Richard Foord
MP for Honiton and Sidmouth · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“Forty Conservative MPs did not vote with their Government against an Opposition motion to ban fracking. Some Conservative MPs abstained because they were not in the House, but others abstained as a matter of principle, and I commend them.”
“There is a real danger that investment in fracking will be a catastrophic mistake, as the fuels, facilities and resources become stranded assets. There is a real risk that they will lose their value prematurely as the tide of renewable technology advances around them.”
“Before the fracking moratorium came into effect, drilling licences over shale gas reserves were issued across 127 constituencies in England and Wales, and there is a risk that communities will suffer from not just the seismic activity, but the polluted groundwater and the damage to natural habitats that flows from it.”
“It can lead to water scarcity and risks polluting our air, our soil, our health and our biodiversity. Green space and nature are an intrinsic part of life in the UK, and we should be protecting our wildlife with everything we have.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) for securing this vital debate with the backing of the Backbench Business Committee.”
“What the public do support is action to mitigate the harmful effects of climate change. Eight in 10 people say that they are concerned about climate change—they want a transition to clean energy. In mid and east Devon, protecting our natural environment is a priority for thousands of people who have corresponded with me on the subject.”
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“Yet the South-West Social Mobility Commission found that just 41% of pupils eligible for free school meals in the south-west achieved the expected standards in reading, writing and maths at age 11—the lowest level of any region in England. By the age of 19, only 30% of those eligible for free school meals achieved a level 3 qualification. Too often, ambitious young people are faced with a choice: stay in the community that they have grown up in and that they love or leave in search of better-paid and more varied career opportunities. That could be different. If we really value our coastal communities and the economic opportunities that they offer, we can set regions such as the south-west alight.”
“The latest report by the South-West Social Mobility Commission highlights a paradox: the south-west region performs really well on some measures, such as employment and economic participation, but it is one of the weakest in England educationally for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. If we want there to be stronger local economies, higher productivity and better-paid jobs, we need a pipeline of young people with the skills, qualifications and opportunities to access them. The south-west peninsula has some fantastic opportunities for the economy and for the UK as a whole. Our agrifood, our defence industries and our clean energy are second to none.”
“It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Alec. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for securing this debate on our coastal communities, which are so often forgotten. Those of us who represent coastal communities like Honiton and Sidmouth can sometimes forget that we represent such a beautiful, stunning part of the world. Sometimes it is only on a Friday or Saturday, when my mind is here or on work, that I drive over a horizon and see the sea and am reminded what a beautiful place it is. But coastal communities often contain pockets of hidden deprivation. In particular, they are susceptible to low social mobility, which is what I want to spend a couple of minutes speaking about.”
“Natural England proposed that overall livestock grazing limits should be reduced to reduce overgrazing, and it was not specific to ponies—it was about overgrazing by sheep and cattle. Ponies can help to graze invasive grasses and promote biodiversity. The people who developed the Change.org petition were doing the right thing, but does the Secretary of State share my view that it was cynical of the Conservative party to develop a shadow petition to gather voter intention data?”
“He did a bold thing in challenging the prevailing consensus, the mood of the House, and views that are now quite mainstream in the House, but while it is compelling to think about all the welfare need that exists in this country—and I acknowledge that there is a great deal—he has a crude oil refinery in his constituency.”
“I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for making this debate happen. I have been to see his bookshelves and, trust me, the books on strategy and military affairs in his library are well thumbed. He knows what he is talking about, and he has done well to corral us all into talking about it today. Let me begin by talking about defence spending. It is fair to say that others have covered it, but I will repeat the fact that we are not spending sufficiently on defence. I want to challenge the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman).”
“Nye Bevan said to the Labour conference in 1957 that his party members should not send him “naked into the conference chamber”, and I fear that the Prime Minister has been sent naked into the Ankara conference chamber. The defence investment plan is indeed a skinny dip. The hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) talked about the famous “King and country” debate at the Oxford Union in 1933. I completely agree with him that people who thought that they would not fight for King and country in 1933 found that, by 1939, they had no choice but to do so because of the circumstances. He knows a great deal about that from his time on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.”
