Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation

[Relevant document: Oral evidence taken before the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on 11 November 2025, on Work of the Department and its arm’s-length bodies, Session 2024-26, HC 415.]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered isolation and hidden deprivation in coastal communities.

What a stupendous pleasure it is to serve under your incredible chairship, Mr Vickers. With so much discussion in recent weeks about the north-south divide, I thought that this debate would be the perfect opportunity to bring colleagues from coastal communities together in a time-honoured parliamentary tradition of comparing notes on who has been most overlooked for funding. While that is a joke, it makes a serious point: communities like mine often feel isolated, not just from funding and opportunity, but from the national conversation. In recent years, the challenges facing the Isle of Wight have rarely made headlines or shaped the political agenda. That does not make them any less real or important to those of us who live there.

What is great about securing this debate is that we can highlight in glorious technicolour the deprivation faced by coastal communities, and how that is simply not seen as urgent, visible or politically fashionable to champion by those meant to represent us. I am therefore pleased to have secured the debate and am encouraged to see so many colleagues from coastal communities across the length and breadth of the country coming together to champion the British coast.

One of the biggest challenges I have faced since being elected in 2024 has been convincing policymakers that the Isle of Wight deserves not simply Government attention, but the same level of support and intervention as that of other communities facing similar levels of deprivation, poor education outcomes and lower life expectancy. Often, the island’s challenges are treated as serious enough to be acknowledged, but not urgent enough for Government intervention. I believe, however, that deprivation and isolation in places such as the Isle of Wight have reached a point where we can no longer pretend that the challenges are a hidden or unknown phenomenon.

I congratulate the hon. Member, my neighbour, on securing this debate, which is important not only for us on the Isle of Wight, but for so many MPs, hence the wonderful turnout in the Chamber today. In particular, I thank him for highlighting our issues with ferries. I am sure he would agree that it is not just the price we all pay to get back and forth, but the whole impact on our local economy. That is a message we really need to get across, and use the opportunity of a new Prime Minister to do so.

The hon. Member, my neighbour, is correct. He will not be surprised to know that I have already raised the issue at least once, if not several times, with the potential incoming Prime Minister.

It is not just islanders’ wallets that are impacted, but our council budgets, public services and ultimately the sustainability of the island. Earlier this year, the fair funding review left the Isle of Wight council facing a £13 million a year funding shortfall, despite the additional costs and challenges I have already described. If that does not demonstrate that current funding formulas are failing places like ours, I do not know what does. There is nothing fair about a funding review that overlooks the additional costs of island life and then expects local services to deliver the same or more with significantly less.

The truth is that being an island or a coastal area comes with unavoidable costs. Even when positive changes are made nationally, they often take longer to reach us, if they reach us at all. Research undertaken by the University of Portsmouth has identified an island factor: the unavoidable additional costs associated with delivering services on the Isle of Wight. The study found that our island status creates extra costs through self-sufficiency, dislocation and what it termed the “island premium”, estimating an added cost of £380 per resident every year, but costing the Isle of Wight council at least £23 million a year extra just to stand still when compared with a similar-sized authority on the mainland. That is coupled with our deprivation, which is often hidden in plain sight.

Unlike in some parts of the country where deprivation is concentrated in large urban areas, our challenges are widely dispersed across the island. Areas that experience significant levels of child poverty, poorer health outcomes and educational disadvantage sit directly alongside communities that are comparatively affluent and rank far more favourably in the Government’s indices of deprivation. That phenomenon has been described by academics as “nested deprivation”, where pockets of deep need exist in areas that appear on average to be doing relatively well. The consequence is that deprivation can be masked by neighbouring prosperity. That helps to explain but not justify how the Isle of Wight’s two constituencies can rank among the most deprived and left behind in the country on some measures, yet still miss out on funding opportunities such as Pride in Place. In other words, our deprivation is not hidden because it does not exist; it is hidden because it sits behind postcard views, nostalgia and pockets of affluence, fuelled by second-home ownership that can distort the reality.

I know that older and vulnerable populations are often supported by naval clubs, particularly in coastal areas, but also across the country. In West Bromwich, unfortunately, our naval club, which is well used by older veterans, is set to close. I have been campaigning hard to try to save it and will work with everyone to try to do that. Does my hon. Friend agree that community groups such as naval clubs are very important in tackling the health inequalities, deprivation and isolation issues he is talking about today?

[Sir Alec Shelbrooke in the Chair]

I agree entirely that we are almost reliant on community groups in coastal and island communities. There is a danger that such provision no longer exists when funding dries up.

We have no dedicated stroke nurse or cancer nurse. Thankfully, after asking, our integrated care board has agreed to fund an epilepsy nurse for the first time; the issue is now attracting someone to do the job. Despite small positive developments, I continue to hear numerous accounts from residents who have chosen not to pursue treatment at all, or have delayed doing so simply because they cannot face the cost, time and stress of repeatedly making the journey. As I draw to the end of my speech, that is the key point that I want to leave Members with.

