Newspaper Column – The Cornishman – 30/04/26

• I’m pressing the Government to legislate to better protect marine mammals – dolphins seals, etc. I presented a new Private Members’ Bill to Parliament and am urging ministers to introduce legislation in the next King’s Speech in a couple of weeks time.

Thanks to the wonderful Seal Research Trust, The Wildlife Trusts and others for advice and support.

• I also tabled a Parliamentary motion calling on the government to do more to restore and protect the remaining ancient woodlands around the UK. These are sites which have existed since at least 1600 and cover just 2.5% of the UK. Where they have been well preserved, they present some of the very best sites for rich biodiversity.

• I was very proud of everyone who works on our NHS frontline and in our neighbourhood health services, when I showed members of the House of Commons Health Select Committee around our local hospitals and health services last week. We have so much to be grateful for. 

Decades of dogma-driven, top-down rules and inflexible central diktat has become a debilitating weight, a ball-and-chain around the staff and the services they run and has wasted millions while private investors continue to syphon the lifeblood from our NHS.

Ministers should learn lessons from the brilliant community project which delivered Cober Valley Health Centre, Helston for a fraction of the cost of using government procurement systems, and with massive long-term community benefit.

St Clare Medical Centre, Penzance wouldn’t have happened if local GPs had continued to wait on the lumbering, inefficient Whitehall controlled systems to deliver a long-promised but never delivered project. They took a risk (and large loan) and just got on, and did it themselves.

West Cornwall Hospital is another jewel in the crown of our local NHS. The recently completed (and shockingly expensive, at £9.3m) outpatients department building was much needed – as the archaic, former building was well beyond its sell-by date. Now the Urgent Treatment Centre needs investment, so the hospital can build its emergency capacity, operate on a 24/7 basis and better integrate with the rest of the hospital and neighbourhood NHS services. And the former outpatients department building now needs to be brought back into essential frontline use, rather than left to rot.

We saw much more, including the brilliant Trelya, the Street Food Project and Growing Links, operating from the JD Centre, and the great Smile Together mobile dental service. We will make strong recommendations to Ministers when we complete our Inquiry.

• The House of Lords Assisted its own Dying last week, as a small minority of unelected Peers flagrantly abused their ‘revising’ powers to deliberately frustrate the will of the democratically elected chamber to block a Private Members’ Bill. They must all go. The sooner the better. Better convert it to a Citizen’s Assembly, …or a museum.