Health services the key issue for North Shropshire candidates as they face voters at by-election hustings

Candidates standing in next week’s North Shropshire by-election have pledged to fight for the NHS and push for more investment in the area’s businesses and infrastructure.

Four of the 14 hopefuls bidding to be the constituency’s next MP set out their pledges to voters at a hustings in Whitchurch on Tuesday evening.

And Conservative candidate Neil Shastri-Hurst, Liberal Democrat Helen Morgan, Labour’s Ben Wood and Duncan Kerr for the Green Party were all in agreement that the current crisis in the health service was the key issue facing the area.

The event, at St John’s Church in St John’s Street got off to an awkward start when another candidate, UKIP’s Andrea Allen, stepped forward and claimed she had not been invited to participate.

But she was told invites had been sent out to candidates whose contact details were publicly available.

Addressing the packed out church, Ms Morgan used her opening speech to tell voters that the “immense pressure” on health services would be her top priority if elected.

She said: “We need to let the Conservatives know we demand better and as your MP I will not stop fighting until the government acts to stop this crisis.”

Ms Morgan, who lives in Harmer Hill where she serves as a parish councillor, said residents were fed up of only seeing the Conservatives “for a photo shoot at election time”.

She added: “I’m the only candidate who can win this by-election who lives and works in North Shropshire.”

Mr Kerr is hoping to pull off another shock election victory after becoming the first Green to be elected to Oswestry Town Council in 2013 and then Shropshire Council in 2016.

He said the Greens had a strong track record of campaigning for important local issues, including fighting off plans to start fracking in Dudleston, and had embarked on a series of wide-ranging improvements in Oswestry after winning outright control of the town council earlier this year.

He said: “The Greens do win elections and we have a fantastic record of achievement.

“People have seen that we have put them first. We believe in acting locally, doing things that make a difference in our communities.”

Mr Kerr also pledged to only take the average UK workers’ salary if he is elected.

Dr Shastri-Hurst told voters he hoped to follow in the footsteps of the last North Shropshire by-election winner, John Biffen, who he said was a model MP.

Dr Shastri-Hurst said: “I want to work constructively with government to secure more investment for North Shropshire, but also hold government to account for you.”

He said one of his six campaign pledges was to call for more money for the NHS, along with greater support to help businesses recover from the pandemic and improving local road and rail infrastructure.

Dr Shastri-Hurst said his plans for North Shropshire would make “an already wonderful place an even better place to live”.

Mr Wood, who grew up in Oswestry, said he would use his platform, if elected, to “fight for every single town and village” in North Shropshire.

“As our towns grow, as Whitchurch is, our public services should grow as well – but that’s not been happening,” said Mr Wood.

He said the police station, ambulance station and NHS GPs and dentists were just some examples of services lost to the town under the current government, and said he would push for investment in high streets and public transport.

Mr Wood said: “It’s about standing up for North Shropshire, the place which will always be home for me.”

Candidates were grilled on topics including assisted dying, corruption in politics and child poverty, but the thread weaving through the majority of the responses was health – from the handling of the pandemic and the current concerns over ambulance delays, to mental health provision and the need for more support for the social care sector to free up hospital beds.

One questioner asked the candidates whether the NHS was worth fighting for – referencing a now-deleted blog post by Dr Shastri-Hurst in which he asked the same question, before he was selected as a candidate.

Mr Kerr said: “It is certainly worth fighting for and we have to fight daily to keep our NHS in public hands.”

He said the Health and Social Care Bill currently going through Parliament was “the start of creeping privatization of the NHS”.

Mr Wood said the situation locally was now far worse than it had been under the last Labour government. He added: “The NHS is under threat everywhere but no more so than in North Shropshire.”

Dr Shastri-Hurst, who previously worked as an NHS surgeon and returned to the front-line during the pandemic, said his first-hand experience put him in a strong position to be able to pressure government to ensure the health service it gets the help it needs.

He said that while, “of course the NHS is worth fighting for,” it was “important to ensure money that goes into the health service is utilised in the right way”.

A key area of focus, he added, was “unlocking the hundreds of millions of pounds” pledged by the government for improvements to Shropshire’s two acute hospitals.

Ms Morgan said the NHS was “severely under-resourced and staff that work there are under immense pressure”.

She said more money was desperately needed for health provision, and that this should go hand-in-hand with reforms to the social care system.

Candidates were also asked to name the government’s biggest achievement and biggest failure of the last few years.

Mr Kerr, perhaps unsurprisingly, said the lack of urgency over the climate crisis was the biggest failure, but praised the government for passing the Domestic Abuse Bill, while Mr Wood criticised the handling of the pandemic but said he did support some aspects of the Help to Buy scheme.

Dr Shastri-Hurst and Ms Morgan both cited the vaccine roll-out as the government’s biggest success story, but Ms Morgan said that should not detract from the poor handling of the pandemic overall.

The biggest failure, said Dr Shastri-Hurst, was the handling of the Owen Paterson standards inquiry.

As the evening drew to a close, a member of the audience asked the candidates whether it was important for prospective MPs to live in the area they were seeking to represent.

Mr Kerr, Mr Wood and Ms Morgan all said people should be free to stand for election anywhere they like – but that their North Shropshire connections did give them a greater understanding of local issues and views.

Dr Shastri-Hurst, who hails from Birmingham, said: “The key really is having somebody who can be an effective representative for the whole community in Parliament, having somebody who has got the skills and experience to be able to advocate on behalf of their constituents.”

Dr Shastri-Hurst was also asked directly whether, if he fails to be elected next week, he would move to North Shropshire to campaign for the issues he claims to support and stand again for the constituency in the next General Election.

He responded that candidate selection was a matter for the local Conservative association, adding: “I’m not going to make cast-iron promises without consulting Mrs S-H first, but it’s something I would want to look into.”

There are 14 candidates standing in the by-election, which will be held next Thursday, December 16.