“Forgive me, but I understood that Grangemouth was a crude oil refinery. We need only look to Eurasia—we need only look at what has been happening in Ukraine and Russia—to see that war comes to those who do not really want it to come to them at all. Yes, that is a failure of diplomacy, but it is also a failure of preparedness. Today, I will focus my remarks on the business of readiness. We are currently spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, and the target is 3.5% by 2035. We really ought to be getting midway between those two by 2030, yet we are projected to be at only 2.68% by then. Of course, the Prime Minister is currently at the NATO summit in Ankara.”
“Conflict does not necessarily begin when a missile is fired or a border is crossed. It can begin when public trust is systemically eroded, when elections are manipulated, when information is weaponised or when hostile actors succeed in weakening a society’s confidence in its own institutions. The objective is often not mere propaganda or the spreading of false information, but to persuade societies that a particular lie is true. The aim is to persuade people that objective truth no longer exists. I want us to think about war readiness in the round, including in the information space.”
“When we discuss warfighting readiness, we are talking about not just platforms, ships, tanks and aircraft, but information. The Foreign Affairs Committee published a report on disinformation. We talked about the use of military and non-military—overt and covert—methods to blur the lines between war and peace, to sow doubt in the minds of target populations, and to destabilise and undermine societies. Last year’s strategic defence review covers sub-threshold attacks, and it talks about how such attacks are difficult to attribute to a perpetrator with certainty due to the methods used and the frequent reliance on proxy actors. The focus has to be on countering Russia’s hostile activities in the information space, as well as thinking about preparing to fight a war and have war readiness, because that is the reality of modern conflict.”
“The shadow Minister is exactly right. Of course, those people’s parents fought in the first world war. They were a generation who really did not want to meet war, but war came to them none the less. Clausewitz, the philosopher of war, talked about government, military and people being the remarkable trinity concerned with war. A lot of today’s debate has centred on the military, on defence, on procurement, and perhaps a little on government as it pertains to policy. We have talked a bit less about people, although the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) did talk about our servicepeople. I want to add to that by talking about people in the country more broadly—the people we represent. We need to think about defence as a national endeavour that builds on everyone’s understanding of the threat and the need to defend the nation.”
“In recognising the challenge of planting enough trees on the land, I wonder whether my hon. Friend has thought more about capturing carbon in the ocean. He and I share the Lyme Bay marine protected area in our constituencies. The Vision Group for Sidmouth was telling me that despite covering less than 1% of the ocean floor, seagrass beds are responsible for 15% of its total carbon capture. Does he agree that we can also look to the sea for the capture of carbon?”
“A constituent of mine is an official, a civil servant who works in support of the IICSA. Having had emotional interviews with so many victims of the crimes that we are discussing today, he cannot fathom why Governments have not yet fully implemented those recommendations. Does the hon. Gentleman share that frustration?”
“Much of the commentary on the defence investment plan is on the threat to the UK mainland, our interests and our assets. First, does the Secretary of State think that it is more useful to think about the Russian threat to NATO in general terms? Secondly, now we have the DIP, is the UK still 31st out of 32 NATO members, when it comes to our commitment to strengthen and modernise the armed forces?”
“It is barbaric that 185,000 babies were taken from young mothers across a quarter of a century until just 50 years ago, and the Prime Minister is right to say how wrong that was. In apologising on behalf of the state, he acknowledged that, of the children who were taken, some were raised in loving homes by adoptive families. Does he accept that it is possible to say sorry to birth parents and their children while simultaneously being grateful to parents who did their very best to adopt children over that period, many of whom did not know about the circumstances in which those babies were removed from their birth parents?”
“For coastguard rescue officers, remuneration provides recognition of the sacrifices that they and their families make: the nights away from home, the cancelled plans, the annual leave taken for training and the loss of income as a result of having to go out and answer calls. These coastguard teams are not built overnight; skills in search and rescue, casualty care and water navigation take years to acquire. Local knowledge, local experience and team cohesion are impossible to replace. If experienced coastguard rescue officers leave, those capabilities cannot simply be replaced. I am particularly concerned about the impact on smaller and more remote coastal communities, where recruitment is already challenging. For the Jurassic coast, that might mean the team at Beer having to become dependent on teams at Exmouth and Lyme Regis.”
