Mid Bedfordshire by-election: Christian Peoples Alliance candiate says it's about moral values but not indoctrination

Sid Cordle, the Christian Peoples Alliance candidate for the Mid Beds by-election, said his party has five core values.

“Number one is the importance of marriage and the family,” he said.

“Number two, the sanctity of life and conception to natural death, number three supporting persecuted Christians worldwide. Number four, caring for the poor – we run food banks. And number five, fighting crime, particularly working with prisoners when they come out of prison to cut reoffending.”

Cordle said the other parties are either not talking about these policies, or have “failed miserably” on them.

“Including caring for the poor, because we’ve got this five-week waiting period when people go on benefits,” he explained.

“You become unemployed, you go down to the job centre, the job centre says ‘yes, you are entitled to benefit, you’ll get your first cheque in five weeks’. It’s like, ‘what am I supposed to do in the interim?’

“‘Well, here are some vouchers to go to your food bank’, it’s terrible,” he said.

“The Labour Party aren’t even saying they’re going to restore the cuts to benefit to get rid of the five-week waiting period.

“In fact, one Labour MP actually asked for the money to go in the manifesto to restore these cuts, but they said no they wanted the money to go on tuition fees,” he said.

Cordle said he is enjoying his campaign: “There’s a lot of people who respond to what we’re saying, you know, standing for Christian moral values.

“And particularly in schools, [where] we want Christian moral values, [but] we don’t want indoctrination.

“We don’t want one value only, but we believe 100 per cent that children should be told they have the option of saving themselves until they get married.

“A man marries a woman, and a man is faithful to his wife and the woman is faithful to her husband for the whole of their lives.

“Over the centuries there’s been billions of people that have chosen to live their lives like that. And at the moment we’re not telling children they have that option.

“We’re telling children you can have sex with whoever you want whenever you want as long as you wear a condom. And it’s not right, frankly, it’s not right that is not teaching, that is indoctrination.”

The party’s website said it was set up to promote Christian values, and it has developed a “detailed manifesto” seeking only to say things that are “pleasing to God and are based on Biblical values”.

The Mid Bedfordshire by-election will be held on October 19, and 13 candidates are standing to replace the former MP, Nadine Dorries.