Hustings address to Beaconsfield Liberal Democrats

Speech by John Edwards on Sat 30th Jan 2010

John Edwards, selected at these hustings as the candidate for Beaconsfield

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and thank you for inviting me along to your hustings.

I thought I would say a few words about myself and why I am involved in politics. I know I have already spoken to some of you this evening and you have read my personal statement, but I'd like to give you a further insight.

Well, why and how did I get involved in politics in the first place?

Well it all started when I was at school, in the sixth form at Windsor Boys School when I was studying for my A Levels. It was the mid 1980s, Mrs Thatcher was obviously Prime Minster and one of my A Level subjects was Economics.

From my own instinctive beliefs I didn't like the way the country was being run at the time, and wanted to join a political party.

I asked for some advice from my Dad, asking him what political parties' youth wing should I join? He told me to join the one with the most of prettiest girls in it, but in the end I joined the Young Liberals.

Any way, back at school I over heard a conversation in the Sixth Form Common Room about some of my sixth form peers going to a Young Liberal Meeting. Unbeknown to me at that time was that some of my fellow school friends were already members of the Young Liberals. I found out where they met and went along to see what it was all about.

In those days the Young Liberals in Windsor and Maidenhead were thriving, and many of the members were there for the social activities. The social side was very good.

But with my instinctive Liberal beliefs I wanted more out of the Young Liberals than just the great socialising. I soon meet a couple of our local Liberal councillors and went canvassing and delivering leaflets with them. Suddenly I was hooked on politics.

I keep mentioning my strong instinctive Liberal beliefs.

Let me tell you a little bit about what I mean.

I truly believe in fairness.

I believe in equality of opportunity.

This must be the main core of everyday life.

To achieve true freedom of the individual and to live in a truly fair and equitable society where everybody can contribute and make the best lives of themselves it must start from education. It's about helping people to help themselves and rewarding merit.

But the theme of fairness runs through all aspects of life.

In social and economic terms it is about raising the threshold level at when we start to pay tax. I believe our party has the right policy on raising the income tax threshold so that low earning hard working individuals and families pay lower taxes, (and the very lowest earners pay no tax) whilst at the same time close the loopholes that seem to increase the gap between rich and poor.

I believe at the general election this year our party has a great opportunity, by concentrating on the seats that we can and should win. A great opportunity because the country is crying out for change. Never before has our party been so important. The Labour Party has discredited itself, the chances of the Labour Party being re-elected to form the government at the General Election in my opinion is some where between nought and zero.

Back in 1997 many people thought they were voting for change. But Labour has failed. In fact in the last 12 and half years the gap between rich and poor has widened, politics has become dirtier and many of our civil liberties have eroded. Labour had an opportunity to change things after 18 years of Tory misrule - but they failed.

And I don't believe people really have the stomach to vote for the Tories. I don't believe there is great enthusiasm for them. Not everyone has short memories. We can't believe everything Cameron says, the Tories have not changed that much (or not as much as they want us to believe they have). They say they believe in and want fairness but they want to cut taxes for millionaires. Cameron talks a lot about the environment, but their MEPs in Europe have joined up with a group that denies climate change.

Climate change is an issue that must be taken seriously by us all, and by our representatives in local, national and European governments. Pollution and climate change is a global problem and therefore has to be tackled on a global basis. Unfortunately the recent Copenhagen Summit was not particularly successful and ended in a weak deal of global agreement, low targets and they actually dropped the goal on reducing CO2 emissions by 80% by the year 2050.

So, not having a real global agreement means that we should work even harder with our European neighbours. In Europe we have broad agreement on climate change but the like I have already mentioned the most worrying part is that we have a Conservative Party in Europe that has joined a group of climate change deniers.

But we need to also take local action on climate change and pollution too. What we all do locally is key.

I was an elected councillor on Slough Borough Council for 8 years (in fact I am very proud that I was in fact the first directly elected Liberal Democrat on Slough Borough Council).

For the first 4 years I was part of the opposition. It was a lonely experience being the only Lib Dem. The Labour led council did not take environmental issues seriously; in fact the environment was almost an after thought for them.

When the joint administration came into power in 2004 we put the environment on the top of the agenda. I am very proud to have been the led member for Public Protection (that included all environmental issues) and during our time in office doubled the recycling rate in Slough. We did this by largely increasing the items that could be recycled at the kerb side, and by introducing more recycling lines at the municipal waste sites. We also sought to educate the public on recycling and the impact on the environment generally. We held a Big Green Day Out once a year in the town centre that made a lot of publicity and education for the environment. We introduced kerb side green waste and plastics recycling.

Now back to my instinctive Liberal beliefs.

As a liberal I am horrified that as a nation we hold so many innocent people's DNA on a national database. I believe this is against the rights and freedoms of individuals.

There is a ruling in the European Court of Human Rights - a ruling that the Labour government is contesting - that makes the retention of innocent people's DNA illegal. If the Labour government wants us to believe that they are in favour of human rights, then why have two Home Secretaries ignored the rulings of Strasbourg? Why does our officious authorities keep adding to the largest DNA database in the world?

As Liberal Democrats we should be proud that as a party we believe in the scrapping of identity cards. ID cards are an expensive way for Big Brother to keep an eye on us all.

Saving public money on the scrapping of the ID card project would allow spending on other priority areas.

One of the policies I particularly like is introducing high-speed rail links in an attempt to take some freight lorries off the motorways and reduce the need for internal flights.

On the subject of rail links, I was very pleased to see that Chiltern Railways are building a new line from London to Oxford (and not with any tax payers money) and introducing other improvements to reduce journey times in and out of London.

Actually transport, and particularly public transport has been one area where this Labour government has been particularly weak on. The Tories would do no better; in fact in London public transport prices have rocketed under the leadership of Boris Johnson.

I guess we all heard the news this week that the country is now officially out of recession. We had growth for the last quarter of 2009 of 0.1%. This is such a small number, that as an accountant I would actually round it to zero. Commentators say that it could be a long bumpy ride out of recession. We were the first country to go into recession and it looks like we are the last country to come out of recession.

Britain is actually in crisis. We have a rotten Westminster and MPs have never been so unpopular. We are coming out of one of the worst recessions and banking crisis this country has ever seen, and on top of all that globally we have a real threat of climate change.

I believe the people of this country want some thing different and the Liberal Democrats are that some thing different. That is why this general election is so important for us as a party. An opportunity to make real breakthroughs, especially where we are in second place and in other places too where there are discredited MPs from the expenses scandal.

We all need to embrace this opportunity and help our friends and colleagues in neighbouring target seats to get their candidates elected

We must take on this challenge. Our party may never see such opportunity again - we need to grab it by the horns and win as many Westminster seats as possible to ensure this country becomes a fairer, and less divided nation in the future.