Candidates' immigration policies questioned following comments made at the Blackpool North Hustings

Blackpool Gazette

The Blackpool Gazette and Blackpool Lead invited the candidates standing for the Blackpool North constituency at next month's general election to a hustings in which they fielded questions from voters.    The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given 90 seconds to answer questions from an audience at a Cleveleys venue.    Six out of the eight people on the ballot took part in the event with Jeannine Creswell (Social Democratic Party) missing and a stand-in taking the place of the absent Lorraine Beavers.  In order of appearance on stage:  PAUL MAYNARD (Conservative Party) JAMES RUST (Monster Raving Loony Party) GITA GORDON (Independent) BILL GREENE (Liberal Democrats) TINA ROTHERY (Green Party) DAN BARKER (Reform UK) CLIVE GRUNSHAW (Labour [Stand-in])

Transcript

00:00Well, it's just a bit of a comment and then a question. I found that the, I don't even

00:07know how to describe the word, like some of the comments here about immigration. So, I'm

00:12a foreigner, I come here to this country to do science, to do some good and to do research,

00:19to help people. I pay, I pay my taxes, actually I pay twice, because to enter this country

00:27I need to pay like NHS fees, plus my taxes that I'm discounting from my salary every

00:33month. So, I found a bit, some of the comments a bit, yeah, shocking. So, I just want to

00:39understand from each candidate, what would be like the policy or the ideas to kind of

00:45deal with immigration, to make sure that people that are here for a reason, they have the

00:51right, they are treated fairly.

00:58This is going to sound slightly controversial, but please allow me to finish the sentence.

01:02We should stop the boats. We should absolutely stop them by providing the correct routes

01:08to our country. It's simply reason that we, the simple reason we have this huge backlog

01:13and that it looks so disastrous, is that we stopped all the legal, most of the legal routes

01:18to get here. And then we took part in wars that made people's lives so miserable and

01:23difficult that they had to escape those places to come here. And now we're going to have

01:27a climate crisis where people are experiencing greater floods and greater droughts and that

01:32will impact food production and the ability to live in even other countries. So, in order

01:37to stop the influx of immigration, allow it to happen correctly, so that we end up with

01:44our doctors and our nurses and our care workers and this rich, vibrant society that benefits

01:48all of us.

01:55You can't believe me again, but if your country is at war, how Britain was with Germany, my

02:01parents didn't run off as refugees somewhere. They stayed and fought for the country, as

02:08did my grandparents in World War I.

02:14You think everyone should just die then?

02:17Well, that's what war is about.

02:20Even though the public is not asking that question. And we went to an illegal war in

02:24Iraq.

02:25I'm trying to stay loony about making the point. My parents didn't run off, my grandparents

02:30didn't run off, but it seems that everybody who's got a war or some kind of stress in

02:35their country, oh, we've got to go somewhere else. And they come here and they bring their

02:40problems with us. Now, those people are going to fight for us if we end up in a war.

02:44Supposed to be funny, now it's just a bit of facelessness.

02:52I don't know what your name is who asked the question, but I would just like to apologise

02:57to everybody here.

03:01How can you speak for everybody here?

03:06Can I finish please? Can I finish?

03:08Speak for me.

03:09Politics is about the greater good.

03:11It is.

03:12And all I've heard from most people, not everybody, is a selfishness, a lack of humanity,

03:20a lack of dignity. And at the end of the day, immigration happens for many, many different

03:27reasons. And we have to treat it with dignity and understand it before we make very flip

03:34comments. And I understand that you're the loony party, but as you said, it has to be

03:41said that we're all human beings in this room. And I can't see Christ here, which concerns

03:48me. And I don't want to vote for anybody who cannot see the greater good and what they're

03:54doing. And some people there, I do not see that. Anna McColl, I'm sure you'll vote for

03:59her.

04:00Yeah, well said.

04:04Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have my 14th great grandchild born. Now that means

04:13that she is likely to be living in 80 plus years from now. But what world would she be

04:21living in? We are destroying the world. We do have people who are economic migrants,

04:28but we're going to get more in the coming years because we are allowing their world

04:35to be destroyed by our greed. We have got to stop the climate change. Their world, their

04:43food is being destroyed, their land is being destroyed, their water is drying up. They're

04:49going to move to where they can see that there is water, food and riches. And that's here.

Category

Transcript

Recommended