LABOUR leader Ed Miliband MP visited Gravesend yesterday to drum-up support for the party’s local election campaign.

He met voters in the town during an hour-and-a-half long walkabout starting with a stop off at Leonardo’s Sandwich Bar on Windmill Street and ending at Gravesend Borough Market in advance of Kent County Council elections on May 2.

The leader of the opposition pledged support for proposals to extend Crossrail to Ebbsfleet and backed 17-year-old Paris Brown’s decision to step down as Kent’s youth police and crime commissioner in an interview with News Shopper.

Mr Miliband said his party would create an extra class of businesses in planning law which would allow councils to protect the high street by blocking pay day lenders and betting shops from setting up.

He hopes the plans will win over voters after Labour was left with just three KCC councillors following the 2009 elections.

Mr Miliband told News Shopper: "In principle I am a great supporter of Crossrail.

"The more it can do in serving different parts of the community the better."

On Miss Brown’s resignation he said: "I think it is right that she stepped down.

"I don’t think it is wrong to involve young people in our politics but there are other ways of doing it."

In Borough Market Mr Miliband met Tom Christie, 21, who claimed he had just got his visa through to go to Russia in order to look for work.

He said his job at La Tasca on a ‘zero hour’ contract would never allow him to get on the property ladder.

The Robinia Avenue, Gravesend, resident said: "I don’t know anyone who’s got a job on the high street: it’s dead.

"How am I supposed to survive?

"What I earn one week is different from the next.

"How am I supposed to say to my landlord when I can pay?"

Mr Miliband also expressed fears over the impact Lewisham A&E’s proposed closure could have on NHS-users in the News Shopper area.

He said: "I am deeply concerned about what is happening in Lewisham.

"I am not saying I would not make any changes but it has got to be done by medical need and not financial alone."

Mr Miliband also visited Asda in Greenhithe earlier in the day.