BREXIT and its many ramifications dominated discussions at a hustings event in Marlborough on Tuesday as candidates locked horns to vye for the Devizes seat.

More than 150 people piled into St Mary's Church for the question and answer session with Liberal Democrat Chris Coleman, Jim Gunter of Wessex Regionalists, UKIP's Tim Page, Conservative Claire Perry and Labour and Green Party stand-ins Sylvia Card and Phil Chamberlain, who covered for the ill Imtiyaz Shaikh and the unavailable Emma Dawnay respectively.

Although much of the evening revolved around Brexit, other issues such as the reintroduction of Grammar Schools, disability benefits and welfare reforms, climate change and cuts to the Arts were also discussed.

On the Brexit issue, Ms Perry said that although she voted remain in the referendum and originally called hard Brexiters 'jihadists', it was important to accept the result and that she was confident that Theresa May would make a success of Brexit, an opinion echoed by Mr Page, who rubbished talk of a second referendum, saying remainers wanted to hijack proceedings.

Conversely, Mr Coleman said that the public voted for departure but not the destination of Brexit and said it was very reasonable that a second vote should be called to allow voters to say if they were satisfied with the deal that will be struck with the European Union.

Mr Chamberlain, who also supported a second referendum, said that the government had no Plan B and Mrs Card said the thought of Boris Johnson being at The Prime Minister's side to oversee discussions was laughable.

Mr Gunter said that if there was no second poll, Britain could fight for a Norway option to preserve current trade ties with the EU and avoid falling off a cliff.

Heated discussions took place over how welfare was being delivered under the Conservative government, with audience members taking out their frustration on Ms Perry, who has held the seat since 2010, over a dementia tax, cuts to disability benefits and slashing benefits caps.

Ms Perry said that spending on welfare had risen from £47b to £50b and the claim that 14,000 people who were on disability benefits have died since being told they were fit to work was grossly untrue and was 'gutter' politics.

When the topic of climate change came up and how the government needs to do more to address it, the biggest roar of the night came from when Mr Page denied the existence of man-made climate change and that scare-mongering about the issue was being peddled. This shocked the audience and in turn, each of the candidates said that this discussion should be put to bed as 99 per cent of the scientific community agreed that this is a real threat to the planet.

Some of the issues that were not discussed, which disappointed the candidates, included the future of the NHS, the housing needs of Wiltshire, the armed forces and the threat of Radical Islam.