Westminster Hall

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 21 June 2023

[Esther McVey in the Chair]

Veterans UK

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

09:30

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the support and services provided by Veterans UK.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms McVey. I apologise in advance if the hay fever bomb that has followed me throughout London this week disrupts my speech. Please be kind to me.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to lead this debate. I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to all those who have served our country, both past and present, as we spend this week commemorating the armed forces. We, as parliamentarians, have been aware of our obligations to look after and provide for veterans since Elizabethan times. In 1593, our predecessors passed the Act for the Necessary Relief of Soldiers and Mariners, which ordered parishes to make special provisions to help the sick and wounded veterans in their communities. That Act, now over 400 years old, forms the cornerstone of what we now call the armed forces covenant.

The covenant states that, to compensate veterans for their sacrifice,

“British soldiers must always be able to expect fair treatment, to be valued and respected as individuals, and that they…will be sustained and rewarded by commensurate terms and conditions of service.”

I was a councillor in Sheffield when the city council was among the first signatories to the armed forces covenant. I am proud that we enshrined the covenant in our working practices, placing a legal duty on ourselves to encourage integration from service life into civilian life. The covenant is a promise to the approximately 2 million veterans in this country and the 15,000 soldiers who join their ranks every year. Their service can have a profound and wide-ranging effect on them for the rest of their lives. We have an obligation to ensure that those who have served our country receive the best possible treatment, care and opportunities when they return.

There are thousands of voluntary signatories to the covenant, and the Armed Forces Act 2021 requires certain public bodies to pay due regard to the principles of the covenant when carrying out their functions, but—shockingly—Ministers have resisted efforts to apply the covenant to their own Government. Perhaps that is because they know that if the Government were to be bound by the covenant, they would fail to meet their statutory obligations.

The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs wrote:

“our veterans need to be able to access support that is human, sensitive and that works for them”,

but a significant number of our returning veterans have found the transition from serving soldier to civilian distressing, and that has actively hindered their interactions with Veterans UK. The all-party parliamentary group on veterans has done excellent research on this matter, for which I commend it. The results of its survey on veterans’ experiences with Veterans UK were released several months ago. It received responses from 1,000 veterans: over 75% of respondents to the survey rated their overall experience with Veterans UK as either poor or very poor, and nearly 85% believed that the consideration given to their mental and physical health was poor or very poor.

Those findings are damning, but even more harrowing are the comments left by some of the respondents. One wrote:

“the process had broken me mentally to the point where my choice was walk away or commit suicide.”

Another said:

“My dealings with this organisation would lead me to believe it is set up to cause deliberate harm to veterans—it is a disgrace.”

Even a single soldier who, after years of dedicated service to their country, has been left feeling that desperate and despondent is one too many, but the depth and breadth of the respondents’ issues with Veterans UK led me to fear that the problems with this body are systematic.

I am pleased that, following the report from the APPG on veterans, the Government announced a review of the role and scope of welfare provision for veterans by the Ministry of Defence in its entirety. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs has himself admitted that

“for too long veterans services have suffered from under-investment, and been over-reliant on paper records and outdated tech.”

None the less, the Government must not allow this review to overshadow other reports into veterans’ affairs. The armed forces compensation scheme, also administered by Veterans UK, compensates those who have suffered injury, illness or death during UK armed forces service, and undergoes a review every five years to ensure that the scheme is fit for purpose. The headline findings of that review were published in January, with the independent reviewer finding that the current process is

“overly burdensome and even distressing for the claimant due to unreasonable timeframes and a lack of transparency.”

The indifference and, in some cases, outright hostility to the plight of our veterans was highlighted by The Telegraph last year in a report that injured soldiers had been “laughed at” and “belittled” by officials involved in awarding payouts from the medical compensation scheme. Some soldiers highlighted that unqualified medical advisers were challenging their surgeons’ professional assessments, resulting in armed forces personnel being undercompensated for their injuries. Compensation money is a lifeline for many of our veterans wounded in service.

Millions of people are grappling with the ongoing cost of living crisis and extortionate waiting times for medical services, but these issues may have a disproportionate impact on veterans. Analysis of Government figures this week shows that 50% more veterans than last year are relying on universal credit. That is a damning indictment of the Government’s support for veterans. Staggeringly, the number of active personnel claiming universal credit has also risen by more than 50%. Not only are our serving troops forced to rely on benefits to get by, but they are also often subjected to substandard housing plagued by mould and damp. There are even reports that some soldiers are unable to afford the subsidised food in their mess halls, and that a food bank on an RAF base that was established to support local communities is instead being used by service personnel who are struggling to get by. It is little wonder that after 13 years of Conservative rule, in which our forces have been underfunded and underappreciated, satisfaction with service life has plummeted from 60% in 2010 to just 42% today.

I have spoken about the difficulties that soldiers face in claiming compensation for their injuries, but surely they have quick and easy access to the medical evaluations and treatment that they may need. The armed forces covenant and veterans annual report states that:

“Looking after the health needs of Service personnel…especially where military service has caused or exacerbated those needs—is one of the first priorities of the Government when it comes to the wellbeing of the Armed Forces community.”

But on multiple key metrics, this Government are failing. Waiting times for treatment through the transition, intervention and liaison service are up by a week since last year, and waits for appointments in the complex treatment service are missing the Government’s target of 10 working days by more than an entire working week.

Shockingly, the list of systemic failures faced by our veterans continues. Thousands of them were robbed of their career, their pension and their dignity as they were dismissed from the force and, in some cases, tarnished with criminal records. Their crime? Being a member of the LGBT community. Early last year the Government commissioned a report to investigate that historical wrongdoing and accepted in the terms of reference that the policy was wrong. The least the Prime Minister could do is offer a formal apology. Sadly, none has been forthcoming.

The LGBT veterans independent review has reported its findings and recommendations to the Government. As Pride Month draws to an end, I call on the Government to release the report as a matter of urgency, and to implement Lord Etherton’s recommendations so that our LGBT veterans are compensated properly for their service and for the trauma inflicted on them by their own country.

Lastly, it would be remiss of me not to mention that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs promised that every veteran would receive an ID card by the end of 2023. These cards are meant to ensure that ex-servicemen and women have quicker access to the health, housing and charity services that they need. We should all support this scheme. However, of the 13,000 recorded veterans in Sheffield, only 218 have received their identity card. The Minister pledged several months ago that he would shave off his eyebrows if every veteran had not received their card by the end of 2023. I hope that he can get to grips with the roll-out in record time for the sake of our veterans, but I fear that, at the current rate of progress, he will be wearing a striking new look after the Christmas recess.

[The Minister for Defence People, Veterans and Service Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

Wrong Minister!

[Gill Furniss]

Sorry, wrong Minister.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I will start calling the Front Benchers no later than 10.35 am, and leave a couple of minutes for Gill Furniss to wind up the debate.

09:40

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) on securing this timely debate during veterans week.

We sometimes hear outside the House an unpleasant narrative labelling veterans as mad, bad and sad. That is simply not true. Most veterans are well trained through their service, highly motivated and huge contributors to our society. I come from a military family and know that that is the case. During my time as chairman of the south-east region for the Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees, I met many veterans who appreciated their time in the armed forces and had found good jobs once they had left. The VAPCs are there to help those who have not found the adjustment so easy, some of whom may have been invalided out of the service. We had frequent contact with Veterans UK, which also helped with our administrative support. I visited Norcross in Blackpool, where it is based, a couple of times for meetings and to see the work that it does.

I am pleased that there has been some progress on digitisation of veterans’ records, because at Norcross I saw for myself the huge rooms containing stacks of shelves carrying all the paper records of veterans who needed help. Doctors’ certificates and medical records all had to be sent by post or courier to Norcross. We heard of one occasion on which a van had been stolen en route, resulting in the loss of many records and subsequent months of delay while they were replaced, so that veterans could be assessed to determine the pension or compensation they should be awarded. I suspect that getting medical records is still causing an issue, and I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend the Minister could update us on that. Does Veterans UK really need original documents, or can they be scanned? Other organisations accept scanned documents. Digitisation should help, but like digitisation in other public services, it has taken far too long.

Last year, in the annual VAPC report, one criticism of Veterans UK was that veterans assessments’ were still taking too long. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough mentioned that. I am very pleased that there is now an online claim service to help people to access injury and illness compensation more easily, but Veterans UK still uses antiquated manual systems to process compensation claims, which results in significant delays. An upgrade is essential and needs to be implemented quickly.

The process is too time-consuming, and the organisational culture emphasises minimising support. Plus, there is criticism that medical assessments are being made by clinicians without appropriate specialist knowledge. I urge the Minister and Veterans UK to work closely with VAPCs, which have plenty of knowledge and experience among their members, to come up with a more streamlined system that is veteran-centric. There was also a recommendation to establish external scrutiny through an independent monitoring board. VAPCs perhaps could help with that. I hope that the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar), the Veterans Advisory and Pensions Committees Bill, will go through, as it would give greater power to VAPCs to provide that necessary scrutiny as well as more help for our veterans.

I thank our serving military and veterans for all that they do. Many of us here are veterans or have participated in the armed forces parliamentary scheme, with all the knowledge that that brings. We hear at first hand about the issues that affect veterans. We will continue to champion them, both in the Chamber and behind the scenes, to ensure that they get what they need.

09:44

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I start by congratulating my good and hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) on securing this debate. I think that I put in a similar application. She was successful, but it is a privilege for me to speak in this debate and I thank her for it.

Lots of local groups in my constituency and across Greater Manchester support veterans, and I am grateful to all of them. I will name a couple of them during my speech, but most importantly, I want to name Stockport Armed Forces & Veterans Breakfast Club, which I have attended several times. It does a lot of work supporting people not just in my constituency but across the borough.

I will echo several points made by my hon. Friend, but I want to highlight the fact that it is unacceptable that the Ministry of Defence has confirmed no additional funding support for veterans to deal with the cost of living increases. A recent report tells us that, in the last year, the Royal British Legion has reported issuing 20% more grants to help with living costs. We all know that mortgages have gone up, food inflation is close to 20% and the cost of living is biting hard. Veterans and some serving personnel and their families are using food banks, which is a total disgrace.

The next Labour Government have a plan to change the armed forces covenant, which is an informal agreement; We will fully incorporate the covenant in law and fulfil the important moral contract that society makes with those who serve. I do not understand why the Government cannot do that now. My local authority has signed up to the covenant, but support for veterans is often a postcode lottery. We need to change that.

A lot of support for veterans is provided by the third sector, which is welcome, but much greater Government involvement and support is needed for those organisations. According to the Office for National Statistics almost 4% of the population have previously served in the armed forces. The numbers are quite serious and we need to offer more support.

A constituent contacted me recently—I will not name him—to make a point about armed forces reservists

“not being allowed to stay in till they are 60”.

He says that the Ministry of Defence

“are doing this so they do not pay out a pension at the age of 60, but other services allow you to stay till 60. The armed forces reserves are losing highly skilled people but at the same time recruitment is at”

an all-time low.

“At present my Regt is below 50% in strength. By the MOD carrying out this type of behaviour I believe we are being discriminated against.”

He then asks me to raise that in the House of Commons, so I raise it now on his behalf. I will follow it up in a letter to the Minister and I hope to have a response that I can feed back to my constituent.

The shadow Minister and I recently attended an armed forces parliamentary scheme breakfast with the Fighting With Pride organisation. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough has already mentioned the historical injustice that affected many LGBT+ veterans and that needs to be resolved. It is less of a party political issue and more an issue of justice. We need to make sure that all political parties work together and that people of all orientations are welcome in the armed forces. We must also ensure that the people who were kicked out and dishonourably discharged get the justice and respect they deserve.

I will finish on that point and I hope the Minister will address particularly the issues about pensions and LGBT+ veterans.

09:47

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, Ms McVey, and I commend the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) for securing it. I echo her and other colleagues’ tributes and thanks to those who serve in our armed forces, and it is fitting that we are having this debate in Armed Forces Week. I declare an interest as vice chair of the all-party parliamentary group on veterans, which conducted the survey that has been referred to.

Many veterans have been broken by the Government’s failing system, which seems to hinder and hound veterans when it should help them. One told me that the process had broken them mentally to the point where their choice was to

“walk away or commit suicide.”

Another said:

“Veterans UK make it so difficult for all veterans and you feel like a criminal…there’s no compassion whatsoever.”

Another described the organisation as a “disgrace”, and yet another said the organisation seeks to

“ignore, obfuscate, delay and deny for as long as they can.”

All that is happening in a country that aimed to be the best place in the world for veterans by 2028. That is a boast by the UK Government who say that they want to transform services for veterans, understand our veterans’ community and recognise veterans’ contribution to society. I recognise that the Minister is taking steps to address some of these issues, but it is not happening quickly enough, and the Government are far from realising the lofty goal of creating a veterans’ paradise. Instead, many former servicemen and women are being plunged into hell as they struggle to make ends meet. Again, we heard from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough about veterans and serving personnel having to make use of food banks, and we should be doing all we can to support them.

There is a real sense that once someone is out of the barracks gate, the MOD washes its hands of them. Veterans UK, the MOD department administering support for veterans, has been described as lacking any empathy for veterans, and the APPG survey, which had more than 1,000 responses, found that only 6% felt that they had had a “good” or “very good” service. That feedback is unacceptable.

I secured a debate on this issue in March 2022, having had contact from constituents. At that time, I had written a letter to the then Minister, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), who wrote back saying there was no issue. We had the debate in Parliament, Parliament agreed that there should be a review of Veterans UK, and he said it was not necessary. As there had been a votable motion, we followed up the debate and asked when the review was going to take place, and he said it was not necessary, so I am delighted that the new Minister is taking this issue forward. Off the back of the survey, we have got the review that we waited for, but it is very telling that it did not happen straight away—the Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming. Again, I pay tribute to the Minister present for making that happen, but his predecessors went out of their way to put up roadblocks.

The failures of the system and veterans’ sense of betrayal are in danger of creating an invisible epidemic of moral injury among retired military personnel. Moral injury refers to the experience of sustained and enduring negative moral emotions of guilt, shame, contempt and anger, which result from the betrayal, violation and suppression of deeply held or shared moral values. It comes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) about the bad and mad—the sense that everyone is out to get them. Potentially morally injurious events include other people’s acts of omission or betrayal by a trusted person in a high-stakes situation. Such events threaten one’s deeply held beliefs and trust, and can cause feelings of shame and guilt. They can even lead to substance misuse, social withdrawal and self-destructive acts. Our veterans deserve so much better than that, and I commend the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) for the efforts he has made in moving forward his Bill on VAPCs.

It is interesting to note that the Scottish Government remain committed to doing all they can, within the powers they have, to provide support for veterans in Scotland, and the SNP is certainly committed to acting on the findings of the APPG survey. As a result of the survey, the UK Government have now announced that they will conduct

“a review of the role and scope of welfare provision for veterans, including by the Ministry of Defence under the Veterans UK banner”,

which I genuinely welcome. The Minister knows I am always impatient and always looking to the next thing. Having secured the review, we now look to when we can see the outcomes and when improvements can be implemented—I nudge him a little on that.

The review must have the scope and the necessary funding to change the situation. Mental health assessments undertaken while a veteran was serving in the forces should be considered by Veterans UK medical assessors when a claim is made under the war pensions or armed forces compensation scheme. There needs to be better signposting of information for veterans about war pensions and the armed forces compensation tribunal process. There also needs to be an increase in the maximum tariffs for mental health condition compensation payments. In some circumstances, an unmarried partner can qualify for a war pension, and we want the qualification criteria further broadened. There needs to be an alternative method to mitigate the impact on war widows who remarried or cohabited before the introduction of the pensions-for-life changes in 2015.

Veterans really need to be at the heart of the review, and I cannot let this debate pass without again flagging the nuclear test veterans. We welcome the fact that they were recognised with a medal, but we need to put in place a scheme to take account of their very serious injuries, and do more to support them, as they deal with their exposure to radiation.

The Scottish Government, even with their limited powers, have gone some way to showing commitment to support our veterans. Last year, the Scottish Government contributed £250,000 to the Unforgotten Forces consortium, supporting its work in improving the health, wellbeing and quality of life of older veterans in Scotland. They also increased the Scottish veterans fund pot to £500,000 per annum, to provide greater support for veterans and their families. The Scottish Government also funded 14 new projects across a range of organisations, including employment support from Walking With The Wounded and outdoor counselling from the Venture Trust. In my constituency, Midlothian’s SNP-led council was the first in Scotland to partner with Veterans Housing Scotland to provide additional accommodation for our veterans. I look forward to seeing that partnership continue successfully.

That list could go on. We have a very proud military history in Scotland. With the limited devolved powers available, we know we have a debt to these men and women. We know that freedom is not free. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the UK Government a lot of the time. In the words of one veteran, they seek to

“ignore, obfuscate, delay and deny for as long as they can.”

Our veterans deserve so much better.

09:56

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) on securing and leading this important debate during Armed Forces Week, reflecting our deep obligation to our armed forces, veterans and their families.

Labour is deeply proud of our armed forces personnel, veterans and their families—the whole community—for the contribution they make to our country. From the response to the invasion of Ukraine to deployments during the covid-19 pandemic, the armed forces are essential to our country’s safety and security. We thank them for all that they do.

Like others, I have had the honour of taking part in the armed forces parliamentary scheme, to gain greater insight and understanding of service and service life. The long-standing connection between Labour and the armed forces community is built on our respect for their public service, and recognition of their sacrifices. We recognise that it is people from our communities who serve—our family, friends and neighbours—and we have a moral duty to ensure that they can access the services they deserve. Theirs is the ultimate public service.

It has been excellent to see Labour MPs this week standing up for the armed forces community in Parliament, with further celebratory events over the following days, many led by local councillors and councils, as referred to. As shadow Veterans Minister, it has been a pleasure to join Labour’s Veterans’ Voice events across the country, hosted by Labour MPs, prospective parliamentary candidates and councillors. Our Veterans’ Voice nationwide listening campaign will help ensure that our plans for the next general election reflect the real-life experiences of veterans and their families.

What has been clear from all the events so far is that the Conservative Government are failing to make the UK the best place in the world to be a veteran. Veterans I have met from across the UK have told me how they feel overlooked and let down after 13 years of a Conservative Government. From veterans who need a hand up, to veterans who are doing perfectly well in life but expect more respect for their service, the whole community deserves better. Veterans UK is responsible for delivering that but, as we have heard from Members today, including the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson), it is falling short of what is expected.

The previous Labour Government were proud to set up the armed forces compensation scheme, to ensure that serving personnel, veterans and their family members can receive support following injury, illness or death. On almost every visit I have been on, a veteran or a family member has explained the difficulties and frustrations with the scheme. There seems to be no plan to address the falling acceptance rates for veterans seeking compensation through the scheme, as successful claims have dropped from 65% to 47% since 2011-12, and rejections have risen from 24% to 41%. I cannot comment on the specifics of individual cases, but we know that there are many problems with the process, as the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) highlighted.

The headline findings of the current quinquennial review of the armed forces compensation scheme state that

“the process is overly burdensome and even distressing for the claimant due to unreasonable timeframes and a lack of transparency.”

That situation is creating mistrust in the armed forces community, because it is perceived that there is little procedural fairness and that decision making is inconsistent. We need immediate action from the Government to improve that. On 30 January, the Minister told the House that the quinquennial review of the armed forces compensation scheme would be published “in the spring”, yet we are now into summer and still have no report. Will the Minister confirm when the final report will be published in full? Further delay only further fails our veterans.

The cost of living crisis has had an enormous impact on our armed forces community, as it has on the rest of society, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) for setting that out. The Royal British Legion and Help for Heroes have increased the number of grants awarded to veterans and their families to support them with rises in basic living costs, such as food and energy, and over the past year the number of veterans relying on universal credit has also increased by 50%. That means that over 50,000 veterans are now receiving universal credit. People are unable to cover their bills, and it is simply not good enough for the Government to ignore the situation. Will the Minister explain what new steps the Government will take to support veterans into well-paid work, and will he outline how his Department is working with service charities to ensure that veterans are not forced into poverty? These are our heroes; the very least they deserve is the dignity of a secure, well-paid job that enables them to cover their basic costs.

