Achi news desk-
They are also angered by a decision, also revealed on Thursday, that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde wants to delay the use of puberty blockers for new patients under the age of 18 with gender dysphoria at the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow.
The SNP’s power-sharing deal at Holyrood could be under threat, as the Greens announced they will hold a fresh vote on the future of the deal after the Scottish Government scrapped a key climate change target.
The Scottish Green Party said the outcome of the vote, to be held at an upcoming extraordinary general meeting (EGM), would be binding on the party.
The date of the meeting will be announced in due course, but the Greens also said they had told the SNP about the vote.
Under the constitution of the Scottish Greens if 100 or more members demand an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) on an issue, the party must call one.
Late on Friday evening the Scottish Greens in Holyrood released a statement to say that the threshold of 100 signatures had been reached.
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The statement said the EGM followed “a request from co-leaders Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater to the party’s Standing Orders Committee, as well as requests from party members to the Executive Committee.”
He added: “The decision to hold a General Meeting was taken to give as many members as possible the opportunity to have their say on key issues including the Scottish Government’s response to the climate crisis, following a well attended online meeting last night be crowded. with questions in the allotted time.”
Amid calls from members to pull out of the agreement with the SNP, Ms Slater said the party had “achieved more for people and the planet in the last 32 months than other parties have for decades”.
“The intention, as a democratic party, is to give members the opportunity to discuss and decide how the party moves forward, how we continue to build on the progress we have made on our manifesto commitments and to realize our a vision of a fairer, greener plan. Scotland,” he said.
“We have achieved more for people and the planet in the last 32 months than other parties have achieved in decades. Now we want to hear from our members on how they want us to continue this progress.
“Our party is rich in talent and determined voices including campaigners and campaigners, councilors and MLAs, which is why the Tories, Labour, big polluters, greedy corporate interests and right-wing media commentators are so determined to get us to fail.
“They fear the progress we have made on making big polluters pay, on rent protection, free bus travel for young people and record levels of spending on climate and nature, and they hate having a pro-independence majority in government at Holyrood.”
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He added: “Not everything in politics is easy, as we have seen over the last years, months and days, but our strength as a green movement is to stand up against those destructive forces that would give us everything we accomplished on fire if half were given. the chance.
“The Scottish Greens are powered by our people, and by shaping the direction we are going in our members we will provide that springboard needed to make the developments even bigger for people and for the planet that we need so much.”
The statement said that the dates and time of the meeting will be confirmed in due course. While the SPG will focus on the Scottish Oasis, cooperation agreement partners in the SNP have been informed, he added.
Earlier today, Edinburgh city councillor, Chas Booth, who wrote to the party’s executive committee demanding a CCA on Thursday night, was confident that the threshold of 100 members would be reached.
“I am confident that in the next few days there will be 100 people who have asked for a CCA,” he said.
Separately, the Rainbow Greens, the LGBT wing of the party, launched a petition on Thursday seeking an end to the agreement over the Sandyford clinic decision.
It is understood that a petition was redrafted on Friday morning to take into account wider concerns about the Scottish Government’s direction including dropping the 2030 climate change target and opposition to freezing council tax.
Sources in the party said it had collected two-thirds of the required signatures within hours of its publication on Friday morning.
The development comes after members of the party made calls on Thursday night in a meeting with co-leader of the party Patrick Harvie, and Members of Parliament Ross Greer and Gillian Mackay, to withdraw from the Bute House Agreement.
Party rules mean that a SPG cannot take place sooner than 21 days after the meeting has been called in order to allow time for members to draw up the wording of proposals and make arrangements to be present suggesting that any SPG would be held in early to mid May.
In her statement to Holyrood on Thursday scrapping the 2030 climate target, Ms McAllan set out a “new package of climate action measures”, including establishing a climate assembly, developing a new national integrated ticketing system for public transport and tripling the number of charging points available for electric vehicles, in an attempt to encourage more people to switch away from petrol and diesel.
