Legacy of Jo Cox

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Thursday 9th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

It was a privilege to co-sponsor the application for this debate with the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), who spoke very much from the heart, and I enjoyed his opening speech.

It is always an absolute honour to speak in debates such as this, especially a debate that is celebrating the legacy of Jo Cox. I did not have the good fortune of getting to know Jo, but through my subsequent role as loneliness Minister, I have had the pleasure —I think!—of meeting her sister, the new hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater). I look forward greatly to hearing her maiden speech, even though I have put on mascara for the first time in months and she is bound to make me cry! The fear for my ankles means that since she joined the House I have not yet returned to women’s football. She has a fearsome reputation, and I am getting far too old to be hobbling around wearing bandages. Her wonderful parents, Gordon and Jean, are in the Public Gallery today; I will definitely go and give them a big squidge after my speech, so they had better brace themselves for some Crouchy loving.

As we heard from the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, Jo’s legacy is much wider than the issue of loneliness, but that is the issue with which I am most familiar. The commission that was established in her name to look at the issue in further detail recommended, among other things, the appointment of a Minister and the development of a strategy. Thanks to my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), not only was I that Minister, but we produced a cross-Government strategy within eight months which has provided a template for discussion around the world.

It was an enormously humbling experience for me to be that Minister. I was the world’s first loneliness Minister, and curiosity about the brief reached all four corners of the globe. But this is what Jo did: she took an issue at which others had cast a glance, and then catapulted it into the stratosphere. Like many in this House, I had spoken about loneliness and isolation in older people before Jo was elected, but when she came into this place she did not just focus on the stereotype; she broadened it beyond imagination, and rightly so. While loneliness continues to plague older generations, younger people suffer equally crippling rates of loneliness, as do young professionals moving to cities for work, those isolated through disability, and—as Jo herself noted—those on maternity or paternity leave.

Why does loneliness matter, given that it is a feeling that most people will experience at some point in their lives? Well, the reason is that prolonged and extreme exposure to loneliness can seriously affect an individual’s wellbeing and ability to function in society. As loneliness has been shown to be linked to poor physical and mental health, and poor personal wellbeing with potentially adverse effects on communities, it was a no-brainer that we needed to work through solutions to combat it.

The statistics on loneliness will no doubt be quoted a great deal today, and they should be: we need them to remain in the political consciousness. Levels of loneliness in Great Britain have increased since spring 2020. Between 3 April and 3 May 2020, 5% of people—about 2.6 million adults—said that they felt lonely “often” or “always”. Results from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey show that from October 2020 to February 2021, the proportion increased to 7.2% of the adult population—about 3.7 million adults. Mapping trends across the country also shows the types of places where a higher proportion of people felt lonely often or always, and differences in personal wellbeing. Areas with a higher concentration of younger people and areas with higher rates of unemployment tended to have higher rates of loneliness during that particular study period. Local authority areas in the countryside also had a lower loneliness rate than, for instance, urban or industrial areas.

These latest statistics reiterate what we learned from the preliminary work for the strategy, which was that all our views about who suffers from loneliness were not always entirely accurate. As an emotion it shows no prejudice. The chief executive fighting battles in boardrooms was as lonely as the retiree missing the banter of the workshop. The difference was sometimes who would, or would not, seek or receive the support or reconnection that they needed.

As the statistics show, covid has increased the numbers but many of the solutions we proposed in the strategy have not been available, thus exacerbating the problem. The Royal College of General Practitioners was amazingly helpful when it came to developing recommendations, in part because GPs themselves were seeing an increasing number of patients whose interaction with their doctor was because they were lonely. It was with that in mind that one of the core recommendations was to use social prescribing to reconnect people, and I genuinely believe that in the run-up to February last year it was gaining massive traction.

The pandemic has been a major setback, for obvious reasons, and if I had one ask of the Minister—unfortunately for him, it is actually two—it would be that there should be a major relaunch of the social prescribing programme for tackling loneliness. We have all seen really good examples of social prescribing initiatives, including in Batley and Spen, and all of us across the House and our constituents would benefit from ensuring that that programme is relaunched. My other ask of the Minister is to join me in campaigning for a wellbeing budget, similar to those in other countries, in which reducing levels of loneliness would be one target. I do not have enough time in this debate to rant about why a budget based just on GDP is simply not enough, but I will be applying for a separate debate on why wellbeing should be front and centre of our post-covid recovery. That includes many of the issues that Jo campaigned on.

As a Minister, and afterwards too, I have had the pleasure of meeting many people involved in supporting those who suffer from differing and often complex levels of loneliness. I have seen brilliant but extremely simple creative ideas such as friendly benches. I have watched men solder and build things in a shed. I have done interviews and podcasts with people around the world, all of which have started with a confession from those on the other side of the mic that they too have felt severely lonely. I have seen pubs put up signs welcoming people in for a chat. I have heard about businesses that support existing staff with befriending networks, and others that help those retiring to reintegrate into society. Every time I see a project, hear a story or talk in general terms about loneliness, I personally find it a humbling experience, but I recognise that the progress we have made on identifying and tackling the issue is truly leading the world, and quite frankly, we have Jo Cox to thank for that.

[Mr Speaker]

Can I just remind everybody that we are now coming to a very important maiden speech? We all know about the legacy of Jo, and it is an absolute privilege to be able to be in the Chair to listen to Kim Leadbeater.