Menéndez March RicardoRICARDO MENÉNDEZ MARCH (Green): The Government is so desperate to find cuts to fund their tax cuts that ultimately benefit those who already have the means to do well while throwing breadcrumbs to everyone else. They're basically willing to reduce the amount that local government is able to have when it comes to the collection of fines which actually supposedly are used to deter poor behaviour. But let's make it clear: fines in the first place were already a free pass for the wealthy to get away with bad behaviour because if you're rich a fine means nothing but a wet bus ticket on the wrist. A fine if you're on a low income or if you're on the benefit—the same people who benefit the least from the Government tax cuts—could mean the difference between being able to pay your rent.So let's also eliminate where the Government is coming from: relying on punishments that actually ultimately only tend to affect the lives of those struggling the most and allow those who have six-figure salaries or more to get away with poor behaviour and at the same time making it harder for local government to have the revenue to do what it needs to do to provide services to our local communities just to pay for those tax cuts.This is an unserious Government—fiscally irresponsible—that will at any cost for the optics of having tax cuts completely undermine our public services will undermine local government and will continue with the rhetoric of using fines which again are punishments for the poor and a free pass for the rich.The Green Party thinks that the answer lies in the devolution and the resourcing of services to local entities. And for a Government that talks about localism this is a bill that does the exact opposite. It's really interesting just how fiscally illiterate the members on the opposite side are. You know when Duncan Webb was talking about the amount of revenue that is going to be collected by this bill the members opposite me said Oh there's a lot of money for a person." No single individual is going to keep that revenue to themselves. That's revenue the Government will be using so I would encourage the members opposite to me that if they're going to be interjecting at least they should not be—or actually I invite them to demonstrate their interjections how fiscally irresponsible and illiterate they are and how much they're committed to actually punishing those doing it the toughest while at the same time cozying up to the wealthy elite the property investors the 70 homes - owning landlords who will then be complaining about a potential capital gains tax from the left.This bill is a nonsense bill. If we want adequate services for our communities—our communities having the right to have good waste disposal services for example—the answer lies in resourcing our local entities not depriving them of funds and the Government collecting that to offer these tax cuts. The truth is that this bill comes in the context of the Government making the cost of living more expensive for our communities. This bill is part of a range of interventions that relied on making life more expensive for people. And so the Green Party just simply won't be supporting this bill. This bill also goes against our principles of appropriate decision making because at no point have we seen adequate consultation with local government authorities to ensure that this bill is adequately consulted on with those local government authorities who ultimately will be affected.The bill relies like I said at the beginning of my contribution on punishments that allow the rich to get away with poor behaviour. If we look at the regulatory impact statement it's laid bare here that low-income individuals are likely to be disproportionately impacted by increasing costs. And I'll quote: "These individuals are more likely to be unable to pay on time in the first place and may be more likely to default on their fines and have enforcement action taken against them." The fines that we're talking about end up criminalising poor people. For a Government that is so supposedly serious on reducing crime they're actually relying on means that end up criminalising people in poverty—a completely unserious Government. But I don't even want to appeal to their values as if they care because they don't care. They don't care about people in poverty they don't care about disabled people who are doing it the hardest they don't care about the poor people they're criminalising and they don't care about their so-called localism they promote because this bill shows otherwise. It's a completely unserious Government and the Green Party won't be supporting this bill."