Green Party leader Natalie Bennett promises help for Black Country industry

Speaking to the Express & Star ahead of her appearance on Question Time in West Bromwich tonight, the anti-austerity leader said she wanted to give new opportunities to businesses and appealed to people not to vote tactically for Labour.

And she accused Amazon, which employs hundreds of people at its warehouse in Rugeley, of being a 'parasite' and of avoiding paying as much tax in the UK as it could.

The Greens are standing in 90 per cent of constituencies across the country. Miss Bennett said: "We need to bring manufacturing back to Britain and rebalance the economy away from the financial sector and the City of London.

"That means rebalancing strong, local economies. We need smaller businesses making things, growing food, turning crops into food, food processing businesses and so on."

Calling for an end to austerity measures to pay off the deficit she said: "The question is about what we're borrowing money for. We want to free up councils to borrow money to build council homes. We want to end right to buy so we have assets in perpetuity as a result of building more homes.

"As a country we have not focussed enough on making sure the rich and the multimillionaires pay their way."

The Green party could take votes off Labour in the election. But Miss Bennett urged supporters not to engage in tactical voting by supporting Labour just to get rid of David Cameron and the Tories.

She said:

"Some people think they should vote for the lesser of two evils. We say they should vote for what they believe in and to change politics."