Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Caroline Ansell

Thursday 10th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

10. What steps he is taking to support coastal communities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

Coastal communities are key to our levelling-up agenda, supported by the UK shared prosperity fund, the coastal communities fund and the £100 million UK seafood fund. Up to 2027 we are investing a record £5.2 billion in coastal erosion risk management. That will be invested in about 2,000 schemes and approximately 17% of it is expected to better protect against coastal and tidal flooding. It includes a £140 million coastal project on defences at the Eastbourne and Pevensey coast. We are putting coastal communities right at the heart of this flood protection landscape.

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and welcome her to her seat. How wonderful that she has chosen DEFRA orals to ask her first question. That is very fitting, because I think the wonderful Sir David Amess never missed DEFRA questions. She is going to be a great spokesman for her area on this front. She makes a good case for the importance of keeping our waters healthy. In terms of fishing, an inshore survey programme of the outer Thames and the south coast is under way so that we can get data on the fishing stocks to better inform and help our fishermen. A recent survey showed that, remarkably, the Thames estuary, having been declared virtually dead not very long ago, has made a fantastic ecological recovery to the point that we can now see seahorses, eels and seals there.

[Caroline Ansell]

Who knew we had seahorses off the coast of Eastbourne? This is my perfect moment. I thank my hon. Friend for her answer on the excellent work that is being done on water quality—that is clearly of massive significance to me—and on the coastal defence scheme; Eastbourne is set to potentially receive £100 million to protect the town for 100 years. But my question is about sewage and waste treatment. The sea, and all it affords, is our greatest visitor asset in Eastbourne and highly valued by local people. I recently met my local swimmers—a very hardy crew that includes one cross-channel swimmer. They are concerned about waste treatment because they so enjoy their swimming. What reassurance can my hon. Friend give them about the new powers in the Environment Act 2021 that will address this, but equally about Government-sponsored local action that will improve storm overflows and surface water, and help to take us from “good” to “excellent” status for our bathing water?

[Rebecca Pow]

I am tempted to ask whether my hon. Friend joined the swimmers with her bathing costume on. I thank her for her work in campaigning on this matter, which she constantly talks about with me. I am delighted that we recently confirmed funding for East Sussex County Council’s Blue Heart project, which she was very proactive about, to help to reach “excellent” bathing water status. That very much focuses on what to do about the surface water and how to separate it from the sewage. That fits fully with all the work we are doing, as a Government, to make a game-changing difference on improving our water quality.

Environment Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Caroline Ansell

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 12th March 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)]

You should chip in!

Dr Benwell: Thank you; I could do a little list now.

On biodiversity, we would have species abundance, species diversity and extinction risk. On habitat, you would have habitat extent and quality. On waste and resources, you would have resource productivity and waste minimisation. On air quality, you would have SOx, NOx—sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides—ozone and ammonia. And on water, you would have biological quality, chemical status and abstraction. There is a great set there, but some of those exist in law at the moment, so we do not need them now. What we do need is a framework that will ensure that when they come and go, future Governments have to fill that gap.

There are several ways to do that. You have heard about the options in relation to an overarching objective that could be a touchpoint for setting targets. You could simply list those targets in the Bill and say that they all have to exist somewhere in law. Alternatively, you could look at the significant environmental improvement test in clause 6 and make it clear that it needs to achieve significant improvement for the environment as a system—not just in the individual areas listed, but across the whole natural environment. That is so we know that we will have a strong set of targets now and in the future.

I will be briefer on the next points, but that was point one. Point two would be about ensuring that action actually happens. The environmental improvement plans should link to targets. There should be a requirement for environmental improvement plans to be capable of meeting targets and for the Government to take the steps in those plans. And the interim targets to get you there should be legally binding.

Point three—I promised I would be faster—is about the Office for Environmental Protection and ensuring that it has the independence and powers to hold the Government to account on delivery.

I have just remembered one thing missing from the Bill, in response to Dr Whitehead’s first question: the global footprint of our consumption and impacts here in the UK. Adding a priority area for our global footprint and a due diligence requirement on business would be a really remarkable step, again, to show our leadership around the world.

