Tell us about yourself and why you are standing

I am a Chester resident of 15 years. As a day job, I am a languages teacher – I have taught lots of children (and now adults!) in the area. I am on the board of governors at a primary school in Chester, I’m a Parish Councillor and I am also a trustee at a Cheshire-based racial equality charity.

There are many things that made me decide to stand. First off, me and my other half are incredibly lucky and we decided a few years ago that it was our turn to pay it forward. We both made a resolution to leave Chester a better place than we found it – which is why I applied for the board of governors – and it went from there.

A few years back, two of the children I used to teach were knocked off their bikes on the journey to school on two separate occasions. The council still haven’t done anything about the incredibly dangerous stretch of road where it happened.

What really propelled me was when I realised that there is a limit to what I can do in my day job to help the next generation. I am a teacher – I’m not a politician – I’m just exercised to stand up. I don’t want to be on my deathbed and say I didn’t try my hardest to leave my area in a better place than I found it.

What personal attributes can you bring to the role?

Above all, everything is about integrity and compassion for me. I had quite a difficult teenage as a young carer for my mum and my priorities have been shaped by that experience really – it brought the concept of dignity into sharp focus for me.

My headteacher and I have a bit of a shared mantra that you if make the right decision for the right reasons and you are well informed then you can make the decision with both feet firmly on the ground. That said, you should never be shy of apologising if it doesn’t turn out the way you intended.

If I can manage a classroom of 30 teenagers, I reckon I can manage the House of Commons!

What are your 3 main priorities if elected?

NHS in the area – including access to primary care; holding water companies to account for the amount of sewage being dumped in the Dee and the Weaver; and connecting our communities with better transport for everyone (including school students) and tackling the woeful signal and internet connectivity.

How would you assess the performance of the Government?

If I was grading it at school, I’d give the current lot a D-. The problem is that the lack of integrity and, the dishonesty (which has rumbled on through the betting scandals throughout the election) just shows how out of control the Conservative house is. I don’t know that people can have confidence in a government that acts like that, so any good that might have been done is just automatically drowned out by the sleaze and scandal.

What challenges do you face representing a diverse constituency – rural/urban- different sets of priorities and challenges etc ?

There is diversity in every community – and we’re better for it. It’s true that Chester South & Eddisbury is a lot more diverse in terms of rural/urban divide than the previous constituencies.

As with any elected MP, it is about being able to represent your community well. There might be a wide range of views across the constituency but we have to remember that we’ve got more in common with each other than we have different. I think, having lived, worked and volunteered locally for 15 years, I’ve got the courage of my conviction to represent all of the area and our views pretty well. It’s different coming from the outside in, but when you actually live and breathe the area, I think you understand it better.

What would you say to disaffected former residents of City of Chester?

Please don’t let the boundary changes disengage you from politics. You can’t change the outcome unless you’re in the game. The only real solution to having constant boundary changes is to introduce proportional representation. So I’d say, go to the ballot box and vote for a party that will bring in PR.

What are the main challenges facing Chester South and how will you address them?

I think we are going to face a lot of challenges in the years to come because the Conservatives have botched so much over the past few years.

We’re all still reeling from the cost-of-living crisis and it’s still everywhere you go. Our mortgages are still sky high. Just because inflation was low last month, it was still 11% higher the year before, so prices are still considerably higher than they were two years ago.

We have real connectivity problems in Cheshire. Even in Chester City Centre, I still sometimes only get 3G signal and it’s often non-existent in Bunbury or Wrenbury. We’ve been promised ultra-fast broadband for years and it’s never materialised. In fact, it was one of Edward Timpson’s pledges at the 2019 General Election.

There is of course a huge problem with access to education as well. Cheshire West & Chester council has an atrocious record on SEND funding. School transport is still a major problem for many in our rural communities and both of those need lobbying on a national level.

What do you feel needs to happen for residents to adjust to climate change?

One of the biggest things we can do to reduce energy usage (and therefore the negative environmental effects associated with it) is to insulate homes – although my house was built in the 1700s, so I appreciate the practicalities of that aren’t always conducive. I personally have looked into solar panels, battery storage and ground source heat pumps, but we’ve been met with obstacles and barriers at every turn. That’s why we need to incentivise the installation of more energy efficient methods of energy sourcing.

I’m also a big fan of community-generated renewable energy, which I think could transform communities and generate income for local authorities.

The Lib Dems are proposing a ten-year emergency homes upgrade, with free insulation and heat pumps for low-income households – that would mean lower energy bills for people who need it most. We’d introduce an incentive to install solar panels and a fair price for feeding back into the grid.

What is your stance on Palestine?

We’re very lucky to have the amazingly erudite Layla Moran in our party, who is of Palestinian heritage. Layla had family trapped in a Church in Gaza and she did regular briefings to Parliamentary candidates. I think she has spoken so well about the ongoing conflict and was formative in party policy, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

The Lib Dems were the first UK political party to call for a bilateral ceasefire. What matters is getting aid in to help civilians caught up in the conflict. That simply can’t be done without a bilateral ceasefire.

