VETERAN Labour politician Paul Flynn clashed with Lib Dem parliamentary candidate Paul Halliday on the bedroom tax and the Severn Bridge tolls at a hustings in Newport city centre tonight.

Mr Flynn, who has held the Newport West who seat since 1987, took a swipe at Lib Dems policies since the coalition Government was formed in 2010.

The prospective parliamentary candidate sought to put Mr Halliday on the spot saying the vilified bedroom tax would not have come into force without the Lib Dems.

Mr Flynn told the audience at Newport Centre: "If they had any decency the Lib Dems would go into political hibernation for the next two decades."

Mr Halliday, the Lib Dem candidate for Newport East, found himself on the back foot but defended the record of his party in coalition with the Conservatives.

He claimed that "everything on the front page of their manifesto" had been implemented since Nick Clegg agreed to the coalition with Tory PM David Cameron.

Mr Halliday told the audience: "That's how coalition works.

"I'm proud of what we've done."

Meanwhile, Plaid prospective parliamentary candidate for Newport West, Simon Coopey, said around 600 people had been affected by the bedroom tax.

And Green Party leader Pippa Bartolotti, also a candidate for Newport West, said it was "the most ill thought out tax that had ever come across my desk", adding it should be the "very first thing to go".

During the debate, Mr Coopey asserted that Newport West was the third most unequal constituency nationally.

But Mr Flynn challenged the validity of his statistics and questioned how this could be the case when one of the city's most famous sons is the billionaire Terry Matthews.

Mr Flynn and Mr Halliday had another heated exchange when the Lib Dem candidate called on the Severn Bridge tolls to be scrapped.

He said he was pushing for it and continuing with that campaign, adding it had gone on for years.

However, Mr Flynn challenged him on this point asking whether it had been "for weeks", or "for years".

Mr Flynn said people had opposed the bridge tolls since they were introduced in the Sixties and likened Mr Halliday's stance to "cheap opportunism".

He said: "When in Government you could have done something about it."

Mr Flynn deplored the loss of the university campus in Caerleon saying it was a "terrible blow for the city" but asserted that the relative lack of students in Newport was a "fundamental weakness".

Pippa Bartolotti attacked education cutbacks in the UK saying: "It is changing the make-up of society.

"I would have thought we needed more universities, not less."

She added: "The loss of centres of learning is going to filter through to generations."