George Monbiot: All I would add to that brilliant and comprehensive review is that there has been an extraordinary failure on monitoring and enforcement of existing environmental law in this country. We see that with Environment Agency prosecutions and follow-ups, and similarly with Natural England.

You can have excellent laws in statute, but if the resources and the will to enforce are not there, they might as well not exist. At every possible opportunity in the Bill, we need to nail that down and say, “That money will be there, and those powers will be used.” That is particularly the case with OEP, but it also applies to the existing statutory agencies.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

Q Thank you so much for coming in. How lovely to have some enthusiasm! I will build on that enthusiasm for a second. I know there are probably lots of things that people think ought to be tweaked. Overall, can you sum up what you think the opportunities from this Bill will present to us?

Given that we have left the EU, I personally see this being a much more holistic system. I would like your views on that. You might also touch not only on the opportunities for improving the overall environment, but how this will touch on our society and business; we have to bring those people along with us.

George Monbiot: I think there is a fantastic opportunity in clause 93, which inserts the words “and enhance biodiversity”. That is something we can really start to build on. We find ourselves 189th out of 216 countries in terms of the intactness of our ecosystems. We have seen a catastrophic collapse in wildlife diversity and abundance, yet for far too long our conservation mindset has been, “Let’s just protect what we have”, rather than, “Let’s think about what we ought to have.” I would love to see that built on.

We can further the general biodiversity objective by saying, “Let’s start bringing back missing habitats and species to the greatest extent possible,” with the reintroduction of keystone species, many of which we do not have at all in this country, others of which we have in tiny pockets in a few parts of the country, but we could do with having far more of.

We could re-establish ecosystems that might in some places be missing altogether, such as rainforests in the west of the country; the western uplands of the country would have been almost entirely covered in temperate rainforest, defined by the presence of epiphytes—plants that grow on the branches of the trees. There are only the tiniest pockets left, such as Wistman’s wood on Dartmoor or Horner wood on Exmoor. Those are stunning, remarkable and extraordinary places, but they are pocket handkerchiefs. They would have covered very large tracts.

We need to use this wonderful enhancement opportunity, which the Bill gives us. There is a lot to build on in clause 93. We can say, “Okay, let’s start thinking big and look at how we could expand that to a restoration duty and, hopefully, a reintroduction and re-establishment duty.” That harks back to clause 16, where we have five very good environmental principles; I think they have been introduced from international best practice. But perhaps we could add one more to those, which would be the restoration of damaged or missing habitats and ecosystems and the re-establishment of nationally extinct native species. We will then not only be firefighting with the Bill, but looking forward to a better world, rather than a less bad one than we might otherwise have had.

Dr Benwell: That is a lovely way to put it: starting to think about restoration and improvement, rather than clinging on to what we are missing. That is the opportunity provided by the Bill.

Bowel Cancer Screening Age

Debate between Rebecca Pow and Caroline Ansell

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Ansell]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I recognise that earlier screening in Scotland and would certainly welcome it.

The petition that I mentioned has been well supported; in fact, it has had 500 new signatories this very day. The originator of the petition, Lauren Backler, has travelled from Eastbourne to be with us today in Westminster. May I at this point pay tribute to her courage and endeavour? For anyone hearing the news that they or a loved one have been diagnosed with bowel cancer, it will be simply earth-shattering, as Lauren knows. She writes:

“On 2nd December 2014, my Mum Fiona Backler was diagnosed with bowel cancer, at Eastbourne DGH’s”—

Eastbourne District General Hospital’s—

“Accident and Emergency and was told a few days later that the cancer was terminal. She started palliative chemotherapy within a week, but despite us being told that potentially she could have up to 2 years to live, she passed away on 28th March 2015, just under 4 months after diagnosis and a week after her 56th birthday. Before she was diagnosed, she had been back and forth to her GP with vague symptoms, and had even had an endoscopy about a year and a half beforehand, which she had been told was all clear. When she was diagnosed, her consultant told us that the cancer had possibly been missed at that stage.

Bowel cancer screening can often pick up abnormalities in people who have no symptoms at all, and so I believe that if the screening age was lowered to 50 it would give thousands of people a fighting chance of beating the disease.”

