Former Prime Minister David Cameron visits Swindon to throw his weight behind Robert Buckland's election campaign

Lord David Cameron, Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs came to Swindon today to help Swindon South Conservative candidate Sir Robert Buckland campaign.

The Foreign Secretary's visit to Shaw Village Centre came in the same morning as Labour's Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones visited Greenbridge Retail Park to show support for Swindon North candidate Will Stone and Swindon South candidate Heidi Alexander.

This is all ahead of the General Election which is being held on Thursday 4 July.

Lord Cameron met Conservative campaigners and then, alongside Robert Buckland, knocked on doors around the area before speaking to the assembled press.

He said: "Crucially you have got an MP here in Robert Buckland who has worked incredibly hard over the last 14 years, standing up for Swindon, getting things done in Parliament. Let's take the NHS where we're just about to have the accident and emergency at Great Western Hospital reopen, having been revamped and reinvested in. We obviously have the new radiotherapy centre that we didn't have before, here in Swindon, so people now don't have to travel to Oxford.

"Who knows if the polls are right or wrong. The only thing that we do know is that if you go along on Thursday and put a cross in Robert's box he'll go on working hard for the town.

"I remember in 2015, when we launched our manifesto here in Swindon, everyone said to me you can't win the election and the whole election was about how the Tories can't win because the media got carried away with the polls. I think it's a waste of time talking about the polls. You don't know if they're right, I don't know if they're right. The only thing you know in Swindon is that you can vote for a good hard working local MP here in Robert Buckland.

"If they are right and there's going to be some mega Labour majority all the more reason to have someone with experience and knowledge and good Conservative values who stands up for Swindon in the House of Commons holding that Government to account. That's not the outcome I want but whatever way you look at it you want to help get Robert back into Parliament.

"When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister and it's him we're looking to re-elect not anybody else. When he came along he was faced with two massive problems. The economy had been hit by the icebergs of covid that stopped the economy growing and the Ukraine war which pushed inflation up to 11%. His job has been to get inflation down and get the economy growing and he's done that. 

"Today we've got inflation at 2%, unemployment at 4%. Half what it is across the Channel. Today your energy bills are falling by over 7% and over the summer you're going to see interest rates come down, you're going to see mortgage rates come down and you've got that with Rishi Sunak. If you swap that for Keir Starmer you're going to have a big spending, a big taxing Labour Government with open borders that will wreck all the progress that we're now making.

"We need another five years as, after Covid and after the war in Ukraine, we've now got the economy back on track and we've got that because Rishi Sunak is a hard working, good man doing a good job at a difficult time and the best way to safeguard that is to keep him in Downing Street and send Robert Buckland back to support him in Parliament and don't put this all at risk with the Labour Party who will wreck the recovery.

"In Swindon we did have the difficult news about Honda but we've now got Panattoni coming which is going to mean even more jobs. A lot of that is down to the hard work of Robert Buckland who helped to bring that about, who helped to deal with the red tape.

"I think the most important thing is getting the levelling up money into the town centre. Like many town centres, it needs investment. We need to deal with the empty shops and our public spaces and that money is there because of the levelling up funds that we have produced, which amounts to £100 million for Swindon. Labour would put that at risk."