Camborne, Redruth & Hayle Conservatives

The towns of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle together make up the commercial and industrial heart of Cornwall.

The area was at the centre of the mining industry in the 19th century and was home to some of Britain's most influential inventors. Richard Trevithick invented the steam locomotive at Camborne and William Murdoch invented the gas powered light at Redruth and also contributed to the development of steam technology.

Today, the Camborne and Redruth constituency is home to a modern academic centre of excellence and invention: the Combined Universities of Cornwall campus at Tremough which includes the world famous Camborne School of Mines. It is Cornwall's only university and is at the cutting edge of digital media technology and renewable energy development. Meanwhile Hayle hosts the world's first facility to develop arrays of commercial scale wave power technology.

There are also plans to reopen a modern, state of the art mine at South Crofty following the discovery of indium, a rare element which is a crucial ingredient in touch screen technology and which has experienced an exponential surge in demand following the development of the i-phone and i-pad.

But despite all the things it has going for it, Camborne, Redruth and Hayle also have pockets of severe poverty and deprivation with the associated problems of social breakdown and welfare dependency.

George Eustice has made delivering economic regeneration and tackling poverty and low aspiration his two key priorities, "I want my home towns to get their confidence back."