Our Time 19: Live Blog

5:30pm - Health

Is the current NHS model sustainable?

• Corrie Drew (Lab): 
  • Pressure on NHS is huge, constituents working for NHS looking elsewhere for careers
  • Starts with education, Labour wants to enable all to take nursing roles by bringing back bursaries and scrapping tuition fees
  • Better the nursing environment to help retention
• Vikki Slade (Lib Dem)
  • 1p more income tax in order to support the NHS better
  • Hospitals are trying looking after people and councils cannot maintain – health and social care need to be one – money would go for social care and mental health
  • Would also bring back bursaries
  • Empathy and care that once was is gone because professionals are so stressed
• David Young (Independent)
  • We do have an unmanageable situation, national debate needed
  • Insurance models can be affected as they provide a linkage and incentives to live a healthier life
• Simon Bull (Greens)
  • Privatisation will not reduce costs, an element of profit-making
  • NHS jewel of the country
  • Despite everything, healthcare professionals still empathise and care
  • If you can afford insurance that’s fine and if not tough luck – not a system we want in the UK
• Ben Aston (Independent)
  • Question of economics – about 8% of GDP on NHS, 200 billion pounds a year and increasing
  • Privatisation is not inevitable

5:38 - Mental Health

Simon Bull (Greens)

• Our mental health services have been underfunded for some time
• Our society is very divided at the moment, need to change the political and economic system
• Worry less about GDP and more about people

Corrie Drew (Lab)

• Working with young people showed the difference in services in the area
• Lost in the last couple of years 60% of funding for youth services due to austerity
• Losing hope across the board, for people’s future, letting people down on support and aren’t offering services and a vision for the future
• Wants to see a government that puts options back on the table
• Terrible opportunities for work and housing the area – look at the whole person

Ben Aston (Independent)

• Multifactorial – society changed phenomenally over the last few years due to technology
• Reluctant to move away from topic of housing – integral to mental health
• Capitalism’s evolvement means uncertainty for job and professional development, combined with difficulty in getting on housing ladder, has a stressful effect on human beings

David Young (Independent)

• Hard for children to have a sense of belonging when both parents work full-time
• Canvassed young people who reflect these issues
• Comes back to providing parenting, no classes on needs of young people at school, need for health clubs

Vikki Slade (Lib Dem)

• Parenting not the issue
• CAHMS access difficult
• 3 main issues – social media, society and school
• Expected to perform for people 24 hours a day, screws with young children’s heads
• Testing in schools, no hope for the future
• Children forced to grow up too soon

5:45 - Environment

Do you support young people taking climate action into their own hands?

Simon Bull (Greens)

• Schools can be more accommodating of the situation, they need a planet that’s worthwhile being educated on
• Supports student climate strikes
• “Are we changing our plans quick enough?”
• BCP council working on the climate action plans – is it enough and is it soon enough?

Vikki Slade (Lib Dem, leader of BCP)

• Joined young people on strikes, they have the ability to influence
• “This is the biggest issue in our world”
• Greta Thunberg an “incredible inspiration”

Ben Aston (Independent)

• Supports young people’s involvement
• Does not support strikes if not within the curriculum framework
• Environmentalism a huge issue, carbon and plastic huge issue
• Would force companies to reduce plastic production – use voluntourism, if they don’t act then he would legislate

David Young (Independent)

• Worries about youngsters who are panicked by sense of impending doom
• Interrupted by Simon Bull “there is a sense of impending doom”
• Doesn’t foresee predictions by critical alarmists
• Simon Bull: “when the house is on fire you put it out, you don’t fan the flames”
• Vikki Slade: “it’s up to every single one of us”

Corrie Young (Lab)

• Shocked by David’s comments
• Proud to support young climate protectors
• If we don’t have a planet there is no point in the rest of their education
• Hope the curriculum catches up with the feelings of young people
• Very pleased to see young leaders taking control of situation

5:54 - Environment

What are you doing to be more eco-friendly personally?

