Cornwall should be more magnificent, says Labour MP hopeful

As the General Election looms I will be chatting to various candidates across Cornwall in the coming weeks. One constituency of particular interest is Truro and Falmouth where all of the candidates are currently women - Cherilyn Mackrory, the current Conservative MP, Labour's Jayne Kirkham, Liberal Democrat Ruth Gripper and Karen La Borde of the Green Party.

Following a recent interview with Cherilyn Mackrory, this week I chat to Jayne Kirkham. I met her at Labour's constituency office in Truro within hours of Keir Starmer announcing the party's six key policies pledge, including delivering "economic stability" and setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power energy company.

"I like the pledges," said Jayne. "It distils and clarifies things like the NHS with 40,000 appointments a week, 13,000 new police officers and PCSOs and the growth plan for GB Energy as that's fabulous for Cornwall. The investment that hopefully will come to the county for offshore wind... it will all help campaigning."

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A criticism aimed at Labour is that there haven't been any solid, consistent policies.

"You do hear that but there has been a lot of policy - we have our five missions in a 25-page document. There's a lot of detail there but it's very hard to get that detail across. This will help - cutting NHS waiting times by this much and employing and training this many new doctors and nurses. It's there in a pledge, all funded and backed up."

Has it all been left too late though?

"I don't think so because the election is looking like the autumn, so doing it now so people have a few months to think about it, understand some of those concrete things we're actually going to do from the start will hopefully now lodge in people's minds."

What are the major issues people in Truro and Falmouth are bringing up when Jayne is knocking on doors?

"Everybody wants change now, everybody's fed up and exhausted. They don't see anything changing, they see things getting worse and worse. It's cost of living, energy, prices during the winter. I was visiting houses during the winter and people were answering in darkness, opening the door in their coats.

"The amount of people you meet who are waiting for NHS appointments and operations, particularly hips and knees, which stops people working which then impacts on everything else. Dentistry is a huge issue in Cornwall. I lost my NHS dentist with my son just after Covid, so unless you pay privately now you can't get treatment - even paying privately is difficult to find. To sign on with an NHS dentist seems to be almost impossible. We've promised 700,000 new dental appointments and we'd have to look again at that dental contract which was supposed to be fixed 14 years ago and hasn't been.

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"Housing is an enormous issue - there's a lot for people to talk about at the moment. People talk to me about the waiting list - we need more social housing which is something which Labour would definitely want to do. It's having those new builds available for first-time buyers, having houses for affordable rent and making sure developers stick to the affordables they've promised.

"Of course, we have to look at second homes and holiday lets - it's something that all the parties agree on down here now. It's something that's been growing for ages, but the Government have done nothing, so now they're looking at doubling council tax on second homes but the horse has bolted. We need some of those things now - we're talking about licensing and regulating short-term holiday lets and Airbnbs.

"Sewage is still happening and is one of those things that's been ignored for a long time. It's got worse and worse, and everyone's looking at it now, but of course nothing was done for so long - the dividends have gone, the cost of fixing it would be so huge. Some of Labour's policies would be stopping bonuses and criminal sanctions for water bosses who don't fix things. It's just not the ability to go in the water, it's mental health, it's physical health, it's some of our economy which is impacted by putting sewage warnings on beaches. We've got some really serious policies about it.

"The big devolution agenda that Labour has could be brilliant for Cornwall for some of those specific issues we have down here which they don't have in Westminster."

How would a Labour devolution deal for Cornwall work? Would that mean our own National Assembly or Cornish Parliament?

"Labour have been quite clear that devolution would be different in different areas. There would be a bespoke deal for Cornwall, so we would be talking directly to Government about that. It could mean a suite of powers to look at second homes could be devolved down here.

"Cornwall has so much to offer - say if you look at GB Energy, floating offshore wind, geothermal, lithium, tin and all those critical minerals, we've got this huge offer and we could really be a net contributor to the economy of the country if we had the backing. Labour is talking about a new skills board so we could have more power over what courses we run at Cornwall College and Truro College."

We talked specifically about the constituency she hopes to represent. I told her, as a Truronian, it feels to me like the city is currently in the doldrums.

