Coastal Communities

Sarah Owen Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank all who have contributed to this incredibly important debate.

Covid has exposed many things, including the dysfunction of the British state. It is overcentralised, slow, wasteful and clunky. Our economy too often delivers great gains for too few in too few places. We need a new model of economic growth to spread wealth, security and opportunity fairly. As we have heard from the contributions today, nowhere is that more true, sadly, than in many of our coastal communities.

Coastal communities, like many former industrial towns, have seen 40 years of managed decline as the great industries of fishing, shipbuilding and port work have all but disappeared for many. Tourism, boosted in some places throughout covid, has not been enough to mitigate the decline of industry. Added to that, the natural geographical challenges for many of these towns—their location on the edges of our country—have often forced them to the periphery of our economy, but, as we have seen in this afternoon’s debate, not from our minds or hearts.

The problem has been turbocharged by 10 years of austerity that has hit our coastal communities hard, ripping apart the social fabric of those towns with the loss of very good jobs. Too many young people are faced with a choice between family and community or opportunity. Too many have had to get out to get on. For the many people who are left growing old hundreds of miles away from children and grandchildren, that is their inheritance, and it has been squandered.

A recent report by the Centre for Progressive Policy found that Conservative-held seaside towns were particularly likely to be pushed into poverty by the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), and his failure to tackle the cost of living crisis. The Office for National Statistics found that the population declined 32% for smaller seaside towns between 2009 and 2018. So, stuck in a low-growth, high-tax cycle, Britain is now unique: a major country that believes it can power a modern economy using only a handful of people in a handful of sectors in one small corner of the country.

Coastal communities do not represent a small section of our society that can easily be forgotten. Approximately 18.5% of the population live in coastal communities—a huge pool of talent and resources that the economy needs. To get the economy growing nationally, we need it working everywhere. We must combat the decline in wages and job opportunities faced by coastal communities, rebalance the lack of opportunity, and entrust local communities with regeneration plans to bring back ageing high streets and infrastructure. That is what levelling up was meant to be about.

The future of levelling up under the new Government is uncertain, and so, too, is the future for many coastal communities. They are absolutely right to have pride in their areas and their rich history. I was born and raised in one. If we visit any of them, we meet people with unlimited energy and ambition for the future of their towns. They are crying out for a Government who will match that ambition, but they have been sorely let down.

Our fishing communities have been sold short by a deal that does not secure our future as an independent coastal state in full control of our waters. Hastings and Rye’s is the largest land-based fishing fleet of under 10-metre fishing fleets in Europe. Has Brexit delivered the utopia for them on quotas? No. Many fishermen in Hastings have said they feel stabbed in the back when it comes to the Brexit deal they have been given. Paul Joy and the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association have said that they are angry about the deal the Government failed to secure for them. Their share of the cod quota has gone up from 9.3% to just 10% over five years.

The tourism sector has also not received enough support throughout the pandemic, and there has been a serious lack of affordable housing. Our coast is one of Britain’s greatest assets, but the people who live there have been let down by a lack of investment and poor infrastructure. A 2019 Lords Select Committee on Regenerating Seaside Towns and Communities report found that, in most seaside towns,

“Inadequate transport connectivity is holding back many coastal communities and hindering the realisation of their economic potential.”

I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) speak about her campaign to secure better rail along the south coast. I thought, “I have been taken back all the way to the 2010 election, when her predecessor was campaigning for the same thing.” After 12 years of a Tory MP and a Tory Government, they are no further down the track in getting electrification between Hastings and Ashford. Coupled with limited access to education, particularly to further and higher education institutions, that curtails opportunities for young people, who deserve so much better.

Poor-quality housing was among the most significant problems reported by coastal residents. The stock of second homes and holiday lets continues to increase—up 40% in three years in England—pushing local people out of affordable housing. We desperately need to improve digital connectivity in coastal areas. We have seen how reliant we are on it over the past three years, and we will be even more so in the future. Many coastal towns have tragically become hotspots for rough sleeping and homelessness.

On all those key indicators, the Government have not delivered, even after the delivery of some pots of funding, such as the coastal communities fund. At the same time, those communities have borne the brunt of Tory deregulation and cost-cutting. Water companies in England and Wales pump raw sewage into our nature an average of every two and a half minutes. Areas such as beaches, playing fields and bathing waters have faced 1,076 years-worth of raw sewage over a six-year period. Hundreds of campaigners, such as the energetic Helena Dollimore, have taken to beaches in Hastings to protest the dumping of raw sewage on our beaches. If Ministers really value our coastal communities, they should stop dumping raw sewage on them.

Now from Rye to Redcar, where thousands of dead crustaceans washed up on the beaches, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) powerfully set out. Those communities deserve answers and an investigation. If the Government and the Tees Valley Mayor have nothing to hide, they should welcome the scrutiny.

I want to hope for better, but the new Prime Minister was responsible for unleashing cuts of tens of millions of pounds to the Environment Agency. Environment Agency data shows that, in subsequent years, the Tories presided over a doubling of the rate at which water companies dump raw sewage. It never needed to be this way.

Under the previous Labour Government, one of the first places to see the potential of investment in wind energy was Grimsby. Now a new generation of young people are powering the world from the Grimsby docks through clean energy and life-changing apprenticeships. Communities know best what their natural resources and assets are, so they should have more say in and control over their investment and regeneration plans. We need to bring power, ownership and assets back to people and communities so that they have a stake in their future. That is why we want to replace the right to bid with a far more powerful right to buy, which would mean that communities got first refusal on local assets and the right to buy them without competition. Assets of community value include pubs, historic buildings, football clubs and high street shops—the things that make up the social fabric of our societies. This is about giving communities financial autonomy, which makes them more resilient and insulates them from decisions made at the whim of Whitehall.

The Welsh Government are introducing new planning laws and stronger licensing systems for holiday lets and second homes, which means that communities in Wales will be able to reap the rewards of thriving tourism while preventing areas from becoming ghost towns when holidays end. It will also put an end to people being priced out of their own neighbourhoods just so that homes can stand empty for months on end. As we have heard, that is a problem across the country, but particularly in Cornwall and the south-west. The Government must learn an important lesson from that. By trusting and working with the community, we can find the right balance. We can bring jobs, growth and income while protecting the fabric and spirit of our coastal communities, which matter so much.