Pippa Heylings MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Mar 2026 · Rural Roads · Hansard source

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  Potholes are not just an inconvenience for my constituents; they are a costly safety risk that causes distress and frustration. Years of underfunding and a policy of managed decline by the previous Conservative county council administration have left Cambridgeshire facing an estimated £800 million backlog in repairs, of which £169 million is for the greater Cambridge area, home to Europe’s largest biomedical and life sciences cluster. One would think that that would have stimulated investment, but the Government allocated just £12 million to address that backlog. To its credit, Cambridgeshire’s Liberal Democrat-run county council has more than doubled its investment in highways maintenance to £73 million. Results are starting to be seen in some areas, such as the recently resurfaced Granham’s Road. I drove along it last weekend, and it is smooth and safe—if the Government brought the money needed to local councils, that is what roads could be like. On behalf of my constituents, I ask the Minister: will she commit to resolving the £800 million backlog in Cambridgeshire to allow for the proper road resurfacing that my constituents deserve?

• 5 Feb 2026 · Road Safety · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) for securing this important debate. Since 2018, there have been 1,506 casualties on our roads in South Cambridgeshire and 34 fatalities, which we all know is 34 too many. Road safety is often discussed in terms of behaviour, speed or enforcement—issues we have heard much about today—but for many of my constituents, the danger begins with the road surface itself. Potholes, worn carriageways and crumbling edges are not just a sign of successive Governments’ failure to invest in our roads and highways but a real safety risk, particularly for cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians and drivers forced to swerve to avoid damage. I hear regularly from constituents whose tyres have blown, wheels have cracked or bikes have been thrown off balance because of the unsafe roads beneath them. This is a recurring nightmare for all councils. I want to take this opportunity to place on record the work of Cambridgeshire county council, which, as the highways authority, is doing everything it reasonably can in very difficult circumstances. Just last night the chair of highways, Councillor Alex Beckett, was out checking the round-the-clock patching of potholes on Cambridge Road in Great Shelford village, following repeated calls from residents and local councillors highlighting just how dangerous this road had become. In the same village, Farhan Hussain, an award-winning curry takeaway owner for whom I recently presented an early-day motion, found a different way of raising awareness: he went viral with a video of himself placing the largest naan in East Anglia in a pothole. To be fair, the council did get it mended within the week. Under Liberal Democrat leadership, the council’s investment in capital maintenance has more than doubled, and it is delivering tens of thousands of pothole repairs every year. The council is also challenging contractors who do shoddy work, and work that does not meet the right standard is being redone at no extra cost to the taxpayer. However, even with that effort, this situation is untenable. Cambridgeshire’s roads were not designed for the volume of traffic they now carry, let alone the growth planned for the Greater Cambridge area. This is where the Government must take responsibility. Local councils are legally required to keep roads safe, but they cannot do so without fair, long-term funding. It is like an old pair of trousers—the limited funding given to councils is forcing them to patch the patches, rather than buy the new pair of trousers that is needed. I urge the Government to recognise that proper, scheduled resurfacing is safer, cheaper and longer lasting and will keep people safe on our roads.

• 3 Dec 2025 · Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor · Hansard source

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  No, I will continue, if that is all right. Across Cambridgeshire almost 50,000 additional homes are forecast by 2041. The reason for this growth is that greater Cambridge, which constitutes the constituency of the hon. Member for Cambridge and mine of South Cambridgeshire, is one of the most economically dynamic regions of the country, with an annual turnover of £30 billion, employing more than 110,000 people. Although Cambridge is the brand, my constituency includes the largest biomedical campus in Europe. It is home to the global headquarters for AstraZeneca, the Addenbrooke’s, Rosie and Royal Papworth hospitals, and the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, whose researchers have won 12 Nobel prizes. We have the Wellcome Genome Campus, one of the world’s largest concentrations of genomics and biodata, and the Babraham Institute and Granta Park, home to the European headquarters of Illumina—I am just saying that a very small rural constituency is a great partner within the corridor. But with that, as we have heard, comes chronic underfunding, and under successive Governments growth has not kept pace with infrastructure. Take healthcare: the A&E department of Addenbrooke’s hospital was built to serve only a quarter of the patients it now sees, and the Cambridge University hospitals trust operates with a deficit of around 162 acute beds. The new acute strategy has been developed as a design, but there has not yet been any decision on a new A&E hospital. Transport tells the same story, as Members from across the Chamber have said. The appalling public transport options currently available and the commuting gridlock damages the quality of life of all residents. I join the east of England all-party parliamentary group and my hon. Friend the Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) in calling for the Ely and Haughley junction to be improved to manage freight, to get lorries off the road and to enable more passenger trains. East West Rail purports to have resolved some of the transport connectivity issues across the corridor, but in my constituency it has been dogged by problems from the very start. There has been really poor community engagement, and nothing has been offered except huge infrastructure going through it. I repeat my invitation to the Rail Minister to come to my constituency to answer the questions of my constituents. The proposed Cambridge east station is in my constituency, not in Cambridge, so it would be very good to have the Minister there. This cannot just be about house building. The Greater Cambridge shared planning service has just won an award for being one of the best planning authorities in the country, because it does strategic planning and community engagement. Let us keep water and nature—the deal breakers in this—sustainable. Would the Minister convene with Lord Vallance to deliver joined-up infrastructure, together with all the relevant authorities?