Duncan Hames for Chippenham

Duncan Hames, prospective Liberal Democrat MP for the new Chippenham Constituency has championed Wiltshire’s environmental concerns at this year’s party conference in Bournemouth.

In his speech at an urgent issue debate on the environment this morning (Sunday), Duncan told of the excellent work of local environmental groups like the Bradford-on-Avon Climate Friends.

Yesterday, Duncan helped unveil the group’s polar bear ice statue at the town’s arts fair. The statue illustrated the urgency of taking action to look for solutions to climate change before time runs out.

Commenting after the speech, Duncan Hames said:

“Local groups of Climate Friends, like Bradford-on-Avon’s understand that climate change will affect us all. We must do everything we can to stop it.

“New green technologies take time to introduce, so we must act now to cut our climate changing pollution, before time runs out.”

Prospective local MP Duncan Hames, and Liberal Democrats from across Wiltshire, are preparing to head to Bournemouth for the party’s annual autumn conference.

The party will be voting on important policies on taxation, transport and health and will be giving a warm welcome to Nick Clegg at his first autumn conference as party leader.

Commenting before the conference Duncan Hames said:

“I hope to speak about the scandalous real cost of Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) in a debate on Sunday morning. The schemes often leave taxpayers shouldering large amounts of risk despite the charges to private contractors.

“There is also a huge range of the costs associated with these schemes, charges for installing a plug socket, for example, can vary from £30 to £300.

Duncan is a governor at George Ward School in Melksham, which was recently granted £25m in funding for a new school site, which will be built without resorting to PFI.

Duncan Hames has also been shortlisted for the party’s award for ‘Best use of blogging or social networking by a Liberal Democrat’.

The nomination is for Duncan’s ‘Twitter’ feed (www.twitter.com/duncanhames) which he uses to keep in touch with local people and allow his constituents to keep track of what he is doing. The winner of the award will be announced on Saturday.