Andrew George MP: speeches

Speeches

• 13 Oct 2025 · Social and Affordable Housing · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Secretary of State to his position and declare an interest as a volunteer member of the Cornwall Community Land Trust. The Secretary of State will be well aware that a perfect storm has hit the construction industry as far as the delivery of social housing is concerned: tender forecasts are not encouraging, Homes England’s scoring matrix is proving to be inflexible, and the cost-value ratio used by registered providers is not helping and is providing a disincentive to deliver in the most deprived communities. There are thousands of homes that community-led CLTs and others could be delivering now. Will the Secretary of State meet me and fellow members of the community-led housing sector? Otherwise, we will be waiting another five years to get shovel-ready affordable homes off the ground.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  Meur ras—pur dha—to my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon). If we are being boastful about the number of people who are supporting the petition, the St Ives constituency, I should say that which includes west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, came first with 470 signatures. It is worth pausing for a moment to respect the constituency for having achieved that figure. I do not want to make light of the issue, though. My hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke), the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth and others have rightly drawn attention to how it is a matter of deep emotion for everyone, but especially for the farmers who have been very deeply affected. Many farmers in my constituency have had a reactor and have been closed down and lost cattle. That has a very significant emotional impact on the family and on the viability of the holding, which is not something that we should dismiss or ignore. I have been involved in this debate for many years. I was a member of the Agriculture Committee back in 1997—that shows my age—when randomised badger control trials started. At that stage, the independent scientific group used triplet areas, with proactive cull, reactive cull or no action, and my constituency was included. I was a strong supporter of the trial. I ran the gauntlet of a lot of animal rights campaigners at the time by supporting a cull in the area. I believe that when we are establishing any kind of policy, we must base it on sound science; we cannot simply conjecture. The research by the independent scientific group provided a lot of baseline evidence against which we have been able to track and compare data over many years, which is really important. I supported it not because I wanted to see badgers culled, or because I felt that they were guilty, but on the basis that we needed to get the evidence. At the time, that was the only way of getting the evidence necessary to base our policy on sound science. Since then, there have been many further iterations in the development of the policy. I remember the policy of proactive culling, which is rightly being brought to a close by the Government now, being brought forward within hotspot areas in 2014. The debates in the House of Commons at the time were sharply divided between team farmer and team badger—I think they even referred to themselves as such—while I was saying, “What about team science?” We need to base this policy on the evidence. Some people will remember the then right hon. Member for North Shropshire, who was the Secretary of State, accusing badgers of shifting the goalposts, which caused a great deal of mirth. We had a lot of fun at his expense on that occasion, I am sorry to say. It is important that the Government look very carefully at the science as they go forward. To pre-empt what I will say at the end of my comments, I think they are coming to the right conclusion. I welcome the approach they appear to be taking. People have referred to badgers being involved in the spread of bovine TB, and it is reasonable to say that the science indicates that they are, but I would argue, and the evidence appears to show, that they are involved to a lesser extent than cattle-to-cattle transmission. A 2021 University of Cambridge molecular genetics paper by van Tonder et al. demonstrated that, on the basis of the studies they undertook, bovine TB is 17 times more likely to spread between cattle than to originate from badgers. I am interested to hear the Minister’s response to that. I imagine that she and her scientists have been looking closely at whole genome sequencing, which makes it possible not just to identify that there is a reactor, but to identify the source of the bovine TB and trace the sequencing process. That and the work of the University of Cambridge indicates where the infection originates. It is important to understand that when one is coming to conclusions in this respect. While we were debating the matter in 2014, I was talking to Professor Rosie Woodroffe of the Zoological Society of London, who was involved in the randomised badger control trials and other work and who advises the Government on their partnership group. We were working with farmers in the constituency on the first community-led badger vaccination project. The Zoological Society of London did some great work at the time. We recruited a lot of support among the community of people who were not vaccinators, although some wished to undertake the training to become vaccinators. That was the start of the first vaccination project where the community offered to support our farmers in the roll-out in Penwith—that is in the Land’s End area, for those that do not know my constituency well. Unfortunately, in 2015 I had to go on sabbatical from the House of Commons and therefore was not able to follow it as closely as I would have liked to as a Member of Parliament. There was then a worldwide shortage of the BCG vaccine, so projects like that could not proceed for two years. Nevertheless, the work of the Zoological Society of London continued across Penwith and the St Austell and Helston areas and is now rolling out further work elsewhere in Cornwall. A paper it published last August in People and Nature— for which, I say to the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth, the abstract was in Kernewek, which is a first—demonstrated that the vaccination trials over four years in the St Austell area showed very productive results. I hope that the Minister and her scientists are prepared to look closely at that.