Gideon's MP Column

Top-down and mandatory housing targets have never been as unreasonable as the ones being imposed on Somerset by the current Labour government, who say the developer-led approach will reduce house prices – it won’t and it never has.

In 2021, I began campaigning against the way 1,100 acres at Orchard Portman was sold off to housebuilders by the Crown Estate. Many had assumed the land would be sold to other farmers to produce food and manage our countryside.

I raised a petition and held a public meeting, along with local councillor colleagues, in Stoke St Mary. The land had been sold off without the usual payments back to the public purse becoming owed on the winning of any planning permission.

The campaign culminated in my bid to get Parliament to investigate the sale – unfortunately MPs on the Public Accounts Committee at the time decided not to do so.

Now chickens are coming home to roost with the development that was always going to be proposed following a sale of this kind.

The 7,000-home proposal could mean a new town of 15,000 plus people across the motorway from Taunton which could overwhelm the balanced development we would all want to see in our county.

That’s why I have now written to the powerful Public Accounts Committee again to call for a full investigation to take place.

More widely across our area the government is saying Somerset must allocate land to build 75,000 homes in its new Local Plan.

No one denies we need new housing but population growth of this scale and speed has never happened in Somerset’s 1,000-year plus history and the fact this will be mostly private houses for sale means they simply won’t be affordable to many local people.

Need not greed should drive our housing provision, and the focus should be on community-led, locally planned development which prioritises really affordable homes – like proper council houses - for local people who need them.

I was, therefore, delighted that we saw a great turnout for the recent public meeting organised by Taunton and Wellington Liberal Democrats to highlight the need for the government to change its approach and give us back our say on how and where development happens in our area.

I was also really pleased last week to be invited to hear from, and speak with, Wellington veterans at one of their regular get-togethers in the town.

The NHS Armed Forces Outreach Service does brilliant work to support veterans and our local Armed Forces community and I heard so many examples of health-related issues they had picked up and helped with.

As ever prevention is better than cure when it comes to keeping healthy. The government requirement to NHS Somerset to cut 50% from its budget is meant to hit backroom office-based roles only, but this vital outreach work could be cut back as a result.

Along with other Somerset MPs, I am opposing cuts of this kind, have discussed it with the NHS and am writing to them to call for the service to remain intact.

Finally, I have also written this week to the new Health Secretary (the third since the 2024 election) to demand an end to the crisis of our failing maternity buildings at Musgrove Park Hospital.

Not only did they come out as the worst in the region, if not the country, in the recent National Maternity Review, but problems at North Devon Hospital mean patients may be arriving from further afield to add to an already busy department.

I was delighted when we managed to get agreement to a new building a couple of years ago but dismayed that 2033 was somehow seen as soon enough.

It isn’t, and the government must recognise it needs to come sooner, please add you name to my petition at tandwlibdems.org/our-campaigns/maternity-unit#c342090 to strengthen the case I can make.