However, Scottish Green members do not believe they are doing enough to combat climate change.
Mr Booth said at the meeting that he would be looking for evidence to support the Scottish Green MPs’ argument that the Scottish Government would have fewer measures to support reaching net zero if the party withdrew from the BHA.
“I am looking for evidence that supports the opinion and I heard not enough evidence last night at the members’ meeting,” said Mr Booth.
“And I did not hear enough evidence yesterday in the ministerial statement.”
He added: “My view is that the Scottish Government is not doing enough in terms of climate action and therefore the Scottish Greens should withdraw from the Bute House Agreement.
“However, if things change enough between now and the CCE and we see real action being introduced and the Green MSPs being able to present evidence for significant changes that being a part of the cooperation agreement have been achieved in terms of climate action, then maybe I am. it will change my mind.”
He continued: “There is a very deep frustration and anger that we have reached the point where a government made up of Green ministers is getting rid of the climate change target. There is real anger about that.
“Unless MLAs come forward and show us evidence that we are taking brave action, which the science says is required, I think that anger will prevail at the meeting and we will have a vote to withdraw from it.”
A second member, who said he had voted for the Bute House Deal in 2021, and backed it again after Humza Yousaf became SNP leader and First Minister last year, said they now want the Greens to pull out of it.
“It’s a turning point,” they said.
“It was known that the Bute House Agreement was widely supported in the party at the time. But now many people who voted for the Bute House Agreement are changing their minds.”
The member added that their concerns were not only about getting rid of the 2030 climate target but also about the freezing of council tax by the Scottish Government.
A third member said: “The anger last night was palpable. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
The Bute House Agreement between the Greens and the SNP was signed in August 2021 and Mr Harvie and Ms Slater became junior government ministers.
In return, the Greens agreed that their HPA would support the Scottish Government in key votes at Holyrood including the Budget and any motions of no confidence.
A shared policy platform was published alongside the cooperation agreement, and to acknowledge policy differences in some areas the document identifies areas where the parties were free to disagree.
These included policies such as whether an independent Scotland should be a member of Nato. The SNP supports Nato membership while the Greens do not.
The demands of Green campaigners for the BHA to end come at a time when the agreement that saw Green MLAs come into government with the SNP in August 2021, is already under pressure.
Mainly, though, the calls so far have come from the SNP side, with a number of high-profile members calling for a rethink, including former leadership candidate Kate Forbes and prominent rebel Fergus Ewing – who has pushed want to get rid of it. its entirety before this year’s General Election.
Friends of the Earth Scotland climate campaigner Alex Lee said last night: “Green party members will be among the tens of thousands of people who campaigned long and hard for stretch climate targets in 2009 and 2019. It is hard to see how the they can reconcile that effort with this weakening in emergency action that their HASAs are asked to support.
“When these targets were set, the Greens, quite rightly, demanded more urgent action given the UK’s wealth, resources and role as a major historical polluter. The Greens should now be using their power and influence within the Government to drive action beyond the desperately weak package produced this week, not as an excuse to go back on their word.”
“Radical climate action is at the heart of the Green Party’s identity, yet Greens in Government have failed to decisively oppose new fossil fuel power in Peterhead and are now in danger of voting through a catastrophic collapse of climate commitments.”
Net Zero Secretary Mairi McAllan said: “The ambitious new package of policies announced in Parliament on Thursday is not a stand-alone list of actions needed to reduce emissions in Scotland.
“The new measures sit on top of the steps we are already taking this year, including a Bill to transform Agricultural Payments, a Bill to tackle Heat in Buildings, which the Climate Change Committee has said could be a model for the rest of the UK, the Circular Economy Bill and Biodiversity Strategy.
“In addition, we will build on them through a Green Industrial Strategy and our next Climate Change Plan which will include policies up to 2040 and which will set our course to net zero by 2045.”