What are your thoughts on housing policy?

We desperately need to overhaul our archaic planning system and build more houses. The Lib Dems have committed to building 350,000 new houses, of which 180,000 would be affordable homes. Of course, this needs to be done with local community in mind – nobody should be suggesting building in the middle of Eddisbury Hill Fort.

What is imperative is that we keep up the infrastructure to go with any new builds. Saighton Camp is a great community, but they’ve been let down by the fact their drains are rubbish and even the corners of the roads aren’t finished. We need GP surgeries and schools that the community can use.

There’s also an opportunity for futureproofing on energy needs here as well, if we build green targets into housebuilding requirements so that the UK can achieve Net Zero by 2045.

What are your thoughts on our future relationship with the EU?

Full disclosure – I lived in France and I speak six languages, so I’m a keen internationalist. I don’t think Britain can have a strong place in the world without a seat at the table.

That being said, we’ve got eight years of a bad relationship with Europe to undo. I read French and German news and I get their perspective – our relationship with our neighbours is not good. The Lib Dems have a four-step plan towards gaining access to the single market, which involves repairing our relationship with European neighbours, rejoining programmes like Horizon and Erasmus, negotiating access to the Single Market. Then, if the conditions are right and we are ready, we would seek to rejoin the Single Market.

Is a trans woman a woman?

For most people, their gender matches their physical sex at birth, but there is a relatively small number of people – up to 1% of the population – for whom that is not the case, and I absolutely believe we must respect their identities too.

For decades, we have recognised that some people’s identity does not match the sex they were born with – I can’t begin to imagine how incredibly harmful and humiliating it must be when they are forced to live at odds with their fundamental feeling of identity. For almost 20 years, we have had a system that allows trans people to have their gender recognised in law, with clear safeguards to stop people abusing it.

So this isn’t a new concept, but unfortunately this is part of a wider debate that’s become far too toxic and hostile. We need to get past that, and have a good-faith conversation about ensuring everyone’s safety and dignity.

What are your views on renationalising services and utilities ?

I’m not sure that in the current economic and social climate that Britain can take more upheaval. The Lib Dems are proposing turning water companies into public benefit companies, which means they would have to run solely for public benefit and not for profit.

What 3 key policies from the national manifesto will encourage people to vote for you

I am very proud of the Lib Dem manifesto during this election. Pretty much unanimously, our manifesto has been the best received and for good reason. It is a picture of the kind of Britain I want to live in.

Of all of the policies, one I’m proudest of is our support for carers and the emphasis we have placed on care. If you haven’t watched Ed Davey’s broadcast about caring for his son – please do. It shows what compassion in politics can bring to the table. I was a young carer for my mother, who had MS. She sadly passed away after she fell forward in her wheelchair and couldn’t get back up. It was an entirely different life for our family than the one that my parents had imagined for us – I was lifting her on and off the toilet and showering her during my teenage years. I wouldn’t swap those years for anything, because my mother was so special, but they were made unnecessarily harder because of the system around us.

I think our policies on reforming Ofwat and banning water bosses’ salaries until rivers and waterways are clean are really strong and will resonate well with all corners of the constituency.

What is your stance on immigration ?

I work with a racial equality charity, where we deal with immigration casework. Some of the policies that have been introduced in the past government are cruel. They’ve been introduced to assuage people’s fears over immigration – which I understand – but these policies have been badly thought out and badly implemented.

What is nonsensical to me is that there is no safe and legal route to enter the UK. If there were, we would be able to account for everyone that comes into the UK and deal with anything that arises from that. As it stands, according to the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, there are between 800,000 and 1.2 million people in the country who are undocumented. That is because we have closed safe and legal routes for people to use to come in, which means they resort to riskier and illegal methods of getting into the UK. If we know how many people are coming in, then we can address that. Otherwise, we’re turning a blind eye to it.

Systemically, we’re not helping ourselves out either. Once someone (a person who helped the British Army in Afghanistan, for example) has been given permission to remain in the UK, the time they have to quit housing and find a job has recently been reduced from 28 days to a week. Finding a job and a house within a week is a big ask and the Red Cross has estimated that it will create an extra 50,000 homeless people. We’re creating another crisis, which will only stoke division, because we’re not thinking it through.

David Cameron said recently that every village and town had something to be proud of. What are you proud of in Chester South and Eddisbury?

There’s so much. The Cheshire Science Corridor, the agriculture, our resilience during and after Covid, Marbury Merry Days. That’s the thing – there are so many villages, so there’s a lot to be proud of.

Above all, I am so proud of our communities – we are diverse but so similar in many ways. We have such special quirks – the Wybunbury Fig Wakes, for example. You don’t really give it a second thought when you’re from here, but when I went with a friend this year, he thought it was the quirkiest thing ever that an entire village was rolling pies down a hill. In all of our areas, we’ve managed to retain and celebrate the traditions that made us what we are – we just need to make sure we secure that and make it accessible for the next generation now too.