"We have six steps for change to crack down on antisocial behaviour, so we're looking at more neighbourhood police and PCSOs, and more youth projects. It's about giving our high streets the chance to flourish. One of our plans is if a building is empty for 12 months or more, maybe the council could make a deal with the landlord so they're offered on lower rents, so you could get someone in them. There are things like that which could be done for the town centre.

"A lot of the issues with Treliske and the NHS down here are about the workforce. The same with social care - it's difficult to get people down here to work in those industries. At the moment we're spending a lot of money on agency staff and we need people to come down here to work, but they need to find somewhere to live. That's why the Fair Pay Agreements in our employment green paper is so important, so people working in social care can see that pay progression and see that it's a career with a future."

What about unique needs for Falmouth?

"I've lived in Falmouth for nearly 19 years now. There's lots going on - the universities give it a night-time economy but there's a downside to that. Again, housing is a massive issue. I think the town has so much potential with the green industrial revolution and what part the docks could play in that.

"It needs the investment that we would bring with the port, which could be part of a proper industrial strategy for Cornwall."

What are people telling her are the reasons they wouldn't vote for Labour?

"It's more that people are fed up but they don't see anything changing. I think people have lost faith with the system. You get 'well, you're all the same, nothing will change'. People are just rightly fed up so you then have to talk about the fact that things have been this way for 14 years because we've had one government for 14 years, particularly down here.

"At the moment we have a Conservative government, six Conservative MPs and a Conservative council. I ask people if things like housing and the health service have been getting better or worse under this government. If they have been getting worse, maybe you should think about these things that we have to offer and the changes we could make.

"We are the main opposition in Truro and Falmouth. We, in the last two elections, have been so close. We've been in second place by a very long way - 4,500 last time and 3,700 the time before, so we are really close now and it's getting that across that if you want change then Labour is the vote for change here.

"I've been in the party for 30 years and the reason you do it is you want to make change. I was an employment lawyer right at the start, so I love the idea that the living wage will be a genuine living wage set by the Low Pay Commission, getting rid of 'hire and fire' and zero hours contracts.

"Then I came to Cornwall as a Navy wife which gave me a completely different perspective. You can see what's happened at Culdrose and how it's shrunk, and how the Forces have suffered.

"I was a teaching assistant at Falmouth School for a long time. In Cornwall we get about £6,500 per child in secondary school, which is lower than the cities and a huge amount of other places. I started off as a SEN (special educational needs) assistant - you look at SEN down here and even when you jump through all those hoops, it so much harder to get things like EHCPs ( education, health and care plans), but when you do the provision isn't there and the funding isn't there. So those 6,500 new teachers are massively important."

So why should voters in Truro, Falmouth and other parts of the constituency trust Jayne to be their MP?

"Because I've been doing this a long time, I've a track history with education and workers' rights, and the fact I've been on Cornwall Council. I've been doing a lot of work since I was elected in 2018. Cornwall will be at the sharp end of the climate emergency - storms, flooding, that kind of thing. One of the first things that I did as a councillor was put in the cross-party amendment for the climate emergency. That helped a lot in Cornwall and was massively important.

"I did some stuff around the council buying things locally. So, for example, supporting Labour's national policy of buying 50 per cent of our food from local sources, so that will help farmers. I've chaired the pension schemes - we've been able to put just under £200m of Cornish pensioners' money into a local impact fund, so we've been funding low carbon rented houses being built in Cornwall, putting money into renewables in Cornwall. That's Cornish people's money going into the Cornish economy.

"On top of that, I've been working with people in my division, working on housing cases, litter picking and doing all those things that have made me a big part of the community."

She added: "Cornwall is a fantastic place - it could be a more fantastic place. Wages are still low in Cornwall, 20 per cent lower than the rest of the country. That should not be the case. It shouldn't have taken so long to get to the point where we're changing that. I live here and I work here, my son has grown up here. He wants to go to university now and he could do that in Cornwall, but for a lot of skills children still have to leave the county.

"I want there to be more opportunities and options to allow young people to stay here, work here and have well paid, highly skilled jobs. We also have that imbalance that other places don't have where we have lower than average wages but higher than average house prices. That is something that we have to sort out with properly affordable housing.

"Cornwall is and should be more magnificent."

Later this month I will be chatting to Lib Dem candidate for Truro and Falmouth, Ruth Gripper.