Sunderland Point

David Morris Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I tabled this Adjournment debate to highlight the plight of an area in my constituency called Sunderland point. Sunderland point is a narrow sliver of land. It could not be described as a peninsula or as an island, yet it is effectively an island when the tide comes in. One has to travel across the estuary to reach it.

Sunderland point is the only area of its kind left in the whole world. It is literally an area of outstanding natural beauty, and it is steeped in history. The point flourished in the 1600s and 1700s because of the slave trade and the import of wood. It was Britain’s main port at the time. Over the years, it has become a shrimping community where people get on with their daily lives, but, owing to the death of a slave boy called Sambo at the point in the early 1700s, the movement to enact the abolition of the slave trade began there.

The child believed, legend has it, that his master had deserted him, and he took ill and died. There was outrage, because the boy was buried in an unconsecrated grave, and, although the issue took years and years—several decades indeed—to reach this House, eventually Wilberforce pushed through his Bill to abolish slavery. On the child’s tombstone, there is a poem, and the very last line—

“Not on Man’s color but his worth of heart”—

was a clarion call for abolition. Bonnie Prince Charlie also landed at Sunderland point, from where he invaded the British isles.

More recently, Sunderland point has been under threat from coastal erosion. The point is estimated to be eroding by 1 metre a year. The locals say more, but official figures state about 1 metre. Nevertheless, the point is now eroding rapidly, because the sea has started to reach an area of fields, where there is mainly clay, rather than rock. The problem is that the question of who can help the community seems to have fallen between the cracks of various points of officialdom. Natural England seems to be the main roadblock. This is supposed to be an area of special scientific interest, but I cannot for the life of me see why it would have any scientific interest if it is not going to be there in 50 years’ time. The Environment Agency has a strategic plan to hold back the tide, but no money to enact it. This story has been running for the whole week on local radio and television and in the regional media.

The community is well on the way towards getting the money to put up a wall of aggregate to stop the point eroding. That will not cost the taxpayer any money whatsoever. It is a shrimping community, and people want to preserve their way of life. It is the only place left in the whole world like it. There is evidence to suggest that George Washington’s family sailed from Sunderland point to the new world, and we all know what happened from there on in.

I am fighting against the plight of my local residents on their behalf because this is an area of outstanding historical value. Once it has gone, it will have gone for ever—and it will be gone within 100 years. Moreover, the way that the waters move and swell in the bay means that they will eventually start eating away at Glasson dock, which is a working port and a big employer, and affect the village of Overton. The Environment Agency has a management realignment plan for that, but let us say it in plain English: in layman’s terms it is coastal erosion.

I am asking the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to consider using its powers under section 16(1) of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 to overrule Natural England if it continues to block efforts to install the flood defences that the local community badly need to put in place to save Sunderland point.