The Government rightly recognise the gaps in Government support, and we welcome the independent review of UK Government welfare services that is being jointly conducted by the Ministry of Defence and the Office for Veterans’ Affairs. It is long overdue, but for the review to be a success the Government must recognise that they have been responsible for the deterioration of veterans services over the past 13 years. From the slow roll-out of ID cards that veterans need to access services to missing important mental health waiting time targets, across the board the Government have not delivered the support that veterans deserve and were promised. The review must be shaped by veterans’ experiences.

On 13 March, the Minister told the House that the welfare review would be “completed within three months”, yet the following week the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs said it would be “three to six months.” I subsequently checked the review’s terms of reference, which state:

“Full and final recommendations will be made by Autumn 2023.”

I too would therefore like to nudge the Minister—perhaps a bit more firmly—to confirm on what date the review outcome will be published. Will he also outline what resources his Department and the Office for Veterans’ Affairs have allocated to the implementation of the review’s recommendations? The review must not just shuffle around the deckchairs; veterans and their families deserve better than the status quo. I look forward to hearing further detail from the Minister.

In conclusion, the Labour party is ready to step up to the challenge. In government, we will fully incorporate the armed forces covenant into law, thereby delivering on the promise to those who serve or have served in the armed forces and their families. They will receive fair treatment. Visa fees will be scrapped for non-UK veterans and their dependants if they have served four years or more. We will also boost specialist support and bring down waiting times for veterans’ mental health services as part of our £1 billion commitment to ensure that everyone receives treatment within a month. Veterans are at the heart of Labour’s plan for Government.

10:03

[The Minister for Defence People, Veterans and Service Families (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

What a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. May I first say what an improvement these little lecterns are, particularly for those of us who are increasingly long-sighted? It is the first time that I have appeared in Westminster Hall with one of them in place, and it is a great improvement. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) on securing today’s debate. As we run up to Armed Forces Day, it really is timely.

Regarding hay fever, the hon. Lady has my sympathies; if I may say so, she fared exceptionally well in struggling with that affliction, which somehow seems to get worse the older we get. I also reassure her about my eyebrows. The Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and the Minister for Defence People, Veterans and Service Families are plainly different, I am happy to say. That is important because of the eyebrow issue, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs lives in trepidation. I am happy to say that my eyebrows are safe as I gave no undertaking to shave them off.

The hon. Lady referred to the relief Act of 1593. I am pleased she did because I started my book on the military covenant, which I wrote 10 years ago, and which is sadly out of print, with the same assessment. The reason being is that it is important to take a long and historical perspective on the military covenant, which has become the armed forces covenant.

I am delighted to hear the commitment made in respect of the covenant by the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), who speaks for the Opposition, and I am particularly proud that this Government, in their early days, inculcated the covenant into legislation and that organisations are now able to sign up to it. I am especially proud of the guidance that goes with the enjoinder to sign up to the covenant, which is important in explaining to organisations what it means to sign up. I am delighted by the number of local authorities that have done so.

We are eternally grateful for the service of all our veterans, and it is only right, as they give so much to us, that we support them as best we can. The strategy for our veterans and the refreshed “Veterans’ Strategy Action Plan” lay out the Government’s aspiration to make the UK a truly great place to be a veteran. I would, however, like to correct a common misconception about what Veterans UK actually is. It is not the same as the US Veterans Administration, and for very good reasons. It is not a stand-alone agency responsible for providing all Government support for veterans. As veterans are civilians, the majority of their care and support comes from the full range of Departments, notably our NHS, but also from local government or from the devolved Administrations.

Veterans UK is simply the public-facing name given to the services delivered by one Department: the Ministry of Defence. Those services include the administration and payment of armed forces pensions, which are very important. I declare an interest as a service pensioner. The other services are the war pension and armed forces compensation schemes, and the delivery of the Veterans Welfare Service, Defence Transition Services, independent personal commissioning for veterans, and Ilford Park Polish Home.

Only the war pension scheme and the Ilford Park Polish Home are services delivered solely to veterans and their families, as the other services also support serving personnel or those in transition. Some 75% of armed forces compensation claims are received from serving service personnel, and that is quite important in the context of the review that has already been mentioned. If I have time, I might come to discuss exactly why that is.

Let me illustrate the scale and the number of individuals supported by those services: last year, almost 12,000 armed forces compensation scheme and war pension scheme claims were cleared, and more than 97,500 war disablement pensions were in payment to the value of £622.5 million. Under the armed forces compensation scheme, more than 3,500 guaranteed income payments were made to veterans, and £104 million was paid out under the scheme.

In the year ending 31 March 2023, approximately 454,000 armed forces pensions were in payment to a value of almost £5.3 billion annually. In the year ending 31 March 2023, the Veterans Welfare Service interacted with 38,609 people via phone or email. It provides tailored advice according to each person’s specific circumstances. When financial assistance is required, the Veterans Welfare Service helps with benefit checks, completion of application forms and signposting to entitlements, and the support available from the wider public and voluntary sectors.

I have met welfare managers and heard at first hand about the range of issues they have to deal with and the troubled circumstances of many of their customers. The help that they provide is extensive, and I have been struck by how dedicated they are to doing the best they can for the people they serve, who are frequently at a point of crisis in their lives. The workforce is fairly mature; many of them have been doing that work for many years. I assure hon. Members that they are very dedicated to what they do, but all big organisations must strive to do better. In the year ending 31 March, there were 161 formal complaints received about veterans services, compared with 2,014 instances of positive feedback from customers who wanted to give thanks for the service that they had received.

The same organisation that delivers all these services has been issuing veterans recognition cards to all service leavers since 2018. It is developing the new digital verification service that will enable veterans to verify their veteran status online quickly and easily, and apply for their veteran recognition card. That service will begin to be rolled out by the end of the year. The card will enable veterans to prove their veteran status to help them to access specialist support and services, and to maintain a tangible link to their career in the armed forces.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), I was fortunate to visit Veterans UK in Norcross, where many of these services are delivered, fairly recently and early in my tenure. As I said, the staff there were notably enthusiastic about delivering for our veterans. They are clearly committed to doing the best they can and their level of experience is immense and hugely valuable.

That is not to say that the staff and I do not recognise that there is room for improvement. Much of the frustration voiced by veterans with services delivered under the Veterans UK banner relates specifically to the armed forces compensation scheme and the war pension scheme, and particularly to the lengthy process for making claims or making a subsequent appeal. I am pleased that the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Luton South, said that the armed forces compensation scheme was created by a Labour Government. I know from her remarks that she accepts that the scheme is not perfect in all regards, and that it needs fairly extensive attention.

The interim findings from the quinquennial review, which have been referred to, give some grounds for encouragement, so the hon. Lady should not be too concerned about the organisation that her party created all those years ago. The review states that

“there are many elements of the AFCS which function well”,

so I think we have to accept that at face value. However, it goes on to say that there are issues that need to be addressed, particularly the length of time it takes for claims to be resolved. We have very little control over some of those issues, and some are common to any such scheme, whether in civilian life or in the armed forces. However, none of that negates the fact that we have to do better. I am convinced that the processes already under way at Norcross will do just that and hopefully improve the less than satisfactory experience of many of our veterans.

One of the major reasons for the delays is that we have to get proper, full, comprehensive medical reports from claimants’ medical practitioners. I can say from personal experience that busy GPs and consultants do not put returning forms very high on their priority list. Part of the reason for delays in concluding claims is beyond the direct control of Defence, but I think it is possible to bring down some of the delays. That has to do, in large part, with digital transformation.

The current process for managing claims is incredibly paper-driven, as my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley said. I have witnessed it for myself. The number of paper files crammed into every nook and cranny at Norcross is truly extraordinary. I encourage right hon. and hon. Members to visit; they will be immediately struck by the acreage of paper files all over the place, reminiscent of a bygone age. That is why we are investing around £40 million in a transformation programme to digitise existing paper-based processes, introduce automation and create a single user portal for pensions and compensation. That will provide a single electronic view of the claimant with online self-service provision, enabling them to provide and retrieve information electronically and allowing them to secure access details for their entitlement and payments.

Such a complex programme brings together multiple different IT systems. On the current trajectory, the first release of the new system is expected early next year, with further iterations being released through to early 2025. That will underpin the customer portal, which is being developed concurrently. Serving personnel will have external access to the portal from personal devices in late 2024 and veterans will have that in early 2025. Meanwhile, lived experience events with veterans are taking place to enhance understanding of the services provided by the MOD. They are designed as an opportunity to inform areas for improvement and to tell us how the MOD can enhance services, as well as share with our customers the improvements that are in hand.

We are committed to improving the customer experience for our veterans. Claims journeys are detailed on the gov.uk website to better explain the process to them. New bespoke animated presentations on gov.uk help to explain how the process works and how veterans can help to provide the necessary supporting documents with their claims, thus addressing one of the criticisms levelled in the interim findings of the quinquennial review.

In November 2022, a new online digital claims service was launched on gov.uk for those seeking compensation from the armed forces compensation scheme and war pension scheme. The service is now available to all service personnel and veterans. The new service has been well received by those using it and already accounts for more than half of new injury and illness claims made. I monitor key performance indicators for delays in claims being concluded and, a bit like inflation, they are stubbornly flat and have been for the past several months. Since the new way of being able to file claims was introduced in December, I expect it to expedite claims and for those KPIs to be met in the foreseeable future.

The MOD is committed to ensuring that the armed forces compensation scheme delivers for those who make a claim, and there are mechanisms of assessment and accountability in place to ensure that that is the case. For that reason, the scheme is checked using the quinquennial review that I referred to, meaning that, as time passes, the scheme is updated and hopefully becomes fit for purpose. This time around, the review has been taking place alongside the improvement activity that I discussed. The headline findings were published in January and I anticipate publication of the full report before the summer recess.

In addition, and in partnership with the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View, whose eyebrows are at risk, I have commissioned a review of welfare provision for veterans, which includes, but is not exclusive to, those provided under the Veterans UK banner. The review will build on the positive work already being undertaken across Government under the strategy for our veterans. The review is being led by a senior civil servant, with the independent veterans adviser and other key stakeholders providing advice. Again, I anticipate publication of the report before the summer recess.

To turn briefly to the comments that have been made, I will not be able to do them all justice, but I am more than happy to write to hon. Members. I was struck by the support from the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) for our armed forces and veterans, though I would expect nothing else. I was pleased that he articulated the support of the SNP and the Scottish Government. It is worth reflecting on the fact that Scotland more than plays its part in the defence of these islands. That is extremely welcome and is of very long standing.

I must, however, raise the point about nuclear test veterans. While I am very pleased that the hon. Member welcomes the medallic recognition, which they are due, we need to be careful about suggesting that that cohort of people have been damaged by their service. We obviously monitor all the evidence, both in this country and overseas, to pick up on anything that is emerging that suggests long-term consequences of service of this nature. So far, that has proved negative, but it is important to keep all the evidence under review, as he would expect, and I certainly commit to doing that.

The hon. Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) was rightly concerned about the cost of living. He will be aware that the MOD has taken action where it can, for example by freezing rents. We are about to have the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body report—he will have to wait for it, I am afraid—but we will see what the recommendations are in the light of the current circumstances. I urge him to be a little patient.

The hon. Gentleman made a good point about reserves over the age of 60. I have had some correspondence on the subject, but as an active reservist over the age of 60, all I will say is that I am sympathetic to his point and I look forward to the letter that he promised. I will certainly address it as best I can.

The hon. Gentleman and others were right to mention the treatment meted out to members of the LGBT community between 1967 and 2000. It was truly shocking. I am extremely in the debt of Lord Terence Etherton for his work on this matter. I do not think the hon. Gentleman was at the reception held by Lord Etherton to mark the end of his review a few days ago, but it was a great experience, though a humbling one. Lord Etherton’s report will be published very soon, as will the Government’s response to it.

There is no question but that this group of people were badly managed and badly handled by the armed forces. It was truly shocking on occasion, and I am deeply grateful to Lord Etherton and his team for producing a very fine report that touches on actions that will span right across Government. We will never make full amends for what happened—that is not possible. People have been deeply hurt, but it is important that the Government properly recognise what happened between 1967 and 2000 and, where we can, try to bring some comfort and restoration to that group of people. I certainly give an undertaking that that will happen.

I will just highlight the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley, who takes a deep interest in these matters, for which I am profoundly grateful. In particular, she clearly has informed herself exceptionally well by taking the trouble to go to Norcross to see the problems there. I know from her remarks how shocked she has been at the 19th century way in which many of the claims are handled.

[Mrs Drummond]

The Minister talked about the delay with GPs and consultants. Would it be possible to, as I mentioned, use either scanned documents or the NHS digital records that nearly every one of us now has to speed up the process?

[Dr Murrison]

Yes, I think so. Of course, that requires compliance by GPs and consultants. The history of IT in our NHS is not necessarily a very happy one, so it is perhaps easier said than done, but where we can do things digitally, we must. We have to ensure that where it is within our power to change things, particularly in relation to digitisation of applications for compensation and processing within the MOD, we do it. That is at the heart of the transformation process. That, in itself, will bring down the length of time that people have to wait.

I will use this opportunity to pick up another issue that the interim quinquennial review highlights: the perceived adversarial nature of the process. When the Government of the hon. Member for Luton South introduced the scheme, it was never intended to be adversarial, yet that has been the perception of many of our veterans. That is a pity, because that is not what we want. I look forward to the recommendations of the review in relation to how we can make that better. I very much hope and expect that the whole journey for our veterans will be dramatically improved.

I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough for introducing this timely debate. I assure her that Defence is absolutely committed—as I am personally—to delivering the best possible services for veterans, both serving and retired.

10:26

[Gill Furniss]

Thank you, Ms McVey, for taking the time to chair the debate; it is much appreciated. Everyone who has taken part in the debate has been very mindful of the issues. I thank them all, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Navendu Mishra) and the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond). All the contributions have been very even-handed, and it has been a great debate.

I thank the Minister for his response. No one doubts his personal passion for veterans’ affairs. I know from my past interactions with him how seriously he takes any issues that are brought up with him, which is very welcome. I feel that I have to put on record that I did get the wrong Minister earlier. However, I noticed that this Minister said that the report was to be rolled out at the end of the year, so there is a chance that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), may well look a little different in January. Let us hope that the report is rolled out before then.

I commend the bravery and courage of all who serve and have served in the armed forces. They risk their lives to keep all of us safe, and I know that we are all extremely grateful for that. The best way to thank them during Armed Forces Week is for the Government to do right by our troops, whether that is ensuring that serving soldiers are not forced to live in substandard housing, and to rely on benefits and food banks to get by, or righting the historic wrongs committed to our LGBT veterans and nuclear test veterans. We can all agree that we need to do more to ensure that all our veterans can access the compensation and healthcare that they need and that they are treated with the respect and dignity that they deserve.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the support and services provided by Veterans UK.

10:28

Sitting suspended.

Housing: Rhondda

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I will call Sir Chris Bryant to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the availability and support for housing in Rhondda constituency.

It is a great delight to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms McVey; we were both in the National Youth Theatre, although you are obviously much younger than I, and so were a youth much later than I was—and remain one.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

You flatter me, sir.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I do not know whether many hon. Members present have visited, but they will know the stereotypical view of the Rhondda: lots of terraced houses up the mountains and down the valleys—many identical houses, but painted with different colours, and many of them mini palaces inside. They were built as miners’ cottages in the 19th century and early 20th century. One of the ironies is that in all my time as a Member of Parliament, which is now 22 years, I have never known us to have a housing crisis. Yes, a few people have faced financial problems and lost their homes, but despite the deprivation levels 66% of people in my constituency own their own home. That is very high compared with many other areas with similar levels of deprivation.

We also have very little social housing—just 12%. Compare that with other parts of the country: Cardiff, 17%; Neath Port Talbot, another next-door county, 19.2%; Birmingham, 23.5%; and Lambeth, just across the river from here, 33.5%. We have very few council houses or former council houses. There are estates such as Penrhys and Trebanog, which are now in the hands of various housing associations, but there are really very few. The commercial rented sector is therefore a very important part of ensuring that people have affordable homes to live in.

It is exceptional to me, as MP for the Rhondda, that we now for first the first time ever have a perfect storm of a housing crisis in the Rhondda. It worries me deeply. Several different elements have led to it. One is the bedroom tax. That came in in 2013, but some of the effects are still being felt today; it is pushing people out of some social housing into other commercial properties. Another is the housing benefit cap, which has now been in place for so many years that it simply has not kept up with rental rates, even in areas such as the Rhondda, where rent is much lower than in London or many other constituencies in the land.

Changes to the buy-to-let taxation system have also had an effect on many commercial landlords in the Rhondda. Those landlords would have bought only two properties at most, because they thought of them as their retirement income. They bought them on buy-to-let mortgages and expected to be able to deduct against tax a significant part of the mortgage interest. Now they find that they cannot. It is more difficult for them to afford to keep their buy-to-let properties, and many of them are selling up. That is even before we consider the effect that mortgage interest rates are having on buy-to-let mortgages. Commercial landlords can deduct less mortgage interest than they could before, and they are finding that the sums simply do not add up. I have heard about commercial landlords saying, “I cannot sell the property, but my mortgage is costing me more than the rent I can charge.”

The Welsh housing quality standard 2023, which was introduced by the Welsh Government, has added another burden to commercial landlords who have to meet that standard. Of course we are all in favour of properties meeting proper standards, but one problem is that many of our houses were built in the 19th century, long before the standards that we would expect today. The bedrooms are tiny or relatively small and do not meet those standards. They are difficult to insulate and heat, because of how they were built in the 19th century. That has posed another set of challenges for commercial landlords, who say, “How am I going to find £5,000 or £10,000? Even if I did find the £5,000 or £10,000, would I ever be able to bring that property up to the new housing quality standards?”

Then we have interest rates. If 65% of people living in the Rhondda own their own homes, that is an awful lot of people with mortgages. Many of them might be on long-term fixed-rate mortgages, but we do not tend to do 16 or 20-year fixed-rate mortgages in the UK—it is more like two, three, four or five. People are seeing significant increases in the amount that they have to pay when at the same time inflation is running at 8.7%. That poses a lot of challenges in the whole market.

There is another element. Again, it is something that was introduced by the Welsh Government, which changed the priority need basis whereby local authorities had to determine whether they had a statutory duty to provide accommodation, so it is different in Wales from in England. I fully understand the rationale behind that. I do not want anybody to be homeless. I want local authorities to be there to help whenever they can, but that has added to the situation as well.

The situation has resulted in dozens of landlords selling up. As I have said, most of them have only two properties. The idea that the landlords have vast portfolios of 30 or 50 properties is not what we have in the Rhondda. People mostly have just two. Letting agencies have said to me, “We would normally let three, four or five properties a month—maybe a bit more at some times of the year. Some of us have not managed to let a single property this year because there is no commercial property to let.”

Between 2018-19 and 2022-23, there was a 65% increase in the number of families forced to leave private rented accommodation because of no-fault evictions, which are normally under a section 21 notice. Every week my office has people ringing up in absolute despair. The local authority now recommends that people stay until they are forcibly evicted, because it knows that, try as hard as it can, it simply cannot meet the need.

Between 2019-20 and 2022-23, there was a 69% increase in temporary accommodation placements. Across the whole of Rhondda Cynon Taf, the local authority, that has risen from 598 a year to 861. In addition, the total number of days that people have spent in temporary accommodation is now running at 44,251 because more people than ever before, particularly families with children, are in temporary accommodation and they are staying longer—considerably longer in many instances.

The cost to Rhondda Cynon Taf, because of the temporary accommodation factor, has changed out of all proportion. In 2019, the cost stood at £514,000. Last year it was £1,633,000. In just those few years the cost has more than trebled so there is a significant additional cost. In the end, of course, temporary accommodation is not high quality. It is not the best option, especially for people who have children, a physical disability or other special needs. It ends up being more costly than providing proper social housing and leads to other social problems further down the line.

We also have another problem. Some commercial landlords are now so nervous about having people who might be in receipt of housing benefit, which has been capped, or people who have financial problems because of the cost of living crisis, that they now often insist on substantial deposits beforehand. We have heard of landlords demanding 12 months’ rent in advance. There is no way the vast majority of ordinary people could possibly afford that. If they could, they might as well buy a home, because they would have enough for a deposit to do so. The good news in the Rhondda is that people can buy properties that are relatively cheap compared with many other places in the country, but only if they have managed to build up a significant deposit. Of course, many people who are in this horrific cycle of being shunted from one commercial rented property or one temporary accommodation to another simply do not have those kinds of financial resources.

