Election 2024? The Candidates Perspectives

What is your position on protecting the right of women to organise, meet and compete in female-only groups, in view of the conflict with the trans activist position that men are entitled to join such groups by either identifying or transitioning?

Robert Bagnall - Green

Anthony Mangnall - Conservative

Single sex spaces and female only competition must be protected. While I support the right of any individual to live their life as they wish, I do not believe this means that they can override the rights of women or fair competition.

The Conservative Party has made it perfectly clear that it will protect the rights of women and fair competition which means protecting single-sex spaces and ensuring that fair competition takes place.

Daniel Steel - Labour

There is an epidemic of violence against women and girls. I take my safety for granted as a man but I understand why single sex spaces (e.g. toilets) are important for many women to feel safe. I’m proud Labour has a plan to halve the levels of violence against women and girls within a decade. But let’s be clear, this issue is most definitely not the fault of transwomen and men. They are very often victims of violence themselves.
The vast majority of women are born biologically female, women like my mum and my sister. A miniscule number of women are not born biologically female feeling their gender doesn’t match their body. These transwomen deserve kindness and respect like any other women.

Caroline Voaden - Liberal Democrat

What are your views on the current social care funding structure for the elderly and does your party have any plans to change this?

Robert Bagnall - Green Party

Anthony Mangnall - Conservative Party

Over the past four and a half years, I have spent a significant amount of time working on social care, especially through my Social Care round table working group. Bringing together local care groups with the NHS, Government officials and independent funding groups I have focused on how we can support those most in need.
Locally, my work has helped to share resources, learn from different organisations and use the NHS’s network to ensure that no vulnerable person is left behind or without care.

These successes locally have made me all the more aware that over the coming years more will be needed for social care. But it is welcome to see what steps the Government has taken through:
Ringfencing and increasing the Social Gare Grant for adults and children
To providing more money for providers and support workers through the Adult Social Care Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund
Increasing funding for the social care work force and to help improve retention within the sector
To improving the Additional Social Care Grant and increasing the budget to £5bn

My party has provided up to £7.5 billion in new support for adult social care over 2023/24 and 2024/25 to address issues like workforce pressures and waiting lists all of which will benefit us at a local and national level.

If re-elected I will continue to support the local social care groups and ensure that they not only have the resources they need but a strong voice in Westminster that champions local and national initiatives that can support young and old alike.

Daniel Steel - Labour Party

Trying to access social care support for my elderly grandma was one of the major reasons I first became involved in politics. While the people I dealt with in the local council were kind, it was a maze to navigate with excessive paperwork and extremely long waiting times to receive any help. I worried about all the people who don’t have family or friends who are able to advocate on their behalf. I want to ensure that everyone is able to live an independent, prosperous, and dignified life.
Labour will undertake a programme of reform to create a National Care Service underpinned by a principle of ‘home first’ so people can live independently for as long as possible. Alongside these changes, we will build consensus for the longer term reform needed to create a sustainable National Care Service. We will explore how we best manage and support an ageing population; how integration with the NHS can be secured; how to best support working age disabled adults; and how to move to a more preventative system

Caroline Voaden - Liberal Democratic Party

Awaiting Response

The First Past The Post (FPTP) system is unrepresentative.
Will you reform it?

Robert Bagnall - Green Party

Anthony Mangnall - Conservative Party

No. I do not agree it is unrepresentative nor would I reform it.

Daniel Steel - Labour Party

While Labour’s manifesto doesn’t propose changing the First past The Post voting system, we are proposing the biggest overhaul of the electoral system in a generation. We will give 16- and 17-year olds the right to vote in all elections, modernise the House of Commons, introduce immediate reforms to the House of Lords by removing the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords, and consult on replacing the House of Lords with an alternative second chamber. I fully support these ambitious reforms which will make our electoral system more representative and fairer for all.

