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Tag: Sian Berry

  • Sian Berry – 2024 Speech on the Loyal Address and Maiden Speech

    Sian Berry – 2024 Speech on the Loyal Address and Maiden Speech

    The maiden speech made by Sian Berry, the Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, in the House of Commons on 17 July 2024.

    Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for calling me. I congratulate the hon. Members for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter), for Bolton North East (Kirith Entwistle), for Wolverhampton West (Warinder Juss) and for Southport (Patrick Hurley) on making excellent maiden speeches today.

    I am so honoured to be here in this historic Chamber today as part of a brand-new group of Green colleagues, who I must now call my honourable Friends. We are very pleased today to hear a wide range of new Bills being proposed. We welcome some measures. Some we will seek to improve and some we will seek to change or add to.

    Listening to people in my constituency during the election, it was hard not to be affected by the strength of public feeling and distress about the climate emergency and the degradation of our natural environment, and by the huge desire to defend social justice and public services. This Parliament must seek to deliver for them.

    This is my maiden speech; I stand here thanks to the votes and values of the fantastic people of Brighton Pavilion. They have put their trust in me and the Green party, and for that I extend my heartfelt thanks and appreciation. Brighton has always been a truly special place, from its origins as a fishing village and Roman villa complex, to its Regency and railway booms, with its huge sense of spirit and a warm welcome to every visitor to our famous beach.

    But Brighton has always been so much more than a seaside resort. The richness and variety of our culture and entertainment is legendary. From Victorian innovation, through the 1960s of my parents and my own decade of youth in the far away 1990s, to the present day, our music, theatre, comedy and literary traditions have always blended with cutting-edge, creative and exciting counter- culture movements to reflect and enrich the modern world. Our cultural richness has survived, strived, struggled and then thrived through many turbulent times, not least the recent pandemic, and I am confident it will continue to do so for many centuries to come.

    I am proud that the latest census confirms that nowadays my city is home to one of the UK’s largest populations of LGBT+ people, and that we host the biggest and best Pride celebrations, including Europe’s largest Trans Pride, which will be this weekend. Brighton and Hove is a welcoming city in so many ways, and I am very proud we are a city of sanctuary, committed to a culture of hospitality and welcome for those seeking refuge from war and persecution.

    Brighton Pavilion has a history of dedicated, long-serving MPs. From its first election as a single-member constituency in 1950, it was represented until 1969 by Sir William Burke Teeling, an Irish writer and self-described “amateur tramp”, who walked from London to Newcastle to explore how councils were tackling unemployment. Our MP was then Julian Amery for 23 years and Derek Spencer for five years, before David Lepper served in this House as a highly-respected and hardworking MP for 13 years. And, of course, I have one of the easiest and most pleasurable jobs among new MPs in paying tribute to my immediate predecessor.

    Brighton is also a special place because it has been at the heart of the green movement in England and Wales, and that continued when our own, beloved Caroline Lucas won the seat for the Green party in 2010. Caroline held the seat through three further elections, leaving a 14-year legacy that I look up to as a shining mountain to climb, as I take my very first steps here today. As well as being an excellent constituency MP, of the many ways in which Caroline influenced policy, I was most charmed by her success in working with the nature writer Mary Colwell to win a new GCSE in natural history. Helping to inspire and train up a generation of new David Attenboroughs is a real national service.

    Most impressive has been Caroline’s steadfast and long-standing opposition to threats to the public’s right to protest. Caroline lived that principle and through it played a key role in ending fracking in the UK. I know that all of us sitting here today are humbly aiming to live up to the high standards, values and work ethic that she represented, and to serve here with the same energy and enthusiasm.

    It is those principles that will guide my work as an MP, as well as some of my own values and enthusiasms. People who know my work in other places will be aware that listening to and supporting young people is something I feel very strongly about. With huge pleasure, I commend to the House the incredible work of Brighton and Hove Citizens, which has just won a huge campaigning victory with a beautiful example of raising up and empowering young people and their voices to make change happen. With schools across Brighton and Hove working with colleges, religious groups, workers, universities and the charity sector, Brighton and Hove Citizens has this year won a big new commitment from the council. After a long and engaging campaign, sixth formers Fi Abou-Chanad and Tally Wilcox presented a 2,000 signature-strong petition and won a pledge for hundreds of young people in Brighton schools to benefit from investment in mental health support and counselling.

    That is just one group of young people among many inspiring organisations across our country that I cannot wait to hear more about in this job. They include Green New Deal Rising, the UK Youth Climate Coalition, YoungMinds, People & Planet, the National Society of Apprentices, the National Union of Students and many more. Young people should have a louder voice wherever decisions are being made, not just when they organise. I am therefore disappointed to see no specific Bill in today’s list removing barriers to voting for young people, including voter ID and age limits for elections to this House and English local councils that do not apply in Wales and Scotland.

    Our 16 and 17-year-olds, and our young people, need a real voice and need those measures in this Parliament. I hope that, when we debate the Bills put forward in today’s King’s Speech, the voices of young people are sought out and listened to, and that many changes and additions are made where they are needed most, including removing the two-child benefit cap.

