Newspaper Column – The Cornishman – 31/08/26

• Parliament’s back. A chance to put the new PM to the test. I’ll seek his support for my Bill to improve the opportunities for the thousands of families housing need.  

Last week’s Government housing investment plans was welcome news for Metro Mayors, but left thousands of Cornish families in prolonged housing desperation limbo. Though Cornwall has the promise of a bespoke MoU (“Memorandum of Understanding”) with the government.  

However, this is against a large step backwards. I warned government ministers their housebuilding targets for places like Cornwall would prove counterproductive. Cornwall’s housebuilding targets have always been well above the national average. Indeed, Cornwall has been amongst the fastest growing places in the country. Nearly trebling its housing stock in the last half century or so. But, after all that, the housing need of locals has got worse. 

Successive governments housebuilding targets are founded on a delusion – that private developers will collude with government to drive down the price of their finished product. It hasn’t worked out like that here. 

Government planning policy will just enable land-value speculators to fill their boots. It’ll drive up the cost of development land; encourage developments of UNaffordable homes and further limit opportunities for desperately needed homes for locals. 

There are hundreds of shovel-ready projects which could deliver thousands of desperately needed social homes tomorrow, including in Cornwall, but the government needs to invest now.  

It’s difficult enough to deliver genuinely affordable homes for locals with a planning system fuelled by greed rather than need. Government policy has made things worse. Welcome as it is, their 10-year £39 Bn housing budget will produce fewer homes. 

 

 

• Cornwall has the poorest access to NHS dentistry in the country, according to last week’s Nuffield Trust report; with a further 25% decline in NHS dentistry here in the last decade.  

The dentistry contract doesn’t incentivise provision of services to those who need it most. It should enable preventative dentistry but doesn’t. 

Our Health Committee warned last year about the dentistry crisis, of “dentistry deserts” in places like Cornwall, the need to review the contract, and to prioritise need and preventative dentistry. 

Cornwall Council’s recent Dentistry Summit helpfully focussed on the challenges and identified the action needed. I’m pressing local health managers and government ministers to address these.  

 

 

• The primary purpose of custodial sentencing should be public protection, especially to protect those most vulnerable to violent and predatory crime. The government’s principal objective when prisons are overcrowded, must be to protect society from dangerous criminals, rapists, paedophiles etc. I appreciate government was left a legacy by Conservative predecessors of overcrowded prisons, and no plans to build more prison places, but these dangerous criminals should be firmly excluded from consideration for early release.  

Nearly half of (about 40,000 of the 89,000) prison places are filled with violent offenders, rapists and child sex offenders. If still a risk, they should be kept behind bars.