Watford election candidates on why you should vote for them

Residents will have the chance to pick one of the seven candidates when polling stations open on July 4.

Speaking to locals on the street, the Watford Observer heard that the cost of living crisis, NHS, and the health of the high street are among the key issues they think will decided the next election.

But what policies do the town's candidates stand for?

Read their full answers below:

Dean Russell – Conservative and Unionist Party

Since my election in 2019, I have been unapologetically focussed on putting people before politics. My record of delivery proves this with every pledge delivered and much more. 

I live in Watford with family links going back over 100 years. I love this town and will always put Watford first. 

I secured the full funding for the redevelopment of a world-class new Watford General Hospital. I helped secure the new Police Station and crime is down. 

My Tips Bill, coming into force in October, means 100 per cent of tips must go to the staff helping over two million hospitality workers. My ambitious goal to train 1,000 people in mental health first aid awareness was achieved last year.

I put politics aside to partner with the Council, successfully securing £16 million Levelling Up Funding to transform the Town Hall and Colosseum. I helped secure £5m to tackle rough sleeping. During my watch, Watford had a period with zero rough sleepers. 

From Zach’s Law to banning Epilepsy Trolling online, to working with my team on thousands of cases to help residents, and so much more. I have more ambitious goals for our town from investment, a Watford-wide mentoring scheme and supercharged jobs and skills fairs. 

At this election, your choice is between me, a Conservative candidate with a track record of delivery, who backs cutting taxes, reducing red tape and creating opportunity, or Labour. A vote for anyone else, including Reform, risks undoing our progress. Vote Dean Russell on July 4th.

Dean Russell - Conservative and Unionist Party candidate

Ian Alexander Eric Stotesbury – Liberal Democrats

We need a real voice for Watford in Parliament and the country needs real change. Our public services are crying out for help - NHS waiting lists have soared, the cost of living is forcing record numbers of people to food banks and sewage flows regularly into our rivers. 

Serving on the council, I'm delivering for Watford. From leading projects to clean up our River Colne and restore wetlands in Cassiobury Park, to securing investment in local high streets and working to improve transport services for our town. We must secure more reliable and affordable buses and trains for our area.

Every day I see two things ever more clearly. Watford is an amazing place, full of incredible compassion, generosity and kindness, and that we need a government serious about investing in our future.

Locally, the Liberal Democrats have delivered on the new access road and multi storey car park for the hospital but we're still waiting for our new hospital - that must be priority one. We must take the crisis in the NHS seriously. My wife is a doctor and I know from her how much we need change. We need thousands of more GPs and a fresh approach to social care, including providing free personal care.

If elected, I will work hard every day with the amazing Liberal Democrat local team and with mayor Peter Taylor to fix our health and social care services, tackle the cost-of-living crisis, protect our natural environment and improve our public transport.

We need a fair deal for Watford and the UK.

Ian Stotesbury – Liberal Democrats candidate

Matt Turmaine – Labour Party

It’s a clear choice here. Vote for me to win and deliver change or you end up with Rishi Sunak’s Conservative candidate. The Conservatives have had 14 years and failed. We are all worse off at the end of this parliament than we were at the start, thanks to them.

The Conservatives’ record is appalling. They partied during Covid while the late Queen heart-breakingly sat alone obeying the law at her husband’s funeral. The Tories have imposed the highest tax burden for 70 years, let inflation rip, crashed the economy, caused a cost-of-living crisis, have brought our NHS to its knees and failed miserably to stop the boats. 90 per cent of all crimes go unsolved. On top of all that, Rishi Sunak couldn’t even be bothered to stay for the 80th D-Day celebrations. He doesn’t deserve another go.

Only Labour can deliver the change we need. Free breakfast clubs in every primary school, Great British Energy to bring fuel prices down for good, ban exploitative zero-hours contracts, 6,500 more teachers, NHS waiting list and times cut just as we did before, and the new Watford Hospital built at last. There is a better future ahead, but you must vote for it.

Whatever they say, the Liberal Democrats can’t win here. It’s a fact. They came a poor third last time. A vote for them or any other party only lets the Conservatives back in. If you want the Tories out and to build a better Britain, then lend me your vote.

Matt Turmaine – Labour Party candidate (Image: Matt Turmaine)

Arran Bowen-la Grange – Green Party

Watford has never had a homegrown MP, and I'd like to change that. At heart, I'm just a very ordinary bloke - I have no connection to the political establishment, and I've never craved any sort of power. I just want to improve the lives of the people of my town.

If I were elected, the residents of Watford wouldn't just be my constituents - they'd be my family, my friends, the classmates I had at school, and their families too. If I was doing the job badly, my own mum would be the first person banging down my door. It's an extra, wonderful bit of pressure that I think I'd revel in. 

