“ Thank you Reverend Johnson for the opportunity to speak at this hustings.  This church is a special place for me because this is where I married my husband Paul.

I grew up here, this is my home.  I went to school in Cranwell and Sleaford.  Like many others then I had to leave the county to get a University education.  I was part of the Lincolnshire Brain Drain.

Now we have a university in Lincoln and people don’t have to leave the county anymore to go to university.  However, where are the graduate jobs for them in our constituency?  We still have the Lincolnshire Brain Drain here.

Sleaford and North Hykeham is the fourth largest constituency in the UK by voter numbers.  We have over 93,000 voters here.  So why haven’t we got graduate jobs here?

We also don’t have the basic infrastructure other constituencies take for granted.

For example, where’s our motorway?  Where’s our general hospital?  Where’s our college or university campus?  After decades of voting in a Conservative MP here we still don’t have any of those things.  Here our votes are being taken for granted.  We are ignored and neglected.

We need more good, decent jobs here, not just for graduates but for everyone who wants to work.  Not zero-hours jobs or employees stuck on low pay and benefits for years.  We need a jobs revolution.  We need to be welcoming new entrepreneurs and businesses and the Labour Party will be their champion.  If elected I will be their champion.

We need Labour’s Green Industrial Revolution to address the climate emergency and transform our country.  Here in Lincolnshire under a Labour Government we will have thousands of new green jobs.  Lincolnshire has a long coastline and land that are ideal for the generation of wind, wave and solar energy.  I want more energy farms and the jobs that go with infrastructure building, and retrofitting homes to make them energy-efficient, here in our constituency.

The frequency of extreme weather events is rising rapidly.  Have you seen the map of projected flooding in 2050?  There will be a huge lake here covering a large part of Lincolnshire.  That’s only 30 years away.  That’s frightening.

Here in the Sleaford and North Hykeham constituency many people have problems accessing public services because public transport is so awful.  We need more train services, more buses, and a Labour government will deliver those.

I’ve been campaigning for years to compensate 1950s-born women — the Waspi women –who’ve had their state pensions pinched for up to six years.  In Lincolnshire there are over 50,000 Waspi women.  Most of them have had £48,000 pinched.  This represents a loss of over £2billion from the Lincolnshire economy.  I’m delighted to tell you that last night the Labour Party announced our plan to compensate Waspi women.

I worked for British Aerospace and I know the importance of defence.  After years of Conservative cuts a Labour government will strengthen our armed forces and protect those leaving military service.

Only the Labour Party has the will to put in the investment this country so desperately needs.  We cannot trust a Conservative Government to do it.

If you want real change vote Labour, vote for me, vote for Linda Edwards-Shea on the twelfth of December!

Thank you.”