Sewage Discharges: South West

Debate between Ben Maguire and Jayne Kirkham

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ben Maguire]

Having grown up in a very rural area in North Cornwall, I know that many of my constituents face that issue, so I thank the hon. Member for raising it.

To look beyond the shocking statistics for a moment, and properly understand the real impact that the issue is having on coastal communities such as mine, I refer to three-year-old Finley from Widemouth bay. This time last year, Finley’s mum took her son to Widemouth bay to play on the north Cornish beach. Later that day, Finley became extremely unwell, and a friend’s child who had been on the same beach at the same time had similar symptoms of diarrhoea and vomiting, which lasted for weeks. Just last week, there were three sewage dumps in Widemouth bay. Tragically, in just the few months since my election, I have lost count of the number of constituents who have written to me or stopped me in the street to explain how they have stopped swimming or surfing in our oceans for fear of getting sick from the contaminated water.

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Cornwall is covered with sewage alerts, and proceedings have been taken against South West Water. Does the hon. Member agree that the new water review will be vital to reform regulation and infrastructure?

[Ben Maguire]

I will address the water review in a moment. I am pleased that the Government are finally looking at this issue in detail, and crucially, as the hon. Member says, consulting, which is so important.

As I said, I have lost count of the constituents who have told me that they have stopped swimming or surfing in our oceans for fear of getting sick from the contaminated water. Imagine the immense effect of that on our tourist industry in Cornwall and the south-west, which has been the envy of the country. Sewage spills are wrecking not only our health but vital local businesses. Surfers Against Sewage has reported large increases in reports of people getting ill after entering the water. In the year to September 2022, there were 720 reports, double the number in the previous year. By September 2023, the number had rocketed to 1,924. It was with a certain amount of trepidation that I went surfing at Summerleaze beach in Bude just days before the election—not just because my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) was standing next to me in a wetsuit and I wondered what stunt awaited me, but because there were visible signs of a sewage dump from earlier that day.

It is not just our beaches that bear the brunt of sewage dumping but our rivers. Just today, Natural England confirmed that the River Camel remains in an unfavourable condition, and Cornwall Wildlife Trust cautioned me just this afternoon that our ecosystems and species are in grave danger if we do not urgently put a stop to this.

Housing: Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly

Debate between Ben Maguire and Jayne Kirkham

Monday 9th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting extra time for a debate that is so important for Cornwall and for giving others a chance for speak about its very particular housing issues. I also thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for initiating the debate. As he said, about 27,000 people are on Cornwall’s housing waiting list, and about 800 are in temporary and emergency accommodation. Many of them are families with young children, who are placed in caravan parks and holiday homes that are up to an hour and a half or two hours away from their support networks, their schools, their jobs and where they live. This is really affecting community cohesion, upsetting families and causing real hardship.

The council is struggling with the need, and the cost is vast. It is providing bunk cabins in council car parks for people to live in as emergency and temporary accommodation, which is very difficult. So many people in Cornwall are now living in their vans, because they simply have nowhere else to go. I am finding that families are moving into emergency accommodation, and that the single people who were becoming homeless when I was first a councillor in Cornwall are now living in their cars. The situation has become really dire.

Businesses are now finding that key workers have nowhere to live, so we have people coming down to work in the hospitality sector or in agriculture. The same is true for professionals, such as teachers, nurses and doctors—a headteacher in Cornwall struggled to find somewhere to live, and she had to give up her job and move away again. There is now a movement called Homes for Cornwall, whereby businesses are coming together to try to find alternatives solutions to deal with the housing crisis, which has become so bad that they cannot find staff. As the hon. Member for St Ives said, we have a very low number of social houses in Cornwall—only 10,300 council homes.

I want to talk about the affordable housing programme grant, which a previous Secretary of State, Michael Gove, suspended for Cornwall because of the poor performance of the housing provider Cornwall Housing, which is an arm’s length company owned by the council. That performance has now improved, and the grant is desperately needed for a new social housing scheme in Redruth, but it has not been returned. I ask the Minister to look into that, and to see whether other local authorities in this situation have been treated in the same way and lost their grants. Has that grant moved to other registered providers in Cornwall, or has it left Cornwall completely? Is there any way we could get that back and backdate it?

The other issue, which the hon. Member for St Ives spoke about, is second homes and holiday lets, which have absolutely exploded in Cornwall, particularly since covid. The private rented sector has been decimated and is now virtually non-existent. We have struggled so much with section 21 notices, which explains to a great extent why so many of our families are now in emergency and temporary accommodation.

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for securing this excellent debate. It is great to welcome him back to his place; he brings a wealth of expertise in this area. I also welcome the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) to his place. I hope that he understands some of the issues that have been raised in this debate, given that he is a close neighbour of ours.

I welcome the cross-party co-operation that we are seeing from hon. Members across the House this evening—although not so much from the Conservative Benches, unfortunately. Cornwall faces a real housing emergency, and it is critical that we work together to fix it. As my hon. Friend mentioned, we must finally move away from building more and more executive housing that has little to no infrastructure, and focus on local need.