Greens 'will not back SNP Budget with less than £4.7bn for climate'

Ross Greer, the party’s finance spokesperson, told members that anything less than the £4.7bn figure was the “very minimum” the Green MSP group would accept.

Greer was speaking at the opening of the Scottish Green’s annual conference, which is being held in Greenock’s Beacon Arts Centre on Saturday and Sunday.

He said that the £4.7bn which had been secured for climate and nature in the 2024/2025 Budget was just the start of what is needed to meet the scale of the crisis.

READ MORE: Keir Starmer's £4.7 billion green pledge 'matches what Scotland spends alone'

Greer told the Green conference: “When the Greens were in Government we delivered a huge escalation in Scottish Government action for our environment. We secured a record £4.7bn annually for climate and nature programmes this year alone.

“Today we are making clear to the SNP that if they want our support for the next budget there can be no going back on that record level of support. £4.7bn is the very minimum that our planet needs at this time of crisis.”

Elsewhere, Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie has said that the SNP must show that they can be trusted if they want his party’s support in Budget negotiations.

Speaking to The National ahead of the conference, Harvie said: “We've seen what were already agreed as Green priorities in previous years, previous budgets, rolled back. Whether that's active travel, whether that's bus pass for asylum seekers, a whole host of other areas where things that had been agreed in previous budgets have not been followed through with.

Scottish Green co-leader Patrick Harvie (Image: PA) “Then, where is the trust that can come from whatever we talk about? Whatever we put on the table in this year's Budget discussions, whatever concessions the SNP want to talk about, whatever commitments they're able to give, how can we lock those in?

“How can we agree a process that guarantees that what's put on the table stays there? That’s going to be a really important question for Shona Robison to be able to answer.”

READ MORE: 'Painful austerity': Scottish block grant 'worth £6bn less than in 2020', report says

A motion to be debated and voted on by Green members on Saturday deals with a similar topic.

Proposed by Greer and seconded by his MSP colleague Gillian Mackay, the motion aims to ensure that the Scottish Green group at Holyrood “require that any potential budget agreement includes ongoing oversight mechanisms intended to ensure that the budget is delivered as agreed, or that any necessary changes are made by mutual agreement”.

As cause for concern, the motion highlights “a number of budgetary decisions made by SNP Ministers following the end of the Bute House Agreement, namely the cuts made in August and September to the Nature Restoration Fund, the pilot scheme for free asylum seeker bus travel and to active travel, as well as the reinstatement of peak-time rail fares and dropping of the commitment to further expand free school meals”.