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is of course correct. The testing regime has been hotly debated—indeed, not just debated; successive Government Ministers and scientists have promised progress on the testing regime for many years. In 1997, the agriculture Select Committee looked at this issue and the benefits of shifting from the tuberculin skin test to the gamma interferon test. The gamma interferon is often used and is a much more sensitive test. It produces many more false positives, which perhaps one might argue is a good thing, and fewer false negatives, so perhaps, if one wants to have a baseline of clean cattle, one might use it, but it adds to the complexity. None of this is perfect, of course, but perhaps the Minister might address the issue of the testing regimes that the Government are prepared to consider using to get on top of the disease. I have a range of questions that I would like to ask the Minister. The first is about the tuberculin test and the gamma interferon test. I remember that back in 1997 there was a lot of talk about the diagnostic instrument for vaccinated animals test, or DIVA test, which has been referred to already, to differentiate between infected and vaccinated cattle. Clearly, that would be a golden bullet and enormously helpful to the industry, because until we get across that line, no cattle vaccine, no matter how effective it is, can be used, because farmers would not be able to sell cattle into the marketplace if they were not able to undertake that differentiation test. In 1997 we were told that an effective DIVA test was up to 10 years away. Every time we look at it, it is always 10 years away; the date simply rolls forward. We have been dealing with this issue for many years, so I would like to know this from the Minister: are we any closer to securing a DIVA test? Secondly, if we are going to base policy on vaccination, are there enough vaccinators and do we have a mechanism through which we can create more? My understanding is that at present we have nothing like enough people who have the licence to undertake vaccination. When we were rolling out the community-led vaccination trial in my own constituency all those years ago, we knew that we were fortunate to have a number of people available to us then, but we also knew at the time that if any of them were to fall ill, we would struggle to continue the work. Clearly, there needs to be significant investment in training, and it is not something that can simply be created overnight. Maybe we could bring in a lot of vets, but that is an expensive way of doing it. Perhaps the Minister would like to advise us on that. Gatcombe farm, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) has been referred to on many occasions already, so I will not go into it, but have the Government taken a view of the Gatcombe trials? If so, what has been identified? Can the Minister tell us whether we are on the cusp of the end of the culling? My understanding is that no new licences are likely to be granted. On the basis of the licences that have been granted, is it reasonable therefore to say that this winter will be the last when there is any culling at all? When the Government announced their policy last year, there was a lot of concern that there would be culling until the end of this Parliament, but it looks to me—I may be wrong—as if culling is going to end. If so, the vaccine, cattle security measures and biosecurity measures need to be brought forward as quickly as possible. What lessons have the Government learned from the Welsh Assembly policy so far? Wales has been ahead of England and Cornwall for some time in rolling out vaccines. Have any lessons been learned through conversations with other Government Departments? Similarly, southern Ireland was undertaking a widespread cull policy, which it stopped. What lessons have been learned there? I do not know, and I wonder whether the Government are fully aware.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the Minister’s helpful remarks. She says that the DIVA test is currently being tested, which is wonderful, but does she accept that, given it was possible to produce a vaccine within a relatively short time in the pandemic—I appreciate that civil servants seem to have a rather stretchy temporal language—a few years is not good enough? Can she be more specific, given that this is costing the country millions of pounds every year?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  Is that licence in a low-risk area?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  I am repeating myself, but the hon. Gentleman must understand that those research papers were questioned heavily as, during the period over which the statistics were gathered, they were not based on the same baseline nor on the same system as cattle testing at that time. Therefore, they did not compare like with like. That was very heavily questioned at the time, and it was never satisfactorily resolved.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Bovine Tuberculosis Control and Badger Culling · Hansard source

