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Coastal Towns

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, because both it and the report are very worth while. Those of us who represent coastal towns realise that there are some serious issues to deal with, because the problems of coastal towns have not been under the spotlight in the same way as those of many older industrial areas in the nation. I, too, am disappointed by the Government response, but I hope that the debate will prompt both the Minister and the civil servants to go back and think more carefully about what can be done to try to address some of the difficulties. It is clear that there is a range of challenges and problems and that there is no uniform solution. However, one’s impression from today’s debate is that the problems of larger towns that have proud borough councils with universities and conference business are little different from the problems of Skegness or Cleethorpes. Nevertheless a range of actions is needed. There are certain common themes. One is that all of us in seaside towns have wards that are generally speaking very prosperous and in which property prices are beyond the means of most of us, yet those towns still have areas of deprivation. That is not picked up by the grant formula or European funding, which means that when the average comes out we miss out on most of the grant funding. In the computer age, we should be able to refine the grant system to deal with some of those areas of deprivation. In my constituency is Sandbanks, where people buy houses for multi-million pound figures, knock them down and build even bigger, Dallas-type houses. However, the constituency also has areas of great deprivation that can be as little as a mile and a half away. Dealing with the problems of that deprivation is terribly difficult. People go to the seaside and see nice beaches and attractive scenery, but sometimes that masks the social and economic problems. The report mentions many such problems, of which housing is one. People born in Poole and Bournemouth and in many other coastal communities are often the very people who cannot afford local housing and who are therefore sometimes forced to leave the area against their will. A common theme has been the number of older residents that coastal areas attract, and the loss of young, enterprising people, partly because of house prices and partly because people with degrees can perhaps find better-paid jobs in London. South-east Dorset, which I know a little better than many other areas, has a real problem in retaining the knowledge base in the local economy to create jobs and wealth. One of the most telling points in this debate was one made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). The issue is not only the number of pensioners—we can debate the statistics, but I believe that Worthing probably has the highest number of pensioners—but the fact that people live to their 70s, 80s or 90s. The dependency of people in their 80s and 90s—the number of visits from doctors, the visits to hospitals and the care support that they need—means that the real costs get driven up substantially. Quite often when I have a pensioner with difficulties or with problems with care, the relative who writes to me and asks whether I can help Mrs. So-and-So lives in Cleethorpes, London, Bristol or somewhere else. People do not have extended family to give support. We heard in this debate about the real problem of care homes in coastal communities, but, as we all know, dealing with some problem children in our boroughs and constituencies can cost an awful lot of money. Legislation makes much of that spending mandatory, which means that money allocated for social services does not get spent on the elderly, who need it and who have very real demands. There is certainly a good argument for reviewing the grant funding formula to determine whether it needs to be rejigged. I believe that the report mentions the national health service once—it does not say much about the NHS because it is, of course, the preserve of another Select Committee—but the NHS and the impact that it has on our local citizens is a major and real problem in coastal towns, and it needs to be taken into account. There are major problems. Another theme that comes up, particularly in Transport questions, is the ability of people to get in and out of coastal communities—some coastal communities have better links than others—but that is not only because the towns want tourists to come in, but because they want goods to be exported. My constituency still has quite a lot of manufacturing. One of the enduring themes of local business men whom I meet is how to access the motorway network and how to get goods to market. The fact that we do not have very good transport links is a negative, and they are starting to take decisions for investment. The area can ill afford to lose companies, but we lose them because there are better transport links elsewhere. Where do Tesco and Sainsbury site their giant centres for distributing stuff to their various supermarkets? It is not usually anywhere near coastal towns. They usually pick a site on the motorway network, which does not serve coastal towns particularly well. We also heard in the debate about the problems with day visitors and transients. There is a range of problems that are not always recognised in the Government’s grant calculations. What are the solutions? The idea of the hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) for a taskforce approach is worth considering. There is a need for much more cross-governmental working, as the policies of some Departments can be offset by the policies of others. I agree with the Select Committee Chairman’s comments about the Department for Work and Pensions, which raised a real issue that needs to be focused on. I am not sure whether there is a solution to that problem, but I got the impression from her contribution and from one or two others that the DWP people had not focused on the issues and that that has implications for the coastal communities that many of us represent. Many of the towns on the coast grew up not only because of Victorian entrepreneurs and the building of railways but because of strong and effective local leadership—borough councils and the people who built the piers, winter gardens and facilities combined with local entrepreneurs to attract people to the towns. Another thing that came out of the debate is that the future will not necessarily be Government-led; it will be led by business, local authorities and people in the towns who have a vision of what they want to do with their communities. To reinforce that, my party would like more power to be devolved to local authorities rather than to regions, because decisions that are made at the lowest possible level by the people who live in the town and who realise what the problems are, and perhaps have some of the solutions, are better than those made by people in Whitehall. That would be an effective way to proceed in the longer term. My hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds) mentioned tourism. Perhaps a bit more thought could be given to how we promote tourism nationally and internationally to get people to come to our coastal resorts. There are many problems, and the Select Committee has been good at focusing on them. I am not sure that we will get much progress in the short term, but we have started a debate that many of us who represent coastal towns realise we must have, and perhaps we will start to come up with some solutions for dealing with the issues. The focus must be on the towns and on looking at the real problems behind the palm trees, as the hon. Member for Torbay (Mr. Sanders) said. We must determine whether we can deliver, sustain and reinforce the good things that are happening—and good things are happening in coastal towns. I was in Brighton recently, and I often go to Bournemouth. There is a vibrancy in some of the towns—sometimes they are a bit too vibrant late at night—but there are also problems a little bit back from the seafront that do not always get attention, money or investment. My party, which is reviewing its policies and looking ahead to its future manifesto, will focus on that problem, because it is important that we deal with the citizens of our country equitably. Coastal resorts have not had the attention or investment that they need. If we do not focus on and invest in them, we will have much bigger social problems and higher costs in the long term.