Short face to face with Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey in North Shropshire

Shropshire Star

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey visited a flower business in north Shropshire where his party hopes to keep the seat sensationally won in a by election in 2021. The Shropshire Star had a sit down four minute interview with the politician.

Transcript

00:00Sir Ed, can you remember back to when Helen Morgan won the seat and your feelings at the time and

00:06how you think you'll, if you have a chance of repeating that?

00:11It was a very exciting by-election. North Shropshire had been held by the Conservatives

00:15for 200 years and no one thought we could win. It was in the depths of winter and initially I

00:22thought it was going to be difficult but we started talking to people that were clearly fed up with

00:27the Conservatives being taken for granted. They liked what they saw with Helen Morgan and our

00:32Liberal Democrat policies and we pulled a remarkable historic victory off. I have to say on the actual

00:38day I wasn't there because I'd got Covid. I was at home. I'd been campaigning and the last weekend

00:44I'd come up here many many times. I really enjoyed it. It's a beautiful beautiful area. I really

00:48enjoyed the campaign and the warm response we got. But on the actual day I was in bed watching it

00:56And the chances of retaining the seat? Well I think we've got a good chance. We're not

01:01going to be complacent. It's clearly a two-horse race between ourselves and the Conservatives

01:07but a lot of people who might have thought of voting Labour and know they need to get behind

01:12Helen Morgan as a way to beat the Conservatives. What I've been noticing is because Helen has

01:19been such a fantastic champion for North Shropshire in Parliament. She's got so much done

01:25in a short time. People realise what an effective local MP she is. What a champion she is for the

01:31area and I think a lot of people even if they voted Conservative in the by-election are going

01:36to vote Helen Morgan because they want a local champion to stand up for the area and that's

01:42exciting and to be honest so many Liberal Democrat MPs have turned out to be great hard-working

01:49champions. You look at many Conservatives and they've sort of almost forgotten the

01:53constituency when they get elected. Does reform make a difference to the dynamic at all and

01:59the re-emergence of a certain character? Well let's see. I don't share any of the

02:07views and values of Nigel Farage but there'll be some people who are tempted

02:13to vote for him. I think he's got a right to stand. It's a democratic exercise. It's poor

02:26elections that people hear all voices. We strongly disagree with him and we're going to focus on the

02:31Liberal Democrat priorities which is the health service, care, the cost of living which has been

02:37hit so badly. People have been really hurting out there and things like the environment, the sewage

02:43issue, climate change and so on. So we're working on those issues. Hopefully the Liberal Democrats will get heard.

02:50You mentioned earlier about the health service being a key priority.

02:57There is a recruitment issue in the health service of being able to get people in posts

03:02in there and in the care system. How would the Liberal Democrats solve that particular issue?

03:09Let me give you two examples which are absolutely right. Recruitment in healthcare is critical. First is GPs. We've got too few GPs

03:16and that's partly because the government hasn't given GP practice enough money. There are actually

03:20GP people wanting to have jobs in GP practice and they can't get them because there's no money

03:26in the primary healthcare sector. We've also got to retain GPs who might otherwise leave or retire,

03:33bring people back. Some people have gone to Australia or left the profession early and of course train

03:38more and make sure more medical graduates go into general practice. So we have a very detailed plan

03:44to sort out the shortage of GPs. The other issue about recruiting people

03:52is on care workers. We have a national shortage of care workers which is acute.

03:56Conservatives have tried to solve this by just bringing people in from abroad, issuing healthcare

04:03visas. We think a better approach would be to pay care workers more. So we're arguing for a special

04:10minimum wage for care workers of two pounds an hour above the national minimum wage so people,

04:16rather than working in a supermarket or in an Amazon warehouse, go and work in our care homes

04:21and then we wouldn't have to ask people from other countries to come here.

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