Summer Adjournment

Seema Kennedy Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Seema Kennedy (South Ribble) (Con)]

It is somewhat daunting to follow experienced colleagues such as my hon. Friends the Members for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), but I shall do my best. The hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) mentioned the M6, and as someone who uses the motorway—even though it has been improved with the toll road—I know that travelling with three children often results in tears of anger and frustration, and that is just from me. I wish the hon. Lady well in her efforts.

As a new Member I shall begin by thanking everyone in the House staff, the Speaker’s office and the Doorkeepers for the warm welcome that they gave us. I particularly thank my buddy, Charlotte Blythin, who helped me in the first fortnight. The way that the induction programme was run gives the lie to the idea that this is an archaic workplace. In fact, compared with my experience at a City law firm, this place is positively 22nd century!

Right hon. and hon. Members may be aware that the statistics in England for one-year survival rates for cancer are lower than those of our European neighbours, largely because of late diagnosis. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), as chair of the all-party group on cancer, for his work on this issue. Diagnosis and prognosis for breast cancer is so much better than it was 20 or 30 years ago, but there are still about 12,000 of our fellow countrymen—mainly women, but some men—who die of breast cancer every year. It was the case in my constituency of a father and a daughter who were diagnosed with breast cancer at the same time and felt very badly let down by Southport hospital, which closed its breast cancer unit without a proper consultation, that has spurred me on to become a breast cancer ambassador for Breast Cancer Now.

I am sure all hon. Members will have had in their inboxes an invitation from Breast Cancer Now to become an ambassador. Breast Cancer Now is the merger of Breast Cancer Campaign and Breakthrough Breast Cancer. Its aim is to eliminate the disease by 2050. I think about 178 right hon. and hon. Members have become ambassadors, but I urge even more to do so, particularly hon. Gentlemen. Men are not just affected as husbands, fathers and sons when their wives, girlfriends and daughters get breast cancer. As the case in my constituency shows, men are also victims of the disease. We need to carry on the efforts of this campaign and eliminate it by 2050.

South Ribble is a wonderful place to live and work, but in one respect our statistics are slightly worse than the national average: the number of older people who live alone. Social isolation is the objective measure of how many contacts a person has, and loneliness is how an individual feels. They can both exacerbate a plethora of health problems, including hypertension, sleep problems and, in particular in the society we live in today, dementia. People are becoming more conscious of this issue, and national and local government are beginning to take measures to deal with it. I draw the attention of right hon. and hon. Members to the “Hidden Citizens” report from the Campaign to End Loneliness. I am sure many colleagues will have heard, particularly when talking to councillors and local groups in their constituencies, how difficult it is to identify very isolated older people, who are literally hidden behind doors. I am sure all of us, in March and April in particular, found those people on the doorstep. They were the ones who were really keen to carry on speaking to us, because they are so isolated and perhaps have only one or two conversations in a fortnight.

The report considers this vast problem and highlights factors intrinsic to loneliness, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity and temperament. It is on extrinsic factors that we in this place can make a difference. How do we build our towns? How do we plan our healthcare? How do we think about travel in the future? I would be very interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House has to say on what the Government are doing in this area.

Finally, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary on being part of the team that secured the nuclear deal with Iran. Right hon. and hon. Members may know that, as the first British Iranian in this place, I take a particular interest in that country. I know that on all sides of the House there are worries about what will happen in the future, but my right hon. Friend laboured for many years, with his P5+1 colleagues, and I hope very sincerely that this is the beginning of a new era of reconciliation and contact between our two peoples. As we saw on the streets of Tehran, the vast majority of Iranians—including many in the Iranian Parliament and Government—are open to the world. They want to turn their faces to the world and have a new era of peace. It is in Britain’s interests, in terms of security and trade, that we engage with Iran going forward. Let us hope the deal does not unravel over the recess and that when we meet again progress will have been made on lifting the sanctions.