Speeches by Kirkham.

“This debate was called by a London Member, my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake). I am grateful to her, but I am happy that so many Members from across the country are here too. I wanted to make sure that our voice from Cornwall, where this is a really big issue, was heard very l…”

“I have just one small point to make about the furnished holiday letting scheme. There are some properties in Cornwall for which there are planning restrictions that say they can only be holiday lets and nothing else can be done with the property, because it may be on the same premises as the first property. I just want…”

“4. What steps her Department is taking to support victims of rape and sexual violence.”

“Victims of alleged rape in Truro and Falmouth and across the country are having their trials pushed back for months, if not years, often very shortly before those trials are set to begin. That leads to severe distress for victims and families, and can have unintended consequences, such as bail conditions becoming outda…”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting extra time for a debate that is so important for Cornwall and for giving others a chance for speak about its very particular housing issues. I also thank the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) for initiating the debate. As he said, about 27,000 people are on Cornwall’s…”

“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 a…”

“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. I will shortly move on to some of the ways in which we can deal with the proliferation of second homes and holiday lets, and address the imbalance. I want to reinforce the point that the hon. Member for St Ives made about the tax loophole. I think £18 million is now lost in…”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison), whose experience and passion will be of great benefit to both his constituents and his local hospital, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford and Bow (Uma Kumaran), who will be a very worthy successor to those suffraget…”

“The Chancellor’s plans for growth are welcome in Cornwall, but in the meantime we are relying upon shared prosperity fund and towns deal money. The deadlines for the completion of those schemes are March 2025 and March ’26. To ensure that investment is not lost, will the Chancellor consider extending the deadlines for …”

“I recognise the conclusion in Baroness Hallett’s clear report and thank her for it. In Cornwall, our peripherality made it so much harder. Our local authority’s public health test and trace was halted by the Government on 12 March when fewer than half a dozen cases were in existence in Cornwall. PPE came very slowly. C…”

“Cornish ports such as Falmouth, which the Secretary of State visited during the campaign, have well-advanced plans to reconfigure to service floating offshore wind in the Celtic sea. Cornish further education providers are keen to gear up to provide specialised courses to support the speedy growth of that industry so t…”