THE candidates for both York Central and York Outer put their views to the public at a hustings last night.

About 200 students and older York residents attended the hustings at the Ron Cooke Hub on Wednesday, with many given the opportunity to put questions to their candidates.

All seven candidates were asked the same question by host Elly Fiorentini, on how the public can work out who to trust in the run up to next week's election.

At the York Central meeting, Labour's Rachael Maskell said she was "fed up with slogans and standing in the House of Commons and hearing questions not get answered", and reminded the public that "politics is far more important than slogans and who's beating who".

Ed Young, Conservative candidate, said "every tax payer has a right to know where their money goes", and said the distortion of facts was "across politics", and about more than any one party.

Nick Love, for the Liberal Democrats, said he found it "worrying that we have taken on some of the worst parts of the US election with regards different versions of the truth", where lies were being repeated "until people believe they are reality, and that disturbs me".

For the York Outer candidates, Julian Sturdy said "all politicians go into politics for the right reasons", and said while the Conservative manifesto "didn't go down well with voters recently", it was "an honest manifesto, something you can trust".

James Blanchard, for the Liberal Democrats, said "we're all pretty truthful and decent people, putting our heads over the parapet", and "if you want to know about truth, you just have to meet people, get to know them as individuals and have that conversation".

Luke Charters-Reid, for Labour, said he had noticed "people are going straight to the manifesto, and more than ever people are sitting down and reading them", and "people can trust politicians if they make the time to go and meet them".

Bethan Vincent, for the Green Party, simply urged voters to visit fullfact.org, an independent charity website which has fact-checked the manifestos of each of the main parties.

More to follow