GE2024: Interview with Warwick and Leamington candidate Hema YellaPragada

As part of its coverage for the 2024 general election, The Boar offered candidates standing for the major parties in the University’s local area the opportunity to be interviewed on their policies, their platform, and their stance on student issues. One of those who accepted was Hema YellaPragada, the Green Party candidate for Warwick and Leamington. YellaPragada, a Councillor for Myton and Heathcote ward on Warwick District Council, is seeking to translate a local election win for the Warwick Greens last year into an electoral performance that could oust the incumbent MP, Matt Western. She sat down with The Boar to discuss her view of the challenges facing the constituency, her ambitions if elected, and the Green Party’s policies more widely.

I call it my home. I can’t see myself living anywhere else, apart from Warwick and Leamington

Hema YellaPragada

What is Warwick and Leamington to her? YellaPragada begins by emphasising deep roots in the area, having lived in the constituency since 2001. She studied a master’s degree in History at the University of Warwick from 2007 to 2009, and says she is now raising a family here – “I call it my home. I can’t see myself living anywhere else, apart from Warwick and Leamington.” She touts strong community credentials, too, not least her position as an elected Councillor for the Greens in Warwick Myton and Heathcote, a position she won in the 2023 local elections when the Green Party became the largest party on Warwick District Council. YellaPragada has been involved in community work a long time before her election, however: she highlights her position as a trustee of women’s support charity Women Stepping Out, and other work serving hot food to vulnerable people for the organisation Sewa Day. The Green candidate says that she has been speaking in schools for twenty years, to raise awareness on environmental issues and the democratic process – an activity that YellaPragada won the UK Parliament Week Activities of the Year award for in 2021.

How have these connections to the seat shaped how she sees Warwick and Leamington in the wider national context? YellaPragada is quick to bring up Leamington’s nickname: “Gaming Spa”, named for the major gaming companies based in the town, Ubisoft and Sumo Digital amongst them. She hails the number of Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) located here too, primarily car manufacturers like Land Rover, Jaguar, and Aston Martin. These industries, YellaPragada says, ensure that Warwick and Leamington is a seat that contributes “significantly” to the nation.

If you do not have a proper strategy or plan to reach that target […] then the targets will be pushed back again and again

YellaPragada, on the government net zero strategy

The prominence of those companies, however, also means that national environmental policies are uniquely important to the local economy. Interestingly for a Green candidate, YellaPragada is critical of the current government’s net zero strategy – not for its end-goal, of course, but for what she describes as the lack of a realistic plan or strategy to get there. Targets are good, she explains, but: “If you do not have a proper strategy or plan to reach that target, and if the government is not providing that guidance and putting a robust plan in place, then the targets will be pushed back again and again.” The pressure to meet climate goals falls on individual companies, resulting in an approach that is both inconsistent and inefficient, and that, should a company’s strategy go badly, can end in job losses and serious economic repercussions for working people. For the companies based in Warwick and Leamington, says YellaPragada, supply chains are the chief concern, for car manufacturers and game developers alike. The mismanagement of adapting these for net zero targets, in the absence of a coherent government strategy, will only lead to an adverse effect on people in the constituency, and an inevitable postponement to the net zero target itself. If elected, the Green candidate says that she “would be standing there in Westminster, holding the government to account, so these things are looked into, and a robust plan comes into place.”

Apart from economic concerns, YellaPragada also cites housing as a primary issue for the constituency. Affordable homes, she says, are badly needed in Warwick and Leamington, and ones that are built to a well-insulated standard, with accompanying infrastructure. She contrasts this need against existing housing developments in the constituency, which she argues fulfil none of those demands. At length, she talks about her own campaigns in the new Myton Green, Priors and Beauchamp estates, which lacked both public transport and post-boxes. YellaPragada trumps that since her election to the District Council, she has succeeded in securing a new every-30-minute bus route for the area, and two incoming post-boxes. But her point is that it should not have had to have been down to her: “What I’m saying is that it shouldn’t come to this. The infrastructure should have been in place before, or at least sooner than later.” She wonders why, when the technology is readily available, the new houses are not built to Passive House standard either, or, “if we think that we don’t have skill sets, we don’t have experts or developers who can actually build Passive Houses, then we can at least push for EPC-A rated houses, so the energy bills are not going to be skyrocketing.”

