BARRIE HUDSON chats to Mark Dempsey, standing for the Labour Party in North Swindon, in our series on all the candidates in the General Election on May 7.

“MY simple message,” said Mark Dempsey, “is that I think Swindon can and must be better than this.

“That’s the reason that I want to be the MP for North Swindon.

“I think many people feel that Swindon is a town with huge potential but that the Conservatives haven’t really delivered the change the town needs.

“That’s why I’ve set out a positive plan for a better Swindon.

“I think we should do the difficult things that will make Swindon a better place to live in.”

Mark is originally from Gloucester and remembers his family struggling to make ends meet during the 1980s.

His father was an ICI worker and his mother earned less than £2 an hour as a cleaner.

He remembers his school’s roof leaking and there not being enough text books.

Factors such as this, plus growing up against the backdrop of events such as the end of apartheid, stimulated an interest in politics.

He joined the Labour Party in 1995 and became a busy activist.

Mark studied for a geography degree, took a masters in environmental policy and has worked as an environmental advisor to various organisations.

He came to Swindon in 2006 and was elected to the borough council’s Walcot and Park North ward in 2010.

He relishes working for the people of his ward and believes the experience will prove very valuable if he reaches the Commons.

His plans include pressing to improve the town centre, turning it into a family-oriented attraction with a keen sense of Swindon’s railway heritage.

Another aim is to provide more opportunities to gather skills and to finally bring a university here.

He believes the first stage toward this goal, he believes, is a university centre in which all current higher education provision is gathered. “I think that there are some big challenges we face,” Mark added.

“One of the central issues is making sure that we can rebuild Swindon as an economic powerhouse. We’ve still got 6,500 people out of work and I was quite startled that overall, wages have gone down in Swindon by £2,500 in real terms. I want to make sure we get Swindon back to where it once was as the zero unemployment town, as the economic powerhouse that it was.

“That to me is about bringing new jobs to the town and Labour has set out an ambition to create 80,000 new apprenticeships. That would be a massive benefit to Swindon.

“There is a youth jobs guarantee, which would be a great opportunity for young people to get the jobs they need. I’ve campaigned for a Thousand Jobs Club, based on a successful model in Plymouth, to create a thousand job opportunities for Swindon.

“But we also need to encourage new businesses to come to the town and if I’m the MP I’ll dedicate myself to doing that. I think there’s an opportunity for Swindon to be the centre for new green-tech and hi-tech businesses.

“Honda want to develop the Hydrogen Highway and hydrogen-powered vehicles. I was visiting Johnson Matthey and they’re building fuel cells that could help with that.

“We could be the centre of that technology, bringing new businesses and new jobs to Swindon, if we can be more ambitious and become the centre of those new technologies that are emerging.

“We need to be looking forward, not resting on our laurels and waiting for the economy to grow. We should be making that happen.”

Also standing in North Swindon are: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative); Janet Ellard (Liberal Democrat); James Faulkner (UKIP); Poppy Hebden-Leeder (Green).