There is another problem. I am delighted that RCT is able, through the Welsh Government scheme, to offer £25,000 grants for people to take property that is not being lived in and make it habitable again, but that must now meet all the new standards. It is simply not possible to smash a two-up, two-down property with small rooms into the kind of property that meets present-day standards. That is yet another problem facing the whole market.

The demand for social housing is increasing dramatically for all the reasons that I have highlighted—people being forcibly evicted, people not being able to find the big deposits that are needed, and people whose landlords are selling their properties. We now have a situation where RCT, which is doing its level best to provide accommodation for people, is finding that it has not just a few applications for every property that becomes available through its scheme, but hundreds. It is not unheard of to have 250 applications for a single property the moment it comes into the system.

In the last three years, the numbers of people applying for a one-bed flat in Maerdy have quadrupled, and they have trebled for a three-bed house in Penygraig. There was a time when certain parts of the Rhondda or RCT were more popular than others, but now every single social housing property that becomes available is massively oversubscribed, and there is no way on God’s earth that RCT, try as it might, and as inventive as it tries to be, can meet the housing need.

As I said, there are now effectively no commercial rented properties available. This is not one of those debates where I want to shout at the Government, “You’ve done terrible things—look how you’ve completely let my constituents down.” All I am trying to do is reveal to both the Government here and the Government in Cardiff Bay—because some of these issues relate to decisions made in the Welsh Government, and some of them relate to decisions made in Westminster—how an area such as the Rhondda, which has beautiful mountains, lovely valleys and some amazing housing stock—albeit that much of it is old and difficult to heat, insulate and keep up to modern housing standards—is really struggling at a time when the commercial rented sector is falling on its face.

What are the answers? We need to do something about the housing benefit cap, which has been frozen for far too long and is now completely out of kilter with reality for most ordinary properties in the Rhondda. We need to change some of the taxation for buy-to-let properties, because otherwise we will simply lose the commercial rented sector in its totality in constituencies such as mine and perhaps in many other parts of the country, and that is problematic. And of course we need to build more social housing, but I know that that solution will not come on board quickly.

The Welsh Government need to think about the priorities they have set for councils such as Rhondda Cynon Taff, because at the moment it is simply unachievable, with all the will in the world, for RCT to meet its full statutory duties. The Welsh Government also have to think about the housing standards and how they apply in valleys communities. Some people might look at a two-up, two-down terraced property from the outside and think, “I don’t know what that’s going to look like inside,” but many of them are palaces indoors, because people take phenomenal pride in them. In a community where most people own their own home, there is that pride in the street where you live and the house you live in. That builds a sense of community and a sense of communal ownership of the whole terrace, the street and the town.

I want to say to the Welsh Government that I fully understand why they do not want commercial landlords to be ripping off tenants. I argued at the beginning of my time as an MP that we do not want commercial landlords simply coming along, buying up a house, spending 50p on it and then putting somebody in because they know they will be able to get vast amounts of housing benefit over the years because the tenant will be in there. That is the Government effectively subsidising bad commercial landlords. Yet we now have the flip side of that problem, which is that housing benefit is too low, so it is difficult for commercial landlords to make any kind of money from renting their properties, and we need roughly 20% of the housing stock in the Rhondda to be in the commercial rented sector.

I passionately believe in social housing. I would love Rhondda Cynon Taf to be allowed to build more properties. As it happens, the first local authority in the country to introduce the idea of a person buying their own council property was Newport, under Labour control. However, the key then was that if someone bought their property, the local authority was able to invest that money in building more social housing. One of the our problems is that we have not invested enough in social housing across the whole of the country for many years.

I am sure the Minister will be able to respond to all my problems, but if there is anything else she needs, I will send her a little report I have done, entitled “The New Housing Crisis in the Rhondda”; it is available on my website as well. I care passionately about making sure that people have a decent home. That is one of the great things that, historically, people in the Rhondda have been able to afford, but at the moment, we have a real challenge. I hope the Minister can help.

11:16

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey, although I have not had the pleasure of serving in the youth theatre either with you or with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant). That is extremely disappointing, but I am not able to rectify that now. Nevertheless, I very much thank the hon. Member for his speech on behalf of his constituents and the way he has conveyed the sense of pride in place for his constituency, which I am sure we all recognise as Members of Parliament. He has done a great job. I have visited his constituency, and although I have not spent a lot of time there I recognise the picture he paints. I look forward to receiving his report and I will study it. On issues such as housing, which he cares so much about—as do we all—it is important that we work across our United Kingdom. I want to reassure him that we work closely with the Welsh Government through our Interministerial Standing Committee channels.

The hon. Member has raised a wide variety of issues relating to different policy areas and Government Departments. Some of them are the responsibility of the Westminster Government and some sit with the Welsh Government. I know that everyone will have heard his remarks and will have been reminded of the importance of working together. These might be separate policy areas, but ultimately, they come together in someone’s home, and that is how we have to think about it. In this area, we value the strength of our Union and see its importance. Devolution both reinforces and strengthens the powers of his local authority, Rhondda Cynon Taf, supporting it with funding and enabling local authorities to make decisions close to the people they serve.

What are the Westminster Government doing to alleviate and respond to the concerns the hon. Member has raised? The most important thing is the way we support all the devolved nations via the block grant, which for the Welsh Government amounts to £19 billion just for this financial year. That grant is for them to spend on devolved matters such as housing, schools and transport. We also provide additional infrastructure investment, not only to deliver the homes we need but to nurture strong communities throughout the UK. It is important that we work closely to level up growth, opportunity and pride; that is at the heart of this Government’s vision and a central mission for all of us. The people of the United Kingdom expect us to come together. This is a great opportunity to see how we are doing that and to draw on the combined strengths of the United Kingdom.

Let me focus on the economic context, which is at the heart of what the hon. Gentleman spoke about. He talked about the financial pressures on all our citizens, as well as mortgages, rents and the cost of living; all of those interact. The UK Government are taking determined steps to beat inflation. Ultimately, inflation is the enemy we must all defeat because it has a direct impact on people’s ability to pay their mortgages. The hon. Gentleman highlighted the high rate of home ownership in his constituency, and of course the rate of home ownership is affected by people’s ability to meet their mortgage payments, or their rental costs if they are in the private rented sector. Help with mortgages is available for certain people via the support for mortgage interest scheme, and the Chancellor is taking significant action in that space by talking to mortgage lenders. I encourage people to talk to their mortgage lenders, which have been instructed to deal with their customers fairly, especially at this time of severe economic stress.

It is also important to recognise the support the Government have put into helping people across the UK, including those on low incomes or no income, whether or not they are homeowners. There is a high number of people on lower incomes in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and for those most in need we have put in place a generous UK-wide support package, which includes up to £900 in cost of living payments for households on eligible means-tested benefits this year, a disability cost of living payment of £150 in the summer, and an additional £300 cost of living payment to pensioners to help with the coming winter. To protect the most vulnerable, we have uprated working age and disability benefits by 10.1% from April. That equates to an additional £1 billion of funding, including the Barnett impact, to help households with the costs of their essentials. In England, that funding goes towards the household support fund. It will be up to the Welsh Government to decide how to use the extra Barnett funding.

Energy costs are an additional pressure on household budgets. The hon. Gentleman rightly raised the issue of some homes being more difficult to insulate, owing to the way in which they were constructed, and their not being up to certain current standards. We want his constituents to be warm and dry, regardless of the age of the property they live in, and the UK Government have taken significant steps to help people with their energy bills.

As the Chancellor announced in the spring statement, the Government are maintaining the energy price guarantee at £2,500 until the end of June. That will save households an additional £160 and bring Government support with energy bills since October 2022—so including the most extreme periods of the winter, when people will have needed to have their heating on—to £1,500 for a typical household. Those measures ensured that households across the UK were supported through the spring, and certainly while retail energy costs remained high. Hopefully, those costs are starting to turn downward, and we hope that continues.

The hon. Gentleman also raised a number of issues about the private rented sector—the commercial rented sector—notwithstanding the fact that his constituency contains a relatively high proportion of homeowners. The private rented sector plays a vital role in any housing market across the UK, and I recognise the fact that the Welsh Government have their own schemes. The hon. Gentleman touched on some of those, and they are obviously for the Welsh Government to administer. He talked about the impact of the empty homes grant. There is also Help to Buy in Wales, and the leasing scheme.

There are a number of ways in which any Government can help citizens, and we are always happy to talk to our counterparts in Wales. I believe I have a meeting quite soon with my counterpart in the Welsh Administration, and our officials meet regularly to discuss how the schemes work and what is the best way to get help to people who really need it.

The hon. Gentleman talked about section 21 no-fault evictions. He will be aware, as will the House, that we intend to fulfil our manifesto commitment to ban section 21 evictions. We have introduced the Renters (Reform) Bill to Parliament for its First Reading, and we are looking forward to the Bill progressing so we can begin the process of enacting those provisions. My understanding is that we are working closely with the Welsh Government so that they may align their measures, should they choose to do so, with the measures we are taking through English legislation. We want and expect the provisions in the Renters (Reform) Bill to cover Wales as well as England.

The hon. Gentleman highlighted the impact of section 21 evictions on his constituents, which he has seen through his casework and surgeries. That is why we want to bring the Bill forward. We know that one of the most significant anxieties that private renters have is the fear of a section 21 eviction—the retaliatory eviction that we hear about so often. When tenants have to report a significant problem or fault with their property, whether it is damp or mould, a broken boiler or something else that makes the property dangerous, they fear that instead of fixing it, the landlord will simply evict them and make them homeless. That adds to the pressure on homelessness services and temporary accommodation, which, as the hon. Gentleman brought to life, exists in Wales as well. That is why we are taking action to remove that section 21 power.

At the same time, we need to be completely fair to landlords who need to regain their property if tenants are abusing it. Just as there are good and bad landlords, there are good and bad tenants, if I can put it that way. If a landlord is renting their property in good faith to a tenant, and that tenant has damaged it in some way or is engaging in antisocial behaviour, it is absolutely right that the landlord can regain their property to restore that confidence that it will not be damaged. They should also be able to move back into their property or sell it on the open market if they wish to do so.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about social housing. We recognise that it is a vital addition to any housing market, which is why we in England are investing considerable sums of money to ensure that there is social housing across the nation for the people who need it. We have delivered our £11.5 billion affordable homes programme in England, and I encourage the Welsh Government to follow in our footsteps and deliver more social housing to meet the need of people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and across Wales. I thank the hon. Gentleman and I look forward to reading his report.

Question put and agreed to.

11:24

Sitting suspended.

Tackling Loneliness and Connecting Communities

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq in the Chair]

16:27

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of tackling loneliness and connecting communities.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I know this is an issue you care passionately about, as do many Members across the House.

I spoke for the first time about the issue of loneliness in the Christmas recess Adjournment debate in December 2011. I was supported in that debate by the excellent Campaign to End Loneliness, and I was gifted statistics about the older population and the impact of loneliness on health. I quoted Einstein and Mother Teresa—great minds who had reflected on loneliness long before it became the globally recognised problem that it is today. Thank goodness it is, because it needs to be, and not just for the older population whom I spoke about 11 and a half years ago.

Last week was Loneliness Awareness Week, but I do not need an awareness week to be thinking about this issue. I often think about loneliness; it has become part of my general psyche, along with sport, physical health and wellbeing. For example, I was at home doing menial chores last weekend, listening to the guests laughing and singing at a joyous barbecue a few doors down. I was smiling at their fun, but I suddenly became conscious of the anecdotes I heard as the world’s first loneliness Minister. For many people, summer can be just as lonely as Christmas.

The definition of loneliness reveals the reason why that might be. Loneliness is a

“subjective unwelcomed feeling of lack or loss of companionship”.

It happens when we have a mismatch between the quantity and quality of the social relationships we have and those we want. Just like Christmas, when adverts show families and friends together, opening the windows and hearing the soundtrack of summer can increase one’s sense of isolation and loneliness. When I was a Minister, we reflected on the definition of loneliness and wondered whether we should revise it. In fact, a great deal of energy was spent on that by the very hard-working civil servants who supported the ministerial team on this issue, but we returned to the original definition, because it is very clear what loneliness is.

Many Members have come to Westminster Hall straight from the Great Get Together event being held next door in the Jubilee Room. The event, sponsored by the Jo Cox Foundation, is not only an important means of connecting people and communities, but a wonderful way to remember Jo and all her work on loneliness. Its success has been phenomenal, bringing innovative and creative thinking to how we connect people and communities throughout the year. I see that the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) is present. I did not really know her sister Jo—I merely had the privilege of being part of the outcome of the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness’s recommendations—but I think of the hon. Lady as a friend, a football teammate and a co-conspirator on all things loneliness. I have heard her speak passionately about Jo, the commission and the Great Get Together many times, and I predict that today will be no different.

It is important to remind the House of the statistics on loneliness. Some 47% of people over the age of 16 say that they experience some degree of loneliness, and 6% say that they often or always feel lonely. Contrary to what was discussed in the main Chamber debate that I led, it is not older people who now experience the highest levels of loneliness; people aged 16 to 24 are more likely to say they feel lonely often or always. Women are more likely to be lonely than men, and although there is no significant variability by ethnicity, there is for those who suffer poor health, who are disabled or who live in deprived communities. The main challenge of loneliness is that it can affect anyone, regardless of whether they are the chief executive officer at the top or the apprentice at the bottom. It is a subjective emotion, vulnerable to changing circumstances and life’s varying events.

When the Government led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) took on board the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness’s recommendations to appoint a loneliness Minister, there was a moment when we worried what our media would say. Would they mock the Government for trying to come up with policy around people’s feelings? Had we gone soft? Is loneliness not something that just affects old people? As it happens, we got nothing but praise, in part because commentators understood then, as they still do now, the impact of loneliness and why there needs to be a Government-led policy approach to tackling it.

In fact, we had interest from around the world. We had ministerial delegations from New Zealand and Japan, and conversations with people from South America and Scandinavia. The world’s media is very interested in what we have been doing in the UK, because loneliness can increase early mortality, disease and poor mental and neurological health. I will not beat around the bush: loneliness is expensive. I am not sure there a definitive figure for how much it costs, but we know it affects the health service through GP appointments, admissions to accident and emergency units and social care. We also know that it has a massive impact on productivity, with one set of figures suggesting that it costs UK employers between £2.2 billion and £3.7 billion a year. Tackling loneliness is good health, social and economic policy, so it is worth doing properly.

The loneliness strategy, which I was proud to author, is a good start. We in the UK lead the world in strategic thinking on tackling loneliness, but others are catching up. The hon. Member for Batley and Spen and I regularly speak to politicians around the world about loneliness; we have become quite the double-act—I hope that strikes fear into the Minister. In recent months, I have attended a conference in Barcelona, and spoken to the Mayor of Buenos Aires about how cities can combat loneliness. From my earlier work, I keep a close eye on what the wonderful US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, is doing and saying on the issue—if colleagues have not read his book, it is well worth doing so. However, I am not afraid to admit that the strategy, as brilliant as it was and as welcome as it was back in October 2018, is probably in need of a huge refresh post covid if we are to maintain our global lead. If there is one good thing about the pandemic, it is that it shone a huge spotlight on loneliness, but we need to get a grip of the issue and urgently revamp some of the excellent initiatives that started but withered, first, due to the lockdown rules, and then due to other priorities.

One measure I am particularly thinking of is social prescribing. There was huge enthusiasm after the launch of the strategy, and to me, as a local politician, it felt extremely positive, but the link workers were reassigned during the pandemic, and since then they have been racing to catch up amid other priorities, and the groups they previously prescribed to have disappeared.

Before the pandemic, working from home was for the few who embraced flexi-working, but now it is fairly standard, which has reduced the connectivity with the workforce for many. Transport services have disappeared from communities, isolating the elderly. We can all tell stories about our constituencies. Mine is about the 155 bus, which has ceased to exist in my villages, increasing loneliness across Burham, Eccles and Wouldam. Youth services, which were pretty patchy before, are non-existent now, leaving youngsters bereft of any connection beyond school. It is beyond the scope of this debate, but it is partly for that reason that I think we should give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote in local elections, to give them a say on the services that affect them.

The rush to build large-scale developments to address the housing shortage has resulted in a decline in community. Estates once promised community centres, green spaces and play areas, but they are now built to an identikit, soulless spec; people come and go but never commune. Finally, there have been cuts to things such as BBC local radio services, sports provision and accessible green spaces. They may be small losses to some, but they are huge to those who need them, such as the one in four people who use radio as a means of combating loneliness. The challenge for everyone, including the Minister, is that there is no one cause of loneliness, so there is no one solution. On this issue, more than ever we need—to use that often-uttered phrase—joined-up thinking.

There are some brilliant projects out there. Let’s Get Chatty is a befriending initiative that started in March 2020 to support residents of Medway in tackling loneliness and isolation. The group, which has won a Pride in Medway award, has grown over the past three years, and runs “Coffee, Chat and Connect” and “Walk and Talk” sessions. Similarly, the Larkfield Community Group, at the other end of my constituency, arranges a buddy scheme, connecting a lonely person with a volunteer buddy for an hour a week to talk, listen and hopefully become a friend. Dr Huq, you have previously mentioned the banking hub in Acton, a vital community resource that helps tackle loneliness.

We have Men in Sheds, active retirement associations, the women’s institutes network, the wider scout and guiding movement, disability sports initiatives, friendly benches, walking groups, more active running groups, church-run groups, refugee services, parental support groups and bereavement clubs—the list goes on and on. I am proud that many of those groups have joined hundreds of other community organisations from across Kent and Medway who have attended my over-55s advice fairs since 2015, connecting constituents with like-minded people, activities and hobbies.

I hope that colleagues will highlight and celebrate the local and national groups they know. They deserve recognition for all their hard work, but we need more of them. We also need stronger national leadership on this issue. I do not mean the Minister, who is wonderful, but we do need to strengthen the cross-Government approach of providing long-term funding to projects, and to upscale and improve the evidence base. We need to incentivise local authorities and their partners to develop local action plans to tackle loneliness and, incidentally, hold them to account on delivery.

Funding has generously been given from central Government to local councils in the past for loneliness projects, but whether they have been delivered or the success of delivery is not transparent. We must invest in the community and social infrastructure needed to build connections, particularly in areas with higher levels of deprivation. My own patch has seen mass development and yet valuable section 106 funding has never been allocated to a community hall or any type of communal facility where people can gather.

We do not even build pubs anymore. Once pubs were the centre of a community; these days, we allow them to decline into disrepair, before they are bulldozed and made into blocks of apartments with no communal space. We need to loneliness-proof all our new transport and housing developments. I have supported a recent application for a brand-new retirement community, which has everything one would want to see to keep people connected in their later lives. I see my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) here, which reminds me of “The Thursday Murder Club” retirement property. That is fiction, but it can turn into reality.

There is so much to celebrate in the UK. We started the global conversation on loneliness, thanks to a cross-party commitment to honour Jo’s legacy. Yes, we find ourselves in challenging times, but that is when those who feel acutely lonely need our strength and determination most. We have passed the pandemic; there are no further excuses. We have the chance now to grip the issue, revamp and refresh the loneliness strategy, and I hope the Minister will do just that.

14:43

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Thank you, Dr Huq. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon. This debate comes at a very poignant moment for me. I am grateful to my good friend, co-conspirator and football teammate, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), for securing it. I would also like to associate myself with the comments she made in her excellent speech, particularly around social prescribing, which we could do much more on, and the importance of the UK continuing to play a leading global role in the work on loneliness, not sitting on our laurels but always looking at new ways to drive this work forward. As the hon. Lady said, wherever I go, in this and other countries, loneliness is the one issue people will always come and speak to me about.

Last Friday was the seventh anniversary of the murder of my sister Jo. It was a day that many Members and people in this place remember with a feeling of shock and disbelief that does not get any less painful with time; it certainly does not for me. As I have said before, there is a very strong chance that I would not be standing here today were it not for that horrific event. It is Jo’s birthday tomorrow, so this is always a difficult time of year for our family. One thing that helps to get us through is the way that every year so many people choose to celebrate Jo’s life and what she stood for in Great Get Together events across the country over what would have been her birthday weekend.

