Watch as Crawley's parliamentary candidates faced questions from students and debated on key issues ahead of the General Election 2024.
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00:00Good afternoon. Tomorrow marks the day of the 2024 General Election, when our nation
00:25decides who will govern us for the next five years. Today, however, is when the candidates
00:31for the Crawley constituency answer the questions of the students of St Wilkins. Welcome to
00:36St Wilkins General Election question time. We are delighted to have with us most of the
00:52candidates up for election to represent Crawley after this election tomorrow. Within 24 hours,
00:58one of them will be our Member of Parliament. We have on stage Zac Alley of the Conservative
01:03Party, Tim Charters of the Reform Party, Dickinson of the Greens, Lee Gibbs of the Liberal Democrats
01:10and Peter Lamb of the Labour Party. All of them will be taking questions from our own
01:15St Wilkins students, and their answers will be being live at the rest of the school in
01:19their classrooms, and the wider Crawley community via YouTube. So we have a format, it's really
01:27simple. Each of you have a minute to outline your party's main manifesto priorities, and
01:32why people should vote for you, either on a national or a local agenda. And then we'll
01:37take questions from the audience, which I'll ask you all to respond to in turn. Okay? Great.
01:44So I'll start. First of all, you have over 106 forms in this room and more around school.
01:51Many of you will have a chance to vote for the first time in election tomorrow. Why should
01:56they vote for you, Zac Alley? People should vote for the Conservatives as nationally and
02:03locally as me, Zac, because we have a clear plan to deliver a secure future for the country
02:12and for families. We have a strong economy. We have came out of recession recently. Our
02:21economy is growing faster than Germany, France, Italy, and USA. What we are saying to people,
02:29in the next five years, we will lower your taxes for working people. We will protect
02:35our pensioners with cheaper luck than now with the cheaper luck plus. We will support
02:41families where they need government's help. We will provide opportunities for young people
02:48like you sitting in this room, whether it's a degree opportunity or whether it's an apprenticeship
02:54where you want to do whatever you want to do, rather than the government telling you
02:59what is good for you, you can make that choice. I have been listening to people in Crawley
03:05and I have made my plan, a six point plan for Crawley, and my number one point on my plan
03:15is to protect our urgent treatment centre at Crawley Hospital from overnight closure.
03:21We are over 100,000 people population in Crawley and we deserve to have an access
03:28to a 24-7 health facility. I will make sure that we get a fair share funding from national
03:38government for our roads and our transport infrastructure in Crawley. I will make sure
03:45that whoever is empowered nationally does not impose a national U-less care on Crawley.
03:53And last thing, I'm a father of two young teenage kids as you guys are sitting here. I want them
03:59to be a homeowner but I want to make sure that we protect our green spaces and we build homes
04:07on brownfields or other places rather than building on our green fields, whatever is left
04:14in the development of Crawley. So I'll make sure that you guys and my boys have an opportunity to
04:20buy a house but not sacrificing our green. So tomorrow you and everybody listening around
04:27Crawley have an opportunity to elect me, Zachary, as your parliamentary candidate now and as your
04:35MP from tomorrow to represent Crawley, not in Westminster as a representative in Crawley,
04:41but Crawley as a representative in Westminster.
04:45Thank you.
04:46So the Tories have broken Britain. They've been in government for 14 years and they have a massive
04:52majority since Boris was elected and they have made these kinds of promises in the past and
04:57they've not delivered any of them. They failed in immigration, they failed in Brexit, they failed
05:02on law and order and nothing they promised has really been trusted anymore, sorry Zach,
05:07but it's demonstrated. It's demonstrated. And Labour, they're going to bankrupt Britain.
05:14Higher taxes and all this woke stuff that they keep pushing in support.
05:20They're the party of the urban leads. Reform UK are polling above the Tories in multiple national
05:27polls. We're polling above the Tories here in Crawley. That makes us the opposition to socialist
05:34Labour. If your values are like mine, where we treat people as individuals and value meritocracy
05:41and want a low-tax economy with high growth and a healthy national identity, then vote forward.
05:49Thank you.
05:50We have a vision to offer you which is hope and change for a fairer and more equal society and economy.
06:07We want to transform our society and economy so we have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink,
06:14cheap sustainable food and energy, more affordable houses to live in, well-paid secure jobs
06:22and well-funded public services. The Green Party put people and the environment first
06:29above all other things. Every decision we make, every action we do, every policy we come up with,
06:35people and environment will be at the front, at the centre of those things. Now what is more
06:42important than people and the environment? I don't think there are anything more important
06:47than those two things. But in this election we've hardly heard anything about climate change,
06:54no discussion at all from the two main parties and very little from anyone else except the Green
07:00Party and this is the most important issue that humankind have ever faced and that's something
07:07that we should be talking about at least and acting upon if not more. Now we're going to be
07:13talking about a number of important issues today amongst us but climate change as I've just said
07:18is surely the most important of the issues and I hope we'll be able to talk about that
07:24during this discussion as we go on. But I also am a democrat, I believe in democracy and I would
07:35say to you if you are concerned about the environment and you believe in the sort of
07:39things that we the Green Party are talking about, then vote Green. But if you don't,
07:45then vote for one of the other parties represented here or other parties who are not here today.
