Ken Livingstone has unveiled the GLA budget for the next financial year and published a series of commitments made to the Green Party to secure the support of their two Assembly Members when the Assembly comes to consider the proposals.
These include an additional £18million over the next three years to deliver new waste and recycling facilities and a fivefold increase in the money available to support and advocate walking and cycling.
Speaking earlier today Mayor Livingstone said: “across London more and more people now want action to safeguard our local environment and to tackle climate change. This package of measures will continue our work to reduce greenhouse gases, and will build on London’s success as the only major city in the world to have achieved a shift away from car use to public transport, cycling and walking.”
“It is no accident that London is establishing itself as the leading ‘green’ city, leading the way on tackling climate change issues. London is the only region in the country where the Greens are an active partner and the package we are announcing today will help us maintain that leading position.”
Green Party Assembly Member Darren Johnson said Mayor Livingstone had “responded positively to our proposals and the package announced today is a major boost for London. The budget agreements between the greens and the mayor over the past three years have provided major investment in sustainable travel, greener homes and safer streets and london is a better place for it.”
However the deal between the Mayor and Greens has come under attack from the One London Party. Party leader Damian Hockney said “The next two months of Assembly meetings are a complete waste of everybody’s time as the deal with the Greens has been done. It is a re-run of last year when the Mayor agreed to spend a few more millions on cycling and walking to buy the Greens’ two votes.”
Hockney repeated past calls for more powers for the Assembly, commenting: “there is an Iron Curtain between the Mayor and Assembly Members, erected by the Mayor and his team to ensure that we cannot hold him properly to account – and abetted by the Government which framed the legislation in order to give all power and control to the Mayor, to be held to account by Government and not the people of London. The Assembly must have real powers to hold the Mayor to account on behalf of the people of London or it should go.”
