In the run-up to the general election, the Standard is interviewing the candidates vying to represent North Wiltshire in Parliament. This week, reporter Elliot Cass spoke with Lib Dem hopeful Brian Mathew, who believes the Conservative majority can be overturned.

FORMER aid worker Dr Brian Mathew is standing as the Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for North Wiltshire.

A man of the world, Dr Mathew has travelled all across Africa and through parts of Asia and South America during his work as an advisor on water, sanitation and hygiene.

While he was at college he became interested in politics and, after graduating from the University of East Anglia with a degree in development studies, he lived in Egypt and Israel as part of an academic project.

Since then he has travelled the globe working on providing clean water to less developed communities and also achieved his doctorate in water and sanitation from Cranfield University.

He explained how he had once been forced to stop his team’s pickup truck as soldiers fleeing fighting in Sudan tried to take their vehicle.

“I said to them, ‘Look, I’m turning this car around and anyone who wants a lift can get in the back,’ and everyone got in the back.

"It was a truck with a bar and there must have been 17 people or so hanging on in the back.”

In the interests of winning the North Wiltshire election, Dr Mathew has given all of this up to focus on campaigning full time and claims to have knocked on 18,000 doors in his constituency to help win the 7,500 votes his party lost by in 2010.

“The election is going to be somewhere in that ballpark and I think we can win it,” he said.

“We’ve been doing so much hard work throughout the constituency and knocking on so many doors.”

He says his top priority for parliament would be the promotion of the Severn Barrage, a method of generating electricity using tides which could produce huge amounts of green electricity for the country.

On university tuition fees, Dr Mathew admitted that the Lib Dem policy of voting against any rise in 2010 had been an aspiration rather than realistic policy.

He saidadded: “We couldn’t have got everything across because we weren’t in the position to.”

On defence, Dr Mathew said that he supported a two per cent increase in spending in line with what had been agreed by Nato and voiced his support for a 0.7 per cent increase in the foreign aid budget.

He concluded: “I appeal to Green voters and to Labour voters to come on side and back my campaign.

“I’m an environmentalist so I’m about as green as you can get, and I believe in working with people.”