Greens' sights on City Hall seats

Ms Berry is confident of improving the Greens' assembly seats

The Greens' London mayoral candidate Sian Berry is focussing her efforts on her party's bid to win more London Assembly seats on 1 May.

Ms Berry will be parading a 5ft "giant peach" to persuade voters to vote Green in their London-wide "top-up" votes.

The Greens won two seats in 2004 under the system, which chooses 11 seats by a form of proportional representation.

Ms Berry says, as an assembly member, she would push hard for free insulation for all Londoners' homes.

On 1 May London voters will have three ballot papers: pink for the mayor, yellow for the 14 assembly constituency seats and peach for the 11 London-wide seats.

'Good sign'

Ms Berry said she hopes with the aid of the "giant peach" - made from insulation board - to make as many people as possible aware of the proportional representation aspect of the election.

She hopes to improve the Greens' representation on the assembly, claiming that the party's casting vote over the mayor's budget has already produced results.

As an assembly member she would "make sure" everyone is entitled to free insulation. Ms Berry believes that restricting free insulation to people in certain income groups is counter-productive and says energy companies would bear most of the cost.

Could she win the mayoral election? "It's unlikely. There's no reason why we shouldn't have a massive landslide switch to us but I admit it's probably an outside chance," she said.

"But the polls are showing a very high rate of second preference votes for us."

Second preferences

Ms Berry added that she took that as a "really good sign" for the Greens' assembly chances.

She said the decision to urge their voters to put Labour's Ken Livingstone as their second preference was made "because it was the right thing to do" to keep the Conservative candidate, Boris Johnson, out.

She is hoping for four seats on the London Assembly, which she says will be possible if the Greens pick up the same vote share they did in the 2006 local elections in London.

Ms Berry said she was pleased by the way the campaign had gone - particularly her endorsement by the Observer, which urged readers to put her first and Mr Livingstone second.

Across the country the party would "do very well" and was hoping to become the official opposition in Norwich, while it was looking for "a significant increase in the general vote in the London elections and across the country".