Wycombe candidates meet shoppers in final push

ELECTION hopefuls met shoppers in High Wycombe today as they entered the final leg of the General Election campaign.

Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and UK Independence Party candidates chatted to residents and handed out leaflets and balloons in the last weekend before polling day.

The Conservatives have held the seat since 1951 and Steve Baker is hoping to take over from Paul Goodman, who has stepped down over his disillusionment with Parliament.

In an interview with The Bucks Free Press the four clashed over the economy, the future of Wycombe Hospital and grammar schools.

Click the player below to listen to today's interview with the candidates.

All agreed that the economy is constituents’ number one concern – but disagreed over how to tackle the Government’s spending debt.

Labour’s Andrew Lomas said: “I think a lot of people recognise the work the Government has done, they are just concerned that support would be withdrawn from the economy too soon.”

He said the crisis started in America and not because of ‘profligate’ Government spending and public cash was needed to get the economy back on its feet.

Yet Conservative Steve Baker hit out at Labour’s planned 1 per cent increase on National Insurance contributions.

He said: “If you put more tax on National Insurance clearly it tends not to promote jobs and employment. National Insurance is a tax on jobs.”

Lib Dem Steve Guy said his party had outlined detailed spending plans and said of the Tories: “Their current manifesto doesn’t identify in enough detail the spending cuts they would make.”

Liberal Democrat Steve Guy.

Yet Mr Baker said: “You can’t conduct a full spending review from opposition.”

Mr Wiseman none of three main parties ‘were able to give the faintest idea’ how they planned to pay for public services.

Getting out of the European Union, cutting ‘waste and bureaucracy’ and quangos would put the Government ‘well on the way’ to cutting the deficit, he said.

Mr Lomas admitted The Bucks Free Press’ front page story about a grandmother who fell in Wycombe Hospital but had to go to Aylesbury for treatment looks ‘fairly strange’.

Angela Bignall had to go to Stoke Mandeville Hospital because A&E was downgraded in 2005 by the local NHS trust.

Yet Mr Lomas said: “It’s happened under a Labour Government but it’s not been caused by a Labour Government, it is the trust’s decision to allocate resources.”

He said he wanted a ‘full range’ of services, a view echoed by the other candidates.

Mr Guy said: “It’s Government policy to have central super-hospitals. It makes it easier to achieve your target and look good on paper but you are not delivering what the public want.”

A Lib Dem Government would elect members of the public onto the management board, he said – while Mr Baker backed Labour’s foundation trust model, which allows residents to become trust ‘members’ to influence decisions.

He said he could not promise to return A&E and doctor-led births – axed last year – but would ‘strive’ to get more cash for the county, ‘local control’ and more freedom for staff.

Mr Baker said: “Money has been poured into the health service yet we have still lost health services.”

Conservative Steve Baker.

Mr Wiseman said UKIP would ‘put doctors back in charge of the hospitals’ and cut back on a ‘vast army of bureaucrats’.

Mr Lomas and Mr Guy said they personally wanted to abolish grammar schools while Mr Baker and Mr Wiseman stood by the selective system.

Mr Guy told the BFP after the recorded interview: "My personal view is, yes, I want to abolish 11+ selection."

The Conservative said he ‘unequivocally’ backed grammars. He said: “What abhors me is the idea of destroying something good.”

He called for upper schools to be ‘built up’ and parents should not be ‘ashamed’ to send their children there.

Yet Mr Lomas said a child failing the 11+ is a ‘huge kick in the teeth’.

Pointing to research which he said shows poor children do not get into grammars, he said: “The idea that they are a means by which poor, bright kids can be risen through to great heights is completely false.”

Yet Mr Wiseman said UKIP would build more grammars. He said: “The rich people tend to get in because they tend to move their addresses, they move their homes to set up their children into a grammar school.”

UKIP's John Wiseman.

Mr Guy said: “As an engine for social mobility, it doesn’t work and the Conservatives nationally have recognised this.”

The Lib Dems would fund children according to their family’s wealth, he said.

Independents David Fitton and Madassar Khokar are also standing.

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