Harrogate Chamber Hustings : Your Questions Answered
What you are doing to encourage people to vote?
In preparation for the General Election to be held in less than 2 weeks, we hosted a Hustings of our own with 6 of the 7 candidates standing in the Harrogate & District constituency in attendance. This week we will reflect on the questions asked and the answers given.
Louise Terza from charity, Time Together asked:
There's a lot of disengagement from politics locally, A lot of people, a lot of apathy, lots of people don't think their vote's going to make a difference. They're not even going to bother voting. I wondered what you're doing to reach those people and to encourage them to vote.
Tom Gordon (Lib Dem):
Well, I think it starts to grassroots level and that's one of the reasons why I'm a Liberal Democrat. I was selected a year and a half ago; for five nights a week if I've not been at an event or an engagement, we've been out knocking on doors across the entirety of the constituency speaking to people. We had spoken to over 20,000 people before the election was called. It's those conversations that motivate people to want to engage.
Paul Haslam (Independent):
The key is about consultation, about making people know that you are working for them. I'm always emphasising that I work for the people that I represent in Bilton and Nidd Gorge. So, I think that's one of the things I'm trying to get out as many people as possible. I think that MPs have a responsibility to convene and bring people together so that we can co-create our future and I think that's what we need.
Andrew Jones (Conservative):
I think the heart of ensuring that we do not have political apathy is showing that the political system is responsive, and that people are listened to, and people are engaged by it. Politicians need to show that they are listening, taking action and addressing the concerns that people have. Another area is I think standards in public life have been awful and this has added to the distance people feel between themselves and the lives of politicians. Since I became an MP, I have seen eight current or former Labour MPs given custodial sentences, two Conservatives, one Liberal Democrat, one Scottish Nationalist.
I have seen people from right across the house have to stand down in disgrace and cause by-elections, both sides, all sides. Political parties have to take responsibility and it has not been taken strongly enough so people who should not be in public life are allowed to continue. That applies to every single party. We also need to make sure that when people go to parliament, the parliamentary system works better. That is all the parties working together with the speaker.
Shan Oakes (Green):
I've felt for a long time I have not been listened to. My representative in parliament takes a completely different view from mine on most things it seems and the idea that any opinion other than the Conservative one is playing politics. We need proportional representation as opposed to first pass the post; we have got to have a modern voting system. This system in this country is utterly useless - broken is an understatement. Until we do that, we certainly get disengagement.
John Swales (Reform):
I suspect the majority of the population are disengaged from politics. Where we are as a country now baffles and frustrates and annoys me every day. To the point my wife said to me, “John, do something about it or shut up.” So, I did something about it because I feel I have to. We've got a system in this country that's called democracy but it's not working because democracy is rule of the people by other people and democracy is people's wishes going up into parliament and legislation coming down. At the moment we've got parliament responding to external factors that we all know about and driving policy down onto the people. So, we need to stop that and turn it around. How do we do it? We’ve got maybe 25 volunteers working for us at the moment, and they’re out and about talking to people. We have a stand in town on a Saturday. People are coming up to us and once they get talking, their frustration and language just pours out of them. So, it's having those conversations, taking them away and then building policy on the back of what the people want rather than large organisations and quasi national organisations.
Conrad Whitcroft (Labour):
I think a lot of it has come down to the view that people see politicians failing to treat each other with respect and then assume that they're doing the same to them. And it's the broken promises that I think from the last 14 years in particular - Conservative and Coalition government that has led us down from that perspective. But I'm not interested in talking down my opponents, partly because I've been raised not to. I think the truth of the matter is that the Labour Party has been honest and clear with what they have set out and I understand that the apathy can partly come from the disappointment that we're not doing more, but then that wouldn't be telling the truth would it? We wouldn't be able to go out with a massive manifesto saying “I'm going to spend all of this money” because that is simply not the reality as people see it. We've set out our key priorities - these are things we know that we can achieve in the short term, and they will build the building blocks for the start to then move upwards. There's also that responsibility in office. Our Prime Minister was fined for having a party whilst the laws that he put in place meant people couldn't see their dying relatives. I find that absolutely reprehensible. We can see that that is a clear example of how standards in public office have so terribly declined. I think we need to change that to change the way that MPs are held accountable as well.
We would like to thank all candidates for participating in a lively and engaging discussion, and all those who asked such pertinent questions.
Thanks also to John Plummer for facilitating the meeting and Pavilions of Harrogate for hosting.
Written by Zach Greaves - Chamber Press Secretary
