General Election: "We have to bring power to local communities" says Lib Dem North Bedfordshire candidate

Joanna Szaub-Newton said: “One of the reasons we experience so many problems with the NHS is that decisions are being made centrally.

“The Liberal Democrats believe that we have to bring power to local communities so they can make the decision on how to allocate their resources to address the issues that they are experiencing.

“Ultimately it is not about solving problems for them, but it is about helping them find the solution for themselves,” she said.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service asked what the minimum size of a community would be before this decision making process ceased to work.

“The answer would be different for different issues,” she replied.

“For instance, for housing and planning applications we can go as low as possible for neighbourhood planning.

“The NHS is much more complex, and what we are proposing is the introduction of a strategic small surgery fund specifically designed to help allocate those resources in the rural areas.

“We could group similar communities together to try to find an optimal answer.

“I think a similar approach could be done for towns, but it depends on the demographic of the area, different demographics will have different issues.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that it will have to be done on the individual estate area, but maybe similar demographics or similar population density.

Wouldn’t this be more expensive than decisions taken centrally?

“With centralised decision-making it is like having a suit that would supposedly fit an average person,” Ms Szaub-Newton replied.

“You end up with clothing that doesn’t fit anyone.

“It doesn’t mean that all the decisions across the whole chain of the decision making process have to be done locally.

“The top level overview can still be done centrally, but then it’s about how it’s executed, where specifically most of the resources are allocated

“That can be done more efficiently at the local level,” she said.

“Overall, whatever is happening right now with the centralised decision-making is not working.

“We know that we can make better decisions at the ground level,” she said.

The other candidates standing in North Bedfordshire are:

Pippa Clayton – Reform UKPhilippa Flemming – Green Richard Fuller – ConservativeRichard Fuller – ConservativeUday Nagaraju – Labour

The election will be held on July 4.