Meet your candidates for Torridge & Tavistock

With the general election approaching on July 4, it's important to meet the candidates who could represent North Devon in Parliament. All articles are from the candidates themselves.

Andrew Jackson - REFORM UK

Hello, I’m Andrew Jackson, and I want to share a bit about my journey and why I’m standing as the Reform UK candidate for Torridge & Tavistock.

I was born and raised in the countryside, where I developed a deep connection to farming, nature and strong family values. My parents running the local pub instilled in me a commitment to hard work and the local community.

At 18, I embarked on a significant chapter of my life by joining the Army and going on to join 29 Commando Regiment, based in the Royal Citadel, Plymouth. 

Over the next 17 years, I served my country in various challenging environments. My military career taught me resilience, leadership, and the importance of strategic thinking and teamwork.

After retiring from the military, I moved into the private security sector in the Middle East.

This role exposed me to international perspectives and further honed my skills in navigating complex situations with calm and precision. Despite the demands of the job, I always maintained a clear focus on safety, security, and ethical conduct.

On my return to the UK, I worked as a self-employed tree surgeon sub-contracted to Network Rail.

On the personal front, I am married to Zoe, who keeps my feet firmly on the ground. Together we have a nine-year-old son. I am also the chairman of the local parish council.

Today, I am standing as the Reform UK candidate for Torridge & Tavistock because I am passionate about bringing practical solutions and positive change to our community. 

My decision to enter politics is driven by a deep-seated commitment to serving others and ensuring that local voices are strongly represented.

My vision for Torridge & Tavistock:

Support for agriculture and small businesses: Recognising the vital role of agriculture and small businesses in our local economy. 

This includes advocating for fair pricing, reducing regulatory burdens, and promoting local produce and products. By championing the needs of farmers and small businesses, we can promote food security and rural economic development.

Stronger public services: Ensuring housing and NHS services for local people is a priority for fostering a healthy and thriving community. Improving healthcare, dentistry and education. By prioritising these areas, we can create a supportive environment where local people feel valued and cared for, leading to stronger, more resilient communities.

Inclusive and transparent governance: I pledge to be an accessible and transparent representative. I am committed to listening to your concerns and ensuring your voices are heard in the decision-making process.

My journey so far has been one of service, dedication and continuous learning. 

As your Reform UK candidate, I bring a wealth of experience, a strong moral compass, and a genuine commitment to improving the lives of those in our community. With your support, I aim to build a brighter, more prosperous future for Torridge & Tavistock.

Let’s work together to create positive change for our community and help me continue on my journey.

Geoffrey Cox - CONSERVATIVE

This constituency has been my home for a quarter of a century. 

My children were brought up here, attending our village school, and my daughter was married in Lamerton village church. 

My wife, Jeanie, and I looked after my elderly grandmother in our village. 

My father was schooled in Tavistock and my family have been Devonians for generations.

Since 2005, I have had the great honour of representing the people and communities that mean so much to me.

I have never stood, or wished to stand, for anywhere else.

Over the years, I have supported our local football club, Tavistock AFC, now as its President, helped to found a local mental health charity, “Make a Difference”, been a governor of a local school and Vice President of the North Devon Hospice.

I was raised to respect common sense conservative values, the importance of love of and duty to our country, strong defence of our borders, traditions and laws, and the value of hard work, education, high aspiration, family and service to the community.

Since 2019, I have held 800 surgery appointments, including in village halls during the summer, and have helped nearly 4000 constituents. 

I also help with a wide range of things important to community life, like restoring village halls, broadband, community shops and bids for funding such as for the Tavistock Dementia Alliance Dementia Coordinator.

In 2019, as Attorney General, I pledged new investment in our communities, including the Okehampton-Exeter railway, opened in 2021, soon to have a £15 million parkway station, and the Tavistock-Plymouth line, which received the green light last year. 

I ensured Tavistock College will receive a new school, obtained new funding to save Princetown Visitor Centre, and secured the “Fursdon Review” for Dartmoor’s farming communities. 

The £139 million contract to connect gigabit broadband to thousands more “hard to reach” local households will commence this September.

Torridge, too, is seeing major investment with a new £16 million Marine Technology Innovation Centre and sharing another £400 million to regenerate the local economy. 

I also marshalled Government support to reopen Appledore Shipyard in 2020, now creating hundreds of local jobs and apprenticeships.

These new opportunities for our communities require a clear plan for the economy, which despite the upheavals of the pandemic and the Ukraine war, has the joint-fastest growth in the G7 and lower inflation than the EU; lower interest rates will soon follow. 

We must safeguard pensions, including with the “triple lock plus”, strengthen our armed forces by raising defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP in an insecure world, ease the tax burden on working families, continue to raise school standards (the number of good or outstanding schools in Torridge and Tavistock is up from 80% in 2010 to 94%), and halt illegal channel crossings.

