PPC Profile: Charlotte MacKenzie

Full name: Charlotte MacKenzie.

PPC for: The new constituency of Truro and Falmouth in Cornwall.

Website: www.charlottemackenzie.com

Selection Result: 86 per cent of the first preference votes from my home CLP in November 2007.

CV:
Local councillor elected for the first time in 2007. Freelance researcher and consultant. Previously a senior lecturer in higher education, then associate director of HEFCE and the Quality Assurance Agency. Experience of voluntary sector leadership including community regeneration.

I was inspired to go into politics because:
I believe it is possible to change things for the better.

My main policy interests are:
Ending poverty; meeting housing need; communities and democratic renewal; action to stop climate change. There is a cross-party consensus in the UK on the need to tackle climate change, so the election will be partly a choice between approaches to ‘how?’.

Three things I think should be in the next Labour manifesto are:
1 – One minimum wage for workers of all ages.
2 – Specific actions on climate change which will further Labour’s broader agenda on issues such as housing and transport, as well as energy.
3 – Voting at 16.

I think people should vote for me because:
I will champion Cornwall at Westminster and in the South West region, as well as the fourth term Labour government in the constituency. There is so much Cornwall needs – investment in affordable low carbon homes, rail infrastructure, and the regeneration of Falmouth docks. As the only UK region to receive EU convergence funding, Cornwall is also leading the way on issues such as the development of wave energy – but by 2013 (when the EU funding ends) if local wages are still only three quarters of the UK average, we will all have failed. Only Labour can deliver the economic turn around Cornwall and the rest of the UK needs, and do so in a socially inclusive way.