Wycombe’s Reform UK candidate Richard Phoenix has said he can beat the area’s longstanding MP Steve Baker at the July 4 general election.

He said: “I think it is possible to win, I really do, especially in this election. Steve Baker’s majority has been slipping even though the Conservatives did well last time.”

Speaking to the Bucks Free Press, the 60-year-old, who is a chartered surveyor at his firm Phoenix & Partners, discussed his family life, the election and Nigel Farage.

Phoenix said his wife Lizzie – with whom he has two children, Mia and Ben – is ‘very supportive and tolerant’ of his political work.

The former Conservative member, who has lived in Wycombe for eight years, quit the party in 2005, saying it was too ‘set in its ways’ and ‘restricted’.

READ MORE: General election 2024: Full list of Bucks candidates

If elected MP, he has said his top priority would be to try and rebuild Wycombe Hospital, including reinstalling a Type 1 A&E unit after the previous facility was closed in 2006 and moved to Stoke Mandeville in Aylesbury.

Wycombe hospital has a 24-hour urgent treatment centre for minor injuries and illnesses, which is classed as a Type 3 A&E and faces a £100 million repairs backlog, much of which is related to its crumbling 1960s tower.

Phoenix claimed that Baker had put ‘barriers in the way’ of bringing a full A&E facility back to Wycombe after the veteran Tory claimed earlier this year that it was ‘not possible’.

The Reform candidate said he would lobby Westminster for funding to build a ‘whole new hospital, probably on a new site’, including a new Type 1 A&E.

He said: “It is very difficult to achieve but you only achieve it by campaigning for it. I am in property, so the way I see it, I would release that land for housing and social housing, which there is always a serious need for.”

A new hospital could be on Greet Belt land if necessary, Phoenix added, suggesting Wycombe Air Park and the land earmarked for the recently turned-down plans for Marlow Film Studios as two potential locations.

His other two main policies are to tackle homelessness in Wycombe and to transform the town’s high street.

If elected, the MP hopeful pledged to further highlight the issue of rough sleeping by setting up a task force with Buckinghamshire Council, Wycombe Homeless Connection, One Recovery Bucks and other key partners.

On Wycombe’s high street, Phoenix said: “I would like to see it be a magnet for three or four more restaurants – not top end-end restaurants like the Ivy or anything like that – and probably some more coffee shops.”

The Wycombe candidate also said that illegal immigration ‘needs to be stopped’ and that migrants crossing the English Channel to England in small boats should be turned around back to France.

He said: “If you intercept a boat and turn it around, they go back to France then – as simple as that.

“If a boat makes it to shore, you are not going to grab a whole load of people, stick them in a boat and travel 21 miles back to France.

“That is where you have to do a fast processing, which is in everyone’s interests. No one wants them in a detention centre. Those people who are genuine asylum seekers have a valid claim.”

Phoenix also said he thought that last week’s surprise return of Nigel Farage to Reform as the party’s leader and a candidate in Clacton was ‘essential’.

Asked about Farage’s previous racist remarks and whether he felt uneasy standing for his party, the Wycombe hopeful defended the former UKIP leader as a ‘Marmite politician’ and ‘thoroughly decent man’, adding: “I don’t think he has made racist comments.”

Phoenix was read some of Farage’s past remarks, which have included saying that people speaking foreign languages ‘made him feel uncomfortable’, that some Muslims come to the UK to ‘take over’ and claiming last month that Muslims do not share British values.

The Wycombe candidate said: “I would take some of those comments as a bit tongue-in-cheek.”

He added: “I wouldn’t want to rake up anyone’s past.”

The candidates standing in Wycombe in the July 4 election are Steve Baker (Conservative), Emma Reynolds (Labour), Toni Brodelle (Liberal Democrats), Catherine Bunting (Green Party), Khalil Ahmed (Workers Party of Britain), Richard Phoenix (Reform UK), Ed Gemmell (Climate Party), Ajaz Rehman (Independent) and Mark Smallwood (Independent associated with Vote Life).

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