The Conservative Party leader came to the border of Fylde and Preston for a campaign stop - where she spoke to local democracy reporter Paul Faulkner.
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00:00Ms Badenock, you'll probably be aware that a couple of Lancashire Conservative County
00:04councillors and the leader of Ribble Valley Borough Council defected to reform a few weeks
00:08ago.
00:09What can you say to Conservative voters in Lancashire to persuade them from following
00:12the same path at the local elections?
00:14Well, obviously I'm very sad to lose any of our members to any other party, but right
00:20now, having suffered a historic defeat, what we need to do is rebuild trust with the public.
00:26That means making sure people understand what the Conservative offer is at this election.
00:30Conservative councils deliver better services for lower taxes.
00:34Reform has never run a council before, and we need to show people that we are running
00:38for the right reasons so that we can deliver for them, not just to win elections.
00:43You mentioned lower taxes, Lancashire County Council, a Conservative run currently, it's
00:47had to raise its council tax by the maximum amount in three out of the last four years.
00:51Are the Conservatives really that different at the local level to other parties?
00:54Yes, because even when we have rises, they are lower than what's happening elsewhere.
00:58I've been talking a lot about Birmingham at the moment.
01:01They raise their council tax, I think, by 20%, yet the streets are covered in rubbish.
01:05They haven't even used the money people are paying to deliver the services.
01:08They're rats running around.
01:10Conservative council, Litchfield, is now helping them clear their rubbish because they've declared
01:14a national emergency.
01:16That cannot be right.
01:17And one of the things that I remember about Lancashire County Council is that when Labour was running
01:23it, it would have become bankrupt.
01:25That's why Conservatives got vooted in.
01:26They inherited a very difficult financial situation and they have made it a lot better.
01:30They still have to save £100 million over the next two years, tens of millions of that
01:36in savings that haven't been delivered thus far.
01:39Don't the roots of financial challenges like that have their roots in 14 years of Conservative
01:46national government and the fact that they treated local government as a bit of an afterthought?
01:50No, I disagree with that.
01:51All of the money that gets given to local government comes from taxpayers.
01:56We currently have the highest tax burden ever.
01:59What we need now is to start making life easier for people.
02:02And what I am telling people is that when Labour were campaigning in the election, they promised
02:07to freeze council tax.
02:08Where is that freeze?
02:09It hasn't happened anywhere.
02:11They broke promises and what we're telling people now is that they're making life even more
02:15fragile for our citizens, our economy is becoming more fragile, they've raised taxes, they promised
02:22not to, like the jobs tax, NI has gone up, growth has halved, inflation is up, borrowing
02:27is up.
02:28We're really worried about the economy and we're asking people to put their trust in Conservatives
02:33this.
02:34Because even when times are tough, we still deliver better services for lower taxes.
02:37Thanks.
02:38Thanks, thanks.
02:40Thanks.
02:41Thanks for reminding us so far.
02:41Thanks.
02:42Thanks, Love.
02:43Thanks for reading it off.
02:47You're jerking Ulises, Thank you for joining us.
02:49Subscribe to you to My power.
02:50Who do you guys probably know?
02:52Thank you!
02:53And if you want to send actual laptop or Ken Bacon my Yunus about, OK.
02:58Gbonus, I believe you have!