Rachel Gilmour MP: speeches

Speeches

• 9 Sept 2026 · Pharmacies: Government Funding · Hansard source

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  Last Friday I visited a community pharmacy in Tiverton, and it was announced on Monday that an application for another pharmacy in my constituency had been turned down. Currently I have three pharmacies in Tiverton when I actually need four. Does the hon. Member agree that we really need to grasp this nettle and make sure we have enough pharmacies on our high streets?

• 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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  Will the hon. Lady give way?

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

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  The hon. Gentleman will no doubt recall the pleasant experience we had in Odesa recently, with Russian drones almost falling on our heads. Reports from Germany suggest that the recent drone attack on Leipzig airport was indeed coming from Moscow. Does he not agree that dealing with and having a good relationship with our nearest allies is the safest route to our national security?

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

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  It is elected—it is a Parliament.

• 1 Sept 2026 · Face-to-Face Banking: Rural Areas · Hansard source

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  Like my hon. Friend’s constituency, mine is large at 1,250 square miles and the population is elderly. The No. 25 bus runs every two and half hours. If a constituent needs to bank in Taunton, it takes five hours to get there and back. Does she agree that increasing face-to-face banking services, particularly in enormous constituencies such as mine, is crucial?

• 15 Jul 2026 · National Energy System Operator: Blackout Risk · Hansard source

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  I should remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. For 30 years, I have been a member of the GMB trade union, where I was greatly supported as a whistleblower, and I have just joined the board of WhistleblowersUK. With that in mind, what is the Minister doing to actively protect whistleblowers who come forward with serious concerns about both public and private organisations, and will the Government heed Liberal Democrat calls to establish an office of the whistleblower to better help and protect these individuals?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation · Hansard source

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  I hear what the Minister says; as a lifelong Liberal, I personally found those years extremely difficult. That said, rurality is not taken into account when the Government give out money for local areas. Accounting for rurality and remoteness in local government funding outcomes would make a massive difference to my constituency and others.

• 14 Jul 2026 · Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. There is a version of coastal communities that we like to tell ourselves, of chocolate-box fishing villages and tight-knit communities where people look out for one another, and there is certainly truth in that. In Tiverton and Minehead, I represent one and I see it. We talk of coastal areas being at the end of the line, but there is no line for west Somerset. It is a cul-de-sac. The west part of my constituency, for all its natural beauty, suffers from the lowest social mobility in the country, and it ranks among the poorest travel times to employment, at the 96th percentile. Education and employment opportunities for those living along the coast are so limited that teenagers are catching a bus at 6 o’clock in the morning, with a two-hour journey each way, just to reach the further education courses they need. It is a material hit to a young person’s aspirations, forcing them to compromise before they have even started and putting them at a direct disadvantage to their peers elsewhere. It creates a profound poverty of aspiration and ambition, brought about by an environment that tells people they have been forgotten. That is why my party has consistently called on the Government to apply a fair funding formula that properly takes into account the realities of coastal and rural life for education, travel, health and much more. Perhaps the right hon. Member for Makerfield (Andy Burnham), much of whose political brand rests on regional empowerment, might turn his attention to the south-west as he closes in on No. 10, because the coastal and rural premium is real and is felt acutely. Over the last few months, my office has produced a report into dementia in Tiverton and Minehead. Isolation and loneliness ran through it as a constant, unrelenting theme, not as one issue among many, but as the backdrop against which everything else is experienced. This year alone, the west Somerset coastal area has lost dental services, its post office, hospital scanning equipment and its local citizens advice bureau. They are services that young and old alike depend on, and one by one they are disappearing. Devolution in Tiverton and Minehead means meaningful evolution to prosperity, opportunity and a better future for all my constituents.

• 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.