Alison McGovern

I begin by thanking the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for bringing forward this Bill and for giving the House the opportunity to debate, on all sides of the question, the health and wellbeing of our coastal communities. I trust that the hon. Member will be reassured that, as a Minister and a constituency MP for Birkenhead who lives right next to the edge of the country, on the banks of the River Mersey and proximate to the Irish sea, I understand this issue very well. The Government share the concern that lies behind this Bill. We recognise that there are significant and persistent health inequalities in some of our coastal communities, and it is absolutely right that the Government address them. However, having listened to the debate, I am struck by some of the comments that my hon. Friends made about the various health inequalities that persist across our country. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson) that the underlying economic circumstances are the determinants of health. There should be nothing inevitable about somebody experiencing poorer health, or spending fewer years of their life in good health, simply because of where they live, yet in far too many communities, including coastal communities, poorer health outcomes sit alongside deep-rooted social and economic disadvantage. These challenges are not new. They were set out powerfully in the chief medical officer’s 2021 report on health in coastal communities, and the importance of place to our health has been reinforced by the chief medical officer’s latest annual report on health in rural areas and small towns. We in this House all thank the chief medical officer for his considerable work on this subject. That report is particularly relevant to today’s debate, because rural, small town and coastal communities frequently overlap, and many of the challenges that it identifies will be familiar to Members of this place. It highlights the challenges of accessing and providing services across greater distances, limited public transport, ageing populations, workforce recruitment and retention, housing pressures and hidden deprivation. Importantly, the report also emphasises that health and social care services need to be designed around the needs and circumstances of local populations. That matters, because when we talk about health inequalities, we cannot simply talk about differences in people’s experience of the NHS, as I said yesterday in a speech on the work that we are doing on social care.