07:51But if you do feel that climate change is something really we should be doing something
07:57about and it's the Green Party and the other party who are actually pushing this issue and
08:02wanting to make a change, so in that case vote Green. Thank you.
08:14I just want to say thank you very much to Mr Frank, probably calling him Mr Frank in this
08:19environment and thank you to everyone, everyone involved in setting this up. It really is a
08:25it's a great initiative to get young people involved in politics and learn a bit more about
08:30the last thing we want right now is apathy and thank you very much to my fellow candidates.
08:34So it's a big deal to to get up and be head of the parapet and stand for an election at any level.
08:40So yeah all the credit to you for doing that. A little bit about me, I grew up in a place called
08:47Redhill not far away and I served on Burgess Hill Town Council, Mid Sussex District Council
08:54and currently on the East Leicester Town Council. Now why should you vote for the
09:01Lib Dems at this election? Well I'm only jumping the gun but I think on Friday morning we'll be
09:06waking up to what looks like a Labour government. Now the question this time around is who is the
09:13one that needs to be in opposition, the main opposition to challenge the Labour government.
09:18We've had a back and forth for decades between Labour and the Conservatives
09:22switching roles, blaming each other for the past four or five years and going round and round in
09:28circles. The Liberal Democrats believe in a fair deal and the people of Crawley have not had a
09:34fair deal for a very very long time. So take a punt, vote Liberal Democrat tomorrow and let us
09:43challenge the new government as the main opposition party. To have a progressive party in power and
09:51a progressive party in opposition would be a big deal. It would mean that change would have to be
09:57very detailed and very apparent and we'd have to really make some big changes rather than the two
10:04main parties blaming each other. So if you care about the climate, if you care about NHS and
10:12hospitals that were promised and have never arrived and the cost of living, take a punt
10:18tomorrow. Thank you very much.
10:26I may have reached the grand old age of 37 but if there's one thing that stays with you I can
10:30assure you it's being born in school assemblies, particularly when people are talking at you
10:34rather than with you. My name is Peter Lamb, I am the Labour party's candidate. Some of you
10:40might have seen me on Facebook ads all over the place. I'm on TikTok, I've never been on TikTok
10:44before, I don't know how I got there but apparently my name is getting out there somewhere.
10:49On the way in I was being heckled by people walking into the room with my name.
10:54The Labour party stands for equality. We believe that everyone deserves a chance to succeed in
10:59life. We believe that everyone should at least have a bare minimum of having a decent house that
11:03they can live in, having a decent income so they can afford to not just survive through life but
11:08actually enjoy their life and that people should not be penalised for who they are by their other
11:13people in society. You should be judged by what you do, not who you are. You should be free to
11:18live without prejudice and without fear within our society. I'm running in this election for a very
11:24simple reason. We've had a government for 14 years, most of that has been Conservative. I'm
11:30sorry to remind you of this but some of it was a Liberal Democrat, they were in fairly recently.
11:34Our life has got worse. A lot of you will be too young to remember this but what we're going
11:38through right now is not normal. It is not normal for the economy to be stagnant for 14 years so
11:44that people's pay is frozen and parents find it harder and harder to put meals on the table and
11:48harder and harder to get roof over your head. It's not normal to have to live in hostels because
11:52someone can't get you a house and living. This is the direct result of decisions that have been taken
11:56in government and it's time someone did something about that. I was born here. I went to school down
12:02the road and maybe the only time I was heckled in an enemy's face was here last time when I
12:06pointed out it was Holy Trinity but I did go to school down the road and it was there that I
12:10realised that a lot of kids I was in class with weren't going to have the things that I thought
12:14made life worth living and that was when I joined the Labour Party to fight for equality because I
12:19wanted to make sure that everyone in our town has a good quality of life. Over the last 16 years
12:25as a councillor, as a council leader, as just an activist in our community I've fought to try and
12:29make things better for people but you constantly run into the roadblocks that are put there by
12:33people that stop you making things better and I'm running this election because I want to go
12:37out to Westminster because I know where the problems are, the things that are holding us
12:40back as a community and I want to make sure that someone there at least understands what problems
12:45are, gets them out of the way so we can fix those things so that the last 14 years doesn't turn into
12:51the next 14 years of people struggling to make ends meet and not really seeing what their future
12:55is going to look like.