Voters are return to the polls just a month after the local election, following the PM's surprise election call.

Labour’s Candidate in Central Ayrshire, Nairn McDonald, this week said the choice facing the country was stark. Another 5 years of Tory Austerity and Cuts or a different, fairer way under a Labour Government.

Mr McDonald said: “The choice at this election is the biggest in a generation. We can have another 5 years of unneeded and devastating cuts under Theresa May or we can end Austerity by voting in a Labour Government.

"Theresa May and her government have shown themselves to be friends of the rich and big business while they appear happy to attack the poor, vulnerable and disabled by cutting support and benefits, introducing the vile Rape Clause or the Bedroom Tax.

"Labour offer a different way. We will end the political choice of Austerity and start funding our services correctly and stop making savings on the back of those most in need.

"We will be able to afford to invest by making sure the rich and businesses pay their fair share and contribute to our country. It is time companies like Amazon, Apple and Facebook pay the tax they are due instead of using loop holes to con this country out of millions.

"Labour offer a fully costed set of pledges and programme for government the Tories offer nothing but more cuts, more attacks on the working people and vile polices like the Rape Clause and Dementia Tax.

"Only Labour can defeat the Tories and bring about the change our country is crying out for. The only way to stop Theresa May winning is to send back Labour MPs the length and breadth of our country.”

"Labour’s Manifesto pledges to support our Young People by banning Zero Hour Contracts, Raising the minimum wage across the board to £10 an Hour by 2020, Re-introducing housing benefit for under 21s and scrapping Tuition Fees down south ( Labour has already done so here in Scotland.)

"For our Older People the manifesto promises to keep the Triple Lock on Pensions, Keep the Winter Fuel Allowance and give justice to the WASPI Women.

"Labour also plan to grow Scotland’s Economy by creating a £20 Billion Investment Bank to support enterprise here in Scotland.

"By bringing services like the Royal Mail back into public ownership we can make sure everyone has access to affordable postal services. Dundonald currently doesn’t have a Post Office due to cost cutting measures. We would stop this and make sure it has access to postal services and that they are affordable.

"The SNP can’t win this election, the only way to secure an end to the Tories and bring about a Labour Government is to vote Labour on June 8th and vote For The Many NOT The Few.

SNP candidate Dr Philippa Whitford says she would feel honoured to be re-elected by the people of Irvine and Kilwinning and said the SNP block of MPs is making a difference for Scotland.

Dr Philippa Whitford said: “The SNP stands up for Scotland in Westminster. If we send a dozen Tories MPs down they’d just rubber stamp whatever the Conservative government does whether that’s more cuts, more deprivation, more poverty.

“They certainly won’t speak up for Scotland, whereas myself and my colleagues would and I think both locally and nationally we’ve all worked much harder than our predecessors.

Dr Philippa Whitford said the thing that made her want to get in politics is the fact that poverty and deprivation are the biggest drivers of ill health “That’s something that’s controlled in Westminster”, she said, “Through controlling our economy, through setting benefits and welfare cuts, the impacts on the disabled, child poverty levels are soaring since 2012 and here in Ayrshire we’ve got nearly 27 per cent of our children are living in poverty in Central Ayrshire, that’s quite shocking.

“These are the kinds of issues I’ve tended to speak about, disability, poverty, support for families. Also because I worked in Gaza as a volunteer for a year and a half in the 90s obviously the issue of Palestine is very close to my heart and quite active on that.

“One of the other threats of Brexit is around the NHS workforce, a lot of our doctors, nurses and social care workers are European, my husbands German and has been a GP in our NHS for 31 years, and 11 months on has no idea on the basis he’ll be allowed to stay or use the NHS. It’s so cruel for them to leave people hanging like that for such a long time.

“If they’re doing a ‘fortress Britain’ approach, not wanting to let people in, our population would start to go down again. It’s a threat to lots of industries but certainly the NHS.

“In all that referendum debate people didn’t talk enough about or look at the benefits we’ve had from Europe. They like to bitch about it, they like to blame it for everything, but actually we’ve had huge gains.”

