SOUTH West Wiltshire’s five electoral candidates clashed over education, Trident, taxes and other polices last week at a hustings held at Trowbridge Town Hall.

More than 50 people attended the event which was held by the Yerbury Street Residents’ Association (YSRA) and chaired by the group’s chairman James Ward OBE on Friday.

One of the more debated policies was on education with audience members keen to know what will be done to improve schools.

The first applause of the night went to Liberal Democrat candidate Trevor Carbin who was addressing the UK Independence Party’s Matthew Brown, who claimed that ‘grammar schools are the greatest engine of social mobility, rightly or wrongly’.

Mr Carbin said: “Up to 10% of children in Wiltshire have not had their first choice for schools accepted but having spent time at a grammar school I wouldn’t wish it upon anybody.”

Green Party candidate Phil Randle also received applause for his vision on education after saying: “We believe it is about giving people at schools the skills for life and that they need to get a well rounded education but that isn’t happening at the moment because we aren’t putting the resources in.”

An area that caused divide was on the subject of Trident, with candidates split over the missile defence.

Labour candidate George Aylett said: “If you vote for me I will be one of 52 Labour members who will not vote to renew Trident."

Meanwhile Conservative candidate Andrew Murrison defended Trident and said: “I’m partly convinced that Trident probably prevented another war.

“We spend £3billion a year on it when we have a defence budget of £33billion, so it is only a proportion and I hope we can maintain this for the foreseeable future.”

Moving onto immigration Mr Brown said: “We are having to spend more of our money on immigration and we need to get a grip on it and this isn’t about race or religion.

“If we only budget for 10,000 immigrants coming into the country but more than this number come in, how is it going to work? It isn’t so we need to a get a grip on immigration.”

However, Mr Randle strongly opposed this view and said: “We cannot blame migrants for these problems, stop the scapegoating.”

Perhaps the loudest applause on the night went to Mr Aylett in his closing speech who said: “We will look to increase the minimum wage to £8 an hour, we will look to invest £2.5billion into the NHS and I want to see the House of Lords abolished and replaced it with an electoral senate.

“Labour stands up for the many and not the privileged few.”

Mr Carbin said: “They said that a coalition government wouldn’t survive but here we are.

“We want to cut tax for working people and protect funding for education and pledge £8million to protect the NHS.”

Ending with his closing statement Mr Murrison said: “We have halved the deficit and we plan to get on a financial even keel, but when we took over this government we faced a real dangerous situation of ending up in a truly unhappy place and I do not want a change in direction as I think this would be catastrophic.”