After blogging about the manifestos of the three main parties, I thought I’d email the three main party candidates standing in my constituency (Frank Dobson (Labour), George Lee (Conservative) and Jo Shaw (Lib Dem)) to find out what their personal views on these kind of issues are, so I sent them the following email:

Dear …,

I am writing to you and the candidates from the other major parties to find out your views on science and education issues in the General Election and I will be posting all responses to my blog at http://www.blog.jstreetley.co.uk and updating the Skeptical Voter wikipage (http://skeptical-voter.org/wiki/) so that all can see where you stand. I think these issues are particularly pertinent to this constituency given the large number of HE institutions within it, so I hope you will find time to answer these questions.

Do you support the use of public funds to provide unproven health products such as homeopathy? Including funding of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital within the constituency?
Do you agree that testing on animals (within strict criteria) is a necessary part of the development of medicines?
Do you believe the science budget represents a sound investment? Will you act to protect science funding?
Do you support the concept of tuition fees/top-up fees, along with any cap?
Is a good Science education as important as one in English or Maths? Why?

I realise your party’s stance on some of these issues is clear in their manifesto, but I would really value your personal opinions on these and I know others in the skeptic and science community will too.

Regards,
James Streetley

Some questions are taken from the Skeptical Voter Survey and others I have invented. Feel free to use them to quiz your own PPCs if you wish. I will post back as soon as each replies to me.