What the candidates had to say about the Saffron Walden Parliamentary election

All the reaction to Thursday’s Parliamentary election which saw incumbent Sir Alan Haselhurst return to Westminster.

Sir Alan said: “I feel flattered in the one sense and in awe on the other that people should have so emphatically re-endorsed me.

“I have two main pledges for the constituency. We really must sort out the railway line, it’s long overdue for some major expenditure.

“And we must bring this area up to speed with telecommunications and broadband. People need the same level of connectivity at home as they do in the office now, they need to have a good speed of coverage.”

Mike Hibbs, who stood for the Liberal Democrats and came fourth, added: “I’m a bit disappointed, but given what’s happened to the Liberal Democrats nationally, we’ve done quite well to keep our vote up here to a reasonable level.

“Obviously I would have preferred to get more, but we live to fight again.”

Labour’s Jane Berney said: “We have improved the number of votes for the party and our vote share which I am very pleased with. It was always going to be difficult in this area to make a big impact.

“I would like to thank all the people who voted for me and my team, the Saffron Walden Constituency Labour Party as I couldn’t have done this without them, with their hard work and enthusiasm.”

She added: “It’s been a very encouraging campaign. A lot of issues centred around housing and how to get onto the housing ladder and a lot of people brought up transport, where it is going up in price but they’re not necessarily getting the standard they deserve.”

Second-placed Peter Day, of UKIP, said: “It’s a strange one for me. It’s great to be in second place. It’s very encouraging, but the whole thing’s worked out completely differently to how I expected.

“We got four times as many votes as last time, that’s got to be a good achievement. It’s a fabulous result.”