‘We have the best policies for people and planet’ – Rajiv Sinha, Green candidate for Cities of London and Westminster

Rajiv Sinha is the Green Party candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster and has lived in the constituency his whole life. He is the director of a human rights nonprofit in the UK and has worked on projects countering Islamophobia in the Indian diaspora.

We met at The Green Park and our encounter was the longest of the four candidate interviews — a tribute to Sinha’s keen awareness of various factors that constitute each question and his passion to implement change for the good. We started our conversation on the topic of rough sleeping.

How do you plan to address the issue of rising homelessness, including rough sleeping, and improve affordability and conditions for private renters?

Homelessness, as far as I’m concerned, is a political choice. It’s not an inevitability. Look at Helsinki, a big capital city in Europe, which has almost eradicated homelessness. There’s, I think, one shelter left in the capital city, in which single- to double-digit numbers of people sleep rough every single night. Zero would obviously be ideal but it’s a lot lower than the number here.

The Finnish policy that essentially brought them to where they are now is what I consider a huge success story. It’s called the housing finance policy where — regardless of whatever other conditions or situation that someone might be in, whether they have issues with substance abuse, mental health, physical health — you provide them with a home first. And then from that basis, and that support system, and that basis of dignity and having a roof over your head, you then solve the other problems that people have. So I think that we should be looking far more radically at the topic of homelessness and I don’t see any of that kind of thinking. I think it’s sickening.

In terms of social housing, we need so much more of it. So we have a plan for the Greens to increase the supply of social homes by about 150,000 a year. So a lot of that would be building but there’s also a matter of buying back social homes into the ownership of people and councils.

So as a Green MP, I would firstly work towards properly funding local councils but also work with local councils to buy up housing supply and improve maintenance and repairs. We are on the side of renters. It runs the risk of upsetting landlords but the situation for renters is just astonishingly bad. There are so many different problems with it. Rents are far too high, people are spending far too high a proportion of incomes on rent, and people are lacking security with the existence of things like section 21 no-fault evictions, which we would abolish on day one and we would put in place rent controls. First freezing rents and ultimately looking to bring rents down with a rent commissioner set up to actually look at how exactly to do that. 

Are you in support of scrapping the two-child cap on benefits? And why? 

It’s a cruel, inexcusable and insupportable policy that both the Conservatives and the Labour party seem committed to. It would cost £1.3 billion to lift that cap. That’s nothing in governmental terms, especially when you look at the Green Party tax reform package, which is going to bring in £50bn to £70bn a year.

Our tax reform package includes taxing the wealth of the super wealthy. This will result in a significant amount of new money coming into the public purse, specifically, it includes a tax of one percent on assets of £10mn or more and two percent on assets of £1bn or more. These are small percentages in terms of tax rates, but they will generate a substantial increase in public funds.

The second part involves the National Insurance policy reform. This isn’t exactly targeting the super rich because the goal is to remove the upper earnings limit but this change will affect less than 10 percent of people in the country. For someone earning £50,000, the national insurance tax increase would amount to about five or six pounds a week, or roughly £250 to £280 a year, which I believe is an affordable sum for people with that salary. When aggregated, this small contribution from each person amounts to a significant amount of money that can benefit everyone else. This makes the policy very rational and reasonable.

The third part of our tax reform is to reform capital gains tax, aligning it with income tax bands. Philosophically, we believe that people should not get away with untaxed wealth while ordinary people are taxed on their income. Together, these three reforms are expected to generate around £50bn a year, and I’m supposed to believe that £1.3bn to lift the two child benefit cap is untenable. Ridiculous. I’m not having it. That would go on day one.

What measures will you implement to reduce rising crime levels in the community?

I’m so glad that you mentioned the community at the end because it speaks to the Green Party’s approach to policing, crime, safety, and security. These issues should be community-led. If they’re not community-led, they become state-led, and it should involve community involvement, activity, and crucially, accountability, which is currently lacking.

Take the Metropolitan Police, for instance, since we’re in London or Westminster. It is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist, and it has many other cultural problems. I want to see the police commissioner admit these issues publicly. This should not be a source of shame but rather a source of immense pride. Admitting these problems would allow for more pride in a force or a commissioner willing to address them openly.