David Young (Independent)

• I walk wherever I can, we’re pretty well served in [Poole]
• Asked if he does anything else to be eco-friendly
• British technology exists for Geo-thermal energy
• Won’t require wind turbines

Vikki Slade (Lib Dem)

• Declared climate emergency at BCP
• Trying to go paperless, keeping bees, solar panels on the house
• Actively supported wind farm and community energy company
• Using Beryl Bikes to get around is possible
• “Whatever we were doing last week, we need to do more this week”

Simon Bull (Greens)

• Put forward motion to declare climate emergency that was passed
• Gone from 2 cars to 1
• Slowly going meat-free
• Sighs heard from David Young (Independent)

Corrie Drew (Lab)

• Day-to-day decisions made on what’s best for the environment
• Buy local with reduced packaging
• The worst thing we do for the planet is the meat and dairy industry
• Taken the choice not to have children to reduce the carbon footprint

Ben Aston (Independent)

• Chooses products in supermarkets that have less plastic
• Does not own a car
• Wind farm: support cutting use of fossil fuels, within sight of the land “push it over the horizon”
  • Met with laughs from Simon Bull and Vikki Slade

6:01 - Fact check

• Corrie Drew’s (Lab) statement on cutting of funding to youth services – what has fallen by 63% in local area?
  • Has been a fall but not as dramatic 

6:03 - Crime

What would you do to make the streets safer for young people?

David Young (Independent)

• Supportive of stop and search and harder punishment for carrying knives
• Better youth services to stop youngsters joining gangs
• The controversy of stop and search – shouldn’t be targetted at any one racial group
• Problem with knife crime very acute

Corrie Drew (Lab0ur)

• Lots of factors cause people to commit a crime, no one aspires to commit a crime
• Better opportunities should be provided across the board
• Relationship-based community policing rather than aggressive stop and search
• Schemes that have worked in the past have been cut but could be brought back in

Vikki Slade (Lib Dem)

• Stop and search not the answer
• About better community policing
• Knife-crime a public health issue – worked well in Glasgow
• Youth clubs a good way of spotting issues – direct to mental or social services, talk to the parents
• Look after struggling students at school – much for likely to see that ‘alternative’ way of life

Simon Bull (Greens)

• Policing needs better financing
• Lack of hope for many young people, need to get them out of despair
• Funding for youth services important
• Mental and physical health important – things missing from the curriculum

Ben Aston (Independent)

• Schools obvious first point on intervention
• Young people carry knives for self protection, not to instigate but to protect
• A serious issue symptomatic of wider problem of lack of social cohesion and societal breakdown

Simon Bull interjects: war on drugs is not working, the cost to us all is astronomical, needs to be looked at differently. Gives organised crime to make money out of young people.

6:11 - Fact check - stop and search

Stop and search has no deterrent effect. Met Police analysis shows there was no crime reduction at a borough level in London.

David Young (Independent) – reaching an epidemic, counterintuitive to believe stop and search doesn’t have an effect, links with drugs need to be investigated, wider debate about the effectiveness of the war on crime needed.

6:14 - Crime

How will you ensure crime doesn’t worsen due to lack of funding to youth services?

Vikki Slade (Lib Dem)

• Manifesto pledges £500m for youth services
• Important to have an adult outside the family for children to go to
• County lines a massive issue, need to get a grip to spot the signs

Corrie Drew (Lab)

• Important to ensure quality youth services – professionally staffed, don’t leave rural communities behind
• Ensure work opportunities, invest in better apprenticeships and options for where to go after school

David Young (Independent)

• Supports increments in funding
• Make money go further by supporting voluntary organisations

Ben Aston (Independent)

• Spending money on knife crime at the end after the crime
• Fund youth services, spend money before problems arise

Simon Bull (Greens)

• Look after young people with properly funded youth services

6:28 - Education

Education suffered significant cuts – what will you do to attract great teachers back into the profession?

