WHILE I have every attention of participating in a fair election campaign I am not going to sign the pledge put forward by Conservative candidate Sir Graham Bright.

The reason for this is that I feel such pledges are a distortion of the democratic process.

Whilst the winning candidate will be impartial, many candidates are running on a party ticket which means they are relying on voter loyalty and the benefit of large party machines to help their campaign such as leafletting and PR.

With these benefits must come the obligation to be linked with their party’s track record and current actions on the police, justice and home affairs. I feel that this pledge is a desperate attempt to stop a proper campaign brought on by the fear of being linked with recent cuts to the Police Force and previous years of mismanagement.

In the case of Sir Graham, it is that his party has been wielding the axe to front line policing and handing over powers over justice and home affairs to the unelected EU.

For the Labour candidate, it is the economic disaster which has meant a struggle to balance the budget and over a decade of policing led by bureaucracy and paperwork.

And as for the Liberal Democrats, they must share responsibility for front line policing cuts and the repeated pledges they have broken to their voters.

UKIP doesn’t make pledges we don’t keep and I, as a candidate, do not have anything to hide. I think it only right and proper that the trustworthiness of the manifestos put forward by other political parties are held under the microscope and voters have the chance to compare party policies with their party representative.

PAUL BULLEN

UKIP candidate

Police and Crime Commissioner