We asked you to submit your questions to candidates standing in the 2024 General Election.
From all your submissions, we chose 10 that represented the broad issues you wanted answers to.
We asked every candidate we had contact details for to respond.
We’ll be publishing them in the run-up to the General Election with the responses from the candidates who replied from each constituency.
These are the answers are from candidates standing in the Barrow & Furness constituency.
Your question:
What are your plans for education? Schools are struggling with limited budgets, and increasing demand for services. Staff are being cut because support staff’s pay rises aren’t fully funded. People are losing their jobs because education is underfunded. Children are the future of our country, and our education system should be a beacon of funding and investment to give us the best future possible.
Adrian Waite, Liberal Democrats
I think schools are held back by an over-centralised system that imposes a national curriculum and rigid Ofsted inspections on schools. I think this stifles initiative, reduces performance and fails to provide value for money.
Liberal Democrats believe that education is the best investment we can make in our children’s potential and our country’s future. It must be adequately funded. We would:
- Tackle the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention.
- Improve the quality of vocational education.
- Strengthen careers advice and links with employers in schools and colleges.
- Reform Ofsted inspections.
- Implement a new parental engagement strategy.
- Tackle the crisis in special educational needs provision.
- Redirect capital funding to help clear the backlog of school repairs.
Barry Morgan, Reform UK
Ease pressure on the state system by offering 20% tax relief to parents willing and able to go private – no VAT on fees.
Attract staff capable of critical thinking by banning transgender ideology and critical race theory from the school environment, banning smartphones from the classroom and permanently excluding violent and disruptive kids from the classroom.
Weight the curriculum more in favour of substantive subjects with teachers teaching how to think, not what to think – Reform UK would already cut funding to universities that undermine free speech, and I would argue that many schools, too, need to clean up their act.
Lisa Morgan, Party of Women
Money is being wasted by schools buying in trainers of PSHE (personal, social and health education) who are instead pushing gender identity ideology.
Staff and pupils are being put under pressure and have to deal with unnecessary workload because of this trend.
Many are stressed by having to watch what they say, even if it’s perfectly reasonable, because they could face bullying — if not disciplining — simply for telling the truth.
It is often difficult for teachers to refuse ‘affirming’ vulnerable children down a potentially damaging pathway to gender transition.
Children are the future of Barrow and Furness. Our education system must be based upon truthful curriculums and be given non-ideological investment if this constituency is to benefit from an educated population ready to take the opportunities offered in this uncertain future.
Would you/your party consider writing off all nurses’ university debt if they signed up to working in the NHS or care sector for at least 5 years thereby upskilling the care sector and taking some burden off the NHS?
Adrian Waite, Liberal Democrats
Liberal Democrats believe that people should be in control of their own lives and health and that means everyone should get the care they need, when they need it, where they need it.
This cannot be achieved without skilled nurses whose work is valued.
We would train, recruit and retain the doctors, nurses and other NHS staff we need, including by:
- Establishing a properly independent pay review body.
- Retaining more staff across the NHS through a 10-year retention plan.
- Making flexible working a day-one right and expanding access to flexible, affordable childcare, as set out in chapters 4 and 9.
- Fixing the work visa system and exempting NHS and care staff from the Immigration Skills Charge, as set out in chapter 18.
- Ending the false economy of spending money on agency workers and encouraging the use of flexible staff banks.
Writing off the debt is an interesting idea, but I am not sure that it would be the best way to help.
Most of those training to be nurses go on to work in the NHS, so there is no need to force them. The main reason they leave the NHS is because the government doesn’t support them on the job or through their studies.
That’s why the Liberal Democrats are proposing to bring back nurses’ bursaries to help trainee nurses through university and put forward a 10-year retention plan to improve working conditions for NHS staff.
Barry Morgan, Reform UK
All student fees for doctors, nurses and medical staff will be written off pro rata per year over 10 years of NHS service.
All frontline NHS and social care staff will pay zero basic rate tax for three years; the outrage of training caps for UK medical students will be consigned to history.
Reform UK will end NHS waiting lists within two years by converging public with private sector health care, incentivising frontline staff, cutting waste and training up our own citizens and settled UK residents.
Lisa Morgan, Party of Women
I’d certainly consider the debt issue although I’d want to know more about the cost implications. I’ve had a career where I’ve handled big budgets and such experience helps.
Jobs in the care and health sectors, predominantly occupied by women, need to be properly valued. Barrow and Furness would grind to a halt without women’s work — often poorly paid or free.
The NHS and the care sector must have clear guidance on single sex provision so that these jobs are easier to perform and medical staff can feel confident they can speak the truth.
