Warwick and Leamington Question Time

1.38.41pm GMT Sun 11th Feb 2007

Colin Ross

Last night Warwick and Leamington Liberal Democrats held a Question Time event at Hill Close Gardens. I was on the panel along with Ed Davey MP, local Parliamentary Candidate Alan Beddow, Phil Bennion and Warwickshire Councillor Nigel Rock.

Although a large number of questions were submitted we only managed to take about half a dozen. I feared with an all-Liberal Democrat panel and all Liberal Democrat audience that we would agree on virtually everything. We did agree a fair bit, particularly on the first couple of questions about climate change/emissions and the greenbelt and housing although there were some differences - I highlighted that being right on climate change and emissions was actually more important than just winning votes and with regard to housing we needed to look at the existing stock and bring that up to standard and ensure any new building was sustainable with employment close by.

The second half we managed to disagree a bit more - particularly on the first question about Trident (and I'll give more details on that later on today) where although I was in a minority on the panel I was in the majority in the room opposing any new trident. We also had a very good question about what we would do if there was a hung parliament, ie who would we support. This is a very difficult question all the panelist (myself included) avoided answering it directly - although I think I went quite close to making my view clear by explaining if I was elected beating Labour it would be very difficult to prop up a Labour Government, Ed of course pointed out the issue of some of the Parliamentary Party would have just beat the Conservatives and would have equal problems explaining that one away. Some of the panelists suggested that electoral reform would be our price for supporting one of the others - I said that I hoped we would not be so cheap and would try to ensure as much of our manifesto would be implemented as possible and that should guide our discussions. Ed assured us that whatever happened in the event of a hung Parliament there would be a 'triple-lock' to ensure the party was as much in agreement as possible.

I know we will try to avoid answering the "what if..." question, I am certain as the election gets closer we will be asked more and more often and it will be difficult to not answer it - I suspect I need to work on my answer and the whole party needs to too.