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 Westmorland & Lonsdale constituency.
What will you do to stop run off from animal agriculture polluting lakes/rivers?
Tim Farron, Liberal Democrats
Pollution in our lakes and rivers is a huge issue.
The best way we can stop run off from animal agriculture ending up in our waterways is through working with farmers.
The Government’s move to financial rewarding farmers for protecting the environment is welcome, but I’m afraid they have totally botched the transition from basic payments to the Environmental Land Management Scheme, meaning that farmers have seen their incomes drastically cut and are having to increase their livestock numbers in order to survive.
The Liberal Democrats would support farmers with a £1bn funding package to support profitable, sustainable and nature-friendly farming.
James Townley, Reform UK
Agriculture pollutants and run-off are relatively low in Cumbria compared to other counties with more crop-producing land.
However, it still contributes somewhat, and encouraging buffer zones on the edge of fields to filter out runoff should be implemented.
The primary issue is sewage waste being pumped directly into our watercourses. Fixing this issue should be a priority.
Past measures, like blaming old slate-built septic tanks for lake pollution, have often been misguided. The best form of filtration is running sewage runoff through land before it reaches main watercourses.
United Utilities should expedite plans to create constructed wetlands for filtration. The situation in Windermere is almost entirely sewage-related.
Phil Clayton, the Green Party
Strengthen the Environment Agency to allow it to properly investigate this type of pollution, and assist farmers in trying to reduce it.
Izzy Solabarrieta, the Heritage Party
The state of our lakes and rivers is an area of huge national concern, but in the Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency it is my understanding that the main culprit is the deliberate, constant, long-term pouring of human sewage into the water.
Intensive animal agriculture systems – especially pig and poultry farming – clearly do create huge water issues, and the Heritage Party would ban the most intensive farming systems which would see that issue dealt with.
I would focus initially on holding corporations like United Utilities to account for their actions (pouring sewage into rivers) and also their inactions (failing to stop pouring sewage into rivers). I’d like to see serious fines for the corporations not just wrist slaps, and fines, penalties and punishments for the men and women responsible.
I would like to see a complete overhaul of the Environment Agency so that it becomes an agency to protect the environment, not just the government’s flooding propaganda agency.
We would also push to return to more natural farming methods, encouraging diverse, mixed farming which benefits the landscape, encourages and creates hedges and natural land strips, with the use of fewer chemicals, all of which should help create cleaner waterways.