I have just come from my first Great Parliamentary Get Together since becoming an MP—a wonderful mix of MPs, peers and staff of all political persuasions putting our differences aside and spending time together, accompanied by an abundance of Batley’s finest Fox’s Biscuits, of course. In the days to come, thanks to the hard work of the Jo Cox Foundation and many other inspirational volunteers and organisations, Great Get Togethers will take place in every corner of the UK.

These events are a brilliant example of how, by coming together to celebrate what we have in common, communities can help create opportunities for connection and offer a pathway out of loneliness and unwanted social isolation. It might feel a bit depressing to think that we have to create situations where people are able to connect, but we have to accept that in recent decades our communities have changed significantly. The pace of life, technology, the internet and changing work patterns are just some of the many factors that in some ways can help us to feel better connected, but in other ways can significantly increase levels of loneliness and isolation.

Loneliness was an issue close to Jo’s heart, which, in her far too short time in this place, she was determined to tackle. From our childhood growing up in Batley and Spen, she knew the importance of social connection and community. We were very lucky to have a close, loving family and a wide network of friends, but when Jo went away to university we both experienced the dark cloud that loneliness can cast over your life. It was a tough time for both of us, and a clear illustration of the words that she spoke much later when she said,

“Loneliness doesn't discriminate and can affect anyone at any stage in their life.”

After her murder, Jo’s work was taken up by my now friends, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and Seema Kennedy, the then Conservative MP for South Ribble, as joint chairs of the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness. Working with a range of brilliant organisations in the sector, it was their report that led to the appointment of the world’s first ever Minister for loneliness, who is here with us today, and the world’s first ever Government strategy for loneliness.

I remember with much fondness the launch of the loneliness report in Jo Cox House in Batley when I described myself, Rachel Reeves and Seema Kennedy as the latest version of Charlie’s Angels. It was great that we were reunited today at the Great Get Together event next door. I am hugely grateful to everybody who has helped get us to where we are now on the issue of loneliness, and I am very proud, now as an MP myself, to be co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on tackling loneliness and connected communities, working closely with the team from the Red Cross, who provides us with first-class support, and who, along with many others, including the Campaign to End Loneliness, continues to do outstanding work in this area.

As the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford said, given what we have been through during the last few years, this work is more important than ever. We need to make sure we keep the issue of loneliness and the importance of human connection on the political agenda and alive within our communities. It is in our communities where so much of this work should and does happen.

It was through my work with Jo’s foundation and the volunteer group More in Common Batley and Spen that I really began to understand and value the role of the voluntary sector and the grassroots work done day in, day out in all our communities across the whole country to address loneliness and social isolation, and the importance of the broader mission to create well-connected, compassionate communities where everyone has a sense of belonging and identity. That tackles a huge range of issues, not just loneliness. The pandemic, which led to such a terrible loss of life and enormous hardship for so many, demonstrated just how vital communities and connections in our communities are. It is a lesson that I hope we never forget as the covid inquiry begins its work.

Although I pay tribute to the many volunteers and organisations across the country, including, proudly, in my constituency of Batley and Spen, we cannot simply leave it to communities and the voluntary sector to do the work. By adopting the loneliness strategy, the Government recognised that they have a role to play and it is our job to make sure that Ministers do not take their eyes off the ball.

The current cost of living crisis, with persistently high food inflation, has exacerbated problems. When you are strapped for cash, the temptation is to stay at home and batten down the hatches. It costs money to go out and see friends for a coffee or for lunch, or even just to get the bus into town. If you are going to invite your family round, you want to put on a decent spread, but if you cannot afford to do that, perhaps you won’t bother.

Although I am now looking at loneliness through a political lens, this will always be a personal issue to me, not least because through my life and career, like Jo, I have always been very people focused. I do not want to lose that just because I now work in the very different world of politics—a world that I am sure colleagues will agree is, sadly, sometimes detached from the reality of many people’s lives, so I have tried to draw on my life experience during my time here, some of which I have talked about but a lot of which precedes Jo’s murder.

My background is in holistic health and wellbeing, and in education, so I have tried to draw on those different chapters in my life during my time in Parliament. Early this year, I published my “Healthy Britain” report with the Fabian Society, which has been well received. I believe that tackling loneliness has to be part of a wider, cross-departmental, cross-sector and holistic approach to improving the health and wellbeing of the nation. As I said in my report,

“Health, education, transport, housing, planning, employment, culture and leisure policies can all make a dramatic difference to reducing loneliness and improving physical, mental and social wellbeing.”

My report also talks about the need for a much greater focus on prevention and early intervention in many areas of health and wellbeing.

I echo the words of the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford: there is a need for renewed energy and effort on loneliness, and as part of that we need to do much more to identify people who are isolated and to support people at risk of becoming lonely. That requires leadership. Here at Westminster, that means using legislation to ensure that everyone has access to social spaces, that they are not forced into isolation because they do not have reliable transport and, crucially, that if loneliness is affecting their mental or physical health, they can get access to a health professional and see them face to face.

As the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford said, we need to build loneliness out of our communities and build connection into them. We also need to hold the Government to account to make sure that happens. In that regard, I welcome the start the Minister has made on this work and it is great to see him here today. Today’s debate, at this particularly important moment, is a welcome opportunity to refocus all our efforts on this important agenda.

14:52

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on raising this issue. She is very much at the forefront in doing so and we are indebted to her. We are good friends, so it is a pleasure to come along and support her in all her endeavours. This one is particularly close to her heart, as it is to mine. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater). I thank her for her contribution, made with the passion she often brings to debates. We are very pleased to see her in this place, following on from her sister. Every one of us is greatly encouraged by her contributions in this House and we thank her for them.

I am blessed to represent a rural and urban community, yet rural communities often give us not only stunning views but social isolation, which in my constituency of Strangford can be found in the farming community. I did not hear the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford mention young farmers’ clubs in her introduction—they should have been and I am sure that is an oversight on her part. I must mention them, as they are among the organisations that do fantastic work.

The Northern Ireland Assembly also did a good bit of work on mental health that said:

“Northern Ireland has approximately 30,000 farmers and a total farm workforce – incorporating farmers, families and others – of approximately 49,000.”

Rural isolation is a big issue in my constituency and across Northern Ireland.

[Tracey Crouch]

The hon. Member is right. It was remiss of me not to mention that farmer loneliness and isolation is a huge issue, in particular its impact on mental health. There are some excellent examples of how other countries, such as New Zealand, tackle rural and farmer isolation and loneliness, so the hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that and to draw on the experiences of other countries around the world.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady has just done the very thing that I knew she would do—well done to her. I know that the Minister does not have direct responsibility for Northern Ireland, but it is a pleasure to see him in his place given his range of portfolios. When he speaks, I know that he will encapsulate all the requests we put forward. Whenever we want to ask the Minister something, he has an open door. It is always easy to ask for something when we know we have a Minister who will respond positively.

The Northern Ireland Assembly also pointed out that:

“There are approximately 25,000 individual farms with an average farm size of 41 hectares; this is the smallest in the UK. A key characteristic of farming in Northern Ireland is that 70% of the agricultural area here is defined as ‘less favoured’; this brings challenges in terms of successful farming.”

It also brings many other challenges. Northern Ireland, where one in five adults has a mental health condition at any time, has a 25% higher overall prevalence of mental illness than England. It also has the highest suicide rate in the United Kingdom, at 16.4 per 100,000 people, compared to 10.3 in England, 9.2 in Wales and 14.5 in Scotland. Prescription costs per head for depression in Northern Ireland are £1.71 compared to 41p in Scotland. Those are not just stats; they are evidence.

Northern Ireland is telling the tale of the detrimental impact on people’s mental health that I believe is partly because so many people feel so alone. The quarantine period during covid absolutely exacerbated that. I say this in fun, but the longest time my wife and I had spent together in our lives was during covid. We are married for 35 years, by the way. So covid did bring some benefits—at least I thought so; I hope my wife is of the same opinion! Whatever the case may be, there were too many who were isolated and alone. While covid restrictions have mercifully eased, for some people the ache of loneliness has not. I am so thankful for the community and residents groups who attempted to step into the breach.

The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford referred to Men’s Sheds. We have had a proliferation of Men’s Sheds, as I want to illustrate in my contribution. I recently watched a video of a Men’s Shed learning to play the ukulele. Those of us of a certain generation will know what that is, but those who are younger, like the hon. Member for Batley and Spen and others, might not. These men were from the Glen housing estate, and the camaraderie between them was clear to see. When I looked at the men in that video, I saw men who had been recently widowed or who had lost their jobs. In the Men’s Shed, there were hurting men who were healing simply by being with other men and focusing their minds on living and not just existing. That is so important.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I do not know if it is a universal practice in Men’s Sheds, but I know that in the Glenrothes Men’s Shed, one of the absolute rules is that at tea time they stop what they are doing, go and sit down with everybody and have a cup of tea. For many, that is the most important part of the day. Is that a standard feature in the Men’s Sheds in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency? If not, does he think it would be a good idea for more workplaces to adopt a similar rule?

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Whenever anyone goes into a Men’s Shed there is a cup of tea and a biscuit—it might be a Fox’s biscuit or another biscuit; probably more likely to be a Jaffa Cake down where we are, but whatever it may be, it is about the camaraderie—[Interruption.]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. There will be two votes in the House now, so we will suspend for 25 minutes.

14:59

Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.

15:24

On resuming—

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

We resume where we left off, so we will unpause Jim Shannon, who is in the middle of a cliff-hanger moment of his speech.

[Jim Shannon]

Does that mean I can start again?

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Just go from where you were, Jim.

[Jim Shannon]

I only jest—I would never do that.

I was referring to the importance of Men’s Sheds, and the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) had just intervened on me. It is so important to have that cup of tea, chat and social engagement. Men’s Sheds are springing up all over my constituency, as I mentioned earlier, and the rationale is clear: let men come together and learn to talk freely, to express themselves and to help each other.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)]

While we are talking about loneliness, there is a stigma around mental health issues, especially for men, which can lead to suicide. While we support the important work of Men’s Sheds, there are also fantastic organisations like Andy’s Man Club rocking up all over the country. Anything we can do to help prevent that stigma, we should be doing.

[Jim Shannon]

It is wonderful when we all hear in these debates about the organisations, individuals and volunteers who reach out to try to make people’s lives better. It is not just Men’s Sheds either. Another wonderful project that has sprung up in my constituency of Strangford is the Ards Community Network, where the wonderful Cathy Polley has secured funding for projects aimed at women who need support from others. I mentioned the Men’s Sheds; I also want to mention the good things that have come from the women’s projects. The team there provide yoga classes and mummy-daughter evenings in which women from all areas of the community can come together and learn new skills, or just have a chat with a cup of tea and a Fox’s biscuit—or maybe another biscuit—and relax. Again, it is so encouraging and helpful that so many women of different ages who may not have naturally met are now meeting and bonding. That is what it is all about: reaching out and doing more. The wonderful work in communities is only achieved with funding. In these days of austerity, community groups that put on funded events connect those who need it most—those who are struggling financially, who cannot meet their friends for a dinner out or take their children to the cinema, or who feel constrained.

The hon. Member for Batley and Spen made an important point about what families do: sometimes when you haven’t got the money, you sit in the house, you do not bring your friends round and you cannot go to anybody else’s house. Those are real problems. I am pleased that in my constituency of Strangford we see the Men’s Sheds and the women’s groups thriving. The young farmers’ club, which I spoke about earlier, reaches out in the countryside. We have more suicides among men in rural communities in Northern Ireland than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. That tells me of the pressures of isolation and loneliness. Like others, there are times when on a nice day it is just me and the dog. It gives me a chance to think and to switch off. But for other people, that loneliness is all day and it becomes a real problem.

The debate underlines the message to the Minister: no one has to feel alone. We can help, and that help starts with the funding initiatives and volunteer initiatives that allow young farmers’ clubs or local community groups to speak to and reach into people’s lives. We are blessed to be the Members of Parliament for our constituencies. We have our ears close to the ground, we hear what people are saying, and we are pleased to recognise all those who do good work, reach out and help people. What a great day it is whenever we as MPs are able to make lives better—that is what it is really all about.

15:28

[Beth Winter (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on securing this important debate and on her work on tackling loneliness. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) for the excellent work she does through her sister’s foundation—the Jo Cox Foundation—and the Great Get Together events today. It is so important, so I thank her.

I start by reiterating the importance of definitions. As has already been said, the Campaign to End Loneliness defines loneliness as a “subjective” feeling—that is really important—and states:

“It happens when there is a mismatch between the quantity and quality of the social relationships that we have, and those that we want”.

The UK is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness. That was recognised in the recent update review of the loneliness report, which refers to loneliness as a crisis in the United Kingdom. I know that the Minister is well aware of that.

In the short time that I have in which to speak, I want to focus on loneliness among older people, which is very close to my heart. Age UK has reported that close to 1.5 million older people are often lonely. CFAS Wales—the cognitive function and ageing study—found that more than a quarter of older people in Wales reported being lonely. Before entering Parliament, I worked as a researcher in Swansea University for close to 10 years, and I worked on the CFAS project in the Centre for Innovative Ageing. One of our areas of specialism was loneliness among older people. I thank my colleagues at Swansea University—in particular, my mentor, Professor Ness Burholt, and a friend of mine, Dr Deborah Morgan—for their outstanding and groundbreaking work on the prevalence, symptoms, experience and impact of loneliness among older people, not only in Wales but internationally.

The research for my PhD on social exclusion among older people in rural areas of Wales found a correlation between levels of loneliness, people’s situations in their life course and societal changes. It found that there were lower levels of loneliness during the pre-second world war period and the post-war Keynesian period, but that it has increased since the onset of neoliberalism in the late 1970s. That individualist culture still dominates our society today. I will return to that later when I look at the solutions to tackling loneliness.

As others have already said, loneliness can and does have an absolutely devastating impact on individuals’ mental and physical health. It is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure, and there are risk factors for the progression of frailty. It puts individuals at a greater risk of cognitive decline and dementia, and increases early mortality by more than a quarter.

As others have outlined, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that the decade and a half of austerity and the cost of living crisis have had a direct impact on loneliness in the United Kingdom. For instance, Age UK research reveals that more than 4 million over-60s are cutting back on social and leisure activities to make ends meet. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the cost of living crisis on loneliness?

Although my research and work experience focused on loneliness among older people, which is linked to social exclusion, loneliness knows no bounds; it can affect anybody of any age and background, and at different times in their life course. Loneliness is higher now among younger people. The incidence is higher among single or widowed females, people with mental health conditions, people who are renting and people who have lower levels of social trust. It affects working people: nearly half of people in employment experience loneliness at some time.

Loneliness is also prevalent here in Parliament. I commend the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) not only for her outstanding work as a parliamentarian—in particular, on the climate crisis—but for her honesty for saying in a recent interview:

“It’s lonely within parliament, yes, definitely.”

Much more needs to be done within this bubble, as I call it, to acknowledge and tackle loneliness and isolation.

[Jim Shannon]

Far too often, the people who are a joy to everyone around them can be very lonely. In my time as an elected representative, I have often seen that those who are the life and soul of the party suffer most from loneliness. The hon. Lady is right to underline that the visual impression does not always tell us what is happening inside.

[Beth Winter]

The definition is so important because it is a subjective experience, and we need to be very aware of that.

I will turn to tackling loneliness. At the UK level, the creation of a Minister for loneliness and the strategy on loneliness is welcome. The Welsh Government’s initiative “Connected communities: A strategy for tackling loneliness and isolation and building stronger social connections” is also welcome. It contains four key priorities: increasing opportunities for people to connect; a community infrastructure that supports connected communities; cohesive and supportive communities; and building awareness and promoting positive attitudes. Although the resources attached to those strategies are welcome, they are clearly insufficient and more funding is required.

Crucially, if we are ever going to tackle the underlying causes of this epidemic, as I said, we must accept that it is inextricably linked to other societal developments and changes. One example is the shift from a collectivist to an individualist society, and the resultant loss of a sense of belonging and community cohesion. The neoliberal approach that we live under also exacerbates levels of loneliness and there is a lot of academic research to confirm that. Austerity and the cost of living crisis make it impossible for many people to engage in social activities. There is also the rise of the digital age. I could go on. There are multifaceted indicators and causes of loneliness. If we are ever going to challenge and tackle the scourge of loneliness, we need fundamental, transformative societal change.

The Red Cross supplied us with a number of questions for the Minister, and I want to take the opportunity to pose some of them. What will the Government do to incentivise local authorities and their partners to develop local action plans to tackle loneliness, to invest in community and social infrastructure, to loneliness-proof all transport and housing developments, and to close the digital divide by increasing digital skills and confidence? The Minister may already have those questions to hand; I am interested to hear his response.

I will finish on a positive note. In my constituency of Cynon Valley—which is the best place in the world to live and I welcome anybody to come at any time—we are doing so much to retain and revitalise community connections and our sense of belonging, taking a grassroots, holistic approach. I say “we” because I feel privileged to live there and to go to these brilliant events. They range from the brilliant Men’s Sheds in Hirwaun YMCA to a thriving youth club. I do not know how it has not closed because of austerity, but there is passion and determination in the community, and we have managed to retain that youth club.

In Aberdare, Age Connects has transformed an old people’s day centre into a community hub for all ages, with a whole range of activities. It really is the hub of the community. Down the other end of the valley, Bryncynon Strategy has done a lot of life history work with older people, learning about our heritage and our mining background. It really is a way of befriending and engaging with older people. There has also been a huge revival in choirs in south Wales, so if people are interested in music, they should come to visit us.

I am always optimistic, but I do have hope for a better, inclusive society, filled with care, compassion and kindness, where we respect people and treat them with dignity. Surely we can all agree that is not too much to ask. Diolch yn fawr.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

As a point of information, before I call the last of the Back Benchers, we had a 25-minute suspension because of the two votes, so that goes on to the end of the debate. Our new finish time is 4.25 pm, so do not feel you have to squish everything in before 4 o’clock.

15:39

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq.

Loneliness kills. It does not discriminate, and it does not care how much money someone has, what career they have done or who they are. As has been outlined in the debate, without the right support at the right time, loneliness can very quickly move from a temporary feeling to a chronic state, and damage both our physical and mental health. A study in 2015 found that feeling lonely is as bad for people’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Last year, another study found that only 3% of people who feel regularly lonely feel that life is worth living. Just think about that for a moment. Place yourself in those people’s shoes and imagine feeling so lonely—without people, without hope and without support—that you would rather not be alive. That is the case for millions of people across this country.

Many lonely people describe themselves as feeling trapped, without purpose and frustrated. Loneliness is devastating for our physical and mental health, and therefore has a detrimental impact on our public services as well. We had an opportunity in this country to reconnect with people, to engage with communities and to almost start again after the pandemic. If there was one silver lining from that time, it was that we all came together to reach out to those who were lonely, whether it was to help with prescriptions and shopping, or just calling a neighbour. I do not think that we will soon forget how helpless and isolating the pandemic made many of us feel, because although we were connected to everyone, we were not connected to anyone at the same time.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

To amplify the hon. Gentleman’s point, one of the things that the pandemic taught us all was the psychological impact of being lonely, because we were disconnected from our usual social networks. Does he think that there would be much value in public health messaging that, as well as emphasising the need to maintain our physical wellbeing by looking after our health and avoiding obesity, and the need to look after our mental health, started to articulate good social health, too?

[Christian Wakeford]

I do not know what to say, other than I agree wholeheartedly with what the hon. Member says. Far too often we talk about physical health, and we keep on talking about parity with mental health, but we certainly do not talk about social health. It is only when we get all three working that we can truly thrive not only as individuals, but as a nation.

As I was saying, I do not think that we will soon forget how helpless and isolating the pandemic made many of us feel, but we were the lucky ones. We had a job to go to. We often had family around us and processes to distract us. We were grinning and bearing it, but imagine what it must have felt like for those without any of that, who were already isolated and who became increasingly more so because of a global pandemic. They were waiting for the phone to ring, as days or even weeks went by without a knock on the door and with no one to speak to. Even it was a political canvasser who people did not want to see, that might have been their only contact for some time.

