Joe Morris

Sir Jeremy, it is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship. Across the span of one of England’s largest constituencies, housing, or the lack of it, is one of the main drivers of people coming to my constituency surgeries. It is one of the main drivers of people in desperate need of a place to call home, as my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) has just movingly set out. It is an issue that needs to be taken far more seriously, not just in this place but across the country. The particular lack of access to affordable and social housing in some of our most rural communities is something that has escaped much of the national debate in recent years. Unfortunately, I must say that the Morpeth Conservatives, who run Northumberland county council, are currently engaged in what I can only describe as an ongoing misinformation exercise about the impact of trying to provide more housing. It is very clear to me that what is needed across Northumberland is appropriate development of the homes that are needed to allow people to build lives and communities, and to keep those communities together and functioning, but also to provide long-term stability to young people growing up in those communities, so that they know they will be able to have a life where they have grown up, should they wish to, rather than growing up with their noses pressed against the windows of communities that they will never be able to be part of because they cannot get a home there. I will not keep colleagues’ attention for too long, but the crucial thing, from where I stand, is delivering those homes in areas where people can have access to them, where they can be rented at a reasonable rate, and, crucially, ensuring that they are not removed from circulation but are accessible to local people, so that those people can work in the pubs, shops and businesses that keep the lifeblood of our communities moving. Without that, we will continue to see younger people forced out of rural communities, forced to leave their families and unable to care for their elderly relatives. That is something that comes up far too often—time and again—in my regular constituency surgeries.