STUDENTS and potential first time voters grilled the Filton and Bradley Stoke parliamentary candidates at a hustings event hosted by their academy in Winterbourne.


Winterbourne International Academy held the question time style event on Tuesday, April 28, filling an auditorium with sixth form students keen to fire questions at the candidates; Jack Lopresti for the Conservatives, Ian Boulton for Labour, Pete Bruce for the Liberal Democrats, Ben Walker for UKIP and Diana Warner for the Greens.


The event was chaired by Dr Lisa Harrison from the University of the West of England in Bristol, and saw students ask the candidates questions from a variety of topics including employment, tuition fees, social housing and the EU.


Gareth Keel, head of Humanities who organised the event, said: "The hustings was very successful with a lot of interest from the students many of whom are of voting age and will be voting for the first time.


“Our students provided all the questions and spoke confidently pushing the candidates on a wide variety of issues showing great insight and maturity.


“This question time really got the sixth form talking and stimulated the interest of students who had not really thought about the issues before. From the point of view of an A Level politics teacher I was proud of my students."


Sixth form student Holly Sawyer, 18, said: "In general I thought the candidates were well composed, although in my opinion labour certainly shone through. They all understood the issues raised were important, and respected our opinions on the matters in hand.


"As young people we wanted to address topics relevant to us, and the candidates appeared to understand this.


"In particular, the question regarding sexism in the workplace and in society raised many issues."