Chancellor Darling’s budget announcements of new investment in the environmental economy and green housing are welcome, but fall far short of a Green New Deal. A bolder approach to investment in the UK’s housing fabric would have helped reduce fuel poverty and tackle unemployment in the construction sector. Climate change will affect the poor disproportionately and policies to tackle global warming and poverty should be developed in concert. Reducing the 27% of UK carbon emissions from housing is also the best way to tackle growing fuel poverty, which affects one in 10 households, most of which are poor, vulnerable or old. Mortgages and rents are subsidised, but fuel costs are not, so fuel-price rises affect low-income households most.

Breathing new life into the UK’s 1m empty homes is also one of the most effective ways of providing more affordable housing without an excessive call on the green belt. The badly depressed construction industry could then employ tens of thousands of currently redundant construction workers.
Kevin Gulliver
Human City Institute

South Korea is committed to spending an impressive 80.3% of its recovery stimulus on green infrastructure, including energy-efficient utilities, vehicles, recycling and especially housing (Report, 21 April). By comparison, Darling’s budget announcement of £435m is peanuts. However, to ensure our £435m creates the right market conditions for the UK to become a leader in emerging energy-efficient technologies, we must streamline the planning process. A good start would be for the government to throw its weight behind the green energy bill to be debated in parliament on 8 May.
Paul Roche
Director, SIG Sustainable Products

Jonathan Freedland is right, Labour’s best route out of the black hole has to be green (Comment, 22 April). But it has a track record of getting lost. It still has the wrong targets, inadequate policies to meet those targets, and policies that go in entirely the wrong direction. Money for unproven “clean coal” technology won’t create jobs when we need them (now) and won’t deliver CO2 emissions fast enough, compared with mature renewables. The government has even ignored most of the proposals of its own watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, whose budget proposals were virtually the same as the Green party’s.

We really do need to get some Greens into Westminster at the general election – and meanwhile some more Greens into the European parliament on 4 June.
Peter Cranie
North West Green party

Doesn’t the chancellor realise that most of the people who drive 10-year-old cars can’t afford new cars, even with a £2,000 discount?
Jason Priestly
London