“In June last year, the UK sanctioned Israeli far-right Minister Bezalel Smotrich for inciting violence against Palestinian communities. In recent weeks, Smotrich has issued an order to displace the Palestinian Bedouin community. The UK position on sanctions against Smotrich was part of a joint statement last year with Australia, New Zealand, Norway and Canada. What talks have the Government had with those same partners about further united sanctions against other Israeli Ministers?”
“A Government consultation on changes to the planning system closed on 10 March. It included consulting on weakening flood protection in planning guidance, which could lead to greater house building on land prone to flooding. To avoid the need for new insurance schemes such as Flood Re, which supports people after their homes have been flooded, the Government should seek to prevent house building in areas subject to flooding in the first place. When will the Government respond to the consultation that closed on 10 March?”
“Q14. Tony Blair suggested that at the beginning of his premiership he was at his most popular and least capable, and talked about ending his time in office at his least popular and most capable. For the sake of people in the south-west and across the country, what tips can the Prime Minister offer his successor?”
“The Great South West pan-regional partnership produced an agrifood growth plan which I commend to the Secretary of State. It was launched by Baroness Batters back in February. The south-west region accounts for one third of England’s dairy farms and makes an outsized contribution to the UK food system. How will the Government’s farming road map affect farmers in the south-west in particular?”
“This debate is ultimately about whether Britain chooses to lead or to follow. It is about whether we develop the industries of the future or allow others to forge ahead. The cost of inaction will ultimately be far greater than the cost of transition.”
“Members need not trust me on this point; they should trust the then First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. On 23 June 1914, Winston Churchill was being travailed in this House by MPs who were pursuing an old energy source in the face of a new one. On the eve of the first world war, Churchill pursued oil for powering the ships of the Royal Navy in the face of MPs who pressed the case for coal. This was long before Britain had access to our own oil, but Churchill could see that this new technology was going to change the way that the 20th century would be powered. A century later, we are faced with another transition, from fossil fuels to clean energy generation. That is particularly relevant where I live in south-west England. Yesterday afternoon, I hosted the Great South West new nuclear futures event here in Parliament.”
“The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit suggests that the energy crisis following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine cost the UK more than £180 billion, including a rise in food price inflation of 19%, whereas the economic opportunities are significant. Britain’s green economy now supports around 1.1 million jobs and generates more than £100 billion. It is one of the fastest growing parts of our economy, creating productive, well-paid jobs across manufacturing, engineering and technology. Whether Britain embraces the energy transition or not will not change whether the transition happens. The question instead is whether the jobs, the investment and the expertise are located here or somewhere else. History rarely rewards those who cling to yesterday’s technologies when the world is investing in tomorrow’s.”
“The real choice before us is whether we prepare our economy for the future or watch other countries seize the opportunities that we allow to pass us by. The UK has every reason to be proud of its record on international climate leadership and diplomacy. The Climate Change Act 2008 has become a model for climate governance around the world. Some 76 countries have followed the UK’s lead in developing climate governance frameworks and we have stood at the forefront of international co-operation on the issue, positioning Britain as a key player in securing the 2015 Paris agreement and COP26 in Glasgow. We have shown that reducing emissions and building prosperity can be complementary: this is not just an environmental question but an economic one. Recent years have shown that the cost of our dependence on fossil fuels is serious.”
“So far, the debate has been about how much funding should be found for defence. We should also think about the resignation speech by the former Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), who said last week that the DIP, which he has seen, does not strike the right balance between high-end sophistication and low-end mass. He said that “the defence investment plan does not strike that balance”. —[ Official Report , 16 June 2026; Vol. 787, c. 732.] Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to think about the balance between sophistication and mass?”
“A week ago, the Prime Minister said that the UK would support the deal between the United States and Iran by standing up a “defensive, independent, multilateral mission”. At the planning stage, that was designed to restore freedom of navigation to the strait of Hormuz. In May, the UK was supposed to deploy drones, Typhoon fighter jets and HMS Dragon to such a future mission, whereas today the Deputy Prime Minister spoke of “immediate support for de-mining.” What will the deployment involve, and what might trigger it, please?”
