Should we all enjoy three-day weekends? Green Party leaders think so

Moving to three-day weekends could make the country more productive and healthier, the Green Party's leaders have suggested.
Would you do more work if you had a three-day weekend?Would you do more work if you had a three-day weekend?
Would you do more work if you had a three-day weekend?

The policy idea was put forward by co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley in a bid to address the pressures of modern life.

Mr Bartley said the Greens were offering "bold new ideas" while Ms Lucas, the party's only MP, said it was time to take a "step back" and examine what kind of economy the country wanted.

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On BBC One's Andrew Marr Show, Mr Bartley said: "We really wanted to flag this up because we think that we need bold new ideas for the country.

"We're facing the 21st century, a very uncertain world with big pressures from corporate globalisation."

He added: "When I was a kid, we were told there would be all this wealth created, we'd have this great technological advance.

"You know what? What we're seeing is just growing inequality. And we feel that people are being short-changed."

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Ms Lucas said: "I think there's a lot of evidence that suggests that when people are exhausted their productivity goes down.

"What we're suggesting here is that we are now the sixth-largest economy in the world, people are working ever more hours, getting ever more stressed, getting ever more ill health, mental health problems as well.

"What we want to do is take a step back and think 'what is the purpose of the economy? What kind of country do we want to be?'

"Do we really want a future where all of us are just trying to work even harder so we're bringing our work with us every time we go home in the evenings, at the weekends?"

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