Post pandemic, however, I fear that we have missed the moment. I really hope I am wrong on that, because loneliness needs to be at the forefront of decision makers’ minds. As the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) said, from house building to transport connections, social policy, charity work and sporting elements, we need a truly holistic and wraparound solution to tackle loneliness, and we need to start it now. I do not want to make this issue party political, though, because I think we can all agree that we want to make loneliness a thing of the past. As my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) said, we should all grasp the Government’s strategy for loneliness with both hands, but I would like them to look at providing more money in the area. In the grand scheme of things, the spending costs are not that great a deal, but the social impact really is huge.

I truly welcome today’s debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford for securing it. It is not only timely, but very necessary. By raising this crucial issue today, we can reach out to people in our communities. We can talk again about social prescribing, as we have done in this debate. Fantastic groups in my constituency and across the country, such as Incredible Edible in Radcliffe and Prestwich, are not only doing great work in community growing, but making sure that people have the choice of being able to speak to someone. By working together, we can reduce the stigma surrounding loneliness and, ultimately, tackle it once and for all.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I call the first of the Front Benchers—for the SNP, Peter Grant.

15:44

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Thank you very much, Dr Huq. I am pleased to begin summing up this debate.

In 2007, I went very quickly from being a senior auditor in one of Scotland’s smallest local authorities, which is responsible for about five people, to being the leader of Scotland’s third biggest local authority, which is responsible for 20,000 people. About two weeks in, I had to speak to the senior management team to teach them about leadership. I thought I was a bit of a con or a charlatan then. I am now trying to sum up a debate about loneliness among two of the possible three or four people in the land who have done more than most to help us recognise what loneliness is and how it should be addressed, so I pay tribute to them. I know it is traditional, when summing up, to commend the mover of the motion and other speakers, but the contributions of the hon. Members for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater), among others, today and to the wider debate about loneliness should be recognised. The speech by the hon. Member for Batley and Spen was wonderfully upbeat and positive, given the time of year and the subject. I thank her greatly for that.

I always have to check and write down the constituencies represented. I do not know whether anyone has realised that represented here we have Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, and that the English constituencies are scattered all over England. We also have four different political parties, and nobody has disagreed with anybody. That is something positive we can take out a debate about a still major public health crisis in all our nations. It is a social and health crisis, which can lead to tragedies and the loss of human life.

We need regular face-to-face contact as human beings. I would argue we need to have regular physical contact with our fellow human beings. Nobody should under-estimate the healing value of a hug or a wee hold of the hand when somebody really needs it. Loneliness is the way that we have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to respond to a lack of contact in our lives. The same way that hunger is the way that we respond to a lack of food, and tiredness is the way we respond to a lack of sleep or rest. Loneliness is not a mental health illness or condition. It is the way that our bodies and minds respond to tell us that something is going wrong. Like hunger and tiredness, if we do not deal with it in the early stages, if we do not help people to deal with it, it can quickly become a significant health problem, very often connected to depression, to a loss of self-worth and all the mental and physical health conditions that can follow from that.

As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, loneliness and isolation are not the same as being alone. We all need time to be alone. One of my favourite quotes is from a adopted Fifer called Hamish Brown: “Solitude can be as sweet as honey, but remember you can’t live on honey for ever.” We all need time to be alone, but in the modern world, that is possibly one of the biggest things that people lack. Being forced to be alone is different, whether that is someone being alone in their own house, because no one will come and talk, or in a crowded room, because everybody is talking to each other, or because everyone is having a party and a barbecue next door and they are not invited. It is possible to be unbearably lonely in a big crowd, just as it is possible to be on one’s own yet not feel lonely. We need to accept those things. We need to accept that different people react to loneliness in different ways, just as they react to hunger, fear or tiredness in different ways.

Among the various reminders we have had that loneliness affects everybody and appears in all sectors of society, making itself known in different ways, one thing we have to recognise is something I encounter far too often in my constituency casework: there are people who use loneliness as a weapon. There are people who will deliberately use loneliness and the isolation of a partner to prevent them from having a life. In some cases, it is sadly a prelude to depriving them of that life. Loneliness does not always happens naturally. Sometimes it is forced on somebody deliberately by a partner as a means of controlling their life.

We have spoken about some of the things that have happened recently that have probably made loneliness worse. We cannot possibly point to one thing and say, “That has made loneliness increase by 2%, 5% or 10%.” The cost of living is making people become more isolated, which makes people lonely. There cannot be any argument about that. I want to suggest to the Minister that some of the things that the Government do, even if they are not intended to make people feel lonely, are having that impact. I suggest that the Government should think about that in future.

It can be very lonely going for a benefits assessment, especially in circumstances where the person is not allowed to bring someone with them, or only an approved person. One person against the system can feel very lonely indeed. Does the way that we treat asylum seekers and refugees help them to feel that they are part of a community? Does current Government policy and practice help to reduce loneliness among asylum seekers who land in a country where they do not know anybody, where they do not speak the language and where very few people speak their language? I do not think that it does.

The financial austerity to which our public services have been exposed and subjected over the years means that local authorities have had to protect the statutory “must have” services and that a lot of the “nice to have” services have been badly and disproportionately affected. They are being so affected that we are beginning to realise that they are not just nice to have; they are a must have. It is possible for communities to survive without a library, post office, community centre or primary school, but take all those things out of a community and it starts to die, and those who are left in the community are likely to become lonely and more isolated.

The facilities I am talking about, not all of which are the Government’s responsibility, are libraries, community centres, bowls clubs—I declare an interest as a 31-year member of Leslie Bowling Club; I have not swung a decent bowl yet, but I keep on trying—small independent cafés and pubs. They were once, and in some cases still are, vitally important social centres for communities. What happens in a community when those facilities are lost? All those places appear to be there for one purpose or another, but in fact their importance is that they are places for people to go and meet people. For a lot of people in a lot of communities, the library, café or community centre is the only place that they can meet other people.

That has to be recognised when a council considers whether to withdraw funding from a community centre or close down a library, or when the Government or a local authority considers changes that will lead to small businesses, cafés and pubs closing. Do any Government or council factor in the impact on loneliness before they take any of those decisions? I very much doubt it. I suggest to the Minister that if the Government are serious about this, any assessment of any decision should include its impact on loneliness and general community wellbeing as an essential part. I have no doubt that we will get good, well-meaning words from the Minister and that he will agree with what everyone else has said, because people tend to agree on the issue. We can all agree about what needs to be done, but somebody needs to do it. We can all agree about what the bad impacts are, but sometimes decisions may unintentionally make those impacts even worse.

We have heard a lot about the impact of covid. In some ways, it pulled communities together, but it left a lot of people feeling isolated. Those of us lucky enough to live close to countryside could go out for a walk quite happily and, although we were not allowed to arrange to meet people, could meet people. For those living in the middle of a big city, it was not nearly such an attractive proposition. The increased use of remote working, remote shopping and remote everything else has a lot of benefits, but we need to recognise the downsides as well. We need to encourage people who isolated for a long time during covid and who were so scared of covid that they have not quite come out of their shell yet. There are too many people unnecessarily isolating themselves when the risk of covid has now been greatly overtaken by the risk of loneliness and all the problems that that can bring.

Let me finish by looking at some success stories. We were encouraged earlier to name drop all the great things in our constituencies. That would take me until past 4.25 pm, never mind leaving time to let the other Front-Bench spokespeople speak, so I cannot drop any names, but I will mention some of the brilliant local cafés in my constituency, which I support the best I can. The Men’s Sheds have already been mentioned. They do a fantastic job, and there are a number in my constituency. Glenrothes Men’s Shed, by the way, is a men’s and women’s shed—at least that is where my wife says she is going every Monday morning, so I presume that they allow women. It is open to everybody, and I have never known anyone to go to the Men’s Shed and not come out feeling a better person.

A lot of community cafés, pantries and so on grew up during the covid crisis. I cannot pick out any individual facilities, but I need to mention one person, Rose Duncan, who was an absolute giant of the community effort, particularly in north Glenrothes, during covid. She very sadly passed away a few weeks ago. She gave a lifetime of service to the community in Glenrothes and previously to the community in Methil and Levenmouth, which are also in my constituency. Rose will be greatly missed, and my thoughts are with her family and friends at this time.

Social prescribing was mentioned. Why is it that we have never questioned whether it is a good idea to prescribe antidepressants, which if taken for too long become seriously addictive, but we have not argued about whether it is a good idea to prescribe a season ticket to a local swimming pool or a week’s admission to an exercise class? Bus passes are a great thing. Fife was one of the first places in the United Kingdom—I think one of the first places in Europe—to have free bus passes for elderly people. I was surprised when I discovered that I am now an elderly person. The Scottish Government have taken that scheme over, and we now have free bus travel anywhere in Scotland. It is a benefit to me and also benefits this place to the tune of £20 every time I come down here, because the Scottish Government are subsidising this place by that amount—this place is very welcome. I am quite happy to keep subsidising it because I know it could not survive if it was independent.

There are benefits of initiatives such as bus passes and making sure there are buses that people can get. As one example, I mentioned my membership of Leslie Bowling Club a wee while ago. There were three ladies there, one of whom is sadly no longer with us, who were in their 70s. They were not able to walk very far and were not fit to drive. Every week they would meet at the bus stop in Leslie and, with their bus passes, go to the bus station at the Kingdom centre in Glenrothes. They would take it in turns to pick which bus they went on and go off for an afternoon out and a coffee somewhere and then come back. It made a huge difference to the rest of their week. It made them much more active, vibrant and positive people.

Because those ladies and other people were doing that, the bus services remained viable and were able to continue, even in the early morning when people were going to work, most of whom did not have a bus pass. The whole service was made more sustainable and more viable, helping to keep essential services together. It costs public money, but the public benefits are almost impossible to measure.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman did say he was concluding. I am being told by the official that he is over the standard time, so if he could conclude we would be grateful.

[Peter Grant]

I certainly will, Dr Huq. I am sorry that I have taken so long.

The most important thing about loneliness over the last few years is that we are now talking about it, and that is because of the great efforts of some of the hon. Members here, and we are talking about it because of Jo Cox. Jo has a fantastic number of legacies in this place. I did not know her well, but I knew her well enough to know that she was the kind of MP we do not see often enough. It was a desperate loss for all of us when she was taken so young. Thank you, Jo, from all of us.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I call the shadow Minister, Barbara Keeley.

15:56

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I start by drawing attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as an unpaid trustee of a local charity. It is a pleasure to speak in this debate with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) for securing this debate and for her work on loneliness, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater). I do mean those thanks because, as the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), just said, both Members should be thanked greatly for the work that they do. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed.

Loneliness has been classed among the greatest public health threats of our age. Millions of adults and young people in the UK regularly feel lonely and at risk of experiencing a severe impact on their mental and physical health as a result. My hon. Friends the Members for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) and for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) have talked about the impacts, but those impacts are not felt equally.

The most recent Government data from last year shows that people who live in more deprived areas are more than twice as likely to experience chronic loneliness compared with people who live in less deprived areas. The difference is even more stark among children with different economic backgrounds. Some 28% of children aged 10 to 15 who receive free school meals said they were often lonely, compared with 6% of those who did not have free school meals.

Meanwhile, research from Age UK shows that almost 1 million older people in the UK often feel lonely. My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley talked about that quite extensively. Carers UK research shows that unpaid carers are seven times more likely than the general population to say they are always or often lonely. These issues have been present for many years. Brilliant campaigners such as our former colleague Jo Cox have raised them again and again, and I am glad that that work is being carried on, but as we pass the seventh year since she established the Commission on Loneliness, it feels to me as though tackling loneliness and promoting connectivity is more pressing than ever.

Even before the covid pandemic, the way we were used to interacting was changing. Increased digital connectivity and rapid technological change has led to a change in the social dynamics that exclude many people without access to the internet. Then of course the pandemic struck, and separation became a defining characteristic of our lives in the early 2020s. We were prevented, as many Members in this debate have said, from seeing our friends and family due to the strong desire to protect one another. Our shared spaces were closed, including libraries, museums, art centres and theatres.

The Office for National Statistics estimated that, over the covid pandemic years, the number of people experiencing loneliness rose from 5% to 7%. Research shows that the most profound disruption from the restrictions was felt by people who are most at risk of loneliness, including women, older people, people with disabilities, people experiencing unemployment and young people. Now, we have a cost of living crisis. As we have heard in the debate, that is reducing people’s ability to socialise and connect. Financial instability can provoke or deepen feelings of loneliness, for all the reasons we have talked about. People are unable to get out or to invite people round. In turn, loneliness can exacerbate the feelings of stress brought on by those circumstances. My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen discussed that point.

Two fifths of respondents in British Red Cross research said they had restricted how much they socialised this last winter because of the increased cost of living. Age UK research shows that more than 4 million people aged over 60 are cutting back on their social and leisure activities just to make ends meet. It is not surprising that, according to the Jo Cox Foundation, more than a quarter of people surveyed are feeling lonelier due to the cost of living crisis.

As we have heard today, the challenges facing individuals and organisations are great, but we have rightly focused on the brilliant initiatives that are finding ways to maintain and strengthen connections. In my constituency of Worsley and Eccles South, a charity called Dancing with Dementia holds weekly dance events in non-clinical spaces for people to socialise, dance and listen to a live band. Guests are then welcome to come together for a healthy lunch. The event was originally only for people with dementia and their carers but has now expanded to include anyone that feels low-spirited, in an attempt to promote connection among people who are at risk of developing dementia.

In Carers Week, I met two carers from Salford, Claire and Justine, who talked about the support they had had as carers from a project of Age UK Salford called “Empowered Connectors”, a support group that aims to give family carers a wider voice and the chance to influence positive change. I am looking forward to meeting that group in the summer.

I want to mention the new food distribution charity, Salford Families in Need Meals Project, of which I am proud to be a trustee. Today, as every Wednesday, the charity’s volunteers will be packing and distributing much-needed food to local people and families in Salford. Not only does the charity distribute food, but it is now seeking to connect with people, beyond the food service. I must mention Julie Larkinson, who helps by taking cooking sessions to help people find more ways to cook the food that is distributed.

Finally, it is Armed Forces Week, and I had a newsletter from Allotments for Veterans this morning. I know that veterans in my constituency feel that having that allotment space makes a huge difference to their mental health and it is very much supported by the veterans who go there.

Another charity working to connect communities in my constituency is called START Inspiring Minds. It is a mental health support project that uses art as therapy in group settings, to reduce isolation. One of those services is an arts-on-prescription service that consists of up to a year of weekly, studio-based creative workshops for people experiencing poor mental health. It encourages members to try a range of art forms to build their confidence and self-esteem, with the aim of helping people to reconnect with their local community.

That is just one example of an organisation using the arts to tackle loneliness and promote connection, and I want to expand briefly on the benefits of experiencing the arts and culture. Not only does engaging with the arts and culture help spark conversations with those around us, but arts and culture can empower us to voice our own perspectives and empathise with other people’s narratives, resulting in a feeling of broader connectedness with the world around us.

Research from Imperial College London found robust evidence about the preventive benefits against loneliness for older people engaging with museums, galleries, exhibitions or community art centres. The benefits from participation in the arts are found to last for as long as 10 years, and there is strong evidence out there that makes the case for arts and culture on those grounds. I hope the Government are listening and that the Minister will do all he can to work with colleagues to support and promote visits to our museums and galleries and community art centres, and to encourage participatory art activities—it is important that it is participatory—for older people and other groups who may be lonely.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley talked about the revival of choirs in her area, and that is to be commended. The research I referred to found that choirs very much had this preventive benefit.

The organisations that we have heard about today are doing important work, but that work must not be taken for granted. This week is Small Charities Week. The 800 small charities that make up the Connection Coalition formed by the Jo Cox Foundation in 2020 have been hit hard by the cost of living crisis. A survey by the Jo Cox Foundation in February showed that more than 80% of members had concerns about the ongoing viability of their organisation over the next year. One third of members anticipated the need to cut back on the services they provide, and members also anticipated that the cost of living crisis would have a negative impact on the communities they serve, which would then increase the demand on their services.

We have reflected in the debate on the danger that our excellent small charities and voluntary organisations will go under because of the cost of living crisis. I hope the Minister will set out what his Department is doing to ensure that long-term financial support is available for voluntary sector organisations to help them deliver their vital work. Given small charities’ concerns about volunteer recruitment and retention, will the Minister also update us on what he is doing to support charities and voluntary organisations to grow and develop their volunteer management capacity?

It is testament to the work of the loneliness commission, led first by Jo Cox, then Seema Kennedy, later by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and then taken up by my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen, that much has been done already to tackle loneliness. Yet a strategy and ministerial oversight, which are good things, can only go so far when vital community infrastructure is being undermined by the hollowing out of public services. Sadly, austerity measures brought in through the coalition years have had a concerning impact on the number of permanent closures of libraries, youth centres, community halls and other shared spaces. In addition, and as I have mentioned, the very charities addressing loneliness are now facing further restraints because of cost of living pressures. I urge the Minister to ensure that those vital organisations continue to be supported.

Support for mental health also to be strengthened. A couple of hon. Members have referred to mental health issues and we know that mental health services are critically overstretched. Although we have not often politicised issues in this debate, it is worth saying that under a Labour Government, mental health treatment would be revolutionised by recruiting 8,500 new mental health professionals and Labour would guarantee mental health treatment within four weeks for anyone who needs it. That is the level of commitment that is needed to start addressing the problems facing people who experience chronic loneliness. There is no quick fix to tackling loneliness, but with leadership and determination, inspired by Jo Cox, we can build towards a kinder, fairer and more connected world.

16:07

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Dr Huq. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) on securing this important debate and I pay tribute to the work of the all-party parliamentary group on tackling loneliness and connected communities, which really is fantastic in championing this important cause. The all-party group raises the profile of the issue, and the ways in which we might solve it, in a really collaborative way. Every one of its meetings that I have attended has shown Parliament working at its best. Long may that continue.

I begin by paying tribute to Jo Cox, her life and her legacy. As a West Yorkshire MP myself, I got to know her—sadly, all too briefly. I remember commenting during the tributes in the Chamber that the first time I met her was in the BBC make-up room as we were preparing for a regional politics show. I have to say that she spent about 30 seconds in the chair, while I was in there for a lot longer, but there we go.

It is great that we have had the event today, thinking about the Great Get Together. It reminds us of the phrase that Jo is remembered for so well, about how we

“have far more in common than that which divides us.”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]

The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) also reminded us about when Jo said that “loneliness doesn’t discriminate”. That is a really important line that we should all remember.

The Government are committed to making sure that everyone has the benefit of powerful and meaningful connections. Loneliness is a complex issue and, frankly, it can only be addressed in partnership. It has been great to hear of so many organisations around the country, such as Men’s Sheds, that are doing incredible work in this field. I have seen so many in my constituency really breaking down the barriers. They are critical to tackling this issue.

Government action has been driven by three key objectives set out in the world-class 2018 strategy, which my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford talked about: first, reducing stigma and building up a national conversation; secondly, driving a lasting shift so that relationships and loneliness are considered in organisations all over the country; and thirdly, improving evidence so that we can prove the compelling case for ongoing action.

I am always careful when we start to single out groups of people, because others think that we are forgetting about them. Loneliness can affect everyone—we need to be really clear about that—but we know from some of the evidence we already have that young people are disproportionately at risk, and they are the least likely to seek help. That is why in January we launched a communications campaign aimed at 16 to 34-year-olds that encourages young people to lift someone out of loneliness. That may be just through some small acts of kindness.

A decade ago, people did not really speak about mental health; it was a bit of a taboo. It is incredible to see the real progress that has been made in 10 years. It is now more likely that people will seek help before they get to a crisis, which is good. Loneliness is on a similar journey, but there is much further to go. Some will assume it is their own fault that they are lonely, and some may not even realise that the feelings they are experiencing are feelings of loneliness. We need to normalise thinking about loneliness, recognise its widespread impact, and boost awareness of existing support.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The Minister is spot on, but is not the way we normalise this by talking generally about our holistic wellbeing? We should really join up all our public health messaging to tackle physical, mental and social health.

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to some of the cross-Government work, but we need to join up that messaging right across society.