Defending the effectiveness of the SNP block at Westminster, Dr Whitford said: “From a Scotland point of view, Scotland is now talked about five times more than it was before the last election, because in every debate there will be some SNP MPs looking at how does this affect Scotland.

“There’s one of us on virtually every select committee, whereas when we were represented by Labour once they would go down they were part of UK Labour and talk about UK Labour policies predominitely for London and the South East and not speak about Scotland all that much, where obviously that’s our raison d’etre.

“We can’t outvote, but there’s certainly no question that Scotland’s voice is heard in Westminster. It might not be listened to but it is heard.

“For the constituency I’ve worked both individually and alongside colleagues to promote Ayrshire. We did the big Ayrshire showcase and got great feedback from the people that attended.

“I’m on the cross party groups on aerospace and innovation and parliamentary space committee because Prestwick is one of the sites competing to be the future space port. A lot of it is about promoting what we have on a national stage.

“Locally I’ve got involved and been as active as I could with community groups and charities so I’ve been very active around the constituency, often just trying to facilitate things and bring people together, like bringing Coastwatch and GSK together to restore the pilot house.

“I set up and Ayrshire bus users group that interacts with Strathclyde Passenger Transport and Stagecoach and we’ve come up with ideas to protect bus routes, I just initiated it but it’s now members of the public they have their own steering group. I try and attend as much as I’m asked to as possible and try to bring ideas and action to things if I can.”

Tom Inglis, the Liberal Democrat candidate said: "I think voters in Central Ayrshire should choose to vote for the Liberal Democrats, because we offer the only sensible choice at this election.

"Under a Conservative government at Westminster we face a disastrous hard brexit, crashing out of the European Union, and in all likelihood paying tariffs to trade with it and for visas to visit it. They have taken austerity to an extreme new level, with their attack on pensions, their “rape clause” on tax credits and their complete failure to provide the funding necessary to sustain the NHS.

"Under an SNP government at Holyrood we face an unhealthy obsession with independence, which undermines their ability to get on with the job they were elected to do. They have had ten years in government, and yet our education system is plummeting down the international rankings, children have to wait up to two years for urgent mental health treatment, and the Scottish economy shrank in the last quarter.

"The Liberal Democrats want to protect our important trading relationship with the world’s largest economy, to reverse the most savage cuts imposed by the Tories - without jeopardising our economic recovery, and ensure that the Scottish Government has the funds it needs to provide better education and mental healthcare for our kids.

"I genuinely care about people and about the planet on which we live. I am very interested in current affairs and policy, and am frustrated by a lot of the choices our governments have made over the past 10 - 20 years, and felt that the only way I could help us make better choices was by getting involved in politics. I’m not a career politician, I’ve been working in the technology industry since I finished my undergraduate and masters degrees, and have a breadth of experience in the technology startup sector in Scotland.

"My particular interests lie in making sure we have a sustainable constitutional settlement in the United Kingdom through federalism, tackling financial inequality and environmental sustainability through fairer taxation and legislation, and growing the number of companies and jobs in the technology industry in Scotland.

"I am standing for parliament in Central Ayrshire this time, because I particularly want to: - prevent another independence referendum when the people of Scotland were clear in their choice less than three years ago, and when we have entered a period of huge uncertainty over our relationship with the European Union.

- give the British people a chance to vote on the final deal that the British Government negotiates with the European Union, so that if the deal is as bad as we expect it to be, we have a chance to reject it before its impact is felt on our businesses and jobs.

- raise an extra penny on income tax and dividends, which via the Barnett Forumla, will result in £35 million which the Scottish Government can use to transform our mental health services, which have been neglected for so long by the SNP.

- keep the “triple lock” which ensures that the state pension increases every year by the higher of inflation, average earnings or a minimum of 2.5%, which the Conservatives plan to diminish.

- lift the 1% public pay cap, which artificially depresses the wages of people working in the many hugely valuable and demanding jobs in the public sector.