So what have you got to say for yourself then?

BBC journalist John Waite, of Face the Facts and You and Yours, was the host keeping order as an audience of voters quizzed the parliamentary candidates standing for the Wycombe seat.

Conservative Paul Goodman was booed when he said the Government should leave social matters to the church, charities and voluntary organisations.

He later said that he meant a Government should be an enabler, letting organisations which deal with social problems best carry on with their work.

Chauhdry Shafique, the Labour candidate, was also harangued for Labour's showing on the NHS.

After a number of exchanges, Dr John Preece, a former Conservative Buckinghamshire County Councillor and former manager of Wycombe Hospital, said morale among doctors, nurses and medical staff had hit rock bottom since Labour took power.

He said: 'If a week is a long time in politics, four years is an ice-age."

But Mr Shafique hit back saying "What does that make 18 years of Conservative Government?"

Europe was also a hot topic among candidates and the electorate.

UKIP candidate Christopher Cooke said his party would withdraw from Europe and blasted Tory policy.

He said: "Being in Europe and not run by Europe is about as likely as going swimming and not getting wet."

Dee Tomlin, the Lib Dem parliamentary candidate, attacked Labour for introducing tuition fees and abolishing grants.

She said her party was the only one honest enough to raise taxes to pay for much needed public services.

Green Party candidate John Laker also accused the government of badly mishandling the foot and mouth crisis, saying it failed to act quickly and decisively. He also accused the Government of being unconcerned with rural affairs.

HEALTH:

PAUL GOODMAN: "There have been problems at Wycombe Hospital where there weren't as many previously."

He said under present funding it was unlikely the UK was ever going to spend as much per capita as countries like France and Germany. He believed taxpayers were not going to foot the bill and there should be a partnership between the public and private sector.

Mr Goodman said: "We can't go on like this. We have to get more independent money."

He said waiting lists should be decided upon by doctors not politicians.

CHAUHDRY SHAFIQUE: "The Labour party is committed to meeting the health needs of the nation which is free at the point of use and can generate the wealth and spending on resources necessary to achieve that."

He said: "I see staff resources as the key to the problems in Wycombe. Our difficulty is in terms of staffing. We have the ambition of getting stuck into the task."

DEE TOMLIN: "I know what it's like to be waiting."

She accompanied her son to hospital and slept on trolleys to be with him. She was alarmed when her son had a meningitis victim in the bed beside him and a teenager who had overdosed on drugs at the other side.

Mrs Tomlin said: "The nurses worked very hard but you are concerned when the staff have worked so long."

She added: "At the last election, Labour said they had 24 hours to save the NHS. Now we have to wait 24 hours before we get a bed."

CHRISTOPHER COOKE: "We want to see a more traditional approach to management. We want to see a return to matron, the single line of command like we had before."

JOHN LAKER: "We would like local hospitals to be run by local people. The Marlow surgery closed for a day a few weeks ago in protest of the cost of the huge amount of bureaucracy. The average doctor has 1,200 patients in France and in the UK 2,000."

He said the Green Party was in favour of preventative treatment and would abolish charges for eye tests, prescriptions and dental care.

RURAL AFFAIRS: With foot and mouth disease still disrupting the lives of farmers and those employed in the leisure industry nationwide the question was asked: "What efforts have the candidates made to find out which issues, at this election particularly, affect farmers and those living in the countryside?"

PAUL GOODMAN said he has taken a keen interest in the plight of farmers in the Wycombe area.

He said: "I went with a local councillor to see the local NFU a while ago and I've seen them since.

"Farmers feel severely let down by the handling of foot and mouth."

Mr Goodman said the Government had ignored Conservative pleas to get the army involved and ignored reports saying animals should be buried rather than burned.

"The effort to counteract the effect of foot and mouth was desperately slowed down," he added.

CHAUHDRY SHAFIQUE said Buckinghamshire farmers had managed to avoid the worst of the foot and mouth crisis but were still affected by the problems.

He said: "We were very fortunate in this county not having foot and mouth in Wycombe and surrounding areas.

"It wasn't necessary for us to play a big part in the crisis."