We are not against houses being built, but where are we building them?

YellaPragada, on Green opposition to some housing developments

It is this concern, she explains, which has driven the Green Party to oppose large-scale housing developments, as well as concerns over the environmental impact of building on the green belt. But when asked whether there is any inherent tension between the need for environmental protection, and the need to build new houses, she doesn’t think so. The Green position is not a blanket opposition to new housing, YellaPragada stresses, but “the right houses in the right places at the right price”. “We are not against houses being built, but where are we building them?” she asks. Brownfield sites should always be prioritised over the green field where available. But she does concede that if it isn’t, then new housing developments should go ahead, “because that is the need of the hour”. She emphasises however that there is a certain way of doing it, one that sees developers held to account, instead of “lining their pockets with profit”, and leaving issues to the Council and buyers.

Failures in housing standards are heavily linked to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, the Green candidate suggests – by not properly insulating developments, energy bills are being driven up by inefficient heating. YellaPragada attacks the government for pursuing a short-term approach to the issue, one that targets the symptoms of poor insulation – spending £40 billion on subsiding energy bills – rather than the root cause. Her party is instead pushing for a national housing insulation programme, “funded by the national government, executed by the local councils, to insulate the homes and make them more energy efficient.” Focusing on the cost-of-living challenges for young people especially – “young people are a top priority of the Green Party, definitely” – YellaPragada says the increasing cost of rent is a major obstacle for the young people that she has spoken to. She says that, both as Green Party policy and as her own personal preference, the minimum wage must be raised to £15, to give young people the necessary income to stay above the demand of rising costs. But crucially, the greatest issue confronting young people is the problem of student loans – and YellaPragada is unequivocal that these must be scrapped. All of these “are top priorities of the Green Party, and we do recognise the problems of young people.”

There would be markedly less ASB, YellaPragada argues, if the funding was made available for sports and art facilities to keep young people entertained

Warwick and Leamington, like all communities, face their fair share of crime, especially that of anti-social behaviour (ASB). YellaPragada says her constituency has seen a distinct increase in the issue as of late, and that the blame lies with rising social inequality, partly as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. She also faults cuts to public services: not only are there fewer police on the streets, but there are fewer youth groups, and options to engage young people with on weekends and in the evenings. Instead, these disaffected youths drift towards acts of petty vandalism – graffiti, or breaking public property. There would be markedly less ASB, YellaPragada argues, if the funding was made available for sports and art facilities to keep young people entertained. As one prominent example of her party’s efforts to combat ASB locally, she names the Leamington Safe Space, created in November last year to offer a safe location for young people on nights out. The facility, located in the town centre, is manned throughout Friday and Saturday nights, and YellaPragada touts it as a prime example of the sort of positive solutions needed to counter ASB amongst young people in the constituency.

This mention of the need for nighttime safe spaces touches on another notable trend for the constituency – a seeming increase in violence against women and girls in Leamington Spa that The Boar examined in-depth earlier this year. The increase in misogynistic violence is one that experts have argued goes hand-in-hand with the growing spread of sexist rhetoric online, marketed towards young boys and peddled by so-called ‘male thinkers’ such as Andrew Tate. YellaPragada agrees that this rise in violence is “deeply concerning”, and that actors such as Tate only worsen the problem. To counter it, she feels that education needs to start young, citing her own experiences speaking in schools. PSHE classes, and talks on gender equality, are a “good way to go forward” – yet “significant steps” must be taken, she argues, to address the problem immediately. The Green candidate suggests that measures on social media must be tightened, to better protect users from abuse. There must also be an increase in funding towards the available support services for victims of violence against women and girls – counselling, shelter, and legal assistance where needed. Police officers and responders, too, can be better trained to handle and be more sensitive around the topic. YellaPragada notes that she is a member of the Warwick IAG, and that her colleagues on the panel have tried to sway policing policy to that effect. Yet any response, she finishes, cannot be implemented just in Warwick and Leamington alone if it hopes to succeed: there has to be comprehensive reform of how violence against women and girls is handled across the country.