“The people who live along the banks of the Otter are not asking for miracles; they are asking for honest monitoring, adequate infrastructure and accountability, with pledged commitments being met. The River Otter can recover—we have seen elsewhere that targeted investment in treatment infrastructure and phosphate removal can make a real difference—but recovery will require urgency, transparency, and a willingness to move beyond promises and towards delivery. Bruce McGlashan’s legacy will live on if the polluters, the regulators and we Members listen to, and act on, the citizen science carried out by the volunteers I represent today.”
“To the public, that looks like bonuses by another name…The end goal is clear: close the loopholes and link executive rewards directly to measurable environmental outcomes—cleaner rivers, healthier seas and fewer sewage discharges.” I know that the Minister also wants to see cleaner rivers and seas, and that she is committed to her brief. Can she confirm to the more than 50,000 people who signed that petition that those loopholes will be closed by new legislation? The River Otter is not a cost-free extension of the sewerage infrastructure network that enables bill hikes and increased shareholder returns. It is supposed to offer a living ecosystem, a valued recreational resource, and an integral part of the lives of the people who live in east Devon.”
“Residents of towns and villages across this corner of Devon would love to know. Over 50,000 people have signed a petition that was initiated in February by Marc Astley. Marc lives in Ottery St Mary, and he and his family put together a petition stating that “if environmental standards aren’t being met, executives shouldn’t be receiving bonuses. The government has introduced new powers intended to block payouts when environmental performance fails…But loopholes remain—rewards can still be restructured as retention payments or routed through parent companies.”
“In fact, South West Water failed to meet its own performance targets for pollution incidents for each of the five years of the 2020-25 period. ORCA’s trained citizen scientists have logged over 2,800 individual tests and observations, whereas the Environment Agency carried out 24 location tests on the River Otter over that period. The public should not have to rely on volunteers to provide the evidence base for environmental protection. The volunteer action we have seen is invaluable, but safeguarding rivers must be the responsibility of water companies, regulators and, ultimately, the Government. Are we going to have to wait years for the Otter to be coaxed back to health? What specific measures to address these local issues might we see in the Government’s upcoming clean water Bill?”
“The council’s report was plain that new housing approvals will require that South West Water delivers suitable additional treatment capacity. The costs of inaction are mounting: we have environmental degradation, risks to public health, constraints on housing, additional pressure being added by new housing, and growing public frustration. Residents ask a simple question: why must local communities accept continuing environmental damage, rising bills, and insufficient investment in the infrastructure required to clean up this mess? According to Ofwat’s most recent water company performance report from 2024-25, South West Water had 108 pollution incidents per 10,000 km of sewer, based on self-reported data—more than double the average for the sector.”
“East Devon district council commissioned a water cycle study as part of its local plan. Honiton sewage treatment works—the largest treatment works on the river—is already operating at 40% above capacity. That is projected to rise to 73% above capacity when future building plans are taken into account. The council’s report identified many serious failings in South West Water’s sewage infrastructure in the River Otter catchment. That includes failings at three major sewage works that are already operating in excess of their capacity. Their excess untreated sewage is being discharged regularly into the River Otter. Effectively, South West Water has been using the River Otter as a conveyor—a free, open, half-pipe sewer—resulting in significant environmental harm.”
“Secondly, South West Water has published only a limited programme of what it describes as “tactical improvements”. That is hardly action. Thirdly, despite repeated engagement from local campaigners and community groups, South West Water currently has no scheme to remove phosphate from treated effluent by 2030 and no published plan to meet the commitments made by the former chief exec. There was a time when South West Water talked about a phosphate reduction scheme for Honiton sewage treatment works, which would have removed 35% of all South West Water-sourced phosphate before 2030. According to South West Water more recently, the scheme “had been removed from the 2025-2030 plan.” Another consequence of sewage pollution is its impact on housing developments.”
