Jayne Kirkham

I thank the hon. Member for that point. I wanted to talk about council tax in particular, because, strangely, one of the few things that the entire council agreed on—we have a Conservative council in Cornwall at the moment—was doubling the council tax on empty second homes. In fact, we wrote to the Secretary of State at the time to ask whether we could triple the council tax on second homes, as they do in Labour Wales—that was a very unusual thing to do. Of course, as has been discussed, this is about looking at closing the loophole so that the owners of the property cannot flip between business rates and council tax. That would mean an £18 million a year gain in council taxes. I agree with the hon. Member that we should encourage co-operative and community housing in Cornwall. That is very popular, and if it was supported more, there would be a great deal more of it. In fact, our cabinet housing member in Cornwall has said that if every village built 10 homes, that would deal with the housing crisis completely. Discouraging hope value, particularly in certain parts of Cornwall, would be very helpful. I know that forcing developers to deliver their affordables rather than relying on the viability defence is part of the Government’s plans, because so often developers get to a point and say that they cannot afford to build the affordable houses that they promised. Another real problem is that the cost of building has shot up because the contractors in Cornwall have dropped in number and have become a great deal more expensive.