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  On the effectiveness of culling, the scientific papers often refer to the figure of 56%, but when we dig down into the detail it becomes less clear. There was variation in the testing regimes during the period when the apparent reduction was detected, so it was not clear at all. There is certainly a lot of science out there, but none of it is as clear as the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) purports.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is making a powerful point. She will note that in excess of 90 MPs are taking part, or seeking to take part, in this debate. Given that she is sitting next to the Minister, I hope she will lean on, or nudge, her to recognise that we should not necessarily wait for the provisions of the—no doubt welcome—White Paper when it comes. There is a need to act now, not only to address early intervention and early diagnosis, but to get to children during the earliest years and give them the help they need.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Qatar: Israeli Strike · Hansard source

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  In respect of sanctions, the Minister will be aware that I asked the then Foreign Secretary last week whether he would make sure that the UK has no involvement in the proposed Elbit contract, either commercial or governmental, that there is absolutely no use of the Akrotiri air base in Cyprus to the advantage of the Israeli military, and that there is absolutely no trade with the illegal settlements in the west bank. Can the Minister confirm that the position remains the same following the change of guard, and that he will make sure it is followed through?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Remote Coastal Communities · Hansard source

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  Meur ras, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon), not only on securing the debate but on the way in which he covered the issues and made such a strong case for the very special needs of remote and coastal areas. We hope that the new group of Ministers will attend to those needs, although the previous Ministers were doing good work in this regard, and I am not in any way dismissing or disapproving of that work. As the hon. Gentleman said, only 8% of the population of England, Wales and Cornwall is coastal. In my constituency, which covers west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, 95% of the population live in coastal communities—and, being in the far south-west of the country, we are in that sense remote. Most people in our area actually see London as remote; indeed, remoteness is a concept that depends on which end of the telescope we are looking through. The big difficulty for people living in coastal areas is the remoteness of where the decisions are taken, and for them the remoteness is the other way around: people in the centre are often not listening to, or not hearing, the words and the needs of people in rural areas and, in particular, people in coastal areas such as the hon. Gentleman’s, mine and those of all the other Members who have spoken this evening. I welcome the Minister, who needs time to absorb the magnificence of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. I am using my speech as a buffer during which she can absorb that magnificence, but I want to add a few points, which I hope she will take on board, in addition to those that the hon. Gentleman made. I particularly want to embellish a little further his points about housing. It is not an accident that coastal areas often contain a lot of highly desirable housing markets, where a lot of people with wealth are very keen to invest their money—that is very much an investment, although sometimes they also buy houses for personal recreational use. What we have found in Cornwall in recent years, especially since the small business rate relief was introduced in 2012, is that there has been an almost industrial level of shifting of second homes—from council tax to business rates—that are purported to be or actually have become holiday lets for business rating purposes. Owners apply for small business rate relief, and then pay nothing. We are talking about wealthy people, who can afford more than one home, simply flipping their property, with the benefit of their tax lawyers and others, depending on what is to their