Welfare, Life Expectancy and Recycling: Jo on BBC TV Politics NW
Green MPs will be voting against the two-tier Welfare Bill
Jo Bird: It’s very shameful the Labour MP for Birkenhead is one of the 10 Labour MPs sponsoring the PIP Bill. Even after the Bill is amended, it’s still taking the PIP.
It’s still billions of pounds from the pockets of people like Alicia. Disabled people that need that money to live on.
Annabel: So they have made changes.
It’s not anything like enough. Green MPs, and all decent MPs, will be voting against the two-tier Bill.
Recycle for our one beautiful planet
Jo Bird: We all live on one beautiful planet. We need to recycle 100% where we can, because we have limited resources.
Its easy with the three Rs: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. Reduce, like producing less single use products.
There’s already too much single use plastic in our seas. Re-use, is about making repairable products, part of a circular economy. Recycling, making it easy to know which products go in which bin.
My Council of Wirral has actually rubbish household recycling rates of only 30%. But Stockport recycles double that. So we've a lot to learn from other Councils. We all need to aiming for 100% recycling.
Lift up healthy life expectancy for everyone
Annabel: Is that [Labour's plan] going to help sort of support preventative health care?
Jo Bird: I hope so. Greens welcome this emphasis on prevention and health inequalities, new from Labour. Greens have long supported measures that improve people’s physical and mental health – good food, clean air, clean water, warm homes, safe communities - and enough money to live on.
Greens would also go the extra mile. Literally, we’d support facilities for walking, cycling and wheeling. We’d take privateering out of the NHS.
Most importantly, we’d abolish the two child benefit cap, lifting one in five children out of poverty and giving them a healthy start in life.
The real test for all of this, is healthy life expectancy. So that people who are born in the same hospital on Wirral, but grow up in Greasby or Rock Ferry, no longer have 12 years difference in their healthy life expectancy. But everybody is lifted up.
07.07.2025