MP hopefuls answer The Vine's questions
What do you think of lowering the voting age to 16?
Huw Merriman (Cons) : I support it, although it’s not in our manifesto, so I’m slightly at odds with my party on this. It would have to be done at the outset of a new parliament, rather than being left until immediately before an election, when it might skew results.
Jonathan Kent (Green): Young people are more disengaged than pensioners, so politicians give undue deference to older people and important issues like mental health and education are neglected. If young people had the vote it would mean that people would have to pay them more attention.
Christine Bayliss (Labour): I believe that if you’re being taxed, then you’re entitled to a vote. Sixteen year olds can work and pay tax and so they ought to have the vote.
Martin Saunders (Lib Dems): I agree with what they others have said. Yes, I support votes at 16 and it is in our manifesto.
What do you think about the UK staying under the European Court of Human Rights?
Lib Dems: We would retain this. The UK wins most of its cases at the court and it was actually set up by British lawyers after World War 2. It would be foolish to erode that.
Greens: We support this but would want to see wider judicial reform. Judges come from a very narrow sector of society - male, public school, very middle-class background and people not from those backgrounds don’t get the same standards of justice as a result.
Labour: Rights that have existed to move freely will be taken away. We can either negotiate a better deal or remain. Criticising the ECHR is something that worries me. Reporting in papers such as the Daily Mail, where judges were called ‘enemies of the people’ is very worrying. We must protect our judiciary.
Conservatives: We would still have our own human rights and set up our own regime. When we leave the EU our own Supreme Court will be sacrosanct, which is a good thing for our own checks and balances.
What would you do to increase funding in education and to deal with tuition fees for university, which put poorer students off going?
Lib Dems: Tuition fees need to be reviewed. None of us have a good record on this, including my own party. Education needs more funding. We’ve put forward proposals for 20,000 new teachers. It’s most important. We would triple Pupil Premium funding from £300 to £1,000 per child.
Greens: We talk as if education was a cost, rather than an investment, which is fundamentally wrong. We would fund research and development to find solutions to climate change. Ultimately the people who achieve these things will come through our education system. We are against tuition fees and would write off existing student debt.
Conservatives: We have a three year plan for every secondary school to have £5,000 extra per head. East Sussex schools have not been funded enough. The lowest will be going up. As for tuition fees, they have been supported by all parties. If we want everyone to go to university we have to have a means of funding it. However the interest rate on the loans is too high.
Labour: We would abolish tuition fees and invest in schools. We would particularly target early years funding and nursery places. It’s very important that there is sufficient funding in the first part of a child’s education. It would be the biggest increase in universal early years funding.
The latest report shows that the problem of homelessness is worse than ever, what would you do to tackle this?
Labour: The previous Labour government had a truly amazing street record. Street homelessness was very bad in the 1990s, but under Tony Blair there was a homelessness czar and we got people into accommodation and off the streets, supporting their mental health and helping them to move on. Now the number of people on the streets again is outrageous. There are also thousands of people in the next tier, who are in rented accommodation or have been evicted. We would have two strands, targeting on street homelessness and temporary accommodation.
Conservatives: We raise an additional tax on any foreign company buying property in the UK to spend on homelessness. It isn’t just homelessness, it’s the support services for mental health and addiction that just aren’t there at the moment.
Lib Dems: We would have a strong focus on mental health, with 1p extra on income tax to go towards better mental health care in the NHS. There is a very strong connection between mental health problems and homelessness. We would abolish the Vagrancy Act and invest in social housing with 100,000 more new homes.
Greens: Agree that Labour did a very good job on homelessness. When Sajid Javid (Conservative Home Secretary) spoke about this it was an appalling abuse of facts to blame Labour. Homelessness dropped sharply down under Labour and has risen sharply since 2010, which is really upsetting. We are living in a two-tier society, with people at the bottom increasingly struggling and the people on the top basically on another planet.