It is essential our rural interests are heard in Westminster above the noise of other more populous areas.

I will defend our rural communities, supporting a living, working countryside with food production at its heart.

I will continue working to get things done for you and to be an experienced, independent-minded, and powerful voice for your interests.

I would be honoured to have your support again.

The Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Cox KC

Isabel Angela Saxby - LABOUR

I am proud to call Torridge and Tavistock home.

I’m running for parliament because I’ve seen how London isn’t delivering for us locally, it’s time for change. We need a local, full-time MP who will stand up for our constituency on the issues that matter to us.

As your local, seven-day-a-week MP, I will focus on seven key areas: holding South West Water bosses accountable for polluting our rivers and seas; championing the use of HS2 funds to reinstate our rail links; getting the NHS back on its feet in Torridge and Tavistock; homes not ghost towns - secure and affordable housing for local people; fair funding to improve our road network; learning for life, because everyone deserves access to education and skills training; and fair deals for our farmers and businesses, which will bring prosperity to our communities and put pounds in your pocket.

Politics interests me because it shapes our lives.

Issues such as the NHS, access to education, fair treatment and opportunities in work, all these things in society are shaped by politics.

I’ve seen what the past 14 years have done and how the situation has deteriorated in this time. I’ve seen what’s happened to Devon, the state of our roads, the sewage pumped into our waterways, and it’s not what I want. I am standing because I am committed to fighting for the fair share and recognition that Torridge and Tavistock deserve.

Being an MP involves actively listening to the concerns and queries of constituents, keeping you updated on projects and initiatives in the area and being here. This is why I will run monthly surgeries, ensuring you are kept up to date via the local press, including parish magazines, and social media. 

I live here and will make myself available, because I am committed to listening, working and delivering for our constituency. What else would I be doing? That’s what an MP should do.

These days it’s easy to be disillusioned by what seems to be a never-ending series of scandals surrounding politics and politicians.

I’ve grown up during this time, I’ve seen what’s happened, and it’s easy to feel devastated and disillusioned by it. This is why I am standing, it’s time for change, to represent the ordinary person again and bring our concerns to government with integrity, honesty, and decency.

It’s part of the job. 

Through having regular communication with constituents, you will see that I am a transparent person. If elected I would close my business to focus full-time on being an MP. Why would I have a second job when I love my home and want to do the best for it?

Starting up my own business and being elected as the only Labour councillor in West Devon

took hard work and perseverance, and through that perseverance I succeeded. 

I will carry this dedication and commitment forward when representing you on the national stage, to get the best deal possible for the place we love to call home.

Phil Hutty - LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

Since he was selected in January, Lib Dem candidate Phil Hutty has been talking to voters across the constituency. 

One thing is not in doubt. People are ready for a change. But what difference would having a Liberal Democrat MP make for Torridge and Tavistock?

“Firstly,” says Phil, “I would be a full time MP, present in the community and working on your behalf in Parliament. I have been listening to your concerns and understand the problems you face: the cost of living, NHS waiting lists, lack of dentists, housing problems, disgust at the disregard shown for the environment by water companies and government. My priorities are your priorities, and I will work for you.”

With parties currently publishing their manifestos, there are a potentially confusing range of bright – and not so bright – ideas on offer. 

But when polling agency YouGov asked voters which policies they would support, Lib Dem proposals claimed the top three spots.

These were:

Introducing Blue Flag status for rivers – supported by 87% of voters. 

Under this policy, rivers could be designated with this special status to protect them from pollution. Water companies that continued to dump sewage into Blue Flag rivers would face stiff fines.

Nearly half the children in Devon and over 4.4 million nationally have not seen a dentist in the last year. With dental health in decline and parents worried about getting appointments, it’s not surprising that the Lib Dem policy of cutting VAT on children’s toothbrushes is supported by 83% of voters. Lib Dems would additionally reform NHS Dentistry so that no-one is forced to pay for private dental care.

Around three quarters of voters (74%), support the Lib Dems’ ambitious policy to extend free school meals to all primary school children in England, starting with those living in poverty who currently miss out. This would generate improvements to children’s health, education and future working life opportunities. 

Commenting on these findings, Phil said: “It’s clear that people desperately want change. Families and pensioners across Torridge and Tavistock are fed up with being taken for granted by the Conservative Party. From fixing our health and care services to protecting our rivers and seas, Lib Dem policies have always been the best fit with rural communities such as ours.”

The Lib Dems are also proposing:

•  Giving everyone the right to see their GP within 7 days, or 24 hours if urgent, with 8,000 more GPs to deliver it.
• Bringing down energy bills by applying a windfall tax on super-profits of fuel
• companies.
• Ending sewage discharges by transforming water companies into public
• benefit companies.
• Increasing the farming budget to support nature-friendly farming and bring
• down food prices.

