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media release everyone campaign and the Soil Association Environmental debate sends Big Green message to Scotland’s politicians
18th April 2007
The debate, organised by the Scottish Environment LINK as part of their Everyone campaign, and hosted by broadcaster Lesley Riddoch, gave the voting public an opportunity to quiz representatives from Scotland’s political parties on their environmental manifesto pledges.
An audience of around 250 people – 45% of whom had never attended a political hustings before – debated a range of environmental issues with a panel of seven politicians. Questions focused on climate change, congestion and public transport, meeting Scotland’s energy needs, environmental pollution, urban green spaces, public procurement of food, and a Marine Bill for Scotland.
The debate at the Hub, Castlehill, in Edinburgh, was part of the Scottish Votepod series of events and included interactive audience voting. Scottish group, Capercaillie, kicked off proceedings and ended their set with their appropriately titled song The Tree.
Hugh Raven of Soil Association Scotland said: “On the whole I was encouraged that we got 250 people along to an event discussing sustainable development with the main political parties. I thought the event was well worthwhile. The quality of responses was mixed but the interaction with the audience was good and Lesley Riddoch did a good job of trying to involve everyone in the debate.”
Duncan McLaren of Friends of the Earth Scotland said: “All the parties’ environment spokespeople had a lot to say on the environment and a lot of positive ideas. I think the test would have come if we’d had the parties’ economics and transport people here, and I suspect in some cases we would have seen a divide between what the environment people were saying and what the parties overall are planning to do.”
John Mayhew, of the National Trust for Scotland, said: “The thing I thought was great was that we got 250 people out to the debate, and we got an enthusiastic debate going. We had an audience of young and old people, those who hadn’t been to a hustings before, and people who had. They all got the politicians to engage in a debate on the environment. The environment is such an enormous issue, and there are so many different aspects to it, that we didn’t manage to explore them all fully but that’s politics for you.”
The panel comprised: Colin Fox MSP (SSP), Alex Johnstone MSP (Scottish Conservative), Richard Lochhead MSP (SNP), Ross Finnie MSP (LibDem), Sarah Boyack MSP (Labour), Mark Ballard MSP (Scottish Green Party), Pat Smith (Solidarity).
Notes to editors
1. Interactive voting during the event gave the following results:
- 83% of the audience thought that the next government should commit to 3% cuts in greenhouse gases every year
2. The Everyone campaign, an initiative of Scottish Environment LINK, is a network of Scottish environmental charities dedicated to establishing the environment as a serious mainstream issue in Scotland, with political decisions taken in the interest of the environment, not simply social and economic considerations. The campaign focuses the activities of a combined membership of around 500,000 Scots on issues of common interest.
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