Election Special: Conservative Candidate For Mid-Derbyshire Pauline Latham

The most important thing that any government does is keep the people living in this country safe.

With Terrorism affecting people here, whether the policeman stabbed in London or the children and adults murdered at the stadium in Manchester, it makes people feel insecure. We want our Police and Armed Forces to have the very best equipment and intelligence of any force in the world. A Conservative government will continue to invest in our world-leading security services and maintain and develop our counter-terrorism strategy to protect us all.

Mid Derbyshire is a great place to live and work and I want to keep it that way, which is why I have campaigned alongside local people to retain the green spaces in the constituency in Belper, Oakwood, Spondon and Kedleston Road. Where there is brownfield land it should be used first to provide the houses we need.

I have campaigned for years for the country to have a National Funding Formula for schools. I was so pleased when the Education Secretary announced a consultation on a new formula. There were some anomalies which has been changed so no school will have less funding than currently.

The schools in Mid Derbyshire provide an excellent education for the children and students living here but we need to strive for better all the time.

Our NHS should be responsive to local people’s needs with services as close to home as possible. We will continue to recruit more nurses and doctors to provide for this. Funding for the NHS will increase by a minimum of £8 billion over five years and we will invest in new buildings.

I would like to see a job for everyone in Mid Derbyshire and we are very nearly there. In fact the number of people claiming benefits has gone down from 1401 in March 2010 to 365 this March, a reduction of 74%. This is remarkable and I now believe that we have more jobs being advertised in Mid Derbyshire than we have people able to take them on.

What we now need are more apprenticeships and technical skills training for the jobs available and a Conservative government will do just that to help our young people.

Mid Derbyshire is a great place to live with great shopping and leisure activities. Belper won the first Great British High Street and continues to prosper. I would like the centre of Spondon to be as vibrant and popular with the local residents as Belper is so I will work with Spondon and other areas to see how we can help local traders.