There is no doubt that the Liberal Democrats are in the ascendant again in Torridge and Tavistock after holding the seat from 1997-2005.

With thirty years’ experience of public service in Devon as a social worker, Phil has the experience as well as the dedication to get a fair deal for us in Parliament.

Judy Maciejowska - GREEN

I first became involved in politics the 1980s when the big political debate was about nuclear weapons and the Cold War.

I had two small children – the youngest was born the day Margaret Thatcher was elected – and I was worried about the world they would grow up in.

I joined CND and Friends of the Earth, but firmly believed that change should not be driven simply by pressure groups, but that it needed to come through the democratic system.

In the 1983 election I listened to the Ecology Party election broadcast and agreed with everything they said.

I joined straight away and have been a member ever since.

The Ecology Party changed its name to the Green Party shortly after, and since then I have held many leading roles in the party.

I was its national Elections Coordinator for several years, as well as Co-chair and, more recently, the South West Region representative on the party’s Regional Council.

I was brought up on the Isles of Scilly and moved to London to study when I was eighteen.

Scilly is the most beautiful place in the world, where nature, the sea and people are inextricably linked.

As a child, I would look out at the Western Rocks and the vast Atlantic Ocean on one side, and the distant mainland of Cornwall on the other.

Its isolation was beautiful and comforting, but also fragile, and I believe that is what has made me care so deeply for the natural systems that support us all.

I moved with my husband back to the South West thirteen years ago, when we bought a semi-dilapidated farmhouse in Bere Alston.

We spent two years renovating it and the acre or so of land that came with it.

We now grow most of our own fruit and vegetables and raise poultry, and I am a councillor on Bere Ferrers Parish Council.

It is now more the fifty years since my party first warned that environmental deterioration would bring greater social problems if not addressed alongside each other.

So just as mass migration is an outcome of wars and climate change, so is the sewage in our rivers and seas the result of bad policy and poor regulation.

I am pleased to stand in this election to give voice to my Party’s proposals for real change to a different system that will give real hope to us all.

I don’t expect to be the next MP for Torridge and Tavistock, but I do know that every vote I get will push the next MP to take on more of our proposals.

Alan Edward Rayner - INDEPENDENT

Born in London in 1946, my Surrey childhood led back to London from 1967-1989 - being a local government officer for nearly 20 years. 

After gradual moves westwards in the role of freelance systems analyst, I reached Devon in 2007. After my arrival, I joined Senior Council for Devon (2008) and Torridge Council (as an overview/scrutiny member, 2009-2013) and issued an Atlantic Array bulletin 2011-2013.

In 2019, I lost in an election to Torridge by five votes.

My campaign is on a single issue of electoral reform. Although willing to speak on them, my personal views on other issues are not part of my campaign.

I am asking voters to choose “someone who has pledged to vote in parliament for Fair Votes.”

In our (FPTP) voting system, winners take all; minorities get no recognition. This creates perverse incentives for those elected and underlies the political chaos of recent years.

Residents of Torridge and Tavistock are encouraged to read my election leaflet *before* deciding for which candidate to cast their vote. 

Sadly, Royal Mail has declined to accept my election material for free distribution. 

Thus I must ask people to request a copy by sending an email to me at alanr555@gmail.com - or by post to 73 Victoria Gardens EX39 2BA.

The campaign is only about electoral reform. 

If (unlikely!) I were elected, my primary concern would be to listen and to discern whether I need to change my view. 

I readily admit that I do not know everything about what needs to be done. 

In general, I am aligned with true/fair party policies and their championing of the wellbeing economy.

I support some local infrastructure initiatives:

1. a) X-links project bringing energy from Morocco to Alverdiscott
2. b) restoration of rail links from Tavistock to Plymouth and Okehampton

And would support changes to strengthen local government financial autonomy - moving away from the “Whitehall knows best”; approach that constrains initiatives.

A constituency office (ensuring accessibility to a team of people dedicated to serving local people irrespective of party) would be a major priority.

Never having been elected to public office, I lay no claim to past achievements or initiatives.

My motivation arose from effects of the unrepresentative voting system on UK political life - and the need for greater public awareness of the inherent dangers. 

I have been a member of the Electoral Reform Society since 1966.

The two biggest challenges facing UK are:

1. a) Electoral system perversity and incentivisation of short-term decision-making.

Reform must be enacted by 2028.

Three-year project starts with the appointment of a Citizen Assembly.

1. b) Economic damage caused by UK isolationism with regard to Europe

best addressed by UK re-entry to EEA (European Economic Area) given that EU re-entry is unlikely before the late 2030s.

Transparency and accountability are important aspects of the MP role. 

Sadly standards have declined in this century and so I would join with True/Fair party to restore the central position of enhanced Nolan principles to rebuild trust in UK political activity.