Caroline Voaden - Liberal Democratic Party

Awaiting Response

What is your position and plans on rising wealth inequality in the UK and approaches to tackling it

Robert Bagnall - Green Party

Anthony Mangnall - Conservative Party

To address inequality in the UK we need to ensure that we have vibrant and successful economy. To do so we must empower every individual across this country at every level with equality of opportunity.

This can be achieved by continuing the work to improve our schools and colleges, with over 83% of them rated either “good” or “outstanding” to providing more opportunities to young people by expanding further education colleges and apprenticeship schemes.

Beyond education we need to do better around housing. Building the right size houses, in the right style and in the right place at affordable rates will be essential to closing the inequality gap. My work to reform the second homes market is already helping to raise more money that can be used for local community housing projects and ensuring that those who live and work in South Devon at any age can afford local housing.

South Devon may not be viewed as anything other than a tourist and hospitality power house but it has so much more. The established sectors such as farming and fishing coupled with new high-tech businesses and pharmaceutical manufacturing means that we have a wide variety of businesses and sectors with the jobs to go with it. Ensuring we attract more investment to the South West and to South Devon, will help to mean that we have the jobs and pay to help close the gap.

Finally, taxing less and ensuring that works really pays is the only way to ensuring that the gap is closed. I have long called for lower taxes for those in work and I will continue to speak up for the fact that the best way to close the gap is for Government to step out of the way and for residents to be taxed less and to have more responsibility and opportunities in their hands.

Daniel Steel - Labour Party

We have seen an unprecedented fall in living standards following the disastrous ‘mini-budget’. The Conservative’s economic record over the past 14 years has seen productivity and wages flatlining, leaving British families significantly poorer than those in neighbouring countries like France or Germany.
The only route to improving living standards for working people and reducing wealthy inequality is sustained economic growth. Labour will form a mission driven government with this as our first mission. We will be pro-business and pro-worker as the party of wealth creation.
We will tackle inequality root and stem. We will build 1.5 million homes with ‘first dibs’ for local people. We will end exploitative ‘zero hour contracts’, scrap discriminatory age bands on the minimum delivering a pay rise to hundreds of thousands of workers across the country. We will reform education to deliver high-quality apprenticeships and specialist technical colleges. We will reduce your bills by switching on Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean energy company. We will make transformative investments across every part of the country by setting up a National Wealth Fund capitalised with £7.3 billion over the next Parliament.
If Labour forms the next government these just some of the policies we will deliver to transform the lives of people across the country

Caroline Voaden - Liberal Democratic Party

Awaiting Response

How would your party support the hospitality sector in the South West which has been hit by COVID and bounce back loan payments , cost of living crisis and huge increases in utilities and insurance? We are also struggling to get staff due to lack of affordable housing. The post COVID tourism boom seems to be over too now. It’s hard to make ends meet every month let alone make a living.

Robert Bagnall - Green Party

Anthony Mangnall - Conservative Party

My party has stood firmly with the tourism and hospitality sector over the past four years. From introducing the temporary 15% reduction in VAT on tourism and hospitality as a result of my campaign during the pandemic, to providing grants and loans to help businesses build back in the wake of the pandemic.

However, what has been introduce so far must be the start point not the end point. Reducing VAT on tourism and hospitality on a permanent basis can be achieved over a set period of years that gives confidence to businesses and certainty when planning for the future.

Working with local businesses through my tourism and hospitality group I have championed this sector for the past four and a half years and I will continue to do so. By increasing the measures on second homes we can help provide more primary ownership property for those living and working in the area. Through the Energy Bill Relief Scheme and now the Energy Bills Discount Scheme and Business Rate Relief and Capital Allowance schemes we have provided a huge amount of meaningful support across the country that has saved, sustained and allowed businesses to build back from the pandemic.

However, while schemes of support are of significant use the focus must be on reducing the tax burden via VAT reductions.

If re-elected I will continue to promote and champion our vibrant tourism and hospitality sectors and to support those working in these areas through addressing our housing needs, shortening supply chains, encouraging localism and promoting South Devon.

