The Guardian Series has asked each parliamentary candidate to list five reasons why they should become an MP at the General Election on May 7.

Green Party candidate Michael Gold explains why he thinks he is the best person for the job in Walthamstow.

1. Every year there are less and less people who can remember what life was like before the NHS. Ken Loach's film The Spirit of 45 shows how no money meant no treatment by doctors or hospitals or, at best, inferior treatment. The Green Party wants a 100 per cent publically owned and operated NHS.

2. The Green Party opposes austerity, which was supposed to reduce debt; it hasn't. Light touch regulation of the banks was supported by all the main political parties before the crash and now the poorest in our society have to pick up the bill.

3. The Green Party is committed to building 500,000 genuinely affordable houses. However, in the short term, there needs to be rent controls and security of tenure in the privately rented sector. Also buy-to-let landlords should not be entitled to tax relief on interest paid. These measures would reduce both rents and house prices.

4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt complained of "organised money" running the country not the elected politicians. TTIP will cement this into a concrete reality and even our imperfect democracy will be hung out to dry.

5. The alternative to austerity is having the political will to collect tax. Instead the main parties offer excuses such as 'we need international agreement on tax havens'. They have forgotten, possibly deliberately, that many of the world's tax havens are under British control either as Crown Dependencies or British Overseas Territories.