Coastal Communities

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. There are actually quite a few more people standing than submitted to speak through the Speaker’s Office, so I am afraid I will have to impose a time limit of three and a half minutes with immediate effect. We will see how that goes—it might shrink further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Greenwood]

I do not have enough time, so I will carry on.

I ask the Minister to respond to that point. The Government recently published their storm overflows discharge reduction plan, but although it appears to provide for an increase in the monitoring of overflows, the question remains whether the Environment Agency and Ofwat will then use that data to take tough action. I call on the Minister to set out how the Government intend to address sewage on our beach, UCG and fracking.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I ask Members not to take interventions, because we are up against time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Selaine Saxby]

Unfortunately, I must not—

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Order. We are not taking interventions, and the time limit is about to vanish.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) on introducing the debate. I am a Member for a coastal constituency. Indeed, I live a stone’s throw away from the breathtaking view of Strangford lough. I enjoy the animal life and the majesty of the coast, but I also have first-hand experience of the pitfalls of coastal erosion. That is what I want to focus on.

Moneys have been allocated from Westminster to Northern Ireland in the past for coastal erosion. Professor Andrew Cooper and Professor Derek Jackson stated in 2018:

“A strategic approach to shoreline management is urgently needed to address the challenges of marine flooding and erosion: current shoreline management is reactive and poorly structured and continuation of current practice will lead to coastal degradation and loss of amenity value. There is an absence of adequate information on which to base coastal decision-making.”

With that in mind, we cannot even quantify the issues unless we have the information on how the coast works: the rates of change, the sources of coastal material, the patterns of sand movement, the impact of storms and post-storm recovery along the coastline. Establishing a coastal observatory for Northern Ireland is critical for us. I very much look forward hearing from the Minister, and I wish her well in her role. It is my desire that the moneys set aside for levelling up will help us in Northern Ireland to develop this conversation, and develop strategic action that we can take part in.

Being part of a coastal community does not just mean that we get fresh sea air, which we do. It does not just mean that we have great views, which we do. It means more than that. It can also mean being socially isolated. A journey that is no problem for those who can nip on a local bus in town to a hospital appointment can become an all-day excursion for those who live in a rural area. Those are the issues of isolation and the problems that need to be addressed in any approach to coastal communities.

Coastal towns are more likely to have higher levels of deprivation—I know that that is the case in Northern Ireland. They are also prone to be home to older generations. For instance, 30% of the resident population in small seaside towns were aged over 65 in 2018, compared with only 22% in small non-coastal towns. That is replicated in my constituency of Strangford. The fishing village of Portavogie, which the shadow spokesperson for the Scots Nats, the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson), visited some time ago, once had two fish-producing factories, as well as hundreds of fishing crew, but now we have a fraction of those jobs, and we are still seeking the post-Brexit economic boom.

The coastal communities fund has done some tremendous work supporting funding for volunteers and employment opportunities for vulnerable people, parents and families returning to education. It can help restore tourist attractions, business units creating employment and an environmental apprenticeship scheme. My constituency has seen some of those small things happening with the restoration of the Ballywalter lime kilns in my constituency and with sporting projects.

Looking to the future, the Minister, who is responsible for this and for helping us in Northern Ireland, should speak in favour of a holistic, UK-wide approach to ensure that every community feels the warmth of the coastal fund and any improvement scheme.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

There is a new time limit of three minutes, and the first person who is going to use that brilliantly is Robin Millar.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) on securing this debate. I pity Members of Parliament who do not get to represent coastal communities: along my 58 miles of coastline, I am fortunate to have large towns such as Brixham, Salcombe and Dartmouth, as well as the surrounding villages. It is a bit of a mixed bag: in Brixham, we see huge opportunity coming through a growing fishing sector that had a record year last year and is on course to have a record year this year. It sends much of its fine produce up to Grimsby and the processing plants there, which is very welcome. However, to make that opportunity go further, we need to ensure that Brixham secures funding from the levelling-up fund, which will enlarge the harbour and support the high-tech businesses that are based there, such as the photonics industry.

One of the biggest problems I see in my patch is that of GPs and rural healthcare. Far too many minor injury units and cottage hospitals are closing, and too many GPs are unable to give as much access to residents as necessary; access to dentists is also poor. We need to look at how we roll out better rural healthcare, a point that is most keenly felt in coastal communities. The point about bus routes, which has already been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), is well placed: we have terrible transport links at the moment. We need to make good use of the reduction in bus fares that has just been announced by the Government, which is going to take place in January and last for three months, with low-price fares to encourage people back on to the transport networks. It is a chicken-and-egg scenario: the only way we are going to get more bus routes is by getting more people to use buses in the first instance.

My third point is about fishing and aquaculture. Since all Members present are coastal MPs, I encourage them all to join the all-party parliamentary group for shellfish aquaculture, because aquaculture can increase opportunities within our coastal communities, as well as help to sequester carbon and produce sustainable food. One of the largest mussel farms in Europe is off my coastline, and it is doing extraordinary work.

Finally, turning to the point that was so well made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), housing is a big problem. In Salcombe, the average house price is £800,000, so there are no homes available for local people, and the story is similar in Brixham and in Dartmouth. We need to build houses with covenants—houses that are there for local people at locally affordable rents—and we need to do so quickly, because quite frankly, my communities are being hollowed out by those extraordinarily high prices. There is a lot to do, and I know that as a group, we can work on a cross-party basis to make sure we get the very best for our communities.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

Finally from the Back Benches, Natalie Elphicke.

[Mrs Natalie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) on securing this important debate. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as an unremunerated director of the not-for-profit Housing and Finance Institute, which has put forward a strong case for coastal renaissance in its “Turning the Tide” research paper.

We are an island nation, so it is somewhat surprising that so many policies, and the funding that goes with them, appear better designed to support our big cities than to support our coastal towns and villages. Coastal communities have a different design and construct from other areas. They are sometimes described as the end of the line, but in Dover and Deal we like to say, “Welcome to the beginning of Britain”. However, that end-of-the-line thinking dominates Whitehall. It is extremely damaging to the allocation of much-needed infrastructure investment, and to business, as whole swathes of business opportunities are moved to the so-called central belt in the midlands or even further north.

My constituency is the gateway to and from the European continent, and it is vital that investment in it is supported through its continued and future growth, which will benefit the country as a whole. For Dover and Deal, that means investment in the A2 upgrade, which is part of the roads investment programme, in port health and in port border infrastructure, which is the subject of a levelling-up bid from Kent County Council, and in our people through the education and skills necessary to make the most of the opportunities that have arisen since we left the European Union, and to reflect a modern, digital and creative economy. That is the subject of a second levelling-up bid, led by Dover District Council, and I commend both bids to the Minister.

In the time I have remaining, I will focus on coastal community deprivation. In the 2015 deprivation indices, more than two thirds of the 30 most deprived small areas were in coastal communities, and nine of the 10 most deprived small areas were in seaside places. Rolling forward to the snapshot of the latest available figures, which are from 2019, 25 of the 30 most deprived small areas are in coastal communities, and all of the top 10 are in our small coastal areas.

A notable feature of coastal communities is a high incidence of the private rented sector, as well as a lack of new or affordable housing. The proportion of private rented sector housing increases in a gradient across all the quartiles as the average multiple deprivation score increases. Additionally, there is a significant incidence of poor-quality housing, which has a causative effect on other indices of deprivation. Prioritising our coastal communities and their housing is essential. Policymaking needs to move on from the Victorian industrial focus and focus on our modern age.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

If our three Front Benchers keep to nine minutes each, Sally-Ann Hart will get to sum up at the end.