“The first objective is that “any storm overflow that is persistently releasing more than 20 times a year will be tackled following investigation of the cause”. The second objective is that “where our assets are not performing as they should, or where they are causing environmental harm, we will act”. The third objective states: “As part of our 2025–2030 investment programme, we’re targeting improvements across the Otter catchment—including at Ottery St Mary—to reduce storm overflow use, and lower phosphate in our treated discharges”. At the time, those commitments were welcome, but residents are entitled to ask what progress has been made in the last year. First, at the 11 worst discharge points along the river, there was still an average of 67 untreated discharges in 2025. That is not fewer than the 20 that we were pledged.”
“The evidence gathered by ORCA is striking; its monitoring suggests that the presence of a single sewage treatment works on the river can increase harmful phosphate concentrations in the river by around 80% during the summer months. Its testing indicates that around 70% of phosphate found in the middle and lower River Otter can be attributed not to agricultural pollution, but to treated sewage effluent. One of the most frustrating aspects of this situation is the gap between the pledges we have received from South West Water and the delivery we have seen on them. In August and October 2025, South West Water’s then CEO, Susan Davy, publicly committed to three critical objectives for the River Otter by the end of 2029, which I will quote.”
“In terms of duration, that is three times more untreated sewage hours spilled into the River Otter than into Exmouth bay. In 2025, more than 8,000 hours of untreated sewage were discharged into the river and its tributaries, following hundreds of monitored sewage overflow events. Untreated sewage is entering the river on a routine basis, and at a scale that cannot be dismissed as a consequence of exceptional weather. Phosphate pollution further damages the river’s ecology. High concentrations of phosphate cause algal bloom and eutrophication and reduce oxygen levels in the water, causing significant harm to aquatic plants, fish and wildlife.”
“coli levels at Budleigh’s beach “could be caused by birdlife in the new Otter Nature Reserve”. However, ORCA samples from the mouth of the River Otter show E. coli surges correlate with surges upstream of the nature reserve. We should be honest about the scale of the sewage problem. This challenge is made more difficult by the fact that regular monitoring has been limited. Until recently, nobody was routinely measuring E. coli levels along the River Otter. ORCA volunteers are collecting samples every two weeks. They do so at three locations along the river, building a much-needed evidence base to understand pollution levels, rainfall impacts and likely sources of contamination. In 2024, South West Water released untreated sewage into the River Otter for more than 9,500 hours.”
“Data obtained from South West Water through freedom of information and environmental information regulation requests reveal an alarming picture of bacterial contamination in the River Otter. Between November 2024 and May 2025, average daily levels of E. coli measured in the river were five times higher than the acceptable level for safe swimming. After periods of rainfall, those levels spiked up to 100 times the safe limit, remaining at increased levels for days or weeks at a time. During the period analysed, E. coli levels exceeded the safe swimming limit on more than 90% of days. Budleigh Salterton, where the river meets the sea, lost its blue flag status this year because of a deterioration in water quality. Following the loss of that blue flag status, South West Water stated publicly that the E.”
“It runs through a beautiful valley in Devon that supports agriculture, tourism and recreation, and ought to be a rich and diverse habitat. Yet today, most sections of the Otter and its key tributary, the Wolf, are classified by the Environment Agency as having poor ecological status. That places the rivers within the 20% of water bodies with the poorest ecological status in the country. This issue does not just concern the local environment: it also concerns public health and infrastructure, and it is increasingly a question of public trust in the Government’s ability to regulate companies that provide utilities properly. The facts on the ground are damning.”
“In particular, I would like to pay tribute to Bruce McGlashan, who passed away suddenly in April this year, just days after ORCA hosted a public meeting at The Institute in Ottery St Mary. Bruce brought to ORCA his experience of having been a manager at the Environment Agency for 30 years. He was also secretary of the River Otter Fisheries Association. Bruce was central to ORCA, and helped us to correspond with South West Water and the Environment Agency. It is hard to believe that he, Peter Williams and I stood on the shingle outside the Otter Inn at Honiton, after a meeting with the Environment Agency, just days before Bruce died. He should have lived to see the River Otter returned to full ecological health. The Otter should be one of England’s ecological success stories.”