Daniel Steel - Labour Party

We are lucky to live in a truly beautiful part of the country. It’s why we’re rightly recognised as a tourist destination of choice and why our hospitality sector is so vital. In South Devon hospitality employs 7466 people, generating £399.6 million for the local economy with 2618 venues.
We will support the hospitality sector by switching on GB Energy which will lower energy bills for companies and individuals alike. Labour will replace the current business rates system with a reformed system that levels the playing field between ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses and online giants.
Water companies like South West Water are putting our countryside, our tourism industry, and health at risk by dumping raw sewage in our rivers and sea. Labour will crack down on these failing water companies by giving regulators the power to block the bonuses of executives who pollute our waterways and bring criminal charges against persistent law breakers. I will back these changes to the hilt to clean up our water.

Caroline Voaden - Liberal Democratic Party

Awaiting Response

How will you ensure appropriate and adequate funding for early years education?

Robert Bagnall - Green Party

Education benefits society as a whole and should be publicly funded and available to everybody, free of charge, at every stage of life, including those all-important early years that provide a foundation for more formal education thereafter.  Our manifesto pledges £1.4bn per year "to be invested by local authorities in Sure Start Centres, and to extend the outgoing government’s offer of childcare to 35 hours per week from nine months."

Early years provision is also dependent on skilled, dedicated and motivated carers in what is typically a low-paying sector (as are hospitality, agriculture, and elder-care, all equally important to South Devon). Our pledge to increase the minimum wage to £15 an hour for all ages, with the costs to small businesses offset by reducing National Insurance payments, plus equal employment rights for all workers from their first day of employment, will be of greatest benefit to sectors such as these on which the rest of us rely.

Awaiting Response

Anthony Mangnall - Conservative Party

Awaiting Response

Daniel Steel - Labour Party

High-quality early education and childcare is a crucial opportunity to transform life chances. Too often it is unavailable, or unaffordable. As an initial step, Labour will open an additional 3,000 nurseries through upgrading space in primary schools, to deliver the extension of government funded hours families are entitled to. Labour will end the VAT exemption and business rates relief for private schools. This will generate £1.5 billion to invest in education to invest in our state schools and early years education.

Caroline Voaden - Liberal Democratic Party

Awaiting Response

What will you do to ensure that the developers who build new housing pay enough to enable the local infrastructure to cope with the rise in population.

Robert Bagnall - Green Party

Since the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 we have seen multiple policy failures that have given us a landscape of low-density suburban sprawl made up of energy-inefficient buildings. We've lost prime agricultural farmland and important natural habitats. Making people get into cars to go work or shop has made sustainable lifestyles difficult.  This has all been driven by a planning framework that benefits developers and their profit-margins first, and people second. It could have been so different.

Greens would look at every policy and proposal through the lens of what benefits people and the planet first, not profit. We will transform the planning system to make sure infrastructure keeps up, and campaign to ensure that everybody lives within 15 minutes’ walking distance of a nature-rich greenspace. From our manifesto: "Our Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter will simultaneously protect valuable green space for communities, reduce climate emissions, tackle fuel poverty and provide genuinely affordable housing.

"Councils and national governments should be working together to deliver the homes people need, where they need them and at rents and prices they can afford. Yet speculators and developers are currently allowed to chase the biggest profits and ignore local communities.

"Greens will support local councils to provide good quality, affordable social housing in places where people live and work. And we will ensure largescale developments are always supported by new infrastructure such as GP surgeries, bus services, cycling and walking networks, and extra places at nurseries and schools. All new developments should be accompanied by the extra investment needed to enhance local services too, and so that residents don’t have to rely on cars to live a full life."

Anthony Mangnall - Conservative Party

Awaiting Response

Daniel Steel - Labour Party

Awaiting Response

Caroline Voaden - Liberal Democratic Party

Awaiting Response