    I am grateful for the patience of hon. Members in listening to me. I greatly look forward to seeing the impact of the young voices I plan to raise up in this Chamber being granted the same attention and respect.

  • Sian Berry – 2015 Speech to Green Party Conference

    Below is the text of the speech made to the Green Party Conference held in Bournemouth on 27 September 2015.

    Hello Conference, I’m Sian, and it seems you want me to be Mayor of London.

    It’s so great to be back on the campaign trail. Thank you so much to London Green Party for selecting me.

    Politically it’s a really exhilarating time. Impossible things are becoming a reality. All over the world, in Barcelona, Madrid, in Paisley, Renfrewshire, and closer to home, candidates that started off as massive long shots are sweeping in and winning elections.

    I look at these remarkable movements and I see what positive, principled politics, combined with the power of the people, can deliver.

    I want all of these victories to inspire our campaign. And I want to give my huge thanks to Rashid, Benali, Tom, Caroline and Jonathan who all stood for Mayor alongside me – because you made it a strong and positive campaign, you raised new issues and brought in new supporters.

    And I’m so pleased to have you standing with me still. And lined up with Shahrar, Noel, Dee, Andrea and Rosemary to win the seats we need on the London Assembly where we can hold the balance of power in London again.

    I also want to give the biggest possible shout out to Jenny and Darren. Next May their hard work will have kept the Green flag flying proudly at City Hall, for 16 years – and we will build on that in 2016.

    Now I’m going to introduce you to some of the Londoners we’ll be working with and for. Our campaign will bring their voices into City Hall, and I want to start by bringing them into my speech.

    So this is what just a few of them told me on the towpath this week.

    They definitely know what our city needs.

    All of us here, like them, want a better, fairer, more equal society, where we work together for the common good.

    This isn’t impossible. It is not a false hope. It is a resolute statement that there’s a better way for us to exist together. It is an understanding that things which once seemed impossible can happen when the people decide to make them happen.

    Who could have foreseen the political movements of the last two years? First in Scotland. Then our Green Surge, then the huge wave that has overwhelmed and overturned the establishment in the Labour Party.

    The landscape has changed so much, and it’s clear the political field remains wide open. The stakes are high. For our planet, for us and for the next generations.

    As a Councillor in Camden I meet people every week in severe housing need. Families living four in a single room, and they want to know why there aren’t new homes for them to move into.

    In King’s Cross in Camden we’ve seen nearly a quarter of the promised affordable homes cut this year. It’s the same all over London. In Earls Court just 11 per cent of homes will be affordable, in Mount Pleasant just 12 per cent. These projects are taking huge chunks of what used to be public land and turning them simply into speculative private investments. And this is happening not just under Boris Johnson’s gaze, but with his active help, overriding local communities and councils to push these deals through.

    In City Hall, we will be different.

    The Earl’s Court scheme is not good enough and I will block it. And Greens will put resources and staff into a new Community Homes Unit so that Londoners can decide what to do with land like this all over our city.

    This isn’t just a policy for London. It’s based on a successful model in Cornwall, where 13 community-led housing schemes have been finished since 2009.

    So as with Bristol Green Party’s amazing swing in May, on this too, London needs to follow where the South West has led.

    And don’t get me started on private rent. I rent my flat and I don’t mind saying that rising costs have left me really worried I’d have to move out of the city I love.

    We need to redefine affordability in terms of wages not market prices, and to stabilise rents. And along with Caroline Lucas, with London MPs, and with the help of Generation Rent, I have already been working on this. And I hope to see these powers added to the powers of city mayors by Parliament this autumn, so that they are ready for me to use them in May as the new Mayor of London.

    And of course housing isn’t our only crisis. Air pollution causes the early death of nearly 10,000 Londoners every year. And the absolute scandal of Volkswagen cheating its emissions tests shows that we cannot rely on manufacturers’ pledges on cleaner vehicles to solve this problem. To put it mildly, we cannot rely on them at all.

    I am demanding prosecutions, an independent inquiry right now.

    And for car makers who have lied to us and not cleaned up their cars? I want them to be made to pay for the buses, walking and bike infrastructure, trams and trains we need to reduce traffic and get people off the car dependence that leads them to buy cars in the first place.

    That would be real justice for this criminal fraud.

    What’s the thread running through all these stories? It’s the abuse of power.

    We want to win a Green Mayor and Assembly Members to put power back in the hands of the people, not to hoard it for ourselves.

    Greens will give London back to Londoners, bringing the voices of its amazing campaigns and citizens into our campaign and then into City Hall.

    We don’t have the resources of other parties because we don’t sell out. But we do have one thing that has made the impossible possible in campaigns all over the world: you and tens of thousands of other activists. And seven months.

    So we need your help. We need you on our doorsteps, we need you online, sharing our campaigns and actions and events, we need your ideas. Come and talk to me about them afterwards. And we need your support and lots of retweets for our crowdfunder, which launches next week.

    London is at the heart of the crises we face and it will be at the vanguard of how they are solved. In this exhilarating political climate, we can reclaim our city, and all eyes, across the UK, will be on London’s election next year.

    I’m here to ask you to organise, to recruit, to contribute, to be active in support of our London campaign. Because if we work and stand together, anything is possible.