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Coastal Towns

Well, I am talking about the East Lindsey district council area, which is along the coastal strip. The figure is 19.4 per cent. in that area, compared with the average of 7 per cent., which is a significant difference. According to the 2001 census, Skegness has a population of 18,000, divided into four wards, three of which rank very high on the indices of deprivation. However, as has been mentioned, because things are done on a ward basis, the requisite funding from the European Union or central Government to address those problems is not attracted. There have been problems with the local hospital in Skegness, which has been under threat. As in other coastal resorts, there is a high proportion of elderly residents in Skegness—the average is 23.7 per cent. compared with the UK average of 18.4 per cent. When one of the hospital’s wards was closed and there was a threat that the hospital would be totally closed—coupled with the threat of the closure of the accident and emergency ward in Pilgrim hospital, Boston, which is also in my constituency—there was a chance that the accident and emergency ward nearest to Skegness would be in Lincoln, which is an hour and a half away. Thankfully, that possibility was defeated by a concerted effort and campaign. I hope that there will be more investment—capital investment, not just revenue investment—in the health service in Skegness, and if I have time I shall return to that theme. Turning to education, some 50 per cent. of residents in the east Lincolnshire coastal region have no qualifications at all compared with a rate of 29 per cent. nationally, and only 13 per cent. are qualified to NVQ level 3 compared with a rate of 48 per cent. nationally. Those significant statistics demand changes to how the public sector is funded through the current formulae, and I shall come to some specific proposals later. Several of the schools on the east Lincolnshire coast and in Skegness are poorly equipped. Such areas have highly transient populations, and there is significant movement in school rolls. That means that the schools do not get the requisite funding, because the decisions are made on the count of the school roll in September, even if the numbers increase significantly later in the academic year. I have raised that issue before, but nothing has been done. Turning to employment, the Lincolnshire coast is the least productive area of a low-productivity county. It has a low and falling gross domestic product in comparison with the rest of the United Kingdom—there are low wages and low skills with seasonal work often dominating. Large numbers of people in the area claim jobseeker’s allowance in the winter months. Disgracefully, the DWP withdrew that without warning, leaving people in Skegness and other coastal towns suffering without any money at all. Thankfully, that decision was overturned on appeal. The significant problems with housing have been driven by the recent changes to housing legislation. The changes mean that local authorities have to take into consideration people coming from elsewhere. A resort such as Skegness is an attractive place to live. People from the east midlands want to come there, and if they come from pockets of deprivation, they are often very high on the housing priority list. That means that local people in Skegness cannot access social housing. The problem is coupled with and exacerbated by the fact that there are 26,000 caravans on the east Lincolnshire coast, the vast majority in my constituency. They used to be holiday homes—second homes for people from the midlands. There is now a growing trend for people to live permanently in caravans. They use the local facilities but make no economic contribution through council tax towards paying for them. Caravan parks close for one or two months of the year, so such people go and rent private property in Skegness and then return to their caravans. I am working closely with East Lindsey district council on that, and we are attempting to set up a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss it. There are also significant environmental issues, particularly coastal flooding. According to the Environment Agency, my whole constituency would be under water if it were not for the coastal defences and the excellent work of the internal drainage boards. Yet via the local authorities, this Government have cut funding to those boards, which used to get 100 per cent. rebates from central Government. Now they get only 87 per cent., which means significant deficits and more pressure on local council tax payers. The Government ceiling in respect of 5 per cent. increases means that the local authority has to make a difficult decision. Does it cut back on service provision or flood defences? Because of their incompetent handling of the single farm payment, the Government, through the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, are having to make significant cutbacks to coastal flood defences. In this year alone in Lincolnshire, £15 million is being taken from those defences. That could well have a significant impact, particularly in the context of climate change and global warming. The Government need to focus on five particular issues, the first of which is tourism. They need to formulate a national strategy, including economic diversification strategies, for coastal tourism. I do not share the confidence of the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West about regional development agencies. Like the hon. Member for Cleethorpes, I believe that the RDA in the east midlands is distant and does not understand the coastal region and coastal issues, although I believe that she and I have different regional development agencies. I would much prefer the engagement to be with the local authorities and in order to go to the lowest possible level with people who understand those communities. More needs to be done about tourism. The revenue support grant is the second issue that needs to be addressed. It needs to take into account to a far greater extent elderly and transient populations and recognise the geographical variations that demand different emphases on services in respect of those groups. There are large numbers of tourists in Skegness, and some of them are not terribly well. GPs get refunded from other primary care trusts, so they give tourists priority at their surgeries, which means that local people cannot access their own GPs, particularly in the summer months. That is causing immense tension, as I am sure that all hon. Members will understand. Furthermore, we need to look at coastal protection. We need a significant increase in the availability of funding for coastal flood defences. DEFRA must not continue the cuts that have followed the RPA shambles. Some 20 per cent. of the food consumed in the UK is grown in eastern and southern Lincolnshire, and the possible salination of high-quality agricultural land could significantly damage the production of that food for a long time. Coastal protection is vital for most, if not all, the people in my constituency, because, as I have said, the whole of my constituency would be under water otherwise. The Environment Agency must be fully funded in the comprehensive spending review that will report in the autumn and I hope that the Minister and her officials will take that message back. Finally, I would like the Government to focus on further investment, particularly for health and education. I have talked briefly about the hospital, which needs capital investment. I hope that we will succeed in getting some capital investment from the community hospital fund. There needs to be a greater focus on the further education sector in my part of Lincolnshire, as it has low penetration and accessibility. The whole Lincolnshire FE sector gets less funding than one FE college in Nottingham. That has been recognised by the Learning and Skills Council, but in my view the misallocation of funds is being rebalanced and readdressed far too slowly. The low-wage and low-skill economy in Lincolnshire means that there is a need for the FE sector to be more accessible and relevant to the needs of the people in the part of Lincolnshire that I represent. In conclusion, I thank the Committee once again for its hard work in putting together this excellent report, which makes a significant contribution to coastal towns. I hope that the Government will go away and reflect on their response, which is not excellent. As a representative of Skegness, I do not see why—we have heard this from the representatives of other coastal towns—we should not have the same priority and resource allocation as the inner cities. We have the same problems, exacerbated by distances, isolation, an ageing population and declining public services, including transport. The Government need to take seriously the issues set out in the report. There is no reason why the work cannot be done across the Departments, nor why the Government should not set up a coastal regeneration taskforce, as the hon. Member for Blackpool, South pointed out. That should be a facilitating and enabling taskforce, rather than one that tries to take on the work load itself. The Government need to take coastal communities seriously and, at the least, to provide the appropriate focus to help economic diversification. I shall continue to fight on behalf of the coastal town of Skegness, and the message from other Members in the Chamber, irrespective of their political persuasions, is that they will continue to fight for their coastal towns, too.