Is voting Green a wasted vote? Co-leader Carla Denyer answers your questions
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer speaks to ITV News Politics Reporter Lewis Denison
The UK's voting system means smaller parties always struggle to gain seats at General Elections, but Greens co-leader Carla Denyer has denied backing her party is a wasted vote.
The former city councillor accepts she won't be awarded the keys to Number 10 next month but insists the Green Party can get enough support to influence decisions in Parliament.
She thinks voters uninspired by the two main parties are "feeling excited at the opportunity to get a few Greens elected where we can hold [the government's] feet to the fire in Westminster".
But with tactical voting expected to be high at an election decided through First Past the Post, getting any seats at all will be tough.
So Ms Denyer set out her stalls in an interview with ITV News, answering questions sent in to us by social media users.
ITV News will be replicating the same format of asking the party leaders questions sent in by you, throughout the campaign before the General Election on July 4.
Follow @itvpolitics on Instagram and TikTok to get involved.
Overcoming First Past the Post
The Green Party has only ever had one MP in Parliament, proving how hard it is for smaller parties to break through the First Past the Post system.
It has campaigned for proportional representation since its inception in 1973 and Ms Denyer says voters "can be sure that I'll be keeping up the pressure" if she's elected to Parliament.
But in the meantime, she still believes her party has "got a chance to get a small group of Green MPs elected to hold the next government to account".
The 38 year old is aiming to take advantage of voter apathy, hoping people fed up with the main parties will decide to go Green instead.
"We're going to have a new government," she said. "And while it's true I'm not going to have the keys to the Number 10 after this election, we do have a great chance of breaking through in a handful of constituencies across the country."
She added that while many are eager for new leadership, they are "feeling utterly uninspired by Starmer's Labour Party, so they're feeling excited at the opportunity to get a few Greens elected where we can hold their feet to the fire in Westminster".
On First Past the Post (FPP), she said she "will push whoever forms the next government to bring in a proportional voting system", labelling the current system "fundamentally unfair".
The main criticism of FPP is that the number of votes for a party does not translate into an equivalent number of seats because only the winner in each constituency gets representation.
So a party could get millions of votes by finishing second in areas across the country but get no seats in Parliament.
Ms Denyer pointed out that only two countries in Europe use FPP, the UK and Belarus.
Isn't going Green too expensive in a cost-of-living crisis?
Last year the government made a divisive move to heavily dilute commitments toward a future of net zero carbon emissions, saying the current cost of achieving it was too expensive for struggling families.
Ms Denyer denies this is the case. "Study after study, all of the experts, the UN, the International Energy Agency, are clear that investing in tackling climate change now will cost so much less than dealing with the consequences of it later," she said.
She added that getting to net zero is an "investment in our future" which she claimed would only cost around 1% of GDP.
"And that will then bring us benefits to the economy in terms of GDP, but also in terms of people's health, by having cleaner air, cleaner waterways, better public transport, better access to jobs in education, the benefits far, far outweigh the costs."
On transport, the Green Party wants to make rail and bus travel cheaper by making fossil fuel-powered flights more expensive.
Ms Denyer said: "The government subsidises aviation by not charging any VAT on airline tickets, by not charging tax on aviation fuel, and then on top of that, by directly subsidising domestic flights.
"So the Green Party would switch that around. We immediately stop subsidising aviation, and we put that support towards public transport."
Cultivated meat
The production of livestock is one of the worst contributors to global warming, so the Green Party has long advocated for people to eat less meat.
It even previously had a policy to ration meat and dairy because, its website stated, "it will not be possible to prevent catastrophic climate change unless consumption of these foods is drastically reduced".
The other co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, recently said this policy would not be included in the 2024 manifesto.
But what about cultivated meat, where products are grown in a lab with hardly any emissions, using a fraction of the land involved with farming?
Ms Denyer said she's "interested" in the idea of cultured meat replacing regular meat but her party hasn't yet got a policy on it.
"I'm vegan, so I probably wouldn't eat cultivated meat myself. But if it helps to lower the environmental impact of the food we eat, then I'm all for research into it."
While cultivated meat is approved for sale in the US and Singapore - and its being produced in UK labs - its sale is still prohibited in Great Britain.
Decriminalisation of cannabis
Ms Denyer said it is "clear that the war on drugs has failed", and her party's long standing support of decriminalisation continues to be unwavering.
Cannabis is currently a Class B illegal drug, meaning someone convicted of possession could end up in jail for five years.
"Taking a punitive approach and thinking that that is going to going to actually solve the problems, which, let's face it, are mostly problems of public health," Ms Denyer said.
"Criminalising people for possession is not the way forward," she added.
A majority of US states have now legalised the drug either entirely or for medical use. In 2018, the UK allowed doctors to prescribe medicinal products using cannabis compounds but they are heavily restricted.
Ms Denyer said: "The Green Party would take an approach of legalising and then regulating to make sure that people's health are looked after, because ultimately that's what matters."
Have you heard our podcast Talking Politics? Every week Tom, Robert and Anushka dig into the biggest issues dominating the political agenda…