Peace and justice is not only being asked here in our constituency, but we are asking for peace and justice across the globe as well

YellaPragada, on student protests for Palestine

Of course, by far the central mission driving YellaPragada, as for every one of her colleagues in the Green Party, is the fight against climate change and the danger posed by global warming. When quizzed on what major changes need to happen in the constituency to help work towards a net zero target, she refers back to her earlier points on sustainable housing, and developing public transport. The latter especially animates her – she talks at length about the paradox that confronted her in a conversation with a colleague: “I was speaking to someone, and they said, ‘Well, I’m stuck in the traffic. I’m running late because I’m stuck in the traffic’, and I’m saying, ‘but you are traffic’. If you had taken a cycle or walked, you wouldn’t be stuck in the traffic.” Proper infrastructure, YellaPragada instructs, is not just focused around public transport, but must involve developing cycle- and walkways too, an act that would not only lessen traffic demands and help the environment, but improve people’s health too. The Green candidate’s biggest priority, though, comes back to the need for a “robust industrial strategy”. If elected, she makes clear her desire to “stand there and hold the government to account” for failing to develop a proper plan to achieve its climate targets.

Having come onto campus to give her interview, it was impossible for YellaPragada not to pass by the student encampment for Palestine then going on at the time. The candidate supports this, and other protests like it, enthusiastically: “Peace and justice is not only being asked here in our constituency, but we are asking for peace and justice across the globe as well.” YellaPragada asserts that the Green Party has been distinguished by its support for the student protest movement and that this right to protest and freedom of speech is one that “cannot be curbed”. She feels it “a shame” that such protests have been largely ignored by universities because in her opinion these institutions have a duty to align their policies with the values held by their students. “Students concerns have to be taken into account.”

Labour, if it is coming into power, you need someone to hold them to account, and Greens are going to do that for you

YellaPragada, on why left-wing voters should back the Green Party

The interview has, until the very end, not addressed what is arguably the most relevant point to YellaPragada’s attempt to win the seat – the fact that, at the last election five years prior, her party finished the campaign in fourth place in the seat, some 22,000 votes behind the winning candidate, Labour’s Matt Western. With the Labour Party far ahead of its rivals in national polling, and widely expected to win the general election and enter government, why should voters be persuaded to back Hema YellaPragada as their left-wing candidate, instead of Matt Western? Far from shying away from Labour’s national success, YellaPragada leans into it, suggesting that, given Labour’s status as the victors-in-waiting, the country needs candidates who can hold the party to account once it enters government. She frames herself as the option of the two left-wing candidates who is far more committed to the concerns of students: “He says he supports the students, but have you heard him say anything when Keir Starmer backtracked on student loan reform? I didn’t.” Her strength, YellaPragada says, is the fact that Green Party candidates, unlike Labour, aren’t whipped, meaning they aren’t forced to vote a certain way by their party. This would allow her to always stick by her own convictions in a way that she claims Matt Western could not: on student loan reform, on climate policy, and on Gaza – “Labour, if it is coming into power, you need someone to hold them to account, and Greens are going to do that for you.”

But crucially, why should voters back YellaPragada, if under the current electoral system, a vote cast for her is in all likelihood a wasted one? Again, she is candid, saying that if asked this five years prior, she would not have been able to answer with any real conviction. But recent electoral trends have been firmly in the Green Party’s favour: with the Greens now the largest bloc on Warwick District Council, she says it is “very clear that voters want to see Greens in power.” There is “no reason” why a Green candidate could not win Warwick and Leamington: “Choose real hope, and real change, other than broken promises or half measures.”

Hema YellaPragada is standing as the Green Party candidate for Warwick and Leamington. All major party candidates were approached for interview.

A full list of candidates standing in Warwick and Leamington can be found here.