Remote Coastal Communities

Debate between Jayne Kirkham and Perran Moon

Monday 8th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

Meur ras, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to have secured this debate on Government support for remote coastal communities. My constituency of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle is one such area, and there is growing evidence that such constituencies face distinct and underestimated challenges. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Miatta Fahnbulleh), to her new position.

According to the Office for National Statistics, around 8.7 million people—15% of the population—lived in coastal settlements in England and Wales in 2021. These communities deserve strong representation in Parliament because, just as the human body often shuts down extremities at times of extreme shock, our remote coastal communities tend to feel the chill of economic neglect first, experiencing public service withdrawal, under-investment and eroded socioeconomic opportunities. To illustrate, a report by Onward found that coastal neighbourhoods are 42% more likely to be in the lowest decile for income deprivation than inland areas, and half as likely to be in the best.

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s fair funding review is right to take into account the sparsity and rurality of coastal areas and visitor numbers into the new calculations? For example, a hotel in Cornwall in the winter can cost £53, but in the summer it can cost £100, and county councils spend twice as much on home-to-school transport as London boroughs, proving how much more it costs to provide those services in rural areas.

[Perran Moon]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend, although I think the Government should go further in relation to visitor numbers, because the current proposals look only at day trippers. I will come on to that issue a little later in my speech.

We know that place matters. A recent report from the Resolution Foundation found that one third of pay differences between labour markets stem from the places themselves, not the people who live there. That should be a wake-up call for all of us. There are several interrelated pressures driving this deprivation that are not adequately currently reflected in Government assessments of need.

Military Helicopters: Blood Cancers

Debate between Jayne Kirkham and Perran Moon

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jayne Kirkham]

I agree with the hon. Member that all manner of injuries may have occurred due to people’s military service. It is important that every single one is investigated to check if there is a link. I thank him for reminding me of that.

Due to the sheer number of records and the way they are stored, I understand that checking them could take weeks, if not months. There are a number of things that could be done by Government or further afield that could help people who are affected now or in future. First, the Government could help to spread awareness of this potential link. There will be men and women with initial symptoms of these cancers that can easily be missed. If the serving personnel and veteran communities, who served with or on these aircraft, are alive to the possible risks, they will know what symptoms to look out for and to raise with medics.

Secondly, GPS should be educated in places where there are clusters of personnel and veterans who have worked with these aircraft, so that they know to look for a military record when assessing symptoms that could indicate blood cancers. Thirdly, as well as signposting for veterans, a screening scheme for blood cancers could be set up for those who may be most at risk.

Fourthly, the MOD can move faster on assembling, analysing and releasing the data on how many service personnel and veterans have subsequently developed these cancers, so that more research can be done on causation, action can be taken and cases can be quickly concluded. The five-year survival rate for multiple myeloma is 50%, so people are dying before their cases are settled and many are still being turned down for compensation.

Fifthly, testing exposure to emissions must be done to take into account and replicate the real-life conditions that personnel were working under while undertaking search and rescue and military combat sorties. Sixthly, crews should still be advised to take sufficient precautions around aircraft, such as not standing directly in exhaust fumes and wearing personal protective equipment. Private companies and other countries that still use these aircraft need to be informed of the potential risks so that they can take steps to modify the aircraft and take other preventive action.

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend for bringing us this really important debate. Does she agree that the Ministry of Defence has a duty not just to those people who have already died or those people who are currently suffering but to their family, friends and loved ones? They are the backbone of so much of our armed forces. We need to make sure that this issue is dealt with efficiently and in an open environment so that if there is an ongoing issue, it is dealt with transparently.

[Jayne Kirkham]

I agree that these things should be dealt with as swiftly as possible and that it is not just about current personnel and veterans but people who may be affected in the future.

Military personnel think they know the risks of what they are taking on when they sign up to fly for the military or work as aircrew. What they could not realise is that there were, and possibly still are, other hidden risks. The people who risk their lives in the service of this country are courageous men and women, and they deserve the very best care and the very best chance.

Renewable Energy: Cornwall

Debate between Jayne Kirkham and Perran Moon

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jayne Kirkham]

I thank the hon. Member. That is true particularly around standards on homes, where our local solutions for ground source heating could have been made more of in the past and have obviously now been delayed for that reason.

The feed-in tariffs introduced by the previous Labour Government were reduced several times by the last Government and then finally ended in 2019. Despite that, the community energy sector is resilient and has continued to grow. In my constituency, Ladock won the low carbon communities challenge, and Low Carbon Ladock was given £500,000 under one of the last Governments, which it invested in solar panels on homes, biomass boilers, and ground-source and air-source heat systems. It has been able to put the profits into things for the community, such as safer school crossings, playing fields and more renewables.

The current state of play in Cornwall is that there are 104 wind turbines, 88 solar projects and two operational geothermal sites. Twenty-two projects have been granted planning permission in 2023-24 to date, including one geothermal, one onshore wind, eight battery and 12 solar photovoltaic projects. A further 22 projects have submitted planning applications in 2023-24, three of which are geothermal, four onshore wind, six battery and nine solar.

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the time to act in Cornwall is right now? We have the US State Department, which is very interested in our renewable opportunities, and representatives from France coming to Cornwall. It would be a crying shame if our Government did not use the advantages available to make Cornwall a renewable energies cluster.