Rye has its own fishing fleet; Hastings has the largest beach launched fishing fleet in Britain. These fleets, vessels and fishermen are a unique characteristic of our coastal communities and a treasured part of our heritage.

Unfortunately, as many of you will be aware, our fishermen have been having a hard time for quite some years now. Most of their vessels fall into the UK under-10m fishing fleet which employs over 50% of UK fishermen but is currently entitled to just 3% of the total fishing quota. The rest of the quota goes to the over-10m fleet which is dominated by industrial sized Producer Organisations.

I have long fought for a more equitable distribution of the quota and just yesterday I took part in a Parliamentary debate on the fishing industry. I pressed the Minister yet again to redistribute the quota from the over-10s to the under-10s and I hope we will see some movement on this issue soon.

However, during the course of the debate I was surprised and pleased to gain the backing of Tory Shadow Fisheries Minister Bill Wiggin. He agreed the current distribution of the quota was wrong. Never having received such support from a Tory I proffered my thanks and gave him the opportunity to stake out his position "so I take it if elected you would pass quota from the over-10s to the under 10s?" I enquired.

His response was not the crystal clear answer one might expect from someone who had just moments before endorsed my criticism of current policy. Rather it was a mumbled refusal to commit to anything in particular. A clear, unequivocal Tory policy? A Conservative sticking up for the little guy? Hardly.

A more accurate description would be 'typical Tory posturing'. Easy platitudes but no tough decisions. That's the problem – the Tories are good at identifying the problems of the day but not the solutions.

They attack the Government on a range of issues and make no attempt whatsoever to offer an answer.

They say we haven't run the economy properly, that we should have saved for a rainy day. Fine, but can they point out exactly what it is they wouldn't have spent money on over the last 11 years – health, education, police, pensions or what? I put this to a Shadow Minister last week and the only answer he could come up with was some garbled nonsense about ID cards (no money has been spent on these yet) and IT systems (costly but vital in the 21st century). Simply put, they have no answer.

Time and again they sound off but then shy away when asked to state what they believe should be done:

They complain about waste in the NHS. We ask them to identify it. A deafening silence greets us.

We ask them to commit to future infrastructure development in the South East such as the A21. They squirm away without giving any commitments.

They rail at the injustice of our ineffectual poverty alleviation policies. We have only lifted 2million pensioners and 600,000 children out of poverty they say. 'Do more' they demand. That's fantastic, I couldn't agree more – Labour wants to eradicate child poverty by 2020. Will they support us is this endeavour? Not a bit of it – no firm commitment or spending pledge to lift a single child out of poverty. Instead it is merely an 'aspiration'. Some kind of ideal that may or may not come to pass. Not good enough I say.

Ambiguity and insipid platitudes are now the political currency of the Conservative Party: 'we want to echo the aspirations of the British people', 'tough on crime', 'opportunity for all', 'tackle climate change', 'patient focused healthcare'. Great, fantastic – those are all fine things but the question is HOW? And that is the question the Tories never answer, the question they always shirk – and why? Because they know full well they do not have the answer.

The one thing we do know about them is that they will cut spending – it's in their DNA. They've even said it – apparently they would have 'redistributed' the growth of the last 11 years. What that really mean is cuts to much needed public services. You can't tackle crime with underfunded police forces anymore than you can raise standards in schools by using outdated textbooks or giving teachers pay cuts.

Tory cuts would send pensioner and child poverty statistics back onto the inexorable upward trajectory seen under the last Tory Government. No one wants that.

When you hear a Tory tell you they disagree with something the Government is doing remember to ask them just what it is David Cameron and his sales team are offering instead.

To keep up to date on what I'm doing stop by my website http://www.michaelfoster.org.uk/.

You can also receive a monthly update on my activities by sending an email to mp@1066.net with 'MPFree' in the subject line.