WITH the general election just four months away, The Bolton News is running a series of features with candidates vying for your vote. Here, political reporter Elaine O'Flynn speaks to the Green candidate for Bolton North East Laura Diggle.

MEMBERSHIP of the Green Party surged this week to an all-time high — and the organisation’s candidate for Bolton North East says she is one of their members determined to make it to the House of Commons.

Laura Diggle says as well as standing up for the environment, she will fight austerity both locally and nationally.

The 36-year-old from Breightmet said she has always been interested in green issues but was inspired to get involved with the Green Party after becoming a mother.

She said: “After I had my children I started to think about education, what is the right system for education, and even debates around breast feeding and the politics around it.

“I started to worry about the future.

“After the 2010 election, when the Tories and Lib Dems formed a coalition, when I started to realise that all the parties were pretty much the same.

“We had Labour, then we had the Tories and Lib Dems, and the same things were going on and getting worse.

“I started to get angry about it, and I started to want to fight it.”

The Greens are entirely opposed to the austerity measures introduced under the coalition government, including the bedroom tax and cap of welfare benefits.

If in power, they say they would turn the minimum wage into a genuine living wage and also scrap zero hour contracts.

The changes, they argue, would be paid for by increased taxes on the wealthiest in society.

Working as an occupational therapist for the NHS in Bury, she said she opposes the changes to the health service carried out by this and previous governments.

“The things that I feel more passionately about is the NHS, and the Green Party is out there supporting the organisation,” she said.

“I don’t agree with the tender process, which is costing different NHS trusts millions of pounds bidding against each other and is a ridiculous inefficiency.

“The Greens would abolish prescription charges, and keep the service free at the point of entry.

“The situation we have got at the moment is really privatisation by the back door, whereas we are really in favour our national control.”

As well as keeping the NHS under state control, the Greens also support re-nationalisation of the railways and the energy companies.

The Greens are pro-Europe, but Mrs Diggle says they would still support a referendum on membership and reform on the institution, and keep immigration under control.

Locally, if elected Mrs Diggle says she would support a an initiative to create ‘green housing’ across Bolton borough — insulating houses to better conserve hills and cut energy bills, while the scheme itself would create jobs.

She would also lobby the government to make it easier for councils to implement 20mph speed zones across towns and cities.

Bolton Council voted to make all residential roads across the borough in 20mph in 2013, but brakes have been put on the plans due to a lack of funds.

Before joining the Greens, Mrs Diggle says she was a ‘floating voting’ who regularly wrote to current Bolton North East MP David Crausby on issues she felt passionately about.

“I have found him to be a decent MP, but the Labour party itself has lost its way. It is not really a party of the left any more.

“People might say this ‘green surge’ of recent months is taking votes away from Labour, but I think it is people who might not necessarily have voted in any past — they were disillusioned by parties before.”

Mrs Diggle acknowledges that she has an outside shot of being elected, but says a vote for her will still have an impact.

“Bolton North East is not one of the target seats, but every vote sends a very strong message that these kind of issues are important to people, and it gives more weight to the Green Party”, she said.

Asked why people should vote for her, she said: “I think very much that I’m an ordinary person.

“I’m not a politician — I’m a mum and I work part time, so I think it is the fact that I am no different to anyone else.

“I’m not a careerist, just someone who cares about our community.”

- See Monday's The Bolton News when we speak to Liberal Democrat candidate Stephen Rock.