Liberal Democrats MP for North Cornwall since (elected).
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| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lib Dem | MP | North Cornwall | – present | elected | — | Party history |
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My hon. Friend is making an excellent case for rural communities on heating oil, farming and other issues, but may I add the failure of this Government to extend the rural fuel duty scheme? My rural North Cornwall constituency does not have buses running to hospitals, educational opportunities and jobs. Does he agree that the Government missed an opportunity to extend that scheme to help our rural constituents?
The Government have now baked the £20 million-a-year second homes council tax premium into their core funding; but business rates loopholes, which were increased in the recent Budget, make those payments easily avoidable, so that revenue cannot be relied on consistently. Will the Minister meet the six Cornish MPs to ensure that Cornwall benefits from the second home council tax premium?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I congratulate the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this vital debate. The Cornwall Air Ambulance is a vital service for many of my North Cornwall constituents, many of whom live over 50 miles from their closest major hospital, and I am extremely proud that it is headquartered in my constituency—it was great to see its second helicopter recently. The air ambulance is critical to accessing uneven terrain that ambulances simply cannot drive over or reaching the most remote areas, ensuring that nobody is locked out of lifesaving care because of where they live. That is particularly vital in my North Cornwall constituency, with our vast moorland, rocky cliff lines and many remote villages. It is essential that we ensure that our emergency services are equipped to manage the rurality of our region, ensuring that urgent lifesaving care is not based on a lottery postcode. The Cornwall Air Ambulance is on the frontline of getting people who may otherwise be stranded for hours to hospital for lifesaving treatment. It is also equipped with medical equipment and personnel who can save lives at the scene of an emergency. Cornwall’s Air Ambulance chairman David Richards has described the air ambulances as “flying doctor services”, offering far more than just transportation. I want to briefly highlight two cases that demonstrate the invaluable service that Cornwall’s Air Ambulance provides. In my North Cornwall constituency, 15-year-old Lewie received lifesaving care from the Cornwall Air Ambulance after falling from a cliff in Bude and becoming trapped in an inaccessible cove in the cold water. Lewie was hypothermic and drifting in and out of consciousness. He had suffered severe injuries, tearing two ligaments in his wrist, breaking his hand in three places, his thumb, <span id="227WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="227WH"></span>right elbow and right ankle, shattering the left side of his pelvis, breaking two of the seven plates in his neck, five of the 12 plates in his back and several ribs, suffered a punctured lung and lost half a kidney. Lewie credits the Cornwall Air Ambulance with saving his life that day, stating: “I wouldn’t be here without them”. After Lewie was winched to the clifftop by the coastguard, critical care paramedics onboard the air ambulance helicopter were able to administer pain relief, apply a pelvic binder and transfer him safely into the helicopter. While flying to the hospital they gave him high-flow oxygen and intravenous fluids because he had low blood pressure, reduced oxygen saturation and a weak pulse. Lewie’s story demonstrates just how effective the Cornwall Air Ambulance is at not only transporting critical patients to the hospital but ensuring that they make it to the hospital in a stable condition. Three-year-old Mia became unresponsive amid a sudden seizure while on a family holiday in Cornwall. A helicopter with two critical care paramedics and a doctor was able to land in a nearby field. Mia received lifesaving treatment on the roadside because her condition had worsened and she had suffered a second prolonged seizure while her family tried to rush her to the hospital. Mia’s mother Carissa later said: “I believe that Cornwall Air