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DERMOT MURNAGHAN:  Now the Green Party has promised to be resolutely positive in making the case for remaining in the European Union.  Now that comes as the Prime Minister has been criticised for employing so-called Project Fear in some of the campaigning, some say.  I am joined now by the Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett, she’s at their spring conference in Harrogate.  A very good morning to you and a very nice place to be at the beginning of spring as well, Natalie Bennett. Do you think some of those on your side in the Remain camp are overdoing it a bit and going in a bit strong?  

NATALIE BENNETT: Well what we’re saying very much in the Green Party, our hashtag is ‘greener in, we’re Greens for Europe’.  We are presenting, as you said, the positive case.   We believe we flourish best when we work together on the joint problems that we face.  We celebrate the free movement of people in the EU, that’s something that enriches the possibilities of all of our lives, whether it is perhaps a young person who is a student going to get an Erasmus Scholarship and study in Rome, maybe someone who decides to be an au pair in Paris for a year and of course the continental Europeans coming here bring lots of richness, lots of experiences, lots of education to our society, that’s a real positive.  When you look at things whether it’s water pollution, air pollution, workers’ rights – these are things that we need to set minimum standards across Europe working together and that’s where we are very much focusing on the positive.

DM: Well given you are on the Remain side of things, a very large party of the Prime Minister’s renegotiations of the deal in Brussels the week before last was some restrictions on free movement, do you think he was wrong to do that?  The implication with the Prime Minister was that it might do something about migration to the UK from other parts of the European Union.

NATALIE BENNETT: I think the Prime Minister was wrong to do that but the fact is what we are talking about are actions that the British government would be allowed to take by the EU.  What we want to do is change the British government of course, get a government that is working for the common good and not just for the few and that’s acting on the real urgency of climate change and all the other environmental problems.  So when we change the government we can also change those policies, those things are not actually set in the rules of the EU, they are the choices of the British government.  

DM: Can I just ask you, would you extend that – I mean there are discussions that have been going on a long time now with Turkey about maybe fully joining the European Union, that might have gone away but some sort of membership of the economic area, both of which may include free movement of people. Would you extend that to the Turkish as well?  

NATALIE BENNETT: I think what we need to do when we are focusing on Turkey is very much look at the issues of human rights in Turkey which at the moment are very – I was myself actually in Ankara a few weeks ago at the HDP, the People’s Democratic Party congress and there are real issues in terms of attacks by the government on communities in Eastern Turkey, the curfews there. When I am thinking about Turkey I want to focus first of all on their insisting that the government there lives up to their human rights responsibilities and …

DM: You’ve made that point but you have kind of swerved the issue about whether Turkish people should be allowed to travel freely within the European Union if it became a member.

NATALIE BENNETT: Well I think what we’ve got is a deal that the EU has done in terms of looking at allowing free movement and that ties in with a much broader issue in terms of refugees and we need to look at refugees, they need to be fairly shared, fairly welcomed around Europe.  Those are the issues we need to tackle with Turkey and then once we’ve got things on an even footing then no, I have no problem with it – to directly answer the question – at all.  

DM: And what do you make of the divisions within the Conservative party on this issue because your own party isn’t without its splits?  

NATALIE BENNETT: We have individual members of the Green Party, Jenny Jones our member in the House of Lords among them, who believes that we should be leaving the EU, that’s a position that Jenny has held for many decades.  In the Green Party we have much less problems with that than other parties do, we don’t whip in the Green Party, we believe in freedom of conscience, people saying what they really believe, that’s not a problem for us but actually conference before last down in Bournemouth we had a vote on the conference floor and more than 95% of people there voted for a strong, bold Greener In EU campaign so we have got a very strong view here on the conference floor.  Here people are saying we want to remain in the EU, we want to work together, we want to flourish together, tackle the problems that we face jointly, democratically together.  

DM: Leader, than you very much indeed.  Green Party leader Natalie Bennett there, at their spring conference in Harrogate.