what support can you offer them?
I know it’s really hard and so many students are trying to get by on a grant or loan level that will just about pay the rent and leave them with nothing to live off. We need better jobs for people, we need a higher minimum wage. We do have the Employment Rights Bill that’s coming which will help somewhat in making sure that if you’ve got a job you can’t be left working zero hours. I want the return of grants, I want proper maintenance grants to be there for students, particularly the poorer students.
Siân expanded further during our interview on student rights, the rise of the far-right and more! To see what else she had to say, please have a watch of the full interview on our YouTube channel here!