First Question Time of the year on Campus

**On Thursday 15 November, impassioned students packed out MS.05 to witness first Warwick Question Time of the year. The event was generally well-received, with Warwick Labour and Warwick Conservatives both bringing sizeable contingents.**

Representatives of four campus political parties attended: Michael Timmins from Warwick Conservatives, Thomas Messenger from Warwick Labour, Duncan Mitchell from Warwick Liberal Democrats and Nat Panda from Warwick Greens. Students’ Union (SU) president Nick Swain and Tom Davies from RaW also attended.

Topics posed to the panel on domestic issues included the BBC Newsnight controversy, the condition of the UK economy, as well as the Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

When asked whether ‘Plan A’ was working, Mr Messenger argued that asking the majority to pay more while giving tax cuts to the rich was “unequivocally unfair” while Nat Panda argued the government needed to consider the human costs of its current policies, pointing to rising energy costs disproportionately affecting the poor, and suggested tackling tax evasion as an alternative.

By contrast, Mr Mitchell of Warwick Liberal Democrats argued that the government was “definitely not just helping the rich”, citing the increased of the tax threshold to £10,000 and introducing the Pupil Premium grant for schools based on how many pupils eligible for free school meals attend.

However, it was Tom Davies from RaW who came up with by far the most creative solution to the current economic situation – and received enthusiastic applause – by suggesting selling off traffic lights for their scrap metal and cutting electricity usage and teaching “rolling over a car bonnet a-la-James Bond” stunts in schools.

In international affairs, the panel discussed the appointment of Xi Jinping as new General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the deaths of 18 Palestinians and three Israelis in raids and aerial attacks that day.

Scepticism of genuine Chinese reform but the belief that continued international pressure on human rights issues was necessary was shared by the panel, as was condemnation of the raids and aerial strikes from both sides of the conflict in Gaza.

A key SU issue was raised by a member of the audience towards the end of the event. They criticised the Warwick SU subsidy for travel to the NUS Demo on November 21, claiming that it was promoted in “explicitly party-political terms” and the SU is meant to remain non-party-political.

Mr Timmins also criticised the Demo for being anti-Tory rather than focused on any specific issue and demanded a wider mandate from students for such funding to be allocated, not just Union Council or sabbatical officers.

The SU website promotes the event by saying that “With a Government that is consistently taking students’ futures from them, it is more important than ever that your voice is heard.”

However, SU president Nick Swain argued that no society money was funding the subsidised travel; it was instead coming from the campaigns budget.

He added that the only way to receive the campaigns budget was to bring a proposal to Union Council for funding and, as the funding had been agreed to by Union Council, the SU had a responsibility to provide it.