Interviews conducted by Lottie Macro, Aoife Godsave, Alfie Lovett and Emma Dear
Huw Merriman (Cons) : I support it, although it’s not in our manifesto, so I’m slightly at odds with my party on this. It would have to be done at the outset of a new parliament, rather than being left until immediately before an election, when it might skew results.
Jonathan Kent (Green): Young people are more disengaged than pensioners, so politicians give undue deference to older people and important issues like mental health and education are neglected. If young people had the vote it would mean that people would have to pay them more attention.
Christine Bayliss (Labour): I believe that if you’re being taxed, then you’re entitled to a vote. Sixteen year olds can work and pay tax and so they ought to have the vote.
Martin Saunders (Lib Dems): I agree with what they others have said. Yes, I support votes at 16 and it is in our manifesto.
What do you think about the UK staying under the European Court of Human Rights?
Lib Dems: We would retain this. The UK wins most of its cases at the court and it was actually set up by British lawyers after World War 2. It would be foolish to erode that.
Greens: We support this but would want to see wider judicial reform. Judges come from a very narrow sector of society - male, public school, very middle-class background and people not from those backgrounds don’t get the same standards of justice as a result.
Labour: Rights that have existed to move freely will be taken away. We can either negotiate a better deal or remain. Criticising the ECHR is something that worries me. Reporting in papers such as the Daily Mail, where judges were called ‘enemies of the people’ is very worrying. We must protect our judiciary.
Conservatives: We would still have our own human rights and set up our own regime. When we leave the EU our own Supreme Court will be sacrosanct, which is a good thing for our own checks and balances.
What would you do to increase funding in education and to deal with tuition fees for university, which put poorer students off going?
Lib Dems: Tuition fees need to be reviewed. None of us have a good record on this, including my own party. Education needs more funding. We’ve put forward proposals for 20,000 new teachers. It’s most important. We would triple Pupil Premium funding from £300 to £1,000 per child.
Greens: We talk as if education was a cost, rather than an investment, which is fundamentally wrong. We would fund research and development to find solutions to climate change. Ultimately the people who achieve these things will come through our education system. We are against tuition fees and would write off existing student debt.
Conservatives: We have a three year plan for every secondary school to have £5,000 extra per head. East Sussex schools have not been funded enough. The lowest will be going up. As for tuition fees, they have been supported by all parties. If we want everyone to go to university we have to have a means of funding it. However the interest rate on the loans is too high.
Labour: We would abolish tuition fees and invest in schools. We would particularly target early years funding and nursery places. It’s very important that there is sufficient funding in the first part of a child’s education. It would be the biggest increase in universal early years funding.
The latest report shows that the problem of homelessness is worse than ever, what would you do to tackle this?
Labour: The previous Labour government had a truly amazing street record. Street homelessness was very bad in the 1990s, but under Tony Blair there was a homelessness czar and we got people into accommodation and off the streets, supporting their mental health and helping them to move on. Now the number of people on the streets again is outrageous. There are also thousands of people in the next tier, who are in rented accommodation or have been evicted. We would have two strands, targeting on street homelessness and temporary accommodation.
Conservatives: We raise an additional tax on any foreign company buying property in the UK to spend on homelessness. It isn’t just homelessness, it’s the support services for mental health and addiction that just aren’t there at the moment.
Lib Dems: We would have a strong focus on mental health, with 1p extra on income tax to go towards better mental health care in the NHS. There is a very strong connection between mental health problems and homelessness. We would abolish the Vagrancy Act and invest in social housing with 100,000 more new homes.
Greens: Agree that Labour did a very good job on homelessness. When Sajid Javid (Conservative Home Secretary) spoke about this it was an appalling abuse of facts to blame Labour. Homelessness dropped sharply down under Labour and has risen sharply since 2010, which is really upsetting. We are living in a two-tier society, with people at the bottom increasingly struggling and the people on the top basically on another planet.
Interviews conducted by Lottie Macro, Aoife Godsave, Alfie Lovett and Emma Dear