Ambulance saved Mia’s life that day and I don’t know what we would have done without them…You really don’t know how much Cornwall Air Ambulance do and how much they are needed until it is you that needs them.” Representatives of Cornwall Air Ambulance have told us that they are deeply concerned about the delays to the works to aid access to the rear helipad at Royal Cornwall hospital, Treliske, in Truro. The delay has severely affected the service that Cornwall Air Ambulance can provide to people across Cornwall who rely on its lifesaving work. With the Treliske A&E helipad closed, landings now take place at the rear helipad and require a transfer by road of around 400 metres to the emergency department. That obviously introduces delays and safety risks in what are often life-critical situations for patients being flown in from across the region. It entirely undermines the strength and efficiency of our brilliant air ambulance service. Additionally, increasing traffic and footfall around the site, including from nearby housing developments and additional car parking, will continue to place more and more pressure on the already constrained route. I and my Cornish MP colleagues, including the two in the Chamber for this debate—the hon. Members for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon)—have argued that there is a strong case for targeted transport interventions to ensure that patient transfers are as swift and as safe as possible. We have called for measures to be implemented that could provide secure, reliable access for ambulance transfers, including a safe road crossing from the helipad to the hospital. Cornwall Air Ambulance has stated that the prolonged delays and more complex routes for transporting patients have imposed operational challenges on clinical teams, creating an additional burden that teams delivering critical urgent care should not have to face. It has said that improved collaboration between the NHS and regional air ambulance charities could help to create a <span id="228WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="228WH"></span>more seamless process, increasing resilience to challenges through shared resourcing and more cohesive long-term planning. Will the Minister please commit to call for more systematic and formalised collaboration between NHS teams and air ambulances, to ensure more cohesive and seamless care for patients arriving at hospital via air ambulance? Will she commission a report into the collaborative frameworks of the nation’s air ambulance charities and their work with the NHS? Such a report should engage with regional charities and air ambulances across the UK to explore potential partnership structures. Finally, will the Minister please work with Cornwall Air Ambulance, Cornwall council and others to ensure that a safe crossing can be installed between the helipad and Treliske hospital? On behalf of my constituents, I place on record my thanks and admiration for the whole team at Cornwall Air Ambulance, including the tireless clinical staff and the incredible volunteers and fundraisers. It is an incredible service that, quite unbelievably, does not receive any Government funding.
I am pleased to hear about the review the Minister has announced. Can she give us any sense of a timeline for when that review might conclude?
In May, the Government announced £57 million in nationwide funding for wi-fi on trains. Some other parts of the country have had many rail upgrades, but the south-west has terrible rail lines, and delays due to the High Speed 2 works at Old Oak Common. Will the Minister commit to a minimum fair share of £12 million for the south-west, to cover the entire Great Western Railway network of 93 inter-city express trains?
Last month, South West Water was fined £8 million for more than 500 sewage dumps. Rather than going back to the Treasury, that money should reduce the bills of customers who pay for waste and sewerage services. The fine followed 330 illegal dumps into the River Camel and 230 untreated dumps at Harlyn beach, a world-class beach in Cornwall. My constituents are sick of a company that keeps breaking the law, and that treats fines as a cost of doing business. Will the Leader of the House commit to a debate in Government time on holding these failing water companies to account, and on introducing jail time for offending water bosses?
