Putin’s appeaser in the US Whitehouse should be reminded that any “special relationship” with the UK can only be based upon truth, respect for democracy, justice and respect for international law. It’s clear the countries of Europe need to come together and step up to the mark. For the good of Ukraine, and the good of a safe and secure Europe, we cannot risk dependence on unreliable partners.

I took part in a recent Westminster debate on ‘Housing Targets’.

The Prime Minister says he’ll “back builders, not blockers”. But this is a false battle.

No government in the last 60 years has met its housebuilding targets (unless the government mostly builds them itself). Policy based on setting high housebuilding targets is based on a naive delusion that private developers would be willing to collude with the government to drive down the price of completed homes; and to generally act against their commercial interests. Unfortunately, all mainstream political parties (including my own) are adherents to this delusion.

Housebuilding targets are a means to an end. The end, of course, being to meet (or at least reduce) housing need. If instead, the government set targets to meet need, it would force developers to show how they could meet that need rather than greed.

Cornwall is one of the best examples of where successive government policy has failed. It’s one of the fastest growing places in the UK – Cornwall has almost trebling its housing stock in the last 60 years. Yet the housing problems of local families have got worse. Setting and meeting high housing targets doesn’t work in places like Cornwall, because developers make more money building homes for property investors (eg second and holiday homeowners) than in meeting housing need.

The government’s agricultural inheritance tax plans risk penalising the very struggling family farms our country desperately needs, whilst failing to catch wealthy property investors - who misuse farmland for tax-avoidance reasons – and to ensure they pay their way. I took a small part along with other MPs in a heavily oversubscribed debate in Westminster Hall last week, urging government ministers to think again about their plans. Farmers want government to scrap these plans. If they don’t, they should heavily amend them to enable reasonable succession planning and to protect future viability of genuine farms.

I was ashamed to witness the debate on the government’s new Asylum and Immigration Bill last week. It became a cacophony of dog whistles (ie “I’m not racist, but…”) across the chamber between Labour, Conservative and another rump of far-right MPs. In their collective attempts to out-do each other in their distain for refugees and asylum seekers, they simply fed lazy prejudices rather than countered them.