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

My hon. Friend knows that I have come to the debate for personal reasons. My husband was diagnosed with bowel cancer in December 2014, when we were right in the middle of fighting the campaign, and it was I who spotted the unusual signs and dragged him to the GP, where, like many men, he would never have gone, or at least not for a very long time. Ironically, he received a letter some months later saying, “Come for the screening,” when he would have been 55. Had he had that letter at 50, the polyps would have been recognised and removed and they would, potentially, not have turned into cancer. As it was, he did have cancer, and we had to go through that earth-shattering experience that the poor lady whom my hon. Friend talks about has also been through. I sympathise with her, and I urge support for my hon. Friend’s motion. We need to continue to explain why the matter is so important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Ansell]

I agree, and I hope we can put that need forward today. I know that the Minister and her Department are working hard in this area and that they are all the time seeking to secure better outcomes. I hope that they might just revisit the screening age as part of that.

It has been really moving to hear from right hon. and hon. Members about their own experiences and about the losses they have suffered. Lauren is here today, having lost her mum. What a terrible tragedy that is. It feels especially poignant that we are here so soon after celebrating mother’s day.

With today’s advances in life expectancy, 56—the age at which Lauren’s mother died— is incredibly young, yet if Lauren’s mother had lived in Scotland, she would have been screened three times before the age at which she was diagnosed, increasing the chances of early detection and therefore survival. Learning that must have been a bitter blow. England has, however, led in this area. In 2006, we became the first home nation and one of the first countries in the world to offer routine screening for bowel cancer, with the faecal occult blood test, or FOBT, being sent every two years to those aged 60 to 69—later extended to 74. However, a year later Scotland implemented the same screening, with the crucial difference that it would begin from the age of 50.

The national screening committee, which ran FOBT pilots in the early 2000s, felt that 50 was the right age at which to begin to screen. It noted a lower take-up of the test in 50 to 60-year-olds compared with those over the age of 60, but recommended that the Government take measures to address that. However, when deciding on final implementation it was recognised that, due to a shortage of endoscopy equipment and with substantially higher incidence rates over the age of 60, screening would begin with that age group. It is conceded that more than 80% of those diagnosed with bowel cancer are over the age of 60.

A University of Sheffield study recommended that offering both bowel scope screening and the FOBT from the age of 60 would maximise survival rates and have the important trade-off of being cost-effective. Yet the same study also found that the FOBT would substantially lower the number of deaths by as much as 23% if it was run for 50 to 69-year-olds, whereas running it from the age of 60 only would reduce the number of deaths by only 14%. It is hard to talk about percentages but, just to bring the debate back to the personal level, that significant 9% would have included Lauren’s mum, and perhaps other people we know.

We know that there is a clear upward incidence of bowel cancer over the age of 50. The rate of bowel cancer roughly triples between one’s 40s and one’s 50s, before doubling again in one’s 60s. We all should be aware of the signs and take precautions in our diet and lifestyle to prevent and detect bowel cancer—and, yes, perhaps we ought to shed the very British attitude that we must keep calm and carry on, and seek out our GP. More must be done to improve screening uptake rates. Bowel cancer screening rates remain disappointingly low nationwide, having barely moved above those achieved in the pilot 16 years ago.

[Rebecca Pow]

Spotting the signs is absolutely crucial, and we have had some great receptions in Parliament about just that point with the bowel cancer organisations, but I want to put a positive spin on things. Let us not be negative. If we spot bowel cancer early, which is exactly what my hon. Friend is talking about, it is fully possible to recover. It is one of the ones that has a positive outcome. We have got some great medical teams in this country, and I think we should praise them. In particular, I praise the team at Musgrove Park hospital. It has one of the best support teams in this area. I know Lauren has had a terrible time, but for other people there is an awful lot of positivity, which is why my hon. Friend secured the debate.

[Caroline Ansell]

Indeed, there is a lot of positivity. Lauren brings that positivity: she wants not only to reduce the screening ages, but to advance awareness of bowel cancer across the piece. I know that she is particularly concerned about those who are at risk and are already carrying the condition in their 20s and their 30s. So much more needs to be done, and that includes us talking about our symptoms and taking that forward. As we have heard, there is a good prognosis if we can strike out for that early intervention.