Biography

Cllr Diane Park has grown up in Halifax, Yorkshire. She was head girl at Ryburn Valley High School before attending Sowerby Bridge Grammar School. Her first job was at the Yorkshire Penny Bank in Sowerby Bridge, moving to the Halifax Building Society to further her career.

She currently works for the Lloyds TSB Group at the Halifax site. She was elected in 2003 and again in 2009 as a local councillor for Elland on Calderdale Council.

She has four grown up children, three in full time employment and one studying at Leeds Metropolitan University. Her eldest son served with the British Army at the start of the war with Iraq.

She is married and her hobbies include learning to play the piano, reading, walking and current affairs. She holds two British medals for indoor rowing.

Main Issues

- Clean up MPs’ expenses; without spending millions doing so.
- Have a fair tax system; reduce the gap between rich and poor.
- Ensure health care is free and available to everyone based on need; reduce money wasted on bureaucracy and invest in front line services; doctors and nurses.

I think that the current political system is broken and if elected I will try and change this. In my duties as an elected Councillor, I campaigned for Councilors’ pay increases to be linked to the increases of civil service workers – while many on the council voted to increase their wages by 4.6% as opposed to the 0.5% increase council workers received.

It is important that our representative in Parliament is also an active member of the local community, someone who gets involved with local issues and works tirelessly to benefit the people of their constituency.

Understanding what local people want and delivering a commonsense approach to their problems is, I believe, what a Member of Parliament should stand for. I promise to honour these values.