advantage in terms of tax. Frankly, one must take into account the obscenity of the fact that all those who had done that and were entitled to small business rate relief also benefited from covid aid—so they received four levels of payment amounting to £20,000 apiece. In the case of Cornwall, most of those people have their primary addresses outside Cornwall, and one might argue that they did not need a penny piece of that money, but they still claimed it. By the end of the last decade half a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money had gone towards subsidising the wealthy having holiday homes in Cornwall. I have made this point to Treasury Ministers and Housing Ministers before, and I am somewhat surprised that Ministers have not yet been prepared to look at this policy and to consider at least reviewing it. Surely it is far better to spend half a billion pounds on first homes for the thousands of families in desperate need, rather than simply shovelling that money into the pockets of wealthy second home owners. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to look at that. My next point is perhaps rather unique to the Isles of Scilly. Some of the big pressures that Scillonians face relate to transport, given that they are 30 miles off the mainland. Not a lot of people appreciate that from east to west, my constituency is about 70 miles when one takes into account all that wet stuff between Land’s End and the Isles of Scilly. It is a very expensive area to cover, either by air or by ferry. What we are seeking for the Isles of Scilly is something approaching parity with the Scottish islands. People on the Isles of Scilly pay four, five or sometimes six times the amount that people in Scottish islands would normally expect to pay to get on a ferry or to fly to and from the islands. That also has an impact on freight and on build costs on the islands, meaning that although we desperately need affordable homes, it is very difficult to get them off the ground within the viability thresholds of Homes England. It is a very significant challenge. There is no parity in relation to older people’s bus passes, because there is not a bus and those subsidies therefore do not exist. People who live in the off-islands have to pay significant amounts—£20 or £30—for a ferry just to get from an off-island to St Mary’s to do some shopping. There is no such thing as subsidised transport, and the £3 fares, as for the buses, would be really nice between the islands if we could possibly get it. The Isles of Scilly do not have parity with the mainland on that. The Isles of Scilly also do not have parity on post-16 education. There is not sufficient capacity in the islands to provide it there, so all the 16 or 17-year-olds—under the mandatory rules that apply for post-16 education—need to go to the mainland, but there are insufficient funds available to be able to do that. I am talking to Baroness Smith at the moment to try to make sure that the Isles of Scilly get the full support, so that students get the backing not only for transport costs, but for accommodation and support. There are a lot of costs in relation to the Isles of Scilly that are simply not met, and I hope the Minister is seized of that. The final point, which the hon. Gentleman, who represents Camborne, Redruth and Hayle, emphasised—and I know he will be serving on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill Committee—is that it is absolutely important to get devolution right. In some coastal areas such as Cornwall it is really important not simply to apply the same bland uniformity that we might be able to get away with for other locations. Places such as Cornwall need a unique settlement. We were making good progress on that with the Minister’s predecessors, who were certainly understanding, and the conversations were going well. I hope that the Minister will be listening to the voice of Cornwall on the devolution settlement. The only region for Cornwall clearly has to be Cornwall, and there are very strong arguments for it. I do not have the opportunity to make them this evening, but I know the hon. Gentleman and, indeed, all six Members from Cornwall—and the Isles of Scilly—are very keen to make sure that the message gets to this new group of Ministers that Cornwall deserves a special settlement on devolution.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Remote Coastal Communities · Hansard source

