CANDIDATES standing to become Monmouth’s MP at the general election on May 7 took part in a hustings at a packed Abergavenny hotel suite tonight.

Over 100 people attended the event at The Angel Hotel, which was attended by six candidates standing in the poll.

In occasionally heated exchanges, audience members heckled the seat’s Conservative candidate David Davies and Ukip's Gareth Dunn on their position on deficit reduction.

Mr Davies said: “It easier to say is that we’re going to borrow more money...knowing full well the deficit would stack up. Things are slowly coming right now. We have got the strongest growth rate of the western world at 2.5 per cent. Yes, not everybody has a well paid job but it’s better to be in a job than nothing at all.”

While Gareth Dunn added, as people tried to disrupt him from the audience: “The left thinks the money grows on trees. How can you justify funding £43 billion in debt interest [a year]? The debt has to come down.”

But Labour’s Ruth Jones attacked the coalition government’s stance.

She said: “We have been told we are going to get more austerity. We have been told that for the last five years. I want to see a rebalancing because the cuts are affecting the poor, women and the disabled. Things like the bedroom tax are really hitting them hard and that’s not fair. It is not fair and Labour will not stand for it.”

Plaid Cymru’s Jonathan T Clark agreed.

He said: “They can find the money for their wars if they wanted. Now we have a war on the poor. Only 40 per cent of the planned cuts will have taken place. That is not good.

“The city makes a lot of its money laundering money. Deal with that; balance the books.

 “Austerity was a choice. It was the wrong choice. What should have happened is investment in our infrastructure.”

The Green Party’s Christopher Were said on tax loopholes: “Do you ever walk down a big city and feel they look the same?  It’s impossible to argue that there isn’t a takeover of small business.”

And on potentially returning the railways to public ownership, he said: “To me, it’s a basic common sense policy that we should be able to travel without relying on companies that will make a profit out of it.”

On climate change, Liberal Democrat Veronica German said: “This is not just about us. I work in international development and I go to Lesotho and it’s been ravaged by the effect of climate change.

“I’m a global citizen. We are part of one system and we have got to work together and that’s why it’s important we work together as a world.”

She said voters would vote for her if they wanted to live in an “optimistic, forward-looking world”.

Mr Dunn had earlier attacked the UK's membership of the European Union. He said: “If you’re a farmer, it doesn’t matter who you vote for. Almost everything of this country is being slowly taken away, treaty by treaty.”

Another candidate, the English Democrats’ Jenny Knight, will contest the election but did not attend the event, which was hosted by the Bryn-y-Cwm Community Forum.

Other hustings will be held in Abergavenny at the Priory Centre next Wednesday and in Monmouth on April 23.