I commend the Government on granting Cornwall, by exception, a single-authority FSA—foundation strategic authority—devolution deal. I have been proud to work with all of Cornwall’s MPs and the council leader on this, and Cornwall is very much relieved that it will not be merged with any other region. Will the Minister now meet all of Cornwall’s MPs to discuss how we can move to that mayoral suite of powers and funding, without a mayor, as new legislation comes before this House?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis) on securing this really important debate. I also commend him for his campaigning efforts on behalf of his constituents, especially the family of Keely Morgan, whom he referred to so powerfully in his speech. He was absolutely right that proper deterrents should be in place for offenders. I cannot even begin to imagine the pain that Keely’s family have been through following her tragic death, and the subsequent pain of navigating the justice system to address such serious failures of accountability and justice. Sadly, it is the same story for so many of our constituents up and down the country, including in one tragic case in my constituency, which I will touch on later. I would like to take the opportunity to commend all hon. Members across the House, who have spoken so powerfully about their constituents’ tragic cases. Ther <span id="180WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="180WH"></span>e are far too many similar experiences. On behalf of too many grieving families and the victims themselves, we Liberal Democrats are fighting for changes to sentencing for causing death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving. We believe that the sentences handed to those who kill someone by dangerous driving should properly reflect the seriousness of their crimes. We supported much tougher maximum sentencing and longer disqualification periods in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and we have long been calling for an updated road safety strategy, which must be delivered as quickly as possible, following years of neglect of Britain’s roads by successive Governments. One shocking case relating to road safety in my constituency of North Cornwall involved the hit and run of a young man named Ryan Saltern. In 2019, Ryan was hit and killed late at night by a drunk driver who sped away from the scene, leaving Ryan alone in the middle of the road to die. Despite killing Ryan, fleeing the scene and hiding from the police for 36 hours, Ryan’s killer was spared prison entirely and was handed a four-month suspended sentence and a 12-month driving ban in a magistrates court. Because the Crown Prosecution Service could not prove that he had been driving dangerously, he was charged only with failing to stop and report a road accident—essentially the same charge as if he had clipped someone’s wing mirror and driven off without reporting it. As in the case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt), witnesses at the scene gave a “no comment” interview and experienced no consequences whatever. Imagine the heartbreak that that added to Ryan’s family. In response to Ryan’s tragic death, his parents, Mark and Helen, and his sister, Leanne, launched their Ryan’s law campaign. Their aim is to widen the causing death by dangerous driving offence by including a failure to stop, call 999 and render aid at the scene until the emergency services arrive as an aggravating factor. Their online petition garnered 167,000 signatures, and support for the change is extremely strong, both locally in Cornwall and across our country. Sadly, hundreds of families do not see justice served. During my first two years in this place as North Cornwall’s MP, I have been taken aback by the sheer dedication and perseverance of the Saltern family in campaigning on this vital issue. They have committed to ensure that no more families in Britain are left feeling badly let down and lost in the justice system after a road traffic collision. They are doing incredible work with RysHaven, which provides a safe, dedicated space where families grieving a loved one killed in a road accident can escape and process what happened. I have joined the Saltern family in meetings with various Roads Ministers at the Department for Transport, the most recent of which was last month. I also raised their case with the previous Solicitor General, and I have tried to champion their cause in a number of debates in this House to demand the change that they and so many other families are calling for. That is why I was pleased that the Government announced a new road safety strategy at the start of this year, given that previous road safety strategies successfully delivered good improvements in road safety. But almost one year on, we are still seeking clarity on when the strategy will be implemented and how the several consultations that have already taken place will feed into it.
I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent contribution. I agree that there is a strong case to be made for graduated licences—the hon. Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater) referred to international research showing the success of that scheme in Northern Ireland, and my hon. Friend talked about it too. Hopefully, the Minister was listening to that. I welcome the Minister to his place. From having served with him on the Home Affairs Committee, I know he is very diligent, and I hope he will at least speak to his colleagues in the Department for Transport to get an update on the timing of the road safety strategy, which Members are still waiting to hear about. At the heart of submissions to each consultation on that strategy was the actual impact of road traffic collisions on victims and their families. The human cost of inaction is staggering: each of the 1,500 fatalities on Britain’s roads last year left a grieving family who wanted justice to be properly carried out on behalf of the loved one they had lost. In August, the Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman, set out six clear