In the run-up to the General Election on May 7, the Standard will be interviewing the candidates vying to represent North Wiltshire in Parliament. This week, Elliot Cass spoke to potential Labour MP Peter Baldrey.

TEACHER and Labour hopeful Peter Baldrey hopes that his sense of fairness and his drive to do better will make the difference when it comes to toppling incumbent Conservative James Gray.

Mr Baldrey lives in Box, near Corsham, and teaches at a school in Marlborough and said that among other things his passion for social justice would be what made him stand out from others.

He said: “I think the reason why I’m Labour is because Labour is the most likely to make Britain a fairer society.

“We’re quite open and honest. We’re going to be asking people who earn more to pay the most.”

Top priorities for Mr Baldrey included the NHS, closely followed by raising living standards, education, the economy and immigration.

His final choice, although not the usual focus for Labour candidates, was for unemployment benefits to be withheld from immigrants until they have spent two years in the country.

He added: “If you take the benefits you have to pay in first.”

On education Mr Baldrey said that the plans from the current government were not enough as school budgets would drop under a Conservative-led government.

He said: “If you’re just protecting the school budget in cash terms then that is not protecting us in real terms.”

On the economy, Mr Baldrey said that the Conservatives had got it wrong and said that Labour would balance the books and strive to reduce the deficit.

“It’s not the sort of recovery that’s strong. It’s a weak recovery and that’s not good enough,” he said.

Speaking about defence, Mr Baldrey suggested that he supported higher spending.

“This is not the time for Britain to be dropping its guard,” he said. “We would like an increase in defence spending, but all of this is going to be taking place after the strategic defence review in a few years.”

Mr Baldrey backed the UK’s continuing membership of the European Union, claiming that promising a 2017 referendum on Europe, as the Conservatives had done, would leave businesses in this country with two years of uncertainty.