WE at the Journal have asked each of Salisbury's election candidates some questions in the lead-up to the general election on July 4.

We have already spoken to the Green Party's Barney Norris, which you can find here. 

Up next, the Liberal Democrat candidate Victoria Charleston has given us her answers.

Why should people vote for you?

People should vote for me because right now the word I hear the most is change. Whether you normally vote Conservative, whether you normally vote Labour, Green or anything else, people are very frustrated with the state of the country and what they want is change. In Salisbury the best way of creating change is voting Liberal Democrat. 

Why should vote for me in particular is because I want to be a proper community MP for our area. This is my home, this is where I was married, where my kids were born.

What would be on your to do list on day one and what would be your top three priorities going forward?

  1. A focus on health, I’d be supporting my colleagues in Westminster to push through and hold this new Labour government to account. 
  2. Traffic and travel: it’s the big issue in the city - just being able to get around. When you’re in one of the villages it’s just isolating with a lack of buses. I’d like to start with simple, localised solutions such as smaller more frequent buses, a joined up bus service that gets you into town from Alderbury in the evening, and gets you out again - which it currently doesn’t do. 
  3. Housing: this is all aspects around housing. I speak to people who live in quite horrendous situations, I think everybody deserves a safe and stable home. 

What are your policies on climate change / net zero?

I've been thinking about it a lot, I’ve been doing hustings preparations and I was looking at my notes from five years ago and the climate crisis was there. I think one of the most terrifying things is that the conversations have not moved on in the last five years. The Conservatives had committed to electric cars by 2030 and they took away that commitment. My party has said we should reach net zero by 2045 - that’s earlier than other parties, and that’s because it’s absolutely vital.

What do you think needs to be done to fix the NHS, especially with regards to NHS dentists?

Locally, one of the ideas is to create what were going to call health hubs, lots of people want to see their personal doctor. Unfortunately, that model has gone – it’s not going to come back - the world has changed unfortunately. What were looking at doing is to create a space in communities where we people can go so they have that community space locally to them where they can just check in and check they're okay.

Our offer is around the recruitment of more GPs and it is the training up of more GPs, we've got a real problem right now of not bringing people through the system - its causing problems for us. I think one of the things I say is there seems to be a real lack of respect for our public sector professionals right now, whether you’re a doctor, whether you're a lawyer, a police officer, a dentist or teacher, you're being asked to do so much right now on a very limited budget and pay. It gets to the point where you think, is it worth me doing that?

What are your policies on housing, especially for young people? 

We keep putting up properties for over 55s across the city. I can see the value of that for some people but what we're not doing is building houses for young people and young families in our city. It needs to be balanced out and it’s not there. We’ve got a real crisis in this constituency around housing really need to young people, young families, stable rental markets but also stable secure housing for people as well so that’s an absolute priority.

The full list of candidates for Salisbury is: 

  • Matt Aldridge: Labour Party
  • Victoria Charleston: Liberal Democrat
  • John Glen: Conservative
  • Chris Harwood: Climate Party
  • Julian Malins: Reform UK
  • Barney Norris: Green Party
  • King Arthur Pendragon: Independent