This morning the three candidates from the main parties were on Andrew Peach’s BBC Berkshire radio show – you can listen again here – from 2 hours onwards.
It was a lively session, including discussion on Trident, small businesses, maternity care, immigration, and local traffic. David Rendel and Richard Benyon came across well and did their causes no harm; sadly Hannah Cooper for Labour came a bit unstuck at times. There were cameo phone-ins from the David Black of UKIP, David Yates of the Apolitical Democrats, and Brian Burgess as an independent candidate.
All three candidates were polite, mostly explaining their own policies rather than sniping at the others. There was the odd spark though, such as when Benyon accused Rendel of misleading the public about the Tory policy on NHS cuts. Sounds like Rendel might have been guilty there – haven’t seen the leaflet in question, but apparently it’s citing one Tory MEP (Maybe Daniel Hannan?) rather than official party policy. Benyon rightly pointed out that all parties have some wingnuts on the back benches (not quite in those terms!) and that it’s the manifesto policy that counts.
I was struck by how much consensus there was on Newbury hospital – no real differences between the three parties, all agree that there’s no money to provide a full-service hospital including maternity care. I was interested to learn that apparently a population of 250,000 is required to justify a major hospital, and West Berkshire is only about 140,000 or so.
On immigration there was another clash between Rendel and Benyon, with the latter criticising the Lib Dem’s plans for localised immigration caps – i.e. immigrants receiving a work permit specific to an area in the UK. The Lib Dems plan for this to be enforced through the employer, who must ensure that they only employ workers with a right to work in that region.
I must confess I also have some problems with this policy. It puts a lot of responsibility on the employer and is bound to increase the cost of doing business. I also don’t understand how it will work for skilled and professional immigrants. What if a client assignment requires them to relocate for 12 months? If this policy is implemented, I can see a lot of dodgy dealings with respect to contractural location versus actual location. And what about working from home? Will these work permits dictate where immigrants can live?
None of the three candidates really made sense on how to cap overall immigration – there’s definitely some pandering for votes going on with this topic.
There was plenty more – if you’re a voter in the constituency I’d recommend you give it a listen in a quiet hour. There’s no bombshells in there but certainly helps to understand a bit more about each candidate!
[Update - a good summary of the Trident discussion here. My personal take is the £100 billion figure is somewhat dicey - there's no way we'd save all that money even if we cancelled Trident today! Can see both sides of the argument though - what do you think?]
