For too long, Plymouth Sutton and Devonport – and the South West generally – has been under-invested in. As a region, it has never received its fair share of funding on anything, from health and education to transport and housing.

Hosting the G7 summit in Cornwall in June is a fantastic opportunity for the South West. It is a beautiful region that is sure to impress the foreign world leaders that will soon be visiting it.

However, we should not let the region’s beauty hide its high levels of poverty and inequality.

Luke wants to see the South West levelled up, and believes that the G7 summit is the perfect opportunity to do that. It should be used as a platform for the Conservative Government to start investing properly in the South West.

Luke has written to the Prime Minister asking him to publish a plan on how the region will reap the long-term awards of hosing the G7 summit. The event is bound to bring inevitable disruption and protests to the region, as well as a risk of Covid-19 infections. The Prime Minister must detail how his government plans to deal with this disruption, and the support it is putting in place to ensure that the summit doesn’t lead to a spike in Covid-19 infections in the area.

Speaking on the matter, Luke said:

“Hosting the G7 summit will be a moment of pride for our region. It will put the far South West on the international agenda.

 

“It must not be a window of enormous media focus only to have that attention lost when the world leaders return home. I would like to encourage the Government to use this moment to properly invest in the far South West to change our economic destiny for the better.

 

I would welcome the chance to discuss how the region can benefit from the G7 summit with the Prime Minister’s office in due course.”