DEE TOMLIN said she was glad she was not a farmer's wife.

She said: "I spoke to a friend of mine who's a farmer's wife and it seems a very rough life. I'd hate to be a farmer's wife wearing wellies at five in the morning."

Mrs Tomlin added that the rural life was under massive pressure.

She said: "Unless you've spoken to a farmer, you do not know the fear faced by farmers of getting the disease."

JOHN LAKER blamed the Government for not vaccinating animals.

He said: "I haven't talked to too many farmers because you can't get to many of them."

Mr Laker added that animals should not have been killed because they would have got better but the decision was taken for export reasons.

He said: "If we'd vaccinated our animals, we would have been over this problem now."

CHRISTOPHER COOKE also said animals should have been vaccinated but blamed Europe and not the UK for failing to do so.

He said: "The European Commission banned use of vaccinations in 1981."

Mr Cooke added that an outbreak of foot and mouth in Albania was dealt with swiftly by the European Union through vaccination but in Britain this was not allowed to happen.

WHY VOTING MATTERS

CHAUHDRY SHAFIQUE: "Britain has a long tradition of democracy and fair elections but we can sometimes underestimate the value of the vote."

He said there was a growing proportion of 18-22 year old people who don't intend to vote.

"They are possibly alienated from the party political process."

He said there could be a problem because politicians tended to say the same thing, leaving little room for individuality within a party.

He said: "We are expected to stay on message then that is the message we can put across but it would be surprising if on every single issue, we were all at one."

PAUL GOODMAN: "Politicians are less important than they were. They used to run the country. Now they no longer run the economy.

"Social problems are best left to charities, churches and voluntary groups."

He said afterwards: "The Government is an enabler.

"The Labour party supporters here are not going to like the message that social organisations are better at social issues than the Government is."

DEE TOMLIN: "Politicians don't relate to a lot of people," she said.

"This particular election has gone on for so long, I think everybody's already fed-up with it.

"My sons are so fed-up, when they see it on the television, they turn over to anything else."

EDUCATION

On education, a member of the audience asked about tuition fees.

She said: "A reason we don't have young people here tonight is because young people have just finished exams and are now trying to get rid of their debt.

"By the time my son graduates, his debt will be larger than my mortgage was when he was born."

DEE TOMLIN said the Liberal Democrats have pledged to abolish tuition fees across the UK and had already done so in Scotland.

PAUL GOODMAN said a Conservative Government wouldn't abolish tuition fees.

He said: "The reason for this is that when I went to university, I was part of an elite ten per cent. Now Labour want 50 per cent to go to university."

Mr Goodman said: "The buck has to stop at the taxpayer and they will not fund tuition fees."

CHAUHDRY SHAFIQUE said it was not true that every student had to pay full tuition fees.

Mr Shafique said: "Students only have to pay the tuition fees if their parents earn £37,000."

Mr Shafique added that the Labour Party was committed to further education.

EUROPE

CHAUHDRY SHAFIQUE: "It is not true that we don't have any say. Members of Parliament will operate in turn as members of Europe."

He added: "The laws are not made by Martians out there. We are members of the UN, Commonwealth, the G8."

Mr Shafique said: "We would like to play a leading part with all other nations."

CHRISTOPHER COOKE: "We talk about why we should be at the centre of Europe but we can never get to be in the centre of Europe and why should we want to be? Berlin is in the centre of Europe.

"We really want to get our own affairs back under our own control."

Mr Cooke said his party would withdraw the UK from Europe, which he claimed would save £20 billion to spend on public services.

"It's not a democratic process, 75 per cent of all laws come from the EU."

PAUL GOODMAN said Europe was the key issue to fight over at the election. There was a clear distinction between the parties over further integration or withdrawal.

"You can vote at this election for UKIP. Then we would pull out. If you vote for us, we would campaign for a reduction in the amount Europe does. It can be sensibly addressed."

DEE TOMLIN: "I hoped there would be a really good information exercise so people could have a big debate but that didn't happen."

JOHN LAKER: "Anything that keeps us talking to those in Europe is good."

"Having said that, we would be against the Euro and hugely against federalisation."