As a person of colour, I find it insulting and absurd to be told by a white police commissioner that the force isn’t institutionally racist. While he hasn’t outright denied it, the absence of acknowledgement is offensive. This denial is absurd, especially to the families of Stephen Lawrence, Ricky Reel, and many others who have suffered. It’s also disrespectful to the family of Sarah Everard.

This type of denial is a form of leadership that avoids addressing problems head-on. By admitting these issues, only then can we begin to tackle them effectively. I’m not criticising Mark Rowley specifically, but we need bolder leadership that is more in tune with communities of colour and marginalised and minority communities.

Regarding community involvement and increasing police presence on the ground, it’s essential to have more police officers who are connected with and accountable to the communities they serve. This means engaging with local residents, understanding their needs, and building trust through transparency and genuine commitment to addressing community concerns.

I think there’s a case to be made for having more police officers on the streets. Many British citizens feel that this is necessary to address their concerns about safety. However, there’s also a case to be made for smarter policing, especially given the financial constraints we face as a country.

Smarter policing might be cheaper, easier, and quicker to implement than hiring a new generation of police officers. This involves investing in investigative capacity, as detectives are crucial for solving crimes, including those at the local level. We should focus on increasing the number of detectives and enhancing their skills and training opportunities.

Additionally, we should consider breaking down the Metropolitan Police into more localised units. Currently, it is split into 12 Basic Command Units (BCUs), each covering at least two London boroughs, often more. Even managing two boroughs is a huge task for a single administrative unit. For example, combining Croydon and Bromley, two of the largest boroughs, would be highly inefficient. Smaller, more localised units would be more effective and better reflect the needs of the communities.

It’s also important to acknowledge that, by many accounts, crime has been falling since the 1990s. We should avoid a fear-mongering narrative around crime, which often disproportionately affects black people, particularly young black men, who are criminalised at higher rates. However, some crimes, like sexual assault, are on the rise. We’ve seen an effective decriminalization of sexual assault, which is unacceptable. Underfunding of the criminal justice system has led to under-prosecution. To address this, we would invest £2.5bn in our crumbling court system to ensure that crimes, particularly sexual crimes, are prosecuted and dealt with properly.

Community policing is another crucial aspect of our approach. This involves creating forums and spaces for real accountability of police forces in local communities, which would help reduce racism in policing. We also propose abolishing Prevent, which has become part of the problem.

Do you agree with Wes Streeting that the private sector should be used to clear the NHS backlog?

Absolutely not. Outsourcing, as the incoming Labour Government calls it — New Labour, as I like to call it — is egregious. Outsourcing, privatisation, whatever you want to call it, is not what people want, not what people deserve, and certainly not what the NHS was created to do.

This doesn’t need to happen unless you are a dogmatist who believes in neoliberal economics like the two old parties. The Green Party, however, has a robust model for reforming the NHS and restoring it to its former glory.

So, what is the Green Party’s plan for the NHS? We propose a model that returns the NHS to its foundational goals of providing universal health care, free at the point of use. This involves increased funding through our tax reform package to ensure sustainable support, maintaining public ownership and resisting privatisation, improving workforce conditions to address burnout and staff shortages, investing in preventative care to reduce the burden on the NHS by addressing health issues early, and enhancing local healthcare services to ensure communities have access to necessary medical care without overburdening hospitals. These steps will restore the NHS to its intended purpose and ensure it serves the public effectively and equitably.

It all comes back to the money we would bring in with our tax reform package. We propose investing £10 billion purely in refurbishing and repairing the NHS to address its physical infrastructure deficits. For instance, in my constituency, St Mary’s Hospital urgently needs financial support due to issues like mould and damp affecting patient care — a situation that’s simply unacceptable.

We’re also committed to ensuring junior doctors receive fair pay, fulfilling their demand for a 35 percent increase, which merely aligns their salaries with inflation. This is crucial given the disparity in wage increases compared to the private sector. Adult social care is another area needing massive investment. We advocate for it to be free at the point of care, ensuring everyone has access to professional care and involvement in the care of their loved ones. This is a personal issue for me, as my mother has spent much of the past decade caring for my grandparents. We need benefits to incentivise people to care for the elderly, especially with our ageing population presenting a growing challenge.

Do you agree with asking NHS staff to work longer hours to clear the waiting list backlogs?

