Public Services in Cornwall: Funding

Cherilyn Mackrory Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on securing this debate, which is so important to my constituents and people across Cornwall. I do not want to speak for long, but I want to add a bit of localised meat to the bones. I must also disagree with my hon. Friend on one point. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) and I were at a presentation on Friday on the value of seafood to the Cornish economy, where one of the points made was that an economist had looked at the furthest point from the sea, with particular precision, and had found that nobody in Cornwall is further than 12 miles away from the sea. It is even more coastal than we originally thought—[Interruption.] Yes, on a high tide.

I want to add a little meat to the bones of what my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay said. He set out the position on NHS funding very well. Treliske Hospital, the main hospital in my Truro constituency, is the hub for all acute needs for Cornwall. Something the NHS is doing particularly well is to try to spread those services out across the county so that we do not have to have everything happening in Truro.

However, there are particular challenges in places in my constituency, such as Holywell bay on the north coast, or the Roseland peninsula on the south coast. If people on the Roseland peninsula need an ambulance, it has to go across on a ferry before it can get to them. That is how remote it is. Even though it is very close as the bird flies to Falmouth or Truro, the logistics of getting emergency services there are a real challenge for people who live on the peninsula.

I want to make one final point, on special educational needs funding. Based on provisional funding data for 2024-25, Cornwall will receive annual needs funding per child of £724.14. That ranks us 142nd among local authorities. Our statistical neighbours—local authorities with similar characteristics—are due to receive an average of £78.49 per child per year more than Cornwall. In comparison, parents in London boroughs such as Camden, Lewisham, Islington or Westminster can expect their high-needs child to receive something in the region of £2,500 to £3,000.

If Cornwall were to receive the median of everyone else’s funding, it would be worth approximately another £5.4 million to the Cornish local authority, which would therefore be able to provide a much better service for our children. Primarily, as my hon. Friend pointed out, that is down to two things. The first is school transport, because it is very tricky to get a child from those remote places I just mentioned to the school they need to get to, and the second is being able to attract relevant teachers, given the housing challenges that we have talked about in this debate.

I will leave it there for colleagues to reflect on. I join my hon. Friend in his pleas to the Treasury, which he articulated so well, that Cornwall is a special case. We do not like being called a special case for the wrong reasons, but when we have water on three sides—almost four sides—the challenges are real. We have a very competent Conservative-run council in Cornwall, and if it is finding them to be challenges, then we can guarantee that they are very real indeed.