Simon Bull (Greens)

• Teachers undervalued, great resources, very necessary for young people
• Scrap OFSTED, stop testing young people, music, arts and sports important
• Well balanced adults need well-balanced education
• Society is “breaking down”
• Give teachers a chance to learn wider education system, not just a “sausage factory” that pushes out children

Vikki Slade (Lib Dem)

• Scrap OFSTED and testing before 11
• Children taught limited curriculum – children are stifled
• Bring vocational courses back
• Teachers need to be in an environment where children want to be

Ben Aston (Independent)

• Recruitment problem – solved in different ways, look for new sources of teachers
• Increasingly teachers are being asked to do more outside core remit
• Teachers need more agency over what they do, help teachers pursue what they enjoy
• The government cannot change whether teachers are respected

Corrie Drew (Lab)

• Amazing anyone is still teaching due to pressure
• To relieve this, remove public sector pay cap, non-contact time allocated to teacher’s timetables, properly fund schools and equipment, restructure schools were it’s not working
• Scrap SATs, replace OFSTED with a new body that’s more accountable to local gov.

David Young (Independent)

• Retention key issue
• Teachers aren’t heard in the classroom, problems with classroom discipline
• Overworked and underpaid
• Does not have a fully formed policy – surprised there’s not been a mention of Brexit

6:36 - Brexit

How can you ensure no-deal Brexit doesn’t jeopardise careers abroad?

David Young (Independent)

• It may require a visa going forward
• Expects close reciprocal arrangements
• No deal “or WTO situation”, the EU needs us economically more than we need them
• Nonsense for the last 3 years means we have to pay millions for nothing

Vikki Slade (Lib Dem)

• No-deal Brexit a ‘disaster’, “we have to know it’s off the table”
• Boris Johnson ruled out extending the transition period, if not negotiated by Summer all of our rights will be in a precarious situation,
• Response from David: we won’t have to pay EU levees, we would have access to cheaper food and footwear which are currently subject to EU tariffs.

Fact Check:

• • WTO means no preferential trade agreements, doesn’t mean tariffs on everything

Ben Aston (Independent)

• Clean Brexit means extracting ourselves from legislative oversight from EU
• If we want tariffs, we can, they are unilaterally controlled
• Working abroad – most countries have a mechanism to do so. Most Britons working abroad don’t work within EU.

Corrie Drew (Lab)

• Labour has always stood against no deal, the idea of an unknown deal also equally as troubling
• Keen to make sure deal they put on table would keep relationship and door open, open to a public vote after 3 years of Conservatives doing it their way
  • The option of deal or the option to remain
• Needs to be legally binding, whatever the outcome it will be acted on

Simon Bull (Greens)

• Greens in favour of people’s vote, 3 issues – deal, no deal or remain
• David Young: didn’t we already have a people’s vote…how many will we have?
• In 2016 there was lots of misinformation and blatant lying, still waiting for Russian interference report, Cambridge Analytica
• First vote’s validity is controversial
  • David Young (Independent): deception on both sides, goes back to the EU’s inception, “Conservatives used deceit from beginning to foist EU upon us”. No guarantee another vote would rule any one thing out.

Fact check: claim that EU founder said it had to be created in stealth – not a direct quote but instead an author summarising.

6:49 - Brexit

Has your generation let us down?

Simon Bull (Greens)

• “Yes”

Vikki Slade (Lib Dems)

• “Definitely”, young people should have been allowed a vote

Ben Aston (Independent)

• Young people haven’t been let down on Brexit
• If referrendum not legally binding, have another

Corrie Drew (Lab)

• Those in power have let young people down

6:51 - Final Thoughts

• Duncan thanks the audience, fact-checkers and hosts Connor and Nicole and urges everyone to vote on Thursday.

Thank you very much for joining us!