by DR ANDREW MURRISON
Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire

A GREAT privilege to travel to Ukraine with my Defence Minister hat on. On this occasion my mission was to better understand the management of military casualties and their rehabilitation after injury, a matter of increasing interest to the UK and our allies.

We want to see what more we can do collectively to help, an undertaking the UK has taken an early lead in because of our acknowledged experience and expertise in military medicine gathered over the past two decades.

I am always struck by the tenacity and resolve of the Ukrainian people, wherever I’ve encountered them – in country or training on Salisbury Plain.

What a contrast to the aggressor, reliant as it is on mercenaries and the disgorged contents of its prisons. The moral component of the war, as much as the kit and munitions being gifted, is why Ukraine will ultimately prevail.

Housing on a densely populated island is never going to be easy. In general, I’ve been resistant to concreting the countryside and believe there are still plenty of ‘brown field’ sites that builders can consume – they’re allergic to this because cleaning up developed sites cuts profit margins.

I also believe we can build vertically more than we have with three or four floor townhouses with nice roof terraces and balconies instead of gardens the norm rather than the exception.

Too often in the past we’ve been hoodwinked by avaricious developers and a fistful of big builders. That must stop.

I’m cautious about laying into so-called NIMBYs. It’s true that your take on house building is influenced by where you’re placed on the property ladder but home owners are parents and grandparents too, anxious to see family members in homes of their own.