Local MP Gideon Amos has won an assurance from the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the proposed new railway station at Welllington and vowed to continue fighting for this and for major improvements at Musgrove Park Hospital.

Mr Amos issued a statement after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced her Spending Inheritance Statement in Parliament yesterday.

She said the government was cancelling projects in the Restoring Your Railway programme – through which the Wellington project was being funded - and would review the new hospitals project.

After challenging the Chancellor in Parliament, Mr Amos received an assurance from her that the new station will still be going ahead.

He said afterwards: “I was keen to use my first intervention in Parliament to challenge the Chancellor to confirm the new Wellington Station project and it was good to get her assurance so early in the new Parliament that the new station will continue to go ahead - but I won’t be leaving anything to chance.

“Having worked in my previous job to successfully deliver a new now fully opened station, I’m now not stopping until we’ve delivered the new station Wellington deserves and which former LibDem Jeremy Browne became the first MP to propose in Parliament back in 2014.

“On Musgrove Park Hospital and its urgent need for a new Maternity Unit, I am very concerned to see that, so far, the new government is just as non-committal as the previous Conservative one – although at least the new Chancellor isn’t making the same way out and unfunded promises about building 40 entire new hospitals.

“I’m meeting with the Secretary of State for Health in the near future to make the case for Musgrove Park and I’m seeing the Directors of Somerset NHS Trust this week by way of preparation.

“Our Lib Dem manifesto proposed taxing the big banks and energy companies to pay for the desperately needed Maternity Unit and to improve GP and dental services generally.

“That’s what I’ll be putting to the Secretary of State when I meet him and that’s the case I’ll be putting every day in Parliament.

“I was elected to champion Taunton and Wellington above anything else and I’ll keep working on the need for improvements at Musgrove Park Hospital until its future is secured.”