I actually come from something of an NHS family. Both my grandfathers were doctors with the NHS, my mother was a radiotherapist with the NHS and my aunt was a midwife and is now a health visitor with the NHS. My girlfriend is a junior doctor with the NHS, so I’m exposed to these problems, first hand quite extensively. I’m very familiar with the problems faced by junior doctors in particular and I see the stress to the point of physical illness; the lack of capacity and the heartbreak that junior doctors have to suffer from because they want to help people; and they want to help people get better, and often they can’t do that, or they can’t do it efficiently, or they can’t do it quickly, they can’t do it the way they would have liked to. And that’s because there’s not enough money in the system. So we need to fix our employment and retainment structure so that we have more doctors in the NHS. I don’t believe in asking junior doctors who are already overstretched, to say the very least, to do more. I just think it’s so unfair.

Do you believe Thames Water should be nationalised? Why or why not? Should utilities remain in the private sector or be publicly run?

We believe that public services should be public. We believe in making public, for example, rail, mail, energy and water, a pledge that the Labour Party, under Keir Starmer has backtracked on, as they have backtracked on so many things, for example GB energy is about as exciting to me as GB news. Why are we bothering ourselves with creating new companies and structures when we could just be bringing existing structures into public hands, ending fossil fuel expansion in the North Sea, stopping Rosebank and focusing on renewable energy.

We in the UK are actually blessed with natural energy resources, whether it’s wind and solar, and also technologically, we are, I was going to say blessed, but it’s not like a blessing. It’s the result of the hard work and ingenuity science and workers here in the UK, but we need to take advantage of those assets and advantages that we have and make ourselves a leading country in terms of the transition to the future of this world. If we want to have a happy, safe, sustainable future in this world as a species, we are going to need to do this stuff.

We’re going to need to invest in renewables, which means generation, but also storage and transmission. If we’re producing energy in Scotland, how do we or the north of England actually transfer that down to the south, or whichever way around it might be? A lot of the technology is there and I think people hear that, our co-leader, Carla Denyer, who is an amazing person to be talking about this is an engineer, a PhD renewable energy scientist. I believe a lot of the technology needed for change already exists; it’s just a matter of political choice.

A Green government would make those critical decisions. According to assessments by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), transitioning to a sustainable economy would cost around 1.5 percent of our GDP. This figure is significant in absolute terms, but in percentage terms, it represents a reasonable and potentially transformative investment. It could be the single most beneficial investment in our country’s history. It would pave the way for a sustainable future, benefiting our economy in countless ways over the long term.

Beyond economic benefits, there are compelling moral imperatives as well. Transitioning to sustainability would help mitigate climate change, making the world safer for those in flood-prone regions and for refugees and asylum seekers fleeing climate-induced crises. Climate change is a pressing issue that will only exacerbate global challenges, including refugee crises, which are already escalating.

For those more focused on economic outcomes, this investment would also provide the largest possible boost to our future economy. It’s about securing a sustainable future that benefits everyone, economically and environmentally, now and for generations to come.

How will you support home insulation to reduce bills and improve energy efficiency, thus reducing carbon emissions?

We have a compelling policy to insulate every home in the country, although I don’t recall the exact annual cost — it’s fully costed in our manifesto, unlike Labour’s. Our tax package, which includes taxing the wealth of the super-rich, would raise significant funds. This revenue alone, approximately £17 billion pounds, would go a long way toward funding this extensive home insulation program. It’s a massive initiative with multiple benefits: lowering bills, improving warmth in winter at no extra cost, and reducing emissions. Few parties offer such innovative solutions that simultaneously address multiple major challenges.

Just to make a quick political point before we move on, what is the point of Labour? It’s not an opposition party. It’s just a light version of the Tory party. It’s in the same place as the Tories in so many ways, on tax and spend, it’s the same.

How would you improve the environment for walking, wheeling, and cycling?

I’ve been actively involved in monitoring air quality in my ward, Pimlico North in Westminster. We’ve discovered alarming levels of harmful gases like nitrogen dioxide, exceeding legal safety limits.

I’m a strong advocate for pedestrianisation to enhance public health and environmental sustainability. Opening up more streets for walking and wheeling not only reduces emissions but also promotes physical and mental well-being. It’s a transformative step towards integrating health into our daily lives. While I’m fortunate that my constituency is walkable, I believe everyone deserves access to such benefits. For instance, I strongly support pedestrianising areas like Soho, despite opposition from motor lobbies and Conservative politicians.

