Cross party group of MPs retable the Green New Deal Bill

The Green New Deal is a ten year, game – changing plan to stop climate change and build a world in which we can thrive.

Now the Green New Deal bill, formally known as the Decarbonisation and Economic Strategy bill, is beginning its journey through Parliament. 

Today, working with Clive Lewis, Nadia Whittome, Zarah Sultana, and a cross party group of co sponsors, I introduced a new Green New Deal Bill in Parliament.

The bill (drafted with the support of civil society groups, scientists and unions) lays out the path for the UK to meet its commitments to stay within 1.5 degrees of global heating, while improving everyday life and delivering on promises to ‘level up’ the nations.

The GND bill will:

• Create legally binding targets to cut emissions, reduce inequality and reverse environmental damage
• Change the way the Government manages the economy to enable huge investment into jobs, green infrastructure, public services, and environmental protection
• Enable a comprehensive action plan to transform our energy supply, transport system, farming, buildings and the way we work so we can decarbonise quickly
• block investment in the things we need to stop now – making fossil fuel extraction a thing of the past
• ensure that transformation here doesn’t harm communities elsewhere, by making plans to pay reparations that simultaneously deliver climate and development goals

It includes measures to: 

• End our fixation on growth and prioritise new measures that help guide us towards improvement in people’s health and well-being, the reduction of inequality, tackling the climate emergency, and the restoration and protection of the natural environment
• Redistribute democratic power and resources to devolved government and elected mayors, including the power to raise their own green bonds
• Guarantee climate justice, by ensuring investment across the UK, with a particular focus on de-industrialised areas and among the many communities who have been excluded from full participation in the economy and society
• Transform our energy supply and transport systems, eliminating greenhouse gas emissions and reducing air pollution
• Make housing energy-efficient, ensuring all new homes are zero-carbon and meet social need
• Decarbonise our farming, reducing the ecological damage caused by current methods and improving our food system
• Promote global justice by ensuring finance and technology for the global south, and by promoting the Green New Deal approach globally