Seven of the nine candidates battling to be elected as Falmouth's MP, were given a grilling when they appeared before an audience of local primary school children recently.

Marlborough School had organised the hustings-style event and had invited other primary schools from the town to join in. The year five class from St Mary's School accepted the invitation and joined the juniors from the host school.

Head teacher Richard Gambier said afterwards: “I am extremely grateful to the candidates who were able to come to school to field the questions raised by the young people.

“There wasn't of course a vote in it for them, but they gave all our juniors and the class from St Mary's an insight into the election process and a fantastic flavour of the issues under debate in the furore of the campaign.

“To be fair, the children gave them a run for their money too. Following an open forum involving children from both schools, the prospective parliamentary candidates met with all the Marlborough School's parliamentary committees, so all of the juniors were able to discuss issues that matter to them.

“Speaking afterwards the politicians were extremely impressed with the children's knowledge and interest - more than one said that this was the best experience they had yet experienced on the election campaign.”

At the end of the session, the children were given a chance to cast their vote as to who had impressed them the most which produced results that don't reflect national polls.

The results were: Karen Westbook, Green; 44 votes; Stanley Guffog, the Principles of Politics, 30 votes; Sarah Newton, 15 votes; Rik Evans, National Health Action,13 votes; Simon Rix, Liberal Democrat, six votes; Stuart Roden, Labour, four votes and John Hyslop, UKIP, two votes.

Unable to attend the event were Loic Rich, Independent, and Stephen Richardson, Mebyon Kernow.