PA
The Green Party has sent an official complaint to the BBC after it failed to cover any of its historic election wins in stark contrast to all other parties.
Four Green candidates won on Thursday, with Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay victorious in Bristol Central and Waveney Valley. The party also held Brighton Pavilion, formerly represented by Caroline Lucas, while gaining North Herefordshire from the Conservatives.
But Nate Higgins, the Greens’ democracy and citizen engagement spokesman, said none of the victories were broadcast live by the BBC, prompting him to launch a formal complaint.
The complaint said: “During the coverage of the general election, the BBC broadcast live the declarations of the leaders of the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Reform UK parties and their speeches.
“Inexplicably, neither the declaration in Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) nor Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) were broadcast, despite both being stunning gains for the Green Party’s co-leaders. Their speeches were also not broadcast.
“There is no justification for treating the Green Party differently than every other English party leader.”
The Greens were the fifth-largest party by popular vote, winning 1.9 million votes compared to the Liberal Democrats’ 3.5 million and Reform’s 4.1 million.
Higgins went on to claim it was “tone deaf” for the BBC to announce that the Greens had won in Bristol Central and then cut to an interview with Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader.
“This has the effect of playing down the impact and scale of Green wins, and meant there was less airtime for Green politicians because their speeches were not broadcast,” he said.
“The Green Party had clearly telegraphed their target seats and potential gains, so ignorance is not an excuse for not broadcasting any of the declarations of Green MPs.”
Co-leaders Denyer and Ramsay hugged on College Green where they met on Monday afternoon for the first time since their election victories, along with Berry and Chowns.
Speaking to the PA news agency, Ms Denyer described the moment as “history in the making” and said the Greens would be using their new seats to hold Labour’s feet to the fire on a range of issues.
She said: “With four times the representation in the House of Commons, we do hope and aim to influence the debate, whether that’s through motions, amendments, questions, work on committees and so on.
“And we’ll be pushing Labour to, especially in these first 100 days, take some swift actions on those low-hanging fruit that they could take to help make this country a fairer, greener place straight away.”
She cited scrapping the two-child benefit cap and revoking approval for the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea as two key aims for her party.
She added: “My concern is that the Labour Party rolled back on a lot of their policies before they even got into power and so a lot of voters are concerned that they will continue to do so in government.
“And that’s why so many people told us they were voting Green in this election, because they saw the value of having a team of principled Green MPs who share their values and can represent their concerns and their views in Westminster, pushing the Labour government to be a bit braver.”
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