Epping Forest and Harlow
Liberal Democrats

Jon Whitehouse makes the case for a liberal Epping Forest

20 Apr 2015

To a full house in St Mary's Church, Loughton this evening, Jon Whitehouse defended the Liberal Democrats' record in government, and explained why his local knowledge and background as a councillor makes him the best choice for Epping Forest MP.

The well-supported hustings event, organised by Churches Together in Loughton, gave voters an opportunity to hear from candidates on a variety of issues, from housing policy to climate change. In what was a respectful and constructive exchange of views, only at the end did encumbant Eleanor Laing have to contend with noisy jeering from a minority concerned about welfare cuts.

Early in the debate, housing policy emerged as a key issue.

Whilst all the candidates agreed that more houses needed to be built, and that unsustainable price increases were not in the community's long-term interests, few offered specific solutions. The Green Party saw the opportunity to push their goal of re-distributing wealth, but offered only vast un-costed council house building programmes. Jon Whitehouse pointed to Lib Dem policies on building Garden Cities, and introducing a 'rent to own' scheme, as practical, costed solutions that could help get people onto the housing ladder. He noted that it was only because of Lib Dems in government that local councils were once more building new housing at all.

Like most of the other candidates, Jon was clear in his commitment to protecting the Green Belt, and finding local sites for new housing on existing brown-field sites. The Conservative candidate was able to mention her attendance at a recent council-house building site, but was unable to explain how her party's policy of selling off council homes at a discount would improve ordinary people's access to good housing.

On health, the various problems with Whipps Cross hospital, and the impact on residents here, were discussed in good detail by both Lib Dem and Conservative candidates. The Labour candidate, from Brentwood, showed his lack of local knowledge by using his answer to talk about hospital funding for the East of England, which does not cover Whipps Cross in any case!

The inevitable question about the European Union gave the UKIP candidate a chance to talk about his favourite topic - one that he would return to in reply to almost every question. It was good to hear many candidates prepared to defend and explain the benefits of Britain working closely with our neighbours.

A question about Climate Change should have been something of a gift for the Green Party, but really only Jon Whitehouse had any practical measures to talk about: the massive increase in renewable energy overseen over the last few years by a Lib Dem Energy Secretary. We've fought tooth and nail against Conservative nimbyism especially over wind energy, but our manifesto promise of more on the environment is clear.

The "young people's party" candidate astonished the audience by claiming than there was no such thing as man-made climate change. Such un-scientific views from someone claiming to have the interests of the next generation at heart would have been depressing, were it not for the clear answers on the topic from many of the other candidates.

While clearly some in the audience had already made up their mind, or of course were party activists, citizens in Epping Forest have shown real demand for live political debate, and the many in the audience taking notes showed a healthy engagement with politics that bodes well for the future of democracy in our country.

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