The new government has announced housing targets are intended to improve the availability of affordable homes for locals. However, I fear it is more likely to have the opposite effect.

They propose to almost double the rate of housing growth in Cornwall. They believe this will contribute to a fall in house prices and therefore improved affordability for local families. There’s little likelihood this will work, and Cornwall’s experience suggests the opposite will happen.

Having tracked the way the housing market works in places like Cornwall over recent decades, it seems clear that development tracks house price inflation and slows when the market stagnates. Higher housebuilding targets are reflected in higher hope values land adjoining every community around Cornwall; land value speculators sit on those sites until planning permission granted enables a maximisation of development value and undermines the viability of affordable developments suitable to meet local need.

Cornwall doesn’t have a major problem with NIMBYs resisting development. Cornwall has been the one of the fastest growing places in the United Kingdom – nearly trebling its housing stock in the last 60 years – and yet the housing problems of local people have got worse. Housebuilding targets are a means to an end. The intended purpose is to meet housing need. Yet, in Cornwall, this is one of the best examples of how that policy completely fails.

I will be holding a debate with the government’s housing minister in September. I hope to persuade the government to think again.

Growing concern about protests by right wing agitators on the streets of towns in Cornwall has provoked local people to peacefully counter this, to stand up for tolerance and kindness in our society. The burning of libraries, looting of shops, attacking of mosques, and of people who “look foreign” has brought out the very worse of a small rump in our society. We are better than this. Thank you to all those who have contacted me and to promote our true British values.

The government’s intention to devolve powers to regions and local authorities is welcome. However, I’m sure that all six Cornish MP will stand together - making clear the only suitable region for Cornwall is Cornwall. We want real devolved powers rather than to become merely a bigger agent of central government, as proposed by the previous government.

I’m disappointed the government plans to withdraw winter fuel allowance for some older people previously been entitled to it. Of course, the government must fill the black hole in public finances left by the previous Conservative government. But they could do that by closing tax loopholes and tax dodges taken advantages by the wealthy, rather than to make those who are already struggling pay for this. The new government should be reversing the widening inequality, not extending it.

Andrew George, Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives