West Midlands Citizens secure pledges at Mayoral Assembly
Leading Mayoral candidates put on the spot at Mayoral Assembly
On March 29th Citizens UK member organisations in the West Midlands organised a Mayoral Assembly attended by over 900 people from across the region for what was the largest non-partisan event of the Mayoral race.
Civil Society leaders asked both the Conservative candidate, Mr Andy Street, and the Labour Candidate, Mr Sion Simon, to pledge to act on local priority issues.{See the impartial candidate selection process below}.
The pledges are summarised in the table below. Both candidates spoke for no more than 7 minutes as they responded to powerful stories and reflections from Citizens UK leaders on each priority.
Theme
Pledge
Mr Andy Street (Conservatives)
Mr Sion Simon (Labour)
Families Better
Off
Will the Mayor become an accredited Living Wage Employer, and invite those they do business with to follow suit?
No
Yes
Will the Mayor establish free public transport for all 16-19 year olds in full-time education & training?
Yes – but to those who need it
Yes
Will the Mayor conduct a pilot of Universal Basic Income within the region?
No
Yes
An
Inclusive
West
Midlands
Will the Mayor develop a comprehensive programme for E.S.O.L (English for Speakers of Other Languages)?
Yes
Yes
Will the Mayor publish annually how enterprise support agencies are impacting local minority entrepreneurs?
Yes
Yes
Will the Mayor establish a Cabinet Member for Cohesion on his/her Board?
Yes
Yes
Citizens UK pledged to inform member organisations of the importance of everyone registering to vote before midnight on the 13 th of April by visiting www.gov.uk/register-to-vote and to go out and vote on Elections Day, 4 th of May.
Our basis for candidate invitations.
There are six candidates standing for election to be our region’s first Mayor on the 4th of May.
They are (in alphabetical order):
- James Burn for the Green Party
- Pete Durnell for UKIP
- Beverley Nielsen for the Liberal Democrats
- Sion Simon for the Labour Party
- Graham Stevenson for the Communist Party
- Andy Street for the Conservative Party
There may possibly be more candidates as the deadline to register ends on the 4th of April.
For impartial reasons, we have invited only two of the candidates to our Assembly: Sion Simon and
Andy Street.
These two candidates were chosen after looking at how parties have performed in recent elections.
In general, a substantial majority of seats at every level of local and national government which are
subject to election by voters within West Midlands constituencies have won in recent elections by
Labour and Conservative party candidates. We have also considered the odds calculated by
Ladbrokes for the West Midlands Mayoral Election, which suggest that these two candidates are the
front runners.
Taking account of the practical necessity to limit candidate numbers – our schedule includes
contributions from leaders in our member institutions, most speaking for the first time and bearing
in mind that the aim of our Assembly is to seek commitments of the new Mayor’s office and build
our relationship with them, we’ve concluded the candidates’ likely success in the election, judged on
objective considerations, is a legitimate and relevant basis for the invitations.
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