I decided that, during Loneliness Awareness Week, I could not stand here and talk about breaking down the barriers and the stigma of loneliness if I did not admit that I have been lonely myself. That is why I did interviews in some national papers. I have been overwhelmed by the response, not just from the UK, but from around the world. Despite the fact that awareness was raised during the pandemic, it is still unusual to see people in public life, and people more broadly, talking about their loneliness.

We want to drive a lasting shift. My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford was the first Minister for loneliness. It is great to follow in her footsteps—there is not a lot of pressure on me there! We have invested over £80 million in projects up and down the country, including song-writing workshops in Devon, dance classes in Bedfordshire, health and wellbeing projects such as online chat services in Durham, and projects supporting education, climate and the environment, such as nature walks in Lambeth. Taking that national action is really important. We have also expanded social prescribing, which really does help loneliness, but also improves public health. My hon. Friend is a big advocate of that. I am really keen that we look at how we can expand these measures even further and add them to other strategies that we are developing in Government.

In 2021, we launched the tackling loneliness hub, an online forum that brings together people who are working in this area. It allows members to develop relationships with others around the country, learn from each other and upskill themselves through events and workshops, and, crucially, share that latest research. Organisations represented include the English Football League Trust, the Co-op Foundation and the British Red Cross. I thank them all for their contributions. It is great that we now have a membership of more than 500, including from the private and public sectors, academia and charities. It just goes to show that we need a joint approach.

Building the evidence base is key, and it is important that we continue that work and share best practice. I know that hon. Members have been flying around the world and speaking to others, and the Department has received requests for meetings with representatives of the Governments of Japan, Sweden, Finland and the US. That is fantastic, because they want to develop their national strategies and build their evidence base. That work will include publishing our own research. We are convening an evidence group to bring together academic experts so they can collect population-level data, in particular.

Our evidence has grown significantly thanks to the work that has been done since 2018. We have much stronger evidence that proves the bi-directional relationship between mental health, loneliness and physical health, which my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) mentioned. We are also looking for greater insights into the risk factors for people becoming lonely, and into the affected groups, including young people, people with disabilities and other special educational needs, people from the LGBT community and those living in deprived areas. It is important that we continue to do that work, but there is still much that we do not know, which is why we are investing in programmes to better understand what works.

This year, we announced the first of the know your neighbourhood fund projects, which will create volunteering opportunities in 27 of the most deprived and disadvantaged areas. I was pleased to visit Hull to see the great work that one of those groups is doing, particularly in the care setting. It really is fantastic. The projects also include museums, libraries—which the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) mentioned—social enterprises and community centres. The know your neighbourhood fund will create thousands of opportunities to bring people together to develop their skills and build relationships, and it will properly connect some of those communities. I look forward to getting the most out of that.

There is a lot for us to learn—not just the funders and delivery organisations, but the Government, local authorities and charities—so that we know what interventions are effective and boost social connections. A number of Members mentioned the cost of living. The Department was keen to lobby the Treasury, and we were successful in securing an extra £100 million for charities. We have also allocated more than £70 million from dormant assets to focus particularly on cost of living issues.

I see volunteering, which is another part of my portfolio, as one of the solutions to tackling loneliness. That is why we are a key partner in Vision for Volunteering, and are looking at a 10-year strategy. I see the sports strategy as another way of increasing the number of people who take up volunteering.

I have the support of my colleagues; this is collective work across Government. I cannot do it alone. I have been really pleased with the engagement with Ministers in other Departments, including the Minister for mental health, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield); the Minister for children, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho); the Minister for Veterans, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), and the Minister for local government, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley).

We have made good progress, but I am keen that we do not lose momentum. We need to go even further. That is why we published the fourth annual report of the cross-Government tackling loneliness strategy with 60 additional actions for the next two years. They include providing targeted support for care leavers, unpaid carers and veterans; improving and building on the success in social prescribing across the country; supporting community infrastructure and community action to tackle loneliness in rural areas; publishing the new suicide prevention strategy, and opening school facilities out of school hours to make the benefits of physical activity more accessible and inclusive. A key focus of those commitments is sharing learning and best practice, and we will continue to do that right across Government.

There is a lot that I could say, but I sense that I am running out of time. The Government and I, as the Minister for loneliness, are keen to keep the collaboration going. It is working incredibly well, and I can sense that people want to play their part. There is a lot that we still need to do, but compared with where we were just a few years ago, where we are now is incredible. I pay tribute to every single person who has been key in developing the strategy.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

To respond to all that, I call the pioneering first ever Minister for loneliness, Tracey Crouch.

16:20

[Tracey Crouch]

Thank you, Dr Huq. I thank colleagues for participating in the debate, either through speeches or through some of the excellent interventions we have heard—it is much appreciated.

I thank and pay tribute to the Minister, who I know is working exceptionally hard across Government to try to deliver on this issue. I also praise him for the very honest interview that he gave at the start of Loneliness Awareness Week. It is incredibly important that public figures show that we, too, are vulnerable to loneliness and that there is nothing wrong with highlighting that. It is something that Jo did brilliantly. Even though many of us have spoken about the issue of loneliness before, I have always said that Jo took that conversation and threw it into the stratosphere, which is why we are where we are today.

I thank the Front-Bench spokesmen for their excellent contributions. I particularly want to mention the contribution by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who talked about all the different areas of Government that contribute to people’s lives in a really positive way. That reinforces the message that I have taken to several Prime Ministers—I appreciate that that does not necessarily imply a long timeframe—that we need to restructure the Government to create a wellbeing Department. We need to bring together different portfolios across Government into something with a powerful voice that recognises that there are policy areas out there that are very good at preventing other conditions, which become very expensive for the Department of Health and Social Care to treat.

I am grateful for colleagues’ comments on lockdown, because that is a very important point. It reminds me of the only argument I had with my husband, who had rather generously gone to the supermarket on his way home from work to pick up our shopping, thus depriving me of my one opportunity to go out that day, even if it was just to connect with someone by talking to the checkout lady. That is what loneliness is—it is about connecting with other people. When we went out for our prescribed walks or exercise, how many of us manically said hello and waved at people we would not ordinarily talk to?

I thank all those who sent briefings for the debate, including the Local Government Association, the Association of Convenience Stores, the National Union of Journalists, the Cares Family and the Red Cross. I also want to add to the comments by the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) and thank the Red Cross for its support for the all-party parliamentary group. Without its support, we would not be able to have the vast conversation that we are having.

Finally, I genuinely thank the tens of thousands of organisations that are out there helping to tackle loneliness. Without them—whether they are statutory bodies, volunteer groups or charities—we would not be talking about how we can reduce stigma around loneliness and improve people’s connectivity, so I pay tribute to them for their work.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of tackling loneliness and connecting communities.

Housing Infrastructure: Essex

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

16:25

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered planning and investment for housing and infrastructure in Essex.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to debate one of my favourite subjects, which is the planning system, and how investment can be forthcoming for development to support my other favourite subject, which is infrastructure—for the rest of us, that is road and rail transport in particular.

This debate is so important for my constituents in Witham, and for the wider county of Essex, because we have seen the most remarkable change in development. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) will respond on behalf of the Government. Even after having been at the Home Office, planning is certainly one of the most difficult and contentious issues. I have had the privilege of working with her previously, and I know that she is deeply constructive.

This issue matters to my constituents. My area is covered by three planning authorities—the districts of Braintree, Maldon and Colchester city—plus Essex County Council, which also has a say on planning issues, as well as town councils and many parish councils; one could almost describe this issue as semi-controversial locally. We are one of the fastest-growing areas in Essex. We border Chelmsford city as well as Colchester city. Our county council is the penholder for minerals and waste plans, and our local parish councils have neighbourhood plans in various stages of preparation. That is on top of the five-year land supply positions, local plans and other pillars that the Minister will be familiar with, including all the planning policies, spatial strategies, the national planning policy framework and changes to national planning laws. In Essex and in my constituency, garden communities were also once on the table.

Our councils have been constantly at loggerheads with developers over five-year land supply positions. Numerous planning applications go to the Planning Inspectorate, and decisions are sometimes felt to ride roughshod over local views. The Minister is familiar with all of that. We have also had the Secretary of State call in and recover planning applications and appeals using powers under section 77 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. We have seen developments approved outside of settlement boundaries against local wishes, and some sites have been deemed inappropriate in local plans.

The Minister and her dear officials in the Department no doubt have filing cabinets just on my constituency and the various pieces of correspondence that I have sent in. However, we are constructive. My constituents have welcomed development. I do not think they should ever be described as nimbys because, quite frankly, we have built thousands of homes over the last decade. We want to see a new wave of homes because we believe in creating the pathway to home ownership.

I will give some examples. Tiptree village has grown and continues to expand; anyone visiting would not deem it to be a village. Stanway has multiple sites being developed; it was once a village, but it is now almost a suburb of Colchester city. Witham town itself has expanded. Villages such as Hatfield Peverel are now being circled by developments. In Heybridge in Maldon, where I am going on Friday, 1,000 homes are being built. That site straddles the two constituencies of Witham and Maldon.

With all that development taking place—thousands upon thousands of new homes—the challenge is not just the house building, but what comes with it. The Minister and every single hon. and right hon. colleague will be familiar with this. Where are the roads? Where are the GP surgeries? Where are the schools? To be fair, we are getting schools through some of the developments. However, my councils and my villages are bombarded with planning applications for developments on green spaces outside settlement boundaries.

It is a fact that developers are highly resourced—they are tooled up, as the Minister and the Department will be only too aware—and can engage highly paid barristers. We have seen far too many speculative applications. Even applications that have been rejected in the past are back on the table. That has an impact on democracy, because it angers and frustrates local residents, who feel that people are riding roughshod over their views and that they cannot have a say. They wonder why their councils, councillors and perhaps even their MP seem so denuded of power. The Government are definitely aware of these issues—they are not new issues for them—so I would really like the Minister to provide some assurances.

There are five-year land-supply issues—there might be a small margin for councils if they have fallen behind or have a marginal land supply. The economic climate, with construction inflation and delays in the supply chain, has an adverse effect on councils, so we need to support them. It is not right to penalise councils in this way, with the risk of unwelcome development in communities. My local authorities are constantly raising these issues.

It would be wonderful if the Minister could provide details about what is being done to encourage developers to build out if they already have consents to build housing supply, and provide clarity on local plans from 30 June 2025. We are back in that famous cycle—the five-year land supply—and councils are struggling with the timeframe, the available windows and what they need to do.

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

Who can blame people for wanting to come and live in Essex, which is why it is so attractive to developers? Would my right hon. Friend reflect on an issue in my constituency of Thurrock? We have identified sites where we would like to build thousands of new homes, but they are subject to a permanent block from National Highways, because of the impact on the M25 and the Dartford crossing, with which she is very familiar. It is all very well having the road infrastructure, but when it is taken away for national purposes, we are not able to benefit from it. We can see the position, as she can, that because of the five-year land supply, new homes will be built on sites where we do not want them, although we have highlighted perfectly adequate sites where we do want them.

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. Some of this speaks to planning policy with regard to neighbourhood plans and respecting the work that has been undertaken. I know her constituency relatively well, and am only too familiar with the Dartford crossing. Thank goodness we got rid of the tolls and everything else with a lot of joint effort.

This is a major issue, because local plans need to be fit for purpose. They should work for local communities, and national schemes should not override them. I say the same as my hon. Friend, and shall come on to infrastructure investment. I hope to see the Secretary of State for Transport at some stage, because in Essex we have a huge number of underdeveloped roads, including the A12—the A13 is in pretty good condition—and the A120, where work has been stymied because of national issues. At the same time, planning and development depend on those routes and roads receiving the investment that they need.

As the Minister will know, local plans, including neighbourhood plans, are important to the planning process, and are a blueprint for national infrastructure schemes. In the east, Transport East and the county council are working with the Government and other authorities on planning for population growth, infra-structure growth and economic growth, all of which are important and exciting things that we want to develop. A truly planning-led approach to planning and development is a win-win. People move in, and they have homes, jobs and so on. Essex, in my view, is one of the best counties in the country, and we are important for economic growth, as we are a net contributor to the Treasury. As a county, what we contribute we never get back, but we do want to see it come back from central Government, whether in sustainable planning policies or the economic growth and infrastructure investment that needs to be put in place.

The county council in Essex provides a great deal of support with regard to development and planning work on roads and highways, but there is not enough funding. At the same time we have the community infrastructure levy, section 106 and the new homes bonus, so how are we going to make this work for local communities? Parts of Witham, including the beautiful village of Hatfield Peverel and the great villages of Tiptree and Stanway, are traffic bottlenecks. The roads are untouched—they have been untouched for probably 40 years, perhaps longer—and the infrastructure contributions are simply not enough. The housing growth in Hatfield Peverel and further afield in the Maldon constituency reinforces the need for a bypass. We cannot have A12 traffic going through rural villages. That is just crazy.

Thus far, no housing scheme has produced anything close to the funding needed to pay for such schemes. I know that the Government are reviewing section 106 and the CIL process, and I would welcome an update from the Minister on that. We need to unlock all of that to get investment in our roads, in my case for the A12 and A120. For my constituency of Witham, those are the two major trunk roads with upgrade plans, but they have already faced delays. The A12 scheme has faced delays and is now progressing through a development consent order process, which is very controversial, I should say. Villages in particular are being impacted.

The A120 dualling scheme has been delayed. Under the road investment strategy, it has gone from RIS2 to RIS3. The scheme is necessary. The A120 was once one of the most dangerous roads in the country. I think it would be useful to hear from the Minister how the planning system and her work is integrating with transport. Linked to that, of course, is healthcare and education. Those are key aspects. The all-party parliamentary group for the east of England highlighted in its levelling up report some of the real deficiencies across the east of England, including Essex, showing that funding formulas used to calculate contributions for key services—health and education in particular—are simply inadequate. Patient-GP ratios in Essex are among the highest in the country. We are struggling, yet we have more people living in our constituencies with no access to health facilities. I would welcome an update from the Minister on that area.

I would like to touch on a very particular point about planning and raise the issue of class Q regulations for urgent development on Crown land. It would be very useful to know how the phrase “urgent development” is defined by central Government. I raise this because the Home Office is using this measure to develop a large asylum accommodation in Wethersfield, in the Braintree district, which my constituency neighbours. The wider impacts for Essex are absolutely enormous. I should just add, for the record, that my part of Essex already houses the largest number of refugees in the whole county.

I would like to pay tribute to everyone who does amazing work locally. It is the local councils that are doing incredible work, but I am afraid that they are not getting the support they need from the Home Office. I appreciate that it is not the Minister’s Department, though obviously she is familiar with the Home Office, but I would like to know specifically what the class Q regulations mean when it comes to taking over a site, in this case Wethersfield, and how the approach may differ from previous sites that the Government have looked at or worked on in the past. Linton-on-Ouse in Yorkshire was one of them.

In particular, I would like to know how there can be such an exceptional planning process that bypasses all concerns and considerations of local councils, local authorities and local residents. I should just add though that Wethersfield is a village. Residents are concerned about clause 103 in the most recent version of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, currently being considered in the House of Lords, which concerns urgent Crown development. The clause gives the Government the power to determine urgent applications on Crown land, which basically bypasses local decision making. I am not sure if local authorities across the country understand what the power will do. It will bypass local democracy, and I think that is a major issue. I would be grateful if the Minister could give an insight on that today. If she cannot, then she is very welcome to write to me on the specifics of this. I would not expect her to have the full details today.

Some of the detail on the use of class Q regulations and clause 103 will cross into our former Department—the Home Office. In particular, I am looking for assurances on how local communities can hold the Government to account, because currently their voices are being silenced. They are simply not having a say.

Democracy reigns in our country, and long may it reign, but within our local communities elected councillors need to be able to engage local residents in a strong way. There are many other planning and development issues that I could raise. I think that I have given the Minister an insight into the Witham constituency, if nothing else. I really look forward to not just hearing from her but working with her. I think she is one of the most capable Ministers in Government, and I have had the privilege of working with her. She has an important role in Government in terms of working across other Departments on these areas of planning, and delivering something that sometimes the Government do not do enough: integrating national policies across the board, so that we can demonstrate that the Government work on behalf of, and deliver for, the British public.

16:40

[The Minister of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Rachel Maclean)]

It is a huge pleasure to respond to my former colleague in the Home Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), and if you will indulge me for one moment, Dr Huq, to congratulate her from the Dispatch Box on her recent honour. She is now a dame, which is incredibly well deserved. I also thank her for her kind words about my work as a Minister. If I am a good Minister, it is because I learned it all from her. I saw her work as the Home Secretary, which is definitely the most difficult job in Government.

Back to matters connected to Witham, we share my right hon. Friend’s desire for the housing and planning system to work for absolutely everybody. We want to make this a country of home ownership. We are the party of home ownership, and we completely agree with her that we want to enable young people to buy a home of their own, and for families to have peace of mind that where they sleep is safe. Housing is at the heart of our efforts to level up growth across the country, including in Essex. That is the power of levelling up: it sees no community left behind. Essex is a thriving and growing area that contributes to the Treasury, as my right hon. Friend pointed out. It is one of the fastest growing parts of the country.

The Government are standing behind the ambitions of Essex and enabling it to unlock even more potential for its residents and people who would like to live there. That is why we have invested significantly in the renewal of town centres across the county. She mentioned a few of them, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). One example is the £85 million investment that we are putting into Harlow, Colchester and at Grays and Tilbury in the Thames estuary through the towns fund. A further £80 million will be invested in four levelling-up fund projects in Southend, Harlow, Colchester and Tendring. Essex is also the only county set to benefit from the creation of not one but two freeports: Thames Freeport in the south of the county and Freeport East in the north-east. I know that those will be huge economic drivers for the county.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham talked in huge detail about all the knotty issues connected to the planning system, and I fear that I will detain the House for too long if I elaborate at great length, so I will pick out a few key points. I will, however, happily respond to her invitation and meet with her, and with some of the groups that she mentioned, such as the all-party parliamentary group for the east of England, to discuss the matter in more detail. She is right in her central observation that we cannot do this in our Department alone; we have to bring together all the different levers of Government—Government funding, the Treasury, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and transport, as she specifically mentioned.

My right hon. Friend expressed the frustration of her constituents when they see development that is not in line with the local plan. That is why we are working to strengthen the role of local plans in the system through all the measures in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. That is absolutely right, because residents feel frustration when local plans are not in place, or cannot be enacted. Speculative development then comes in, leaving local communities feeling ignored. Communities in Witham are very fortunate to have such an effective champion, so their concerns are being heard here. That is why we are making changes to the planning system through the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, including to strengthen the role played by neighbourhood plans, which are a valuable means for communities to shape their surroundings.

The national planning policy framework includes important protections for neighbourhood plans where speculative applications have been submitted and conflict with the plan. For instance, if a local planning authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of housing sites, which is currently required, a neighbourhood plan may benefit from protections. We are consulting on proposed changes to the paragraph 14 protections in the framework, which, as my right hon. Friend will know, will extend the time period that qualifying neighbourhood plans are afforded under paragraph 14 from two to five years, in recognition of the time it takes to produce a neighbourhood plan. We propose removing the requirement that a local planning authority has at least a three-year supply of deliverable housing sites and that its housing delivery is at least 45% of what was required over the previous three years. That will enable more neighbourhood plans to benefit from those protections, and I hope her residents will find that change reassuring.

The changes will empower local communities and place them at the heart of the planning system, and will remove barriers to building more homes. I will make a few remarks on the five-year land supply because, again, my right hon. Friend has effectively said how controversial that can be and how it can lead to developments coming forward in a way that does not come under the support of local areas. We propose removing the requirement for local planning authorities to maintain a five-year housing supply when they have an up-to-date local plan. We intend to make changes to simplify the policy as well as to clarify the use of historical over-supply in five-year housing land supply calculations. We will come forward with the outcome of our consultation analysis. That will provide yet more incentives for local authorities to work closely with their communities to agree local plans.

It is sometimes reported that we have dropped house building targets. That is not the case. I assure colleagues that we are absolutely committed to building the homes this country needs—the 300,000 homes that we need to be building. We are delivering them through a plan-led system with the consent of local communities that commands the support of Parliament, our colleagues and local democracy, which is at the heart of what we are doing.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I welcome the emphasis on local decision making—we all share that sentiment. The proposed Purfleet development in my constituency will result in 2,500 new homes on the River Thames, 45 minutes from the City of London, and they will sell like hot cakes. That is supported by the Government through the housing infrastructure fund and the development has been gifted the public land on which to build. The community wants it and fully supports the planning application, but National Highways is blocking it. What can we do to ensure a proper joined-up approach from Government so that the homes we need are delivered, because some other Departments are getting in the way?