“In fairness, the debate is also about issues that apply across the water industry, not just with Pennon Group. I pay tribute to the more than 75 water testers, campaigners and citizen scientists of the Otter River Catchment Action group—ORCA. The ORCA group developed out of the Otter Valley Association, and it has devoted almost as many hours to understanding and protecting the cherished River Otter as there have been hours of sewage spills into that river, which is saying something. The work of ORCA has provided much of the evidence in my contribution. The dedication of the ORCA volunteers represents the very best of self-organised civic community action and public service.”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of sewage pollution in the River Otter, a river that flows through many of the Devon communities that I represent. I should say at the outset that, this morning, I declined an offer of hospitality from the new chief executive of South West Water and its parent company Pennon Group. They offered breakfast in Parliament, but I did not accept as I was here, in the Chamber, trying to catch Mr Speaker’s eye to talk about the Jurassic coast UNESCO world heritage site, and it is helpful that I will get to talk a little bit about that now. My office has written back to South West Water to request a separate meeting with the chief executive to talk through some of the issues that I will raise in the debate.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. On 17 July 2025, trading standards closed an illicit vape shop on Honiton High Street and seized a large amount of illicit tobacco. Does he think that this change in the law, which allows the closure of shops for 12 months rather than just three, will mean that these shops might close altogether?”
“Earlier today, I and other members of the Foreign Affairs Committee met the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s regional delegation to the UK. The ICRC makes the point that while it is not a non-governmental organisation, it needs access to state actors on both sides of a conflict. I am curious about whether the prohibited purpose test is specifically looking to protect NGOs and organisations such as the ICRC, or whether it is also to do with compliance with international law, such as the European convention on human rights.”
“They should be the backbone of genuine neighbourhood healthcare, not displaced by some remote health hub that, in an Orwellian turn of phrase, is moved further away and deemed to be a “neighbourhood health hub”. If the Government are serious about delivering care closer to home, supporting our ageing population and relieving pressure on our hospitals, they must invest in, not abandon, our community hospitals.”
“They misunderstand both geography and demography: geography, because they do not fit rural and coastal areas and suck resources into the nearby conurbations, and demography because, if the challenge facing our health service is an ageing population, solutions must be about proximity, accessibility and the continuity of care. The choice is plain for all to see: do we continue down this path of centralisation—closing, cutting and consolidating—or do we build on what we already have and cherish? When Seaton hospital was built in the 1980s, people were told that they should be a brick and buy a brick. We need to build on that legacy. Community hospitals should not be sidelined; they should be strengthened.”
“He argued that community hospitals are in just the right places to be on the frontline and tackle this issue for generations to come in our rural and coastal communities, and described community hospitals as “an essential part of provision for both inpatient and outpatient care for many citizens in England and the wider UK.” That clashes with the Government’s insistence that centralisation and the creation of large neighbourhood health centres will deliver progress and better outcomes. Neighbourhood health hubs are being exposed as a contradiction in terms.”
“The chief medical officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty, agreed when he spoke at the Community Hospitals Association’s annual conference last month. He echoed the words from his 2023 annual report, “Health in an Ageing Society”, which is well worth going back to, and said that ageing and the resulting increased frailty were key issues for the future of UK healthcare.”
“Despite losing their in-patient beds 10 years ago, they remain vital hubs of care for the local community. We have seen proposals to close wings and services, and even to demolish facilities, as was the case in Seaton, where the local community understood what was at stake. It was impressive to hear about the petition that my hon. Friend the Member for South Cotswolds put together, which so many people signed in support of her community hospital. In Seaton, more than 9,000 people signed a petition to retain the community hospital there, and we had a public meeting in Colyford where people queued out the door to show their support. These are cherished institutions, built on decades of trust and born from community investment.”
“He told me that community hospitals were designed precisely to face down these sorts of challenges. Community hospitals are embedded in rural and coastal areas, which is particularly good for older and more vulnerable populations. Across the UK, there are around 500 community hospitals, and many of them are located in these sorts of places, outside of cities and where access to centralised care is far more difficult. This is not the stuff of romance. These are not leftover legacies from a bygone era, and they are not historical; they are well placed assets for this era. They are adaptable, thanks to their autonomy, and they are capable of delivering wide-ranging, complex medical services. Our east Devon hospitals perform X-rays, surgeries and diagnostics.”