North Cornwall MP secures No 10 meeting over housing crisis

Six MPs will walk into Downing Street together over the coming weeks, all representing the same county, all pushing the same argument: that Cornwall needs its own deal.

A question in the Commons

The meeting was won in the Commons chamber. Andrew George, the St Ives MP, used his balloted Prime Minister’s Questions slot to press Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the housing crisis fuelled by second homes and land speculation in Cornwall. Andrew told MPs that more than half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money has been handed to second home owners in Cornwall through tax loopholes over the past decade, while housing problems for local people have kept getting worse.

Burnham agreed on the spot to meet all six of Cornwall’s MPs to discuss what tools could support more community-led housing, and how that might feed into a wider Cornwall-only devolution deal.

The offer follows months of cross-party campaigning by Cornwall’s MPs for a bespoke devolution settlement, something the Liberal Democrats, who hold five of the county’s six seats, have made a central plank of their work in Westminster.

What Ben Maguire wants on the table

Ben Maguire, the North Cornwall MP, has already set out what he intends to raise once the meeting happens. His list covers the practical end of life in a rural, fast-growing constituency: poor rural transport links, the distance many residents travel to reach hospital appointments, an acute housing shortage, the gap between second homes or executive-style developments and genuinely affordable homes for local families, and the need for more GP surgery capacity and other community infrastructure in towns like Bodmin as they continue to expand.

Ben Maguire said:

“This has been a very hard-fought campaign, and securing this meeting for all of us as Cornwall’s MPs is now a big step forward. The Prime Minister is willing to listen to us, but my job is now turning that willingness into action for North Cornwall.

“When we sit down at Number 10, I’ll be making sure North Cornwall’s specific challenges are front and centre. That means fixing our rural transport network, tackling the huge distances many of my constituents face just to get to a hospital appointment, and dealing head-on with our housing crisis, where too many second homes and executive developments are pricing out local families who just want an affordable place to live.

“It also means securing the GP surgery capacity that towns like Bodmin desperately need as they continue to grow.”

Whether that translates into anything concrete is, in his own words, the part still to be settled. “This meeting is a chance to put that right through a proper devolution settlement,” he said, “but as ever, I’ll be judging this Government on what they actually deliver, not just their warm words.”