It’s crucial to acknowledge that many people rely on cars for professional and personal reasons, especially those with children. We’re not anti-car, we’re pro-human. Our approach involves transitioning from fuel cars to electric vehicles (EVs) while recognizing that EVs pose challenges due to their reliance on mined natural resources. However, they are a step forward from fossil fuel cars. Ultimately, improving and expanding public transport is key. In London, this means advocating for flat fares and abolishing the zonal system, which unfairly penalises those living further from the city centre. Everyone should have affordable and accessible transport options.

We propose free public transport for individuals aged 22 and under, alongside expanded concessions for older adults. Within cities, free bus travel should be standard. Moreover, improving the north-south railway connection is critical. Current efforts have been mismanaged, reflecting poorly on successive governments’ handling of infrastructure projects. Despite the Conservative government’s claims of business acumen, their track record in infrastructure has been subpar.

Do you support the position of countries like Norway, Ireland, Spain (and many others) in recognizing a Palestinian state?

I’m so proud that the Green Party has been calling for an immediate ceasefire to this unbearable conflict since October, and so have I personally, both in a Green capacity and in my capacity with my day job and career, I am disgusted by our ruling elites, and I will never forgive them for allowing what has happened to happen. It’s surreal. I still find it so difficult to understand what we’re going through, and watching this unfold on TV and social media is just unbelievable. We’ve been calling for an immediate ceasefire since October, the unconditional release of all hostages, recognition of the State of Palestine, and we support South Africa’s case at the ICJ and the ICC proceedings.

The criticism that the ICC case implies a moral equivalence between the Israeli government and Hamas is absurd and insults people’s intelligence. Accusing two parties of different actions simultaneously does not equate their moral standing. It’s ridiculous and insulting to the majority who can see clearly what’s happening. Attempts to undermine the ICC and ICJ predictably come from the American, Israeli, and British governments, all complicit in the devastating attacks on civilians in Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank.

It all needs to end. Violence never solves anything, and Netanyahu’s strategy clearly hasn’t worked. He and his war cabinet have chosen to sacrifice countless innocent Palestinians in a failed attempt to destroy Hamas, a group that uses people as human shields and perpetuates disgusting acts. This intentional decision to kill innocent Palestinians is unforgivable.

What should be the UK’s relationship with the European Union?

Our relationship with the EU right now should turn a new leaf, and any responsible politician entering government will help to do so. We should treasure the EU and European countries. We should ultimately look to rejoin the EU and make whatever steps come at the right opportunities to do so. More immediately, we should be looking to rejoin the Customs Union and to bring back that wonder, which was freedom of movement around the European Union. I, for one, just miss it so much. Everyone does, and what a benefit that had on our economy, our labour force, and our students who had an unbelievable opportunity to study in the most amazing institutions in the most amazing countries. So, we are pro-Europe. We’re pro-rejoining the EU, and we would do so in the smartest place possible, as soon as possible.

We’re a pro-immigration party and believe it enriches our society. Immigration is a beautiful thing that contributes positively to our economy and cultural diversity. Any perceived issues are more about the state’s failure to manage immigration properly than about numbers or the people arriving. Policies against immigration often mask underlying racism, and we believe freedom of movement within Europe is essential for economic stability, cultural cohesion, and addressing labour shortages exacerbated by Brexit.

What does the Green Party offer?

The Green Party offers comprehensive, research-backed, compassionate solutions that connect various issues — from housing and cost of living to climate change and cultural integration. Our policies are integrated and forward-thinking, aiming to solve multiple challenges simultaneously.

Everyone knows we’re compassionate and would bring people along with us and have the best policies for people and planet, but people can be confident and sure that we are also now credible and have the right fiscal policies to manage the policies that we put forward in our manifesto. We have the joint solutions for climate injustice, racial injustice, social injustice, economic injustice. And I would just say, vote for those things.

Don’t believe the liars out there who tell you that you need to vote this way or that way in order to do this or that. And ultimately, if we want a better voting system, we’re going to have to vote for it at some point. Voting for the Green Party is a vote for electoral reform. 

Rajiv Sinha, London Green Party page. The Green Party General Election Manifesto.