SURELY the government won’t stop my Bill to help locals in housing need?

But that’s what ministers plan when it’s brought to the Commons this Friday.

My Homes & Planning Bill would back communities which care about the housing needs of locals and help them fight back.

It would:

· Extend the community right to buy, helping parish & town councils, community land trusts and other local charities secure land and buildings for social/affordable, community-led homes for locals

· Create a new planning rule which would mean homes could only be converted to second/holiday use by securing planning permission.

Our housing and planning system operates as if the housing needs of local people were an inconvenient afterthought. Despite tinkering at the edges, successive governments have created a housing and planning system which rewards land-value speculation more than charitable providers of affordable homes, puts developer profit before affordability of homes, and turns a blind eye to local homes becoming absorbed into property investment portfolios as second homes and holiday lets.

These policies are not fuelled by the politics of envy, but a desire for social justice. Local Labour Party members – led by Cornelius Ollivier (who once stood against me in a general election) - have been on the streets gathering support for a petition backing my Bill.

The policies are simple, practical, balanced measures to help our communities remain places where local people can live, work and raise their families. I find it hard to believe ministers would block this.

Time to reflect on another important campaign success. Cornwall’s declared strategic authority status provides a solid foundation on which to build a stronger Cornwall. One where more of the decisions which affect Cornwall are made in Cornwall.

However, there’s still much more to do. Though we’ve successfully averted Cornwall becoming drawn into the dilute pointlessness of a combined mayoral authority with other territories - this only fixes the foundations.

Devolution is a process, not a single event. If we fail to secure everything we ask for now, we can still bag what we can. Then consolidate and campaign to secure more.

Success was founded on a cross-Party team. All six Cornish MPs working together with the coalition-run Cornwall Council. Attempts by others to divide us have failed. The government impressed that we’ve spoken with one voice.

We had previously been firmly told Cornwall would HAVE TO form a ‘Combined Mayor Authority’ with a wider South West. There was even a presumptuous body set up with government sanction and finance ‘The Great South West’ to cunningly lay the path towards this.

However, the only region for Cornwall is Cornwall. This isn’t about cutting Cornwall off, but cutting Cornwall into a wider, indeed global, celebration of diversity, for which Cornwall has much to be proud of and recognised for.

To become submerged into a placeless South West would have undermined Cornwall’s best interests.