recommendations in relation to road safety in her report on barriers to justice. She said: “Behind every road death or serious injury is a victim, a grieving family and lives changed forever. Yet too many victims told me they felt road crime was not treated with the seriousness it deserved”. Her formal recommendations set out areas for improvement, including implementing stronger national standards for investigating road collisions, trauma-informed training for police officers and staff, and sustainable funding for specialist traffic collision victim support services. I ask the Minister, when he winds up, to confirm whether he has read the Victims’ Commissioner’s report in full, and whether his Department is working cross-departmentally to implement its six recommendations. Will he also please provide clarity around the timeline for the road safety strategy, including when the Government will respond to the consultations held earlier this year? Finally, will he look into adopting a much more victim-centred approach in the new road safety strategy so that families like the Salterns and parents like Keely Morgan’s, as well as the countless families hon. Members have spoken about so powerfully today, can finally feel that their voice is being properly heard?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown- <span id="459WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="459WH"></span>Fuller) on securing this important debate. I pay tribute to my excellent policemen and women, who do a fantastic job in keeping us safe. We Liberal Democrats have long called for a return to proper community policing, and the visible, trusted police presence that it provides for our constituents. During the previous Conservative Government’s programme of cuts, local community policing across our country was torn apart. We have heard from some Government Members who may need educating on the concept of a coalition in which the junior partner makes up 15% of the MPs, and so does not have total control over every Government policy. Since Labour came into government, more than 1,000 officers have been cut from our streets. I am sure that the hike in national insurance contributions has not helped that at all. My force, Devon and Cornwall, has faced a 50% cut to its recruitment budget. The politicisation of the police service through the introduction of police and crime commissioners has done untold further damage to that trust. I was glad when, in November last year, the Government embraced a long-running Lib Dem campaign by announcing the scrapping of PCCs entirely. That will save the British taxpayer an estimated £100 million a year, £20 million of which can be funnelled into neighbourhood policing. For rural areas such as my North Cornwall constituency, neighbourhood and community policing focus heavily on tackling the scourge of rural crime. I have prioritised the fight against rural crime on behalf of my constituents by introducing the Rural Crime (Strategy) Bill and consistently pushing the Government to develop a full strategy to address it countrywide. For many countryside communities up and down the country, thefts of farm machinery, tools and livestock can be devastating. At a time when family farms are being hammered by rising costs, a botched sustainable farming incentive payment system, a rise in inheritance tax, bluetongue outbreaks and a severe drought, the loss of just one all-terrain vehicle or expensive piece of farm machinery can set them back tens of thousands of pounds. Sadly, many of my farming constituents have told me that they have altogether lost confidence that such crimes will be dealt with seriously, so they no longer report them. It is clear that many forces still lack specialists to deal specifically with these types of rural crimes. The Home Office is planning £365,000 of funding for the entire country’s rural crime units, which works out at around £8,500 pounds on average per police force. From my own work on the Home Affairs Committee, I have had the opportunity to quiz officials on police visibility in communities, and specifically on the effectiveness of reopening front desks. I was told by one police official from Buckinghamshire that the reopening of a police station in a town there saw a 19% overall reduction in crime, not just because people reported crimes more, but because it gave the local community a more visible police presence. I have been requesting that Launceston, in my constituency, has its police station’s front desk reopened, but Devon and Cornwall’s police and crime commissioner has refused time and again to do so. That refusal is especially disappointing when the cost is around £100,000 and the cost of suspended Devon and Cornwall police officers is currently around £1.3 million a year. We have clear opportunity to bring back this policing visibility and confidence, yet the requests of the community are being ignored. One way to ensure that frontline <span id="460WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="460WH"></span>officers are left to focus on the communities they serve is to prevent them from being pulled away for other types of crime that fester online. Our Liberal Democrat proposal is to establish an online crime agency, funded by £250 million per year—a levy on the big tech and AI firms that too often enable this online crime to take place. Our local officers would be freed up and sent back out to our towns and high streets, where they belong, combating thefts, shoplifting and the other types of local crime that hon. Members have mentioned. Will the Minister commit to ensuring that every community across Britain has a police counter by using spaces such as libraries, shopping centres and town halls and reopening front desks where feasible, and to establishing an online crime agency so that deepfakes, revenge porn and other online crimes are tackled by specialists? Will she also ensure that the proposed police reorganisation does not further reduce community policing, and build on the NPCC rural and wildlife crime strategy, to tackle the scourge of rural crime?