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  I am so sorry to interrupt the Minister’s peroration, but she covered without detail the funding formula for local authorities and whether it will properly address the poverty and deprivation in rural areas. Cornwall is the poorest region in the country and achieved European objective 1 status—one of the highest levels of regional development aid—but it is not seen in Government eyes as the poorest region, certainly as far as the criteria is concerned. Will the Minister ensure that the criteria the Government use properly assesses the levels of deprivation in rural areas?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Duty of Candour for Public Authorities and Legal Representation for Bereaved Families · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool West Derby (Ian Byrne) on bringing forward this debate and on the passion with which he is advancing the case. The attendance in the Chamber today demonstrates the strength of feeling on the issue. My contribution will draw attention to an area of Government where the duty of candour already exists, at least supposedly—the Department of Health and Social Care. I hope that the Government will learn lessons from the way in which that is conducted within the Department. I relate the case of one of my constituents, Joe Poynton, whose daughter Sally was murdered by his undiagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic grandson Jacob in June 2021. For three years prior to her death, Sally battled unsuccessfully to get diagnosis and treatment for Jacob. He is now receiving that in hospital, but the family are devastated at the price that she had to pay—and they are paying—to achieve it. There is a long tragic history of innocent people being killed by young people with schizophrenia, sometimes undiagnosed and sometimes diagnosed, but usually on the radar of mental health services. Sally Poynton had made repeated attempts to get her son diagnosed, but the service never got on top of the issues. I have already furnished the Minister with my questions, because the attempts to get reports out of the NHS have simply failed—reports have been heavily redacted. What legislative changes can be brought in to correct the failings of the service in this case? What legislative changes are proposed to ensure that an adult discharged from hospital following a mental health admission has a GP assigned to them? Can the Minister ensure that measures are proposed to reverse the disappointing lack of professional curiosity within the service? Finally, can the Minister ensure that there is legal representation at all inquests? The NHS has professionals, barristers and lawyers supporting it, and individuals and families do not.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Duty of Candour for Public Authorities and Legal Representation for Bereaved Families · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right about the need for the state to be open and honest in all these cases. As I mentioned earlier, the duty of candour already exists in the NHS. Nevertheless, in inquests where the duty of candour should be to the fore, the state comes along with barristers, lawyers and their supporters, and the victims of actions in the past are not represented at all. If the same resource that went into protecting the reputations of NHS staff went into supporting patients, these issues would not happen.

• 2 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · Hansard source

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  Meur ras—I am grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. He will be aware that in previous Parliaments I led campaigns to secure the recognition of the Cornish language and the Cornish people. Does he agree that this is not an issue of isolationism? It is not about cutting ourselves off, but about cutting ourselves into the celebration of diversity and having the identity of a place properly recognised and respected so that it can grow rather than be supressed. Surely devolution is about enabling places rather than controlling them, which is what I fear this Bill will do.

• 2 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes a very strong case for Cornwall. He should urge his colleagues in government to welcome amendments to the Bill that strengthen Cornwall’s ability to achieve its unique and very special status, which we believe needs to be enshrined in this legislation as well as the historic record.

• 1 Sept 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  We often get distracted by the semantics and jurisprudence of terms such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”, but it is clear that, with the exception of a few, this House appears united—just as the country is as a whole—in its opposition to the actions of the far-right Netanyahu Government. The Foreign Secretary says that he wants to give diplomacy a chance—he constantly repeats that intention—but can he demonstrate to us that he is not being completely ignored throughout this? If he cannot, will he at least assure us that he will not allow the Elbit contract to go through, that RAF Akrotiri will not be used to the advantage of the Israeli military, and that there is no trade with illegal settlements?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Industrial Strategy: Cornwall · Hansard source

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  Further to that very encouraging response from the Secretary of State, does he acknowledge that Cornwall is the poorest region in the United Kingdom? It has great opportunities, as the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) pointed out, but it has been hampered since losing the highest level of EU structural aid. If we are going to take the opportunities and overcome the challenges that Cornwall faces, would the Secretary of State be prepared to meet the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth, me and other Cornish Members to establish a bespoke strategy for Cornwall to drive the private and public investment needed?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Future of the Post Office · Hansard source

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  I am pleased that the Minister has announced that the overall size and shape of the network will remain the same, and he has also indicated that remuneration must be part of the consultation. As he will know—I have corresponded with him on this matter—the towns of Porthleven and Newlyn in my constituency have been without post offices for a number of years, because no one is prepared to take them on at the remuneration levels that are available. Is the Minister prepared to consider whether he sees those post offices more as Government offices, and to expand their role in terms of information, connectivity, and feedback across a number of Government Departments, to build up the services available in post offices? If he is meeting people, will he meet me to discuss how we can resolve the situation in my constituency?