FOREST students had the opportunity to quiz candidates hoping to be the constituency’s next MP at a special hustings event.

But only five of the six candidates were available to take questions from students of Wyedean School in Sedbury and Gloucestershire College.

Conservative Mark Harper pulled out of the event at Wyedean last Thursday (May 24 because it started two hours before the resumption of campaigning which had been paused as a mark of respect following the Manchester bombing atrocity.

The event was attended by Julian Burrett (Independent), Janet Ellard (Liberal Democrat), James Greenwood (Green), Shaun Stammers (Labour) and Ernie Warrender (UKIP).

The major topic for the event was education and tuition fees but hustings chairman Mr John Lane, Wyedean’s head of sixth form, said jobs and the economy and housing were also high on the list of student concerns.

Wyedean sixth former Rosie Levy said she wanted to put her question to the Conservatives but asked the others how they would respond to the “crisis” of university fees?

She said: “I think we are the future so I don’t understand how it can go up by such a substantial amount.” 

Janet Ellard was asked about the Liberal Democrat position as the party had changed its stance after it went into government in the Coalition after 2010.

She said: “I was always completely against the idea of introducing fees for university, but then we moved into coalition with the Conservatives and the Conservatives were the majority and they did not have the same policy we had and I regret completely that that was one of the polices we gave way on. 

“But now we are in a different position. There have been university fees for some time and the position of the Lib Dems is that we should not, at the moment, go back on that in any drastic way. 

“But the Lib Dems would introduce more grants for young people at university that come from families on low incomes.”

Ernie Warrender said UKIP supported grants for STEM subjects – science, technology, engineering and maths.

“Forty seven per cent of student loans will not be repaid. It is a pointless exercise of paper-pushing and civil servant employment so the government can put out a nice little thing saying: ‘We are reducing the deficit.’ It’s pants, they’re not.

“(Grants for STEM is) investment in the future. People go to university, they leave, they probably start businesses and they employ people.”

Mr Stammers said Labour would immediately scrap tuition fees: “There is no ambiguity about Labour’s position.

“We need to invest in the right of every young person to go to university. It is not just about STEM subjects. 

“It’s not just science, technology, engineering and maths. The musicians in this room, the artists in this room, the drama students in this room, our nurses, our teachers, they give as much to society as do our scientists and technologists.” 

Mr Burrett said he was championing a system that would give every voter the chance to have a say on all the Bills that go through Parliament.

He said: “What is absolutely crucial here is that if you vote for any one of these guys then what we’re effectively doing is handing them the power for five years and hoping they do what they say they do and you understand what they said they’d do. 

“But if you were to vote for me, under my system these guys remained engaged for the full term because are going to want to influence you, they are going to provide this information about how we pay for these costings, why they believe STEM should be valued above other subjects, that is part of a discussion that you would be completely involved with.”

Mr Greenwood said the Greens would scrap fees and buy back current loans by stopping the HS2 rail project and the third runway for Heathrow plan.

He said: “The Green Party position has been totally steady the whole way through and that is that we would never have introduced student tuition fees and now would scrap them. 

“One of the things about student fees is that around 70 per cent of them will never be repaid and this is compounding up and they reckon that by 2050 it’ll cost around £400 billion. So it is very, very bad value for the taxpayer already.

“We also understand the burden of debt that is hanging around students that have been forced to pay the tuition fees since they came in.  It would also be our policy to buy those out.”