Sewage discharge, social care and the Greenbelt were among the main local issues highlighted by parliamentary candidates for Beaconsfield ahead of the general election next week.

Incumbent MP and Conservative candidate Joy Morrissey, Labour’s Matt Patterson, the Green Party’s Dominic Pegram, Reform’s John Halsall and Anna Crabtree of the Liberal Democrats were joined by independent runners Cole Caesar and Pippa Allen at a hustings event in Marlow on Wednesday, June 19.

A wide-ranging discussion of the issues important to the Beaconsfield constituency – which includes Marlow and several South Bucks villages – was moderated by the award-winning BBC broadcaster Andrea Catherwood.

While all sitting parties agreed that Thames Water’s discharge of sewage into the River Thames is a prevalent matter of local importance, Ms Crabtree said the Lib Dems would seek to nationalise water companies to prevent them being “beholden to their stakeholders”.

Ms Morrissey instead suggested that the solution to a growing bacterial problem in the Thames was “making sure we’re top of the queue for new infrastructure” and said she had raised the issue with Thames Water and the government Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA).

On social care, Mr Patterson said he has experience caring for his disabled son and described the country’s adult social care and special educational needs system as “falling apart”, adding: “If we can fix social care, we can start to fix our NHS too.”

Mr Pegram said the Green Party is “committed to injecting £20 billion into the NHS to relieve pressure on social care” and cited climate change as a reason for an escalation of pressure on the system – “My 88-year-old mum has a fear of high-temperature related illness”.

Mr Halsall, the former Conservative leader of Wokingham Borough Council, said he was the first council leader to “stop people from hospital going into care homes in COVID”, adding that reforming the system would require “hard work, competent people and management”.

In the wake of Buckinghamshire Council’s rejection of the Marlow Film Studios planning application last month, the protection of Greenbelt land in the constituency was also a popular topic among the candidates vying for election on July 4.

Ms Morrissey said she had opposed the film studio project because of its Greenbelt site “from day one”, as did Ms Crabtree who said the development would have “throttled access into town and blighted the lives of those living nearby”.

Ms Allen also criticised Labour’s plan to create a designated ‘grey belt’ for housing development, saying the party had “got it wrong in declassifying the Greenbelt, which is there for a purpose”.

However, Mr Patterson replied: “Labour created Greenbelt. It’s our creation and we care for it.”