[Rachel Maclean]

My hon. Friend raises an issue that I do not have any personal knowledge of, and it would be inappropriate for me to comment on a planning application. However, if she will allow me, I will investigate that issue and see what more I can do to unblock it in my capacity as planning Minister. If she is referring to the housing infrastructure fund, I may be able to assist her.

I will finish by raising the issue of the class Q permitted development raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham. The part 12 class Q committed development right permits development by or on behalf of the Crown for up to 12 months in response to an emergency. There are two key considerations. It must be an emergency defined as an event or situation that threatens serious damage to human welfare in a place, the environment of a place or the security of the United Kingdom. To make use of the right, the land must be Crown land. I am aware, as she is, that the Home Office has sought to use the right to provide temporary accommodation for asylum seekers. The House will need to forgive me because this is a live issue and it is subject to live legal proceedings. I therefore cannot comment on it due to fear of prejudicing this issue. My right hon. Friend has rightly brought the views of her constituents to this place, and I and other Ministers have taken note of them.

I would like to finish by thanking my right hon. Friend. It was an enormous pleasure and privilege for me to work with her for an all too brief period in the Home Office. It is a huge pleasure now to be working with her and other colleagues collaboratively to support her ambitions to ensure that Essex remains a fantastic place to live and work, and to be represented by her.

Question put and agreed to.

Ultra-processed Food

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

16:52

[Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the health impacts of ultra-processed food.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I have wanted to have this debate for some time and am grateful for the opportunity to lead it today. I have been deeply concerned about the impact of ultra-processed food on health outcomes and therefore on the NHS. I want to join the debate that others are having in the public domain. We need to ensure that we do not lose sight of the importance of addressing ultra-processed food and its health impacts.

Let me explain a little more about ultra-processed food, as it surprises me how few people know what it is. It is food that dominates the shelves of our supermarkets, much of the food advertising on television, and the multi-buy offers that customers see as they get close to the checkout. It is food that takes up half the average UK diet, with the largest consumption by children. It is food that is linked to heart, kidney and liver disease, cancer, depression and obesity. It is an underlying reason for many poor health outcomes. It is food that has been processed so much that it has little health value; the main ingredients include additives such as preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, and artificial colours and flavours. Those ingredients destroy the integrity of the food itself, but do nothing for its nutritional value, as they are being whipped up into something more appetising with the help of emulsifiers.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does she agree that there is a case for looking again at our food labelling laws, and perhaps for requiring ultra-processed food to carry a health warning rather like the warning required on cigarette packets?

[Suzanne Webb]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention and will come to his point a bit further on in my speech.

Ultra-processed food tends to be high in fat, salt and sugar, and is highly addictive. There is fairly low awareness of what ultra-processed food is, but it is familiar in our shopping trolleys. It includes pizza, ice cream, crisps, mass-produced bread, breakfast cereals, biscuits, carbonated drinks, fruit-flavoured yoghurts, pre-packaged meals, sausages and other reconstituted meat products, and some alcoholic drinks—shock, horror—including whisky, gin and rum. Foods such as plain oats, cornflakes and shredded wheat become ultra-processed when the manufacturer adds sugar, flavourings or colourings. Plain yoghurt is minimally processed, but when sweeteners, preservatives, stabilisers or colourings are added, it becomes ultra-processed.

Although there is no universally agreed definition of ultra-processed foods, the above is a good description. They are all foods that we mainly love, but that are not good for us if they form part of a staple diet, and the UK is one of the biggest consumers per head of ultra-processed foods in Europe. Many of the things I have talked about are things that I have purchased myself and are in my shopping trolley half the time.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this important debate. We have a lot of these debates, and one issue with ultra-processed food is that it is ultra-addictive—people want more of it, and we cannot help ourselves—but we do not treat it as we treat other ultra-addictive things like cigarettes and alcohol, although the health implications could be just as serious.

[Suzanne Webb]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention. Again, we are having the same conversation and I hope to answer her question later in the debate.

Ultra-processed food makes up half of the total purchased dietary energy in the UK. In fact, when it comes to UK children, more than 60% of the calories consumed comes from ultra-processed foods such as frozen pizza or fizzy drinks. All that food is linked to obesity, which causes me great concern. In England, 64% of adults and 40% of 10 to 11-year-olds are either obese or overweight. Those figures are taken from the Dimbleby report. They are staggering.

Figures from 2019-20 show that 1.5 million years of healthy life are lost to diet-related illnesses every year. Tackling obesity costs the NHS about £6.5 billion a year and is the second biggest cause of cancer. To put it starkly, it is a ticking timebomb. Some might say that the ticking has stopped and the bomb has already exploded.

Some 100,000 people have a stroke each year. There are 1.3 million stroke survivors in the UK, thanks to the advances of medicine and medical interventions such as blood pressure tablets, statins and so forth. Children who have high levels of ultra-processed food consumption have been shown to have high levels of cholesterol, increased weight and tooth decay. Obesity has been brought to the fore due to covid. Living with excess weight puts people at greater risk of serious illness or death, with risks growing substantially as body mass index increases.

The cost of all that to the NHS is significant, from prescription drugs and GP and out-patient appointments to the orthopaedic impacts on limbs of weight bearing. Of course, the greatest impact is on NHS hospital admissions. Tackling obesity is one of the greatest long-term health challenges that this country faces. Ultra-processed food is one of the main routes to all obesity issues, because the food is mainly high in fat, salt and sugar. It is marketed aggressively, to the detriment of our health, feeding a growing obesity crisis and feeding our arteries full of fat.

The food supply chain endorses and promotes products that are linked to serious health outcomes, marketing products for which the motivation is profit over health. Certainly at the cheaper end of the market, ultra-processed food does not provide a fully nutritious meal. The marketing and branding of ultra-processed food is relentless. Have we ever seen a high-profile marketing campaign for anything that falls off a tree or comes out of the ground? The answer is no. Instead, we see highly aggressive campaigns selling us the dream of so-called delicious meals. In reality they are highly addictive foods and, without moderating consumption, contribute significantly to poor health outcomes.

I am slightly disappointed that the Government are not proceeding with the plan to ban two-for-one junk food deals. That plan, which has been delayed, would have prevented shops from selling food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar through multi-buy deals. However, at a time when household budgets are under continuing pressure from the global rise in food prices, it would not be right to restrict those options. The principal issue for health outcomes is not so much two-for-one deals anyway; it is the food itself, and we should not lose sight of that. Buying multi-deals does not matter; it is the product itself that matters. That is what we should focus on: trying to eliminate addictive products that are creating poor outcomes for our children.

A good step forward would be an advertising watershed—a 9 pm watershed has been mooted—that would restrict the TV advertising of foods that are high in fat, sugar and salt, not forgetting those online. Current advertising regulations do not go far enough in protecting children from a significant number of unhealthy food adverts. I think that we have all seen the continual adverts for pizzas when we watch family programmes, certainly at the weekend. Those should not be allowed. Half the time, I am moments away from going online to order a couple of those pizzas, but I don’t do that any more.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Don’t order a couple—just order one.

[Suzanne Webb]

Jim, it would be two.

Children and young people are not sufficiently protected from exposure to adverts for unhealthy products. It has been pointed out to me that Government research shows that TV and online advertising restrictions on food that is high in sugar and salt could reduce the number of children with obesity by more than 20,000. I therefore urge the Minister to look at that and bring the timeline forward. I think at the moment it is going to be 2025, but we could and must move faster. There should be a watershed for adverts for both ultra-processed food and products high in fat, sugar and salt, sooner rather than later.

A bigger light must be shone on the manipulative marketing tactics that companies use to lead us into consuming and over-consuming foods that are bad for our health. My office manager and my comms guy are advocates of disgusting microwave burgers, which further strengthens my resolve on the matter. When I first looked at the product that they are addicted to and that they shove in that microwave, I thought, “What is not to love?” It says that it is 100% beef—it tells me three times that it is 100% beef—and with that look, I was hooked. I thought, “I want one of those,” but then I read the side of the packet. It is in fact a composition of beef fat, soya protein, salt, wheat flour, stabiliser E451, dextrose, sugar, egg white powder, yeast extract, something called hydrolysed soya protein, barley malt extract and flavourings. It is 44% beef, so not quite the 100% beef that was advertised. In fact, it is a concoction of emulsifiers, preservatives, colourings and other things, which made it look like the tastiest 100% beef burger in the world. The beef was 100% beef, but it was actually only 44% of the burger itself. That is incredibly misleading. I nearly went out and bought it myself.

The obesity crisis is not helped by the overly aggressive marketing of highly addictive food. Let’s face it: if advertising did not work, companies would not do it. That is what encourages us to go out and buy such products. We saw it in the cigarette market. Changes were needed to advertising, starting way back in 1965, when the poor health outcomes from smoking were being understood. It was many years before one of the biggest health interventions, which was the ban on smoking in public places in 2007. I was one of those smokers many, many years ago. I think I gave up before it was banned in public places, but I can tell hon. Members that smoking is highly addictive, and it was sold to be highly addictive.

When I worked in logistics, the company pushed out the cigarettes into big lorries, which took them to the centres to sell. Even there, packs of 200 cigarettes were handed out to employees as an incentive at the end of the week: “Well done—they have done a great job.” People were allowed to smoke in their offices, although I believe that at the time they were not supposed to. Unhealthy food is now being peddled and pushed in a similar way. We really have to think about that. Something very akin to what happened with cigarettes is happening with ultra-processed food.

[Sir Greg Knight]

My hon. Friend is very generous in giving way. Does she agree that if we are to urge that ultra-processed food should carry with it a label warning, that warning should be in a typeface large enough to be read without the use of a magnifying glass, so people know what they are buying before they purchase it?

[Suzanne Webb]

I do not have the answer to that one. I will leave it to a conversation between the Minister, me and others whether that is the way we need to go with what the labelling looks like. Whatever the decision, I agree that it needs to be clear that that food is not 100% beef—that it is, in fact, 56% manufactured food and a tiny percentage of nutritious food. Something needs to be done to highlight that.

Many people will be saying that they did not know that the foods I have listed were ultra-processed. Let us take those lovely fruit yoghurts. I have been eating them for years and had not realised how processed they were. The simple fact is that you just need to buy plain yoghurt, put some fruit and oats on top and it is a really tasty product.

The impact of the intervention to ban cigarettes in 2007 was estimated by the British Medical Journal to be 1,200 fewer hospital admissions for heart attacks in the year following the ban. In the three months after the ban, there was a 6.3% drop in the volume of cigarettes sold in England. I believe it was around that time—it might have been a few years before—that I gave up smoking. The interventions at the time were working.

Is that what we need to do now? The Minister will be pleased to hear that I am not a fan of the nanny state, but I am a fan of the watershed and that is what is on my wish list. As for the regulators, they need to focus less on the ingredients in our food and more on how the processing of the food sold to us has an impact on our health. They need to address misleading health claims and confusing nutritional information that dominate many products found on supermarket shelves. Indeed, that leads into the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) about how labelling what is in the product has to be clearer.

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank the hon. Member for being so generous with her time. She says she is not a fan of the nanny state, but we would not market cigarettes and alcohol to children, because we know the harm they do to them. Children are not allowed to buy vaping products, because of the harm they do to them. Yet we have this ticking time bomb. I think she said that 40% of children are overweight. Surely that is a group of people we need to take care of. Maybe adults can make their own choices, but we are talking about children here.

[Suzanne Webb]

I thank the hon. Member for that powerful intervention. I believe that before we get into nanny statedom, those manufacturers need to step up and wake up to what they are selling. They are peddling a false dream. This is not about wrestling with one’s conscience; they need to think about the impact of what they are selling to people. That is what they have to face up to first. I believe I am coming on to that further on in my speech.

We have talked about misleading health claims. Children are regularly exposed to products that extol their own virtues but are in fact the opposite: rich in saturated fats, trans fatty acids, added sugar and salt. If a manufacturer were to put labelling telling us that that was what was in their product, I do not think any of us would go out and buy it. We are being sold something completely different from what is actually in the product.

We should not forget emulsifiers, which hold ultra-processed foods together and improve appearance and texture. In other words, emulsifiers make a product taste and look like the food we want it to be. There is growing evidence of their impact on an increased risk of cancer—notably breast cancer—and cardiovascular diseases. Meanwhile, aspartame—I do not know how to pronounce it—is the most controversial ultra-processed food; a sweetener 200 times sweeter than sugar. When I gave up smoking, I used fizzy drinks to help me through that process. Hon. Members will guess that I am now near enough addicted to those fizzy drinks.

[Carol Monaghan]

It is a horrible sweetener.

[Suzanne Webb]

It is, hence my sparkling water, which I was rushing out for. In May 2023, the World Health Organisation said it was concerned about the long-term use of aspartame as it increased the risk of type 2 diabetes, heart diseases and mortality, although the UK’s Food Standards Agency has accepted that it is safe.

Much of this food is our everyday pleasure, so I am not advocating that we tell people what to eat and not to eat. I am hugely conscious of the cost of living pressures and the ways that people are trying to make changes and save money. Consumed in isolation and moderation, this food is fine. The problem is when it takes over our lives—and it has.

The key challenge is to get supermarkets to put healthy products on multi-buys, encourage a promotional spend shift to healthier food products and focus on making food more affordable. Promotional deals are easy ways to make profit for the supermarkets, peddling products that, to them, are low cost but high margin, and have no nutritional value. There is no doubt that modern living and work patterns mean that we find it difficult to find time to cook unprocessed foods instead of purchasing ultra-processed foods, as they are quicker to cook, ready to eat and cheaper. I do not think that there is anyone here who has not left Westminster on a Wednesday night and probably just picked up a ready meal because it is the quicker and easiest thing to do.

I am pleased to have read that the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, which provides recommendations on dietary guidelines, is carrying out a scoping review of the evidence on processed foods and health. It aims to publish its initial assessment in the summer of 2023. TV medic Dr Chris van Tulleken has also been vociferous on ultra-processed foods, and long may that continue. The facts are there. It is a serious crisis when one in three children are obese by the time they leave primary school.

I want to see the private sector lead by example, with manufacturers stepping up, taking responsibility and stopping packaging and promotional techniques that lure customers towards ultra-processed food with no nutritional value. We need to address the potential loopholes and displacement from marketing regulation of food that is higher in fat, sugar and salt when selling the dream of a 100% beef burger when, in fact, it is not. Regulators need to focus more on how the processing of food impacts our health outcomes. Will the Minister consider introducing the important advertising watershed sooner rather than later? We cannot afford to delay. The obesity figures speak for themselves; the cost to the NHS speaks for itself. Also on my wish list is considering introducing a reduction target to keep focused on ensuring that ultra-processed food consumption levels in the UK are at a healthier level.

I am deeply concerned about the impact that such food is having on health outcomes and the impact on the NHS. We need to continue the debate, as the simple fact is that 64% of adults in England and 40% of 10 to 11-year-olds are either obese or overweight. That is staggering. To me, we are not far off from the time for urgent intervention like we had in the cigarette industry. An article was written on Monday, independent of my securing this debate, in which I read someone saying very similar things. The obesity crisis is truly shocking and cannot be ignored. The role of ultra-processed foods in that is significant, as is the role of the food supply chain. The food supply chain needs to step up and play its part in the fight against obesity before the Government need to intervene and start to tackle the ultra-processed foods like they did with tobacco— to basically get in there. The Government will have to intervene at some point if the industry do not get a grip.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I will start to call the Front Benchers at 5.33 pm, with five minutes for the SNP and Labour, because it is only a 60-minute debate. If we do speeches within five-and-a-half minutes, everyone will get in.

17:13

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is indeed a pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) for raising the issue. She comprehensively set the scene and, with the interventions, added to the understanding of why the debate is so important. My research for today mimicked some of the research carried out for the debate on fatty livers a number of weeks ago, and the links are clear. I noted during that debate that my good friend the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), noted that there is no definition of “ultra-processed”. That is an important starting point so that we can begin to address the problems of a highly ultra-processed diet.

The hon. Member for Stourbridge referred to diabetes, and others have as well. I am a diabetic today because for a long period of time—probably a number of years, I suspect—I was the person who bought a Chinese five nights a week with two bottles of coke. That was the way I was; that was the way I lived. It saved me going home to get something to eat, and I ate in the office. Added to that was probably a fair level of stress, and all of a sudden I was almost 17½ stone. I never realised just how the weight had crept up, and I went to see my doctor. My doctor always says “I’ve got good news and bad news for you.” I said, “Well, tell me the good news first.” “The good news,” he said, “is that you’ve got a heart like an ox. But the bad news is that you’re a diabetic.” That is a fact of life.

That was my lifestyle. I was to blame; I will not blame anybody else for that. I am not blaming the Chinese people who sold me the Chinese, nor the shop that gave me two bottles of coke, because it was something I did and I realised what was happening. I am now on medication, so that has helped to administer and control my diabetes. The point that I am making is that we have to be careful what we eat. What we eat is what we are, and, indeed, what we become.

As has been noted, the UK is at the top for ultra-processed foods in Europe. When I say that, I include packaged baked goods, snacks, fizzy drinks, sugary cereals, ready meals containing food additives, dehydrated vegetable soups and reconstituted meat and fish products. They often contain high levels of sugar, fat and/or salt, but lack vitamins and the fibre that I, as a diabetic, need. Those were all noted in the BMJ report on ultra-processed foods in 2019.

Such foods are thought to account for around 25% to 60% of the daily energy intake in many countries. Previous studies have linked ultra-processed foods to higher risks of obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and some cancers, but firm evidence is still scarce. There is some evidential base to be arrived at.

Results in the BMJ report showed that a 10% increase in the proportion of ultra-processed food in a diet was associated with significantly higher levels of overall cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, with increases of 12%, 13% and 11% respectively. I am my party’s health spokesperson, so I am very conscious of health issues. In contrast, the researchers found a significant association between unprocessed—or minimally processed—foods and lower risks of all reported diseases.

Results from another test showed that higher consumption of ultra-processed foods—more than four servings per day—was associated with a 62% increased risk of all causes of mortality, compared with a lower consumption of fewer than two servings per day. In her introduction, the hon. Member for Stourbridge referred to ordering a couple of pizzas. I was not responding to her facetiously, but the point I am making is that, yes, it is easy, and, as the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) said, when people start, they want to keep on eating, and that is a problem.

For each additional daily serving of ultra-processed food, mortality risk increases by 18%. It is clear that more research should be done, and I join colleagues who have spoken—including the hon. Member for Stourbridge—and of all those who will speak afterwards to ask the Minister, who always responds very positively and helpfully, and our Government, to get the information and begin the public awareness campaign that must follow those results.

The health of our nation is the wealth of this nation—this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—and we must take the necessary steps to make people aware of the dangers of their diet choice, because it is a choice. Hopefully today is the next step, perhaps maybe the first step, in that journey to better health.

17:18

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) for securing this important debate on a subject that is really close to my heart.

Most people are now aware of the health impacts of HFSS diets, yet it is increasingly clear that the primary cause of diet-related disease is not a diet that is high in fat, salt and sugar, but rather one that is high in UPF. However, as has been said, I wonder how many people know what UPF is and what it stands for, even though it represents 60% of the average UK diet.

To put it simply, if a food is wrapped in plastic, has at least one ingredient that we would not usually find in a standard home kitchen, or has a health claim on the packet, it is likely to be UPF. Much of it will be familiar as junk food, but there are also plenty of organic, free-range and “ethical” ultra-processed foods that might be sold as healthy, nutritious, or useful for weight loss.

Home-made chips, lasagne and cake are not the same as their UPF equivalents. The processing is what is important—so we do not have to all give up cake, as long as we make it ourselves. When we think about food processing, most of us think about the physical and chemical things done to food, but the definition of ultra-processing includes its purpose: to create profitable, convenient, hyper-palatable products. Those indirect processes—marketing, legal challenges and lobbying—all make the issue of how to tackle the health impacts of ultra-processed foods more complicated.

