Greens want to use taxpayers’ money to help fight immigration raids on illegal workers

The Green Party is eyeing up taxpayer cash to help fight immigration raids, the Daily Mail can reveal.

Several Green councils in London have already vowed to stop cooperating with Home Office officials launching immigration raids across the capital.

But Green-led Hackney Council is now poised to dip into the public purse to launch an ‘information campaign’ to tell illegal workers how to resist raids.

At the Green Party conference in Brighton – where Zack Polanski was joined on stage by MPs Hannah Spencer and Sian Berry – Seema Syeda, of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said the charity is ‘working with Hackney Council to potentially do a public information campaign’ where the council will ‘share information to people about their rights and how they can resist raids’.

Green Brighton and Hove councillor Nadia Barton Ahmad, who spoke at the event, proposed a council motion to ‘support migrant businesses and those targeted by raids’ in the summer – but it was voted down by Labour councillors.

Ms Barton Ahmad said yesterday: ‘We have local elections here in May, and so we are hoping that within a year we will be able to pass something similar.’ 

It comes as two former party leaders hit out at the Greens for a controversial ‘Zionism is racism’ motion.

And in another radical move, Green members are set to vote on a policy of wiping criminal records after five years.

Zack Polanski speaking during the Green Party conference in Brighton on October 2, 2026 

Currently, employers or volunteer groups can request a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check for information on a potential hire’s criminal history.

But Green activists will consider plans to keep details of convictions for thieving, assault, drug possession or similar crimes hidden after five years.

Under the plans, criminals with prison sentences of fewer than two years or those with suspended sentences could have their convictions hidden from DBS checks after just five years.

Shadow safeguarding minister Alicia Kearns said the Greens ‘appear to be criminal apologists’ last night. 

A Green Party spokesman said: ‘Any member can submit a motion. These do not become policy until they are debated and voted on at conference.’

And it seems the Greens’ increasingly radical agenda has sparked party infighting.

At the conference yesterday, former party leaders Caroline Lucas and Adrian Ramsay hit out at a ‘Zionism is racism’ motion.

The motion defines Zionism as support for ‘an ethnonationalist Jewish State’ and states that it ‘will be treated as any other form of racism’ by the party.

Zack Polanski, Hannah Spencer and Sian Berry pictured together at the party conference

Ms Lucas, who was the Greens’ first ever MP, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘There is no single definition of Zionism, and irrespective of the intentions of the people who put that motion forward, I think there is a real risk that it’ll be divisive and could be seen as a sign that Jewish people aren’t welcome in the party. I will not be supporting it for that reason.’

Zionism is a movement for the creation of a country for Jewish people, which now supports the state of Israel. 

The motion, as first revealed by the Daily Mail, seeks to declare that the party is ‘opposed’ to Zionism.

It also supports the ‘establishment of a single democratic Palestinian State in all of historic Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital’.

Mr Ramsay, who was the Greens’ co-leader until Mr Polanski took over as sole leader last year, told The Times: ‘The Green Party has a strong position already on challenging the Government and I think it would just be wrong to adopt a policy that could be seen as not supporting the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians to statehood.

‘I stand by the position the Green Party had in the 2024 manifesto, which made clear we want to see equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians.’

Jewish Greens were horrified last night that Hamas-sympathetic group ‘Friends of Al-Aqsa’ had backed the motion. 

The group’s founder Ismail Patel said in 2009 that Hamas is ‘no terrorist organisation’ and ‘we salute Hamas for standing up to Israel’.

An immigration enforcement officer outside a house during a raid in Batley, West Yorkshire

Labour was forced to remove an event run by Friends of Al-Aqsa from its own conference agenda after fierce backlash from MPs.

A Jewish member of the Greens told the Daily Mail: ‘I’m deeply troubled that my party, a party with its roots in anti-discrimination and non-violence, is getting support for a divisive motion from outside groups and individuals with a problematic history of hatred towards Jews.’

Another said: ‘The motion endorses a one state solution. This is Hamas policy. It goes beyond all sensible discourse for a two-state solution and calls for the Jewish State to be dismantled.

‘Anyone recognising Israel’s right to exist will be tarnished as a racist. This is an Islamist motion.’

Mr Polanski, who is Jewish, recently declared himself to be ‘an anti-Zionist’. 

A Green Party spokesman said: ‘The Green Party, like any party, has a wide, diverse range of views and opinions. [Ms Lucas] is entitled to say what she thinks, and if that influences members in a particular way then that’s how it works.’