Tolled Crossings and Regional Connectivity

Perran Moon Excerpts

Monday 2nd February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

I want to make a few short points to expand on a couple of things that have been mentioned. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) for securing this important debate.

As I have said to several Members, particularly from this part of the world, we are currently closer to Middlesbrough than to my constituency in Camborne. Indeed, when people in this country think about the south-west, they think of Bristol, which is closer to Manchester than to my constituency. That gives an idea of the scale of where we are.

When it comes to the important question of regional connectivity, I gently say to the Minister that, over the last 18 months, the Government have invested over £100 million in Cornish metals, Cornish lithium and, as we have heard, the Kernow industrial growth fund. To maximise the potential of that investment, it is essential that we have the transport infrastructure to support it, including in the Tamar crossing.

[Noah Law]

If we are taking a local growth approach, which I know is so important to our Government, surely a deal for the Tamar must be a crucial part of any devolution arrangement.

[Perran Moon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Tamar bridge should form part of our needed package of transport support, including mainline rail, upgrades to the A30 and, importantly, a complete review of the funding model for our one regional airport at Newquay, which needs to be considered in the round.

My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall spoke about car ownership in Cornwall. One of the gross distortions of the Westminster funding modelling is that we look at car ownership as an indicator of affluence. In Cornwall, it is quite the opposite. Our public transport systems are so poor that we have one of the highest car ownership rates in the country per capita. The reason is that many people in large swathes of Cornwall—particularly young people who need to get to college, or who need to develop the skills to work in some of the organisations I have mentioned—are completely housebound and isolated if they do not own a car. As my hon. Friend mentioned, it also contributes to the real problems of loneliness and lack of access to social groups, which is important for people’s mental health.

There are wide-ranging issues with the lack of connectivity across Cornwall. That is why it is so important, as the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Ben Maguire) mentioned, that our devolution arrangement considers the implications of our remote coastal geography for business development, for young people and the skills they need, and for the social aspect as our population ages and more young people sadly leave Cornwall because they cannot find work, particularly driven by our acute housing crisis. We need a holistic strategy for the whole of Cornwall, and a very important part of that is the Tamar crossing.