The evidence on ultra-processed food is robust. It is not just a couple of trials; hundreds of papers and high-quality data show the wide-ranging health impacts. Many people are unaware of how artificial the designs of ultra-processed foods are. They typically contain little, if any, whole food. The food’s structure is destroyed by industrial processing, meaning that UPFs are usually soft. They are therefore easy to eat quickly, which means that people eat far more calories per minute and do not feel full until long after they have finished eating. UPFs contain drastically reduced levels of phytochemicals, which are essential for dietary health and cannot be replaced through supplementation. There are also extensive environmental effects. The monocultural food system necessary for the production of UPFs is a leading cause of declining biodiversity and the second-largest contributor to global emissions.

If they are so bad for us, why do we eat them? Highly processed foods are on average three times cheaper per calorie than healthier foods. People from households with lower financial security or food security report consuming fewer fruit and vegetables, less fish and more sugar-sweetened soft drinks than those who are more financially secure.

The rise of UPFs is an emergent property of today’s commercialised and commodified food systems. Many people feel food systems have become more profit driven, with natural and fresh food less accessible. For example, buy-one-get-one-free offers in supermarkets often tempt us to buy more but, in 2015, supermarket promotions in Britain were the highest in Europe, with around 40% of our food expenditure going on promoted products.

Lord Hague recently wrote a fabulous article that argued that it now seems extraordinary to us that tens of millions of people used to smoke cigarettes without realising the serious harm they could cause. I suspect that when people look back a few decades from now, they will have a similar sense of incredulity about the food we eat.

One in 20 UK cancer cases is down to excess weight, which is the second largest preventable cause of cancer after smoking. Diet-related disease is the leading cause of early mortality, with the primary cause being high-UPF diets. Two in five children in England face ill health as a result of the food they eat. Those children are five times more likely to develop serious and life-limiting diet-related conditions in adulthood.

We must re-design our food system to put health first. That our diets should be made up mainly of real food seems simple. Individual responsibility is important but, to facilitate it, we must ensure that as many children as possible finish school with the knowledge and ability to cook healthy and nutritious food for themselves. I am arguing for a proactive approach to public health that equips people with the tools and information they need to make informed, healthier choices. We must also increase the powers of local authorities to empower their communities to address their unique health challenges by, for example, tackling the flood of unhealthy food and drink advertising in outdoor areas, especially near areas where children congregate.

The levy on sugar and soft drinks has been an enormous success. The sugar removed from the national diet as a result is estimated to be equivalent to the weight of 4,000 double-decker buses, without leading to a fall in sales. Fiscal measures can incentivise—

[Carol Monaghan]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady’s flow. Sugar may have been removed from soft drinks, but other things have gone in. We have already heard about aspartame, which is a particularly horrible sweetener. We know that the levy has taken a huge amount of sugar out, but it has not had any impact on obesity, particularly childhood obesity, so maybe we need to look at other things too.

[Jo Gideon]

I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. If I had my way, fizzy drinks would be banned from all schools and would be hugely discouraged wherever they are sold, but at least the money raised from that tax helps to educate people that we need to look at what we are drinking and eating.

I will not take up more time, but I want to make the case that we have good reason to look closely at the food that finds its way on to the nation’s plates, and we should take ways to tackle the health impacts of ultra-processed foods seriously, renew our commitment to halving childhood obesity by 2030, reduce diet-related inequality and create a long-term shift in our food culture.

17:24

[Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I could not miss the opportunity to progress my argument about the importance of tackling obesity, and today’s debate, which was so aptly brought to this Chamber by my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb), provides just that opportunity to discuss the ultra-processed food that has an impact on everybody’s diets.

I welcome the premise that if we want a wealthy nation, we need a healthy nation, as I am sure everybody in this room would agree. Obesity and related conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, are the most prominent health impacts of poor diets, which are driven by high levels of consumption of products that are highly processed and contain unhealthy levels of fat, salt and sugar. The term “ultra-processed foods” comes from the NOVA food classification system, which was originally developed by researchers in Brazil. Ultra-processed foods typically have five or more ingredients and, as we have heard, tend to include many additives and ingredients that are not typically used in home cooking, such as preservatives, emulsifiers, sweeteners, and artificial colours and flavours. Such foods generally have a long shelf life. This is how I define the term: if there is a word that someone cannot pronounce when they look at the contents list on a package, the food is ultra-processed.

The vast majority of ultra-processed foods are high in fat, salt and sugar—HFSS, which is the well-established term to refer to foods that negatively impact on people’s health. It has been known for decades that products high in fat, salt and sugar have a negative impact on the health of the nation, and the nutrient profiling model underpins the existing and planned legislation to improve the food system. That includes now-delayed measures to protect children from seeing junk food adverts on TV and online, and to prevent two-for-one offers. My plea to the Minister today is: can we look at the timescales again? They are far too distant in the future and, as I say, the health and wealth of our nation is far too important.

A recent report by the Obesity Health Alliance argued that obesity is the new smoking. That comparison was reinforced by the announcement of £40 million to pilot ways to make the newest and most effective obesity drugs accessible for eligible patients. There is acceptance that obesity is a disease and should be treated with drugs, in the same way that lung disease is treated with drugs. Following that argument through, immense effort has gone into stopping smoking measures and reducing exposure to cigarettes, so immense effort should now be put into reducing everyone’s exposure to foods that are more likely to cause obesity—that is, ultra-processed foods.

The health and economic impacts of obesity are devastating. Obesity is a force multiplier on fatty liver disease, cardiovascular disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer, which puts ever-increasing pressure on the NHS. The combined cost of obesity to the Treasury—that is, through the NHS, the Department for Work and Pensions and the economy as a whole—is predicted to reach £58 billion a year, and I fear that that is probably a very conservative projection. Those who are obese cost the NHS twice as much as those who are not, and it has been estimated that those who are obese take four extra sick days a year, which equates to 37 million sick days across the UK working population. Those stats are clearly very concerning, and there needs to be a collective effort to tackle this widespread problem. If action is not taken now, we will embed ill health and low productivity in generations to come.

A few weeks ago, BBC’s “Panorama” highlighted just how harmful ultra-processed foods are and how they contribute massively to diet-related ill health. However, as we have heard, they are among the most profitable foods that companies can make. This may sound unlikely, but there is willingness among food manufacturers to reformulate their products. However, they want a level playing field. We have a proven model in the soft drinks industry levy, so let us use that as a basis for the reformulation of ultra-processed food and provide manufacturers with a level playing field, because no company is willing to step out of line and lead the way. If consumption of ultra-processed food continues at the current rate and the obesity rate continues to rise, our nation will be economically poorer and very unhealthy.

I will be bold and state my belief that this country is addicted to ultra-processed foods, similar to the way it was addicted to smoking in past decades. We tackled smoking addiction by intervention; it is now time to tackle ultra-processed food addiction by intervention, too.

17:30

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Dr Huq. As many Members know, the subject of food and nutrition is close to my heart, and not just because I enjoy eating good food. I chair the all-party parliamentary food and health forum, which is discussing holding a joint meeting with the all-party parliamentary group on obesity on this very subject. I am therefore really grateful to the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) for securing the debate. I know that the Minister’s closing remarks will be of interest to the Members here, to people throughout the nations, and to both all-party groups.

There can be no doubt that ultra-processed foods have created a looming health crisis that has cost implications for the future of our public services, particularly our NHS. With more than half the calories consumed by the average person in the UK coming from ultra-processed foods, and with research from The BMJ linking these foods to early death and poor health, we really cannot afford to be complacent.

As we have heard, ultra-processed foods usually contain ingredients that people would not add when cooking food themselves. Many would not recognise the names of these ingredients, many of which are chemicals, colourings, sweeteners and preservatives. Research suggests that these additives could be responsible for other negative health effects, with several studies showing links between larger amounts of ultra-processed foods and cardiovascular disease and death, and the more of them a person eats, the greater the risk. The words of Professor Tim Spector, professor of epidemiology at King’s College London, are alarming. He said:

“In the last decade, the evidence has been slowly growing that ultra-processed food is harmful for us in ways we hadn’t thought. We’re talking about a whole variety of cancers, heart disease, strokes, dementia”.

Let that sink in. Quite frightening.

Buying processed foods can lead to people eating excess amounts of sugar, salt and fat, often unaware of how much has been added to the foods they are buying and eating. Scotland, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, has the highest obesity levels in the OECD countries, so we have a bit of work to do. Public Health Scotland found that children from the most deprived backgrounds were almost three times as likely to be at risk of obesity as those from the least deprived. According to the Scottish health survey, in 2021 two thirds of adults were overweight, similar to or marginally higher than the rates recorded every year since 2008. We are not making much progress in tackling the issue. Men have consistently shown higher prevalence of being overweight than women each year since 2008. One third of children are overweight, and I have no doubt that diet, and overprocessed foods in particular, is a major factor.

I want the UK Government to implement a sustainable food strategy that targets products that are high in sugar and ultra-processed foods. Our colleagues in Holyrood published the Good Food Nation Bill and passed it unanimously, enshrining in law the Scottish Government’s commitment to Scotland being a good food nation, where people in every walk of life take pride and pleasure in and benefit from the food they produce, buy, cook, serve and eat each day.

Education and consumer knowledge are important tools in the fight against ultra-processed foods, but accessibility and price are also key. A few weeks ago, in another debate, I pointed out that for many living in poverty, eating healthy food is a secondary consideration to eating at all. Access to healthy food should be a right, not a privilege.

[Carol Monaghan]

We have talked a lot about children, and there are a few issues there. Children who are obese are less able to exercise, which continues the cycle, and of course this is made more difficult in areas of deprivation. Some Members know that I coach gymnastics locally. We see children, some of them very young, who struggle to exercise because they are overweight. We need serious action.

[Martyn Day]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I agree entirely; the only thing I would add is that not only is it important for children to exercise, but when they do they develop habits that stay with them for their lifetime. We have to crack the children issue at an early age.

On a positive footnote—I will get hell for this when I get home—I am pleased to say that our household contains a 19-year-old who has much healthier eating habits than I had as a 19-year-old male, all those decades ago. If I ask him before going to the shops what he would like, I am invariably told, “Raspberries, strawberries and grapes,” whereas I would have asked for chocolate bars and cans of fizzy juice.

[Carol Monaghan]

They are expensive.

[Martyn Day]

They are, I know. That leads in nicely to my next point, which is that the situation is not helped by food inflation: 70% of households are now worried about food and drink costs. This is frightening and does not help us to tackle the food crisis. The impact of deprivation on nutrition, diet and obesity rates is deeply concerning. With unhealthy food often cheaper and more accessible than healthier alternatives, it is little wonder that the UK is one of the biggest consumers of ultra-processed foods in Europe.

We must act now, before it is too late. While many of the policy levers are devolved, several key factors, such as advertising, are determined here. I call on the Government to prioritise children’s health and to protect youngsters from junk food advertising on TV and online. Health inequalities cannot be separated from poverty, so we must also tackle the underlying causes of that, which includes ending poverty, supporting fair wages, and improving physical and social environments, as well as public education.

17:36

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I commend the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) for securing this crucial debate and for all the work that she and others in the Chamber today are doing on this important topic. We have had a small but perfectly formed debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon); the hon. Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), who recently led for the Government on these issues and maintains a keen interest in these matters, which is good to see; and the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), who leads on health issues for the Scottish National party. I also thank the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) and the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) for their interventions. All made crucial points.

Ultra-processed foods are defined as foods that tend to include additives and ingredients that are not typically used in home cooking. They include, but are not limited to confectionery, fried snacks and processed meats. Typically, they are produced to be convenient, quick to eat and appealing. Diets that revolve around UPFs can lead to poor health outcomes, as we have heard, and leave less room for more nutritious meals. We know that balance is essential to a healthy diet, so for most people, cutting out UPFs entirely is not a realistic option. What matters is supporting people to make informed, healthier choices and addressing the wider social determinants that influence their ability to lead a healthy, active life.

That action is important because rising obesity rates pose a profound threat to public health. I would argue that the Government have, unfortunately, responded to this threat wrongly by delaying the ban on junk food advertisements targeted at children and then scrapping the health disparities White Paper. Those are retrograde steps. Instead, the Government have announced a series of pilots, most recently built around the weight loss drug semaglutide, but the reality is that drugs of that sort, while useful for acute cases, are not long-term population-level fixes; they address the extreme end of the problem rather than the cause. My first question to the Minister is: beyond those pilots, what action are the Government taking to tackle rising obesity rates across the United Kingdom? The Government pledged to tackle childhood obesity in their 2019 general election manifesto, but cases have increased, so does the Minister recognise that more needs to be done to improve public health?

I am proud that my party has already committed to establishing at the heart of the next Labour Government a mission delivery board that will ensure that all Departments with an influence over the social determinants of health work in tandem to reduce inequalities and to ensure that health is part of all Government policies. The work will not stop there, though. Under the next Labour Government, every child will benefit from fully funded breakfast clubs and a broad and balanced national curriculum containing a wide range of physical activities. We will end the promotion of junk food targeted at children by implementing the ad ban which the current Government should have introduced—the watershed about which the hon. Member for Stourbridge spoke so passionately. We know that poverty is a key driver of obesity, so we will work tirelessly to tackle child poverty and to ensure that families can afford to feed their children and keep them well.

This is Labour’s vision—positive, ambitious and led by what works—but we cannot afford to wait until the next general election for action on obesity, so I hope that the Minister accepts that more needs to be done and that he will set out how the Government will develop their strategy to tackle obesity, reduce health inequalities and improve access to good, affordable food now. The Labour party stands ready to support him in this action, but it must come sooner rather than later.

17:41

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O'Brien)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) for securing this debate, which is timely and deals with an incredibly important issue, which I am very interested in. I recently met Dr Van Tulleken and the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, and we are working on this at pace, so I welcome the debate.

One of the great challenges with ultra-processed food is defining what it is. The most commonly used definition, as we have heard, is the NOVA definition, which includes foods that are clearly less healthy, such as sugary drinks, confectionery, salty snacks, cakes and other products that are high in calories, saturated fat, salt and sugar. A diet high in those things increases the risk of excess weight gain and obesity. We are committed to tackling obesity, and have a programme of measures to do that. We have introduced calorie labelling in cafés and restaurants, and since last October we have introduced location restrictions on less healthy foods to reduce pester power. An advertising watershed will be introduced in 2025. That requires numerous steps, and we are taking them.

For children and young people, we are spending £150 million a year on healthy food schemes, such as school fruit and veg and nursery milk, through our Healthy Start scheme. We are also putting in £330 million a year for school sport and the PE premium. In addition, there is a £300-million youth investment fund in facilities to encourage an active lifestyle, and we are spending about £20 million a year on the national child measurement programme, which aims to nip problems in the bud. Only a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister made an announcement on funding a £40-million start in the use of new weight loss drugs for those living with obesity.

[Maggie Throup]

Are the Government still committed to halving child obesity by 2030?

[Neil O'Brien]

Yes. We are working with food businesses and we have set out direct measures to further progress reformulation, which is crucial to helping people to make healthy choices. The soft drinks industry levy decreased the amount of sugar in soft drinks by 46% between 2015 and 2020, and the voluntary sugar reduction programme has delivered a nearly 15% reduction in average sugar levels in breakfast cereals and a 13.5% reduction in yoghurts and fromage frais. Together, these policies are expected to accrue health benefits of about £60 billion, producing savings for the NHS.

Although a significant amount of work has been published, there is no universally agreed definition of ultra-processed food; nor is there an evidenced position. We do have definitions of products that are high in fat, salt and sugar, and that is the basis on which we regulate and control those foods. The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition provides the Government with robust, independent advice on the science and the underpinning evidence base. SACN is clear that there is evidence that a diet high in calories, fat, salt and sugar is bad for people’s health. The question then is what ultra-processing adds to that impact. Is it something about the ease of eating these foods, or what it does to someone’s physiology? Are the products in some way addictive, or is it something else entirely?

Some people say, “Why don’t you just adopt the NOVA definition?” but the breadth of the NOVA definition is such that it includes foods that our current dietary guidelines encourage as part of a healthier diet. Shop-bought wholemeal bread, baked beans, or wholegrain breakfast cereals such as bran flakes and Weetabix would be captured by it, so clearly there is work to do to reach the right definition. Some of the foods that I have mentioned can make a positive contribution to nutrient intakes: for example, fortified breakfast cereals or bread and pasta made from fortified wheat flours are the largest source of dietary iron in all age and sex groups and provide, on average, between a third to a half of our calcium intake.

Defining the problem is not completely straightforward. To make progress so that we can start to regulate or do anything else, we need to have a clear definition. However, even though how to define these things is not totally obvious, that does not mean that there is not a problem, that we will not take action, or that we cannot find a solution. We all know it when we see it—I particularly admired the definition of my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) that having an unpronounce-able ingredient is a pretty good sign—but we need to be precise and follow the scientific evidence.

That is why SACN is carrying out the scoping review of the evidence on processed foods and health, which includes reviewing existing processed food classifications and the ability to apply NOVA to UK diets and our national diet and nutrition survey. SACN aims to publish its initial assessment this summer, so we are moving quickly. We are also in touch with other countries in the same position, and I know that France and Canada are doing similar work. As part of the review, SACN will consider whether there is sufficient evidence to undertake a full risk assessment. Only after an in-depth risk assessment and the identification of robust supporting evidence would we consider updates to Government dietary advice.

The Eatwell Guide, which most Members present will know about, summarises dietary recommendations and shows how much of what we eat overall should come from different food groups to achieve a healthy, balanced diet. It recommends that we consume less often, and in smaller amounts, food and drinks that are high in saturated fat, salt or free sugars. Foods such as crisps, biscuits, cakes, ice cream and sugary drinks are all shown outside the main Eatwell Guide image to highlight that they are not necessary. Those foods also meet the NOVA definition of ultra-processed foods.

The Eatwell Guide and associated messaging is promoted through a range of channels, including the NHS and gov.uk websites, and the Government’s national social marketing campaigns, such as Better Health. We know from our national diet and nutrition survey that most people in the UK are not meeting the dietary recommendations depicted in the Eatwell Guide. Aligning diets more closely with existing dietary recommendations will deliver considerable population health benefits and healthcare savings.

Obviously, one of the things that we are doing to achieve those benefits is supporting people with the cost of living so that they can afford to do it. Support for the cost of living, which we have provided through both energy price support and direct measures for poorer households, has been worth £3,300 for the average household over last year and this year—one of the most generous support packages anywhere in Europe. We are absolutely conscious of the challenges around the cost of food at the moment, caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Even as we focus on the cost of living, we are still very much focused on obesity, because it accounts for a significant cost to the NHS and the economy. That is what we are doing with our existing programme on obesity and healthy eating. We know that there is more to do, and we will do more. Our major conditions strategy has a call for evidence that runs until 27 June, seeking people’s views on how the healthcare system can support people to lead healthier lives, including supporting them to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. We know that diet has an important impact on health. My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge has raised important concerns about ultra-processed foods, which we are looking at.

Our existing policies support less consumption of many of the foods that would be classified as ultra-processed because they are high in fat, salt and sugar. We know that they are a problem, and that is why we regulate in the way we do. It is vital that we take a considered and robust approach to the emerging evidence on what ultra-processing is doing. That is what we are doing, and we will not hesitate to take action if the evidence suggests that it is needed.

17:49

[Suzanne Webb]

I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their powerful contributions. We are all aligned on this issue. I wholeheartedly agree with the Minister that there has to be a considered response. It was touched on that we face a looming crisis. I believe that it is already a crisis; the bomb has ticked and now has actually gone off. We need to address the obesity crisis not just for our people and our children, but because of the impact that it is having on our NHS. The cost to our NHS is significant.

There is also significant cost to our own life outcomes. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for sharing his story. I have my own story, but do not have not the time today to share it. My cholesterol was way off the Richter scale at about nine—whatever that means. I have halved it by changing my diet and cutting out any food high in fat, sugar or salt. I have a way to go, but, my goodness, it has worked very well.

I believe that regulators need to step up and make manufacturers take responsibility for the health outcomes of their foods. It is their food after all. They need to step up, act and take responsibility now, even before the Government consider when and if they need to intervene. I hope the manufacturers listen to what is being said in this place and in the public domain and take action.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the health impacts of ultra-processed food.

17:51

Sitting adjourned.