ST AUSTELL BACKS "TAKE BACK POWER"

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 12th Aug 2009

Steve Gilbert (front and centre) with the action team

This weekend over 20 Lib Dem activists from across the UK joined the local St Austell Lib Dem team, led by Parliamentary Candidate Steve Gilbert, to take his pledges on MPs expenses to people across Cornwall's largest town.

The team knocked on 8,195 doors promoting Steve Gilbert's promise to clean up Parliament.

Steve Gilbert, who was born and brought up in St Austell, is so far the only candidate in the race to succeed Matthew Taylor as the MP to say that he would never claim expenses for food, never buy a second-home, or pay for furniture and fittings, with tax-payers money.

Steve Gilbert said: "People are rightly furious with MPs for helping themselves rather than helping sort out the country and we had a fantastic response on the door-step to my pledge to work to clean up the system. St Austell is my home-town and it would be an honour to be the MP for the town I grew up in and now live and work in."

Those who made the trip had the chance to visit the famous Eden project and to take part in a wind-surfing lesson at Polkerris beach.