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Hackney South and Shoreditch candidates field questions on climate emergency at Extinction Rebellion hustings
Meg Hillier speaks at Extinction Rebellion's Hackney South and Shoreditch hustings. Picture: Freya Pickford - Credit: Archant
All Hackney South and Shoreditch candidates attended the Extinction Rebellion Climate hustings at The Urswick School on Thursday night.
Candidates were probed on their party's environment policies, thoughts on Heathrow's expansion and whether the UK should have a second EU Referendum.
Labour's Meg Hillier expressed her anger at the climate emergency. She said: "Labour wants to see a green industrial revolution and I think we need bold change that will be led by government and by people on the ground."
When asked about Heathrow's expansion, The Brexit Party's Robert Sidney Lloyd said: "New planes will be more efficient than our old planes. Whether we expand our airports or not, it will make very little difference."
Tyrone Scott explained The Green Party will focus on tackling air pollution in Hackney and large areas need to be pedestrianised.
He also touched on one of the Green Party's more radical policies which is the legal regulation of drugs such as cocaine and cannabis.
He said: "We need to tackle the black market of the drugs industry we need to regulate. It's not about legalising drugs and having a party, it's about keeping people safe in a regulated market."
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Lib Dem candidate Dave Raval said his party would "reinvent democracy" and called for a change to proportional representation.
He said: "I think we live in a third rate democracy, one that's not fit for the 21st century. The lack of proportional representation, the number of votes cast is only loosely correlated to the people that get elected, and it's possible for the party with the most votes to come second."
He also called for a return to an animist society in which humans live in harmony with the environment rather than trying to exploit it.
