Ben Maguire

It is a great privilege to rise to speak in full and fulsome support of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George), to whom I would like to pay a brief tribute. He has spent many years campaigning on this issue with such passion and dedication. Even when he took a brief sabbatical from this place, he carried on that passion and dedication, and was determined to pursue the measures he has laid before the House today. So I pay tribute to him and thank him. Seeing my hon. Friend’s dedication to people in Cornwall has been an inspiration for me as a young person coming into politics in Cornwall. Like him, I grew up in Cornwall and felt that I had no option but to move away when I turned 18, because it seemed that there were simply no opportunities for a career or further education, but also no kind of hope of affording my own home and raising a family in Cornwall. It is therefore an immense privilege that I have managed to return to North Cornwall as its Member of Parliament. The measures my hon. Friend proposes today are, unfortunately, not new. We have been talking about these issues in this Chamber for decades. In fact, one of my predecessors, the former hon. Member for North Cornwall, John Pardoe, who some hon. Members may remember, in 1966 described our area as “neglected” and “exporting a mass of young people.”—[Official Report, 25 April 1966; Vol. 727, c. 623.] He said: “The tragedy facing so many of the people I represent is the knowledge that the stock of housing on which they must rely—namely, the housing provided by the local authorities—is rapidly declining.” Paul Tyler, his successor, in 1974 said: “The housing shortage is now a major social evil once again.” —[Official Report, 12 March 1974; Vol. 870, c. 144.] My most recent Liberal Democrat predecessor, Dan Rogerson, in 2005 quite simply said: “North Cornwall has more second homes than council houses”. —[Official Report, 18 May 2005; Vol. 434, c. 214.] Yet here we are again. It almost feels like groundhog day, debating once again the abject failure of successive Governments to build enough affordable and social homes for local people in Cornwall that they can actually afford to rent and live in. We just continually see inaction from Government after Government.