I represent a party that wants something that is long overdue - fairness. We've lived through wave after wave of "unprecedented" times - austerity, the pandemic, Brexit - and at each turn it feels as though the government has taken something from us. The Green Party is determined to give back to the people, to rebuild the very fabric of British society by restoring our schools, hospitals and housing to the standards we once knew. 

We're asking the very wealthiest to help us achieve this - not just because they can afford to do so, but also because at this point may well be the only ones who can afford to do so.

I'd be honoured to become the MP of my incredible hometown, and would treat the job and, more importantly, the people, with the respect they deserve. Thank you!

Arran Bowen-la Grange – Green Party candidate (Image: Arran Bowen-la Grange)

Sarah Jane Knott – Heritage Party

I have lived in Watford for over 25 years and I am delighted to be standing for the Heritage Party in the general election this year. Our nation desperately needs a change from the political parties that have been mismanaging our nation for the last several decades.

The Heritage Party wants to give people a choice: we can either stick with globalist parties that are ruining our nation with mass immigration, record national debt, "net-zero" policies that are making energy and food more expensive and who are now accelerating us towards a dangerous hot war in eastern Europe, or we can return to common-sense and restore our nation.

The Heritage Party stands for simple common-sense policies and principles that will restore purpose and prosperity to our town and country if we choose them:

• Protect our culture, countryside and heritage
• Free speech and liberty – review the effectiveness of surveillance cameras in reducing crime
• Traditional family values
• Stop gender ideology and sexualisation of children in schools
• National sovereignty
• Control our borders – end illegal and mass immigration
• Stop rampant development – abolish housing targets
• Financial responsibility
• Self-sufficiency in skills – having enough doctors and nurses to treat patients
• Self-sufficiency in energy
• No net zero – keep our cars
• Support our farmers
• No more infringements of our personal freedoms
• Disentangle from foreign wars
• Pro life

Sarah Jane Knott – Heritage Party candidate (Image: Sarah Jane Knott)

Gary James Ling – Reform UK

Reform UK was set up to stop the insanity of the Conservative/Labour/Liberal uniparty. Don’t forget the Lib Dem/Tory coalition. Voting for any of these political organisations again and again and expecting different results is the very definition of "insanity".

Boom, bust, austerity, wasteful spending, fairness failure, and incompetence (Think post office and blood transfusion scandals) and the collapse of publicly funded Big Projects (Think Watford Hospital and HS2) can all be attributed to this. The collapse of leadership in British politics and serious threats facing our way of life is the result.

When elected, Reform UK will lift income tax start point to £20,000. Prioritise Defence Spending. Freeze non-essential immigration until new Immigration Dept with staff who actually believe in secure borders created. Scrap VAT on energy bills, lower fuel duty by 20p litre. Leave interfering European Convention on Human Rights. Immediate deportation of foreign criminals.

Write off student fees for doctors and nurses after 10 years of NHS service. Urgent inquiry into excess deaths and vaccine harms. Hire 40,000 new front-line police officers, alleviate burdens of in-station paperwork. Ban gender ideology in schools. Overhaul woke approach of civil service, promotions on merit only.

How do we pay for it? Slash government waste - save £50b. Scrap poverty-inducing "net zero" - save £20b. Cut foreign aid budget 50 per cent - save £6b. Stop The Boats - reduce £15.4b a year spent on refugees and asylum seekers. Reduce number of MPs from 650 to 600, Reform House of Lords - save £100s of millions.

Gary James Ling – Reform UK candidate (Image: Gary James Ling)

Khalid Chohan – Workers Party of Britain

I am Khalid Mahmood-Chohan, standing in my hometown, Watford as the Workers Party candidate where I’ve lived and worked with four generations of my family.

If you need to work to live, you're a worker, that’s most of us. "Blue collar"/ "white collar" labels are redundant, we’re all workers.

Labour, Tories and Lib Dems are the same corporatist careerists, offering the same rehashed false choices grinding down ordinary workers but enriching the 1 per cent.

Any vote for them is a wasted vote. More new billionaires have sprung up during austerity than at any other time!

Britain’s Workers movement are demanding that our welfare is the first priority of government. The Workers Party GB is that voice. The Workers Party will immediately remove taxation below £21,200pa removing 2 million of the lowest paid from paying income tax. Plus, a one off wealth tax for estates with over £10m in assets.

Disarray in our basic services, Watford workers are crippled by student debt, astronomical housing costs, extortionate utility bills and broken, expensive transport and parking.

The Workers Party will renationalise monopolies to stop profiteering on basic utilities; renationalise railways to get an integrated public transport system to improve the environment and reduce costs on business; and prioritise affordable housing above all other development.

The moral bankruptcy of "paycheque" careerist politicians is most evident in their warmongering, and now complicity/outright cheerleading for the gravest of crimes, Genocide in Gaza.

The Workers Party GB stands for fairness and equality in Britain, Palestine and the world.

Start the change. Vote Workers Party GB.

Khalid Chohan– Workers Party of Britain (Image: Khalid Chohan)