Lib Dems win 6th form debate at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School, Marlow (Beaconsfield Liberal Democrats)

Beaconsfield Liberal Democrats <alan_oxley@hotmail.com>

Lib Dems win 6th form debate at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School, Marlow

April 2, 2010 4:00 PM

Sixth formers at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow held a debate styled around BBC One's Question Time. The event was covered by the Bucks Free Press and this story is copied from their website.

Current Beaconsfield MP Dominic Grieve, Conservative, Jeremy Miles, Labour, Steve Guy, Lib Dems, Jem Bailey, Green Party, and Delphine Gray-Fisk, UKIP, all featured on Wednesday, March 30.

Lib Dem Steve Guy (candidate for the Wycombe constituency) attacked Tory policy on the economy.

He said his party had warned about "irresponsible" lending and said the economy was "built in a bubble" and "that's how we got where we are today".

The Conservatives' " tough approach" in 1979 to debt resulted in unemployment going "through the roof and the recession was deeper and longer than it needed to be," Mr Guy claimed.

He added the choice was how and when the cuts should be made.

Dominic Grieve responded: "The fact is that the turn around to our national economy which took place in the 1980s was what saved this country and put it on an economic footing which actually made the Blair years possible.

"That's why there was so much money to spend."

He said the Labour model of further borrowing would not work it "is dependent on foreign money lenders being prepared to fund us".

The credit rating of the country will be "downgraded the day Labour wins", he claimed.

"With a debt which is going to approach £1.3trillion if they turn off the tap there won't be any more money for the funding the government wants."

Mr Miles responded by saying George Osborne "is the Achilles heel of the Conservative Party."

He said: "We have a shadow chancellor for whom the centrepiece of the economic strategy is an inheritance tax cut for 2,000 of the richest people in the UK and for that to have any priority in any discussion about tax preferences I think is just shocking."

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THE Liberal Democrats took a resounding 60 per cent of the vote at a ballot following a Sixth Form Question Time style debate.

Year 13 students at Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in West Street, Marlow, put questions to prospective parliamentary candidates and then put a cross in the box for the one who impressed them most.

Around 80 per cent of those who voted will be eligible to vote in the upcoming election.

The results were:

1) Liberal Democrats 83

2) Conservatives 39

3)Labour 11

4)Green Party 4

5) UKIP 1