Tackling Loneliness and Connecting Communities

Peter Grant Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2023 Westminster Hall

[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.]

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[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.

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[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.