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 Whitehaven & Workington constituency.
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.
Josh MacAlister, Labour Party
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.
I started my career as a school teacher so this is personal to me. Our education system is struggling to cope after years of chronic mismanagement under the Conservatives. Childcare and early education are increasingly unaffordable and unavailable. Too many children arrive at primary school not ready to learn. Too many children are not even getting to school. Teachers are burnt out and leaving in droves. Meanwhile, too many of our young people leave school unprepared for the future.
Labour will improve our education system so that young people get the opportunities they deserve. We will expand our childcare and early‐years system and drive up standards. We will introduce free breakfast clubs at primary schools and we will dramatically expand mental health support for children. These changes will provide extra support around schools so that teachers can focus on teaching. And we’ll bolster teacher numbers by 6,500.
I want all of the children in our area, especially those who are overlooked or left out, to have an education that lets them achieve their full potential.
Jill Perry, Green Party
Greens absolutely recognise that children are the future and the love of learning is a lifelong joy. I was a teacher for many years.
Green MPs will invest £2bn in a pay increase for teachers. We will end formal testing at key stages to reduce the stress on teachers and pupils, and we will abolish Ofsted. We will push for £5bn investment in SEND (Special Educational Needs) provision for accessible buildings and trained teachers.
We will make education more fitted to the student, with all subjects treated equally within the curriculum, restring school visits, outdoor learning and encouraging arts and vocational subjects.
It was our former MP Caroline Lucas who advocated for the introduction of the new natural history GCSE and now we need ensure its effective delivery.
Andrew Johnson, the Conservative Party
Schools are the engine room of opportunity and in order for the UK and Cumbria to compete in an increasingly challenging world it is vital that future generations receive the best education that they can.
As the son of a retired teacher, I place a very strong emphasis on education and ensuring that the system receives the resourcing it needs.
Standards in schools during the last 14 years have increased markedly, yet more needs to be done.
Locally we’ve invested heavily in school refurbishment, expansion and rebuild that needs to continue. This also has to include additional provision for complex needs children and ensuring that the education system works closely with other state services, like social care, to protect the most vulnerable, as education is also about a duty of care and preventing scenes like we’ve seen in other parts of the country, such as Rochdale.
Chris Wills, Liberal Democrats
Two subject areas need immediate and substantial fixing:
- SEND
- Further education
There is an explosion in SEND need and one awful result is the level of stress and unhappiness as parents watch their children grow up without the support they need. A major injection of Government funding is needed.
We must have more SEND staff, with better pay and conditions, and many more top quality specialist schools or school places where children receive dedicated, tailored support.
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?
Jill Perry, Green Party
This is a very specific question and it’s not a promise we have made in our manifesto, but we do believe that care sector does need both increased pay rates and a proper career structure, with training and qualifications and a national pay structure.
We will work with local authorities, unions and private providers to make it happen. We will also make it illegal for agents to charge commission to workers from overseas who join the caring profession through the working visa system.
Josh MacAlister, Labour Party
Before standing to be an MP, I did make the case that some public service workers should get a form of loan forgiveness so I know the argument for this idea.
It isn’t something we’re able to promise in our manifesto at this election because we’re only making promises we can keep and that the country can afford.
However, we will deliver a major workforce plan for the NHS so that we have the new doctors and nurses we need and we’ll improve working conditions so that we can retain our excellent staff.
Andrew Johnson, the Conservative Party
This government restored nurses’ bursaries. I believe we should be making much better use of the non-university routes to nursing, which achieve the same end without the reliance on student loans.
We should absolutely be ensuring that where taxpayer funding is used to pay for, or subsidise, education, the public sector protect that investment by requiring some length of service or repayment in lieu, just as happens with expensive training in the private sector.
Chris Wills, Liberal Democrats
Personally, I think there is a strong case for this reader’s proposal. Lib Dems have a ten year retention plan for all staff.
The current situation in which doctors feel that they have to move to Australia and achieve near double their UK pay surely shows a fresh and fairer ‘training with contract’ system is needed for NHS staff.
Care staff need their own higher status, higher pay system, so care is regarded as a fine and respected career.
David Surtees, Reform UK
Cumbria Crack received no answers from Mr Surtees. Just before the election was called, he was diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing six weeks of treatment, which he said had curtailed his ability to campaign.
