Karen Lumley is married with two children and is a former manager of an engineering company.

The Conservative party would begin to reduce crime by increasing the numbers of police officers on our streets by reversing the cuts that Labour have made. In the Redditch division we have seen twenty less police officers than 1997.

We know people feel safer if they see police officers around and so we would implement our "cops in shops" initiative which would entail getting paperwork done in visible places on the beat. This means a more prominent police force.

Police will be encouraged to combat loutish behaviour, graffiti and vandalism. We need to make sure people feel safer in their own homes. Too often criminals seem to enjoy more rights than their victim.

We will introduce honesty in sentencing so that the sentence handed down by the court is the one actually served by the criminal.

We all know that Worcestershire children have been getting a raw deal from this Labour Government. They receive over £500 less per child than if they were educated in Birmingham. That cannot be fair.

We would introduce a national funding formula. We want to make sure the money goes to the schools and is not retained at the LEA. By doing that each school would have received an extra £540 per pupil in 1999/2000 to spend on its own priorities.

We will introduce "free" schools which will free every in the county from bureaucratic control. Redditch has undergone a massive re-organisation and we have seen changes made to the system. We must now see more resources being poured into these new schools to make them work.

I believe every child deserves the very best education that we can provide and I hope that our policies would ensure that happens.

Although Redditch is predominantly urban we do have the villages of Astwood Bank, Feckenham, Cookhill and Inkberrow which I know are suffering due to the current foot and mouth crisis and other labour policies.

The foot-and-mouth crisis has been a disaster for the countryside. We will implement a strategy for recovery with practical steps to stamp out foot- and-mouth once and for all, help struggling tourism and other rural businesses and firm action to prevent infection entering Britain again.

We also know that the Common Agricultural Policy has damaged our farmers. It must be reformed to provide sustainable long-term support for farming and protect the environment and the countryside.

We know that businesses and other rural businesses spend too much time form filling and red tape. We will not enforce European regulations any sooner or more zealously than other countries.

We would also cut business rates for our rural shops like the post office at Inkberrow and our pubs like the Rose and Crown at Feckenham.