Rachel Gilmour MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Sept 2026 · Rural Upper-tier Local Authorities · Hansard source

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  As a part-Devon Member of Parliament—the other part of my constituency is in Somerset—I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. The part of my constituency in Devon is 800 square miles and will form just part of an enormous rural authority. Does she agree that that authority does not have the fiscal power to sustain itself?

• 2 Sept 2026 · EU Membership Referendum: Impact on the UK · Hansard source

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  It is elected—it is a Parliament.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Extreme Heat: Preparedness · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher. I thank the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for introducing this important debate. The reports this week have been horrifying. That thousands may have died in this heat shows how ill-equipped we are as a country to deal with this kind of weather. I represent the rural and coastal constituency of Tiverton and Minehead, with a disproportionately elderly population, and the underlying health inequalities that often go with an area of its character. When the heat comes, my constituents are among the first to suffer and the least equipped to cope. I wish to highlight plainly where preparedness has failed them. In part of my constituency, not only has this period not been managed, it has been completely mismanaged. Some children cooling off in the River Exe on hot summer’s day, as any of us would want to, fell ill because of an alleged discharge into the river. The children’s father kayaked up the river later yesterday evening and reports encountering a pungent sewage odour in the vicinity of one of Tiverton’s sewage treatment work sites. He witnessed what appeared to be active discharge, which the company’s tracker failed to reflect, because it had not been updated. A monitoring system that does not monitor is worse than useless; it is a fig leaf. There is a hosepipe ban, although the company had months of warning. A wet start to the year gave way to weeks of record heat that was forecast and foreseeable. Yet, when the pressure came, South West Water was not ready. The imposition of the ban is on mid-Devon and parts of east Devon but nowhere else in the region. My constituents want to know why they alone are paying the price of a company’s failure to plan. Where was the investment? Where was the foresight? That is not bad luck, it is dereliction of duty. It is hard to shake the distinct impression that to South West Water stakeholders come a distant second behind shareholder interests, which is unacceptable. The consequences go beyond garden hoses. At a slaughter site in Willand, water pressure was cut to a quarter of its normal levels, leading to an unfolding animal welfare crisis. It posed a potential public health risk, as a site that cannot access adequate water cannot maintain hygiene standards. As the MP for the area, it took me five phone calls yesterday before someone from South West Water picked up the phone. I found the lack of urgency and concern to be outstanding. I am assured that some water pressure has now been restored, but this is on a cliff edge, and major welfare issues remain a concern. Despite what I heard from its new chief executive in a breakfast meeting just a few weeks ago, it seems as though South West Water has not learned any lessons. Finally, heat preparedness is also as much about the everyday infrastructure that people rely on. Buses, in particular, are used disproportionately by elderly residents, the very group most at risk of heatstroke. Too many buses still lack adequate air-conditioning. That has to be part of the preparedness conversation. This heat will come again and again. We need a system and the infrastructure that meets it head on and corporate entities that put people first, not profit.