The costs faced by islanders and by many people living in isolated coastal communities go far beyond the inconvenience of waiting for a ferry or a lifeline transport link. Too often when we talk about isolation we focus on geography, but the real cost of isolation and deprivation is a human one. It is the opportunity not taken, the treatment not received, the family not visited, and the support that arrives too late or not at all. Until we recognise that, our funding, policymaking and public services for communities like the Isle of Wight’s will continue to face barriers that many others never have to think about.

Order. I call Jim Shannon.

I am in a state of shock; I had to fiddle through my papers to get my notes. Thank you, Sir Alec, for calling me to speak. I thank the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) for setting the scene. He is right about the deprivation of coastal communities everywhere in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I will obviously speak about my constituency. I know it is not the Minister’s responsibility, but she is always very responsive and helpful.

When we discuss social isolation and deprivation in this House, the mind naturally wanders to stark images of inner-city decay or urban high-rises. I want to take us to a different kind of hardship, referred to by the hon. Gentleman, that is wrapped in beautiful scenery but is no less cruel to those who live through it.

I am talking, of course, about the Ards Peninsula in my beautiful constituency of Strangford. It is a place of incredible community spirit, from Portaferry to Donaghadee, right down to the village of Ballywalter where I was brought up from 1959. We have people who look out for one another, a real definition of a community at work. Scrape beneath the surface, however, and stats from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency tell a troubling story. According to the Northern Ireland multiple deprivation measure, the Ards Peninsula suffers under one notable category: the geographic access to services domain. Villages like Portavogie, Kircubbin, Ballyhalbert, Ballywalter, Carrowdore, Cloughey and Portaferry—all the way down—are ranked among the worst in the province.

What does that mean in reality? It means that anyone without a car is trapped. We have an ageing population in Ards and North Down, with around 20% aged 65 or over. Regional data shows that nearly a quarter of those older folks live in social isolation. The local bus service is infrequent and 11 local bank branches have closed down in my constituency in the past few years. I suspect the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) has had a similar experience. The nearest GP’s surgery requires a complex, multi-stage journey. Elderly people are being cut off from the world, suffering in silence from chronic long-term loneliness.

The hon. Gentleman is speaking about the transport challenges that people face in rural communities. We know that the Government have plans to introduce additional charges for purchasing an electric vehicle, which seems paradoxical when we are trying to encourage people to be more environmentally friendly. Does he agree that the Government should think carefully about support for people in rural and isolated areas when they consider that policy?

I thank my friend and colleague, whose intervention is now on the record. He is right to focus on that. I hope the Minister will be able to answer. What happens in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency happens in mine.

Pockets of the peninsula face employment and income deprivation due to the seasonal nature of the economy. The stigma of poverty and mental health often keeps people from reaching out for help. We have high levels of mental health issues. While healthcare and transport are rightly devolved matters, handled by the Assembly in Stormont, I believe there is an opportunity for the Minister to hold discussions with the relevant Minister at the Assembly. The stats are a warning sign that we are facing a postcode lottery of the highest order. We need targeted infrastructure funding, robust support for rural community transport schemes, as the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East referred to, and digital connectivity to ensure that no rural pensioner or struggling family is left behind.

I welcome some of the schemes introduced by the Ards and North Down borough council, but economies of scale dictate that they cannot reach rural businesses as they should. Councils are limited to their funding pot, which is why I look to the Minister to have discussions with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland. When it comes to the block grant, maybe this money could be ringfenced to help.

I am conscious of time and those who want to speak, so I will conclude with this. I urge the Minister to work with the devolved Administration to look closely at the hidden pockets of rural deprivation. Let us show the people of the Ards peninsula—they are my constituents; it is where I live—that although they live at the geographic edge of our nation, they are at the centre of our concerns. They are always at the centre of my concerns as their MP, but they should also be at the centre of the concerns of this House. Respectfully, Minister, let us invest in these worthy communities.

Order. I am setting an immediate time limit of two and a half minutes. The Front-Bench speeches will start at 10.28 am.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alec. I am so pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) secured this debate. Isolation and hidden deprivation in coastal communities is such an important issue.

Cornwall is not an island, like the Isle of Wight, but we are a rural peninsula with sea on three sides. We were identified by the EU as one of the poorest areas of western Europe, and we received the highest level of structural funding from 1999. Since then, we have not often been selected to receive Government funding that uses the indices of multiple deprivation as a measure, because those indices favour more densely populated areas at the expense of sparser, more rural parts of the country.

Poor infrastructure, high housing costs, precarious seasonal employment and lack of access to healthcare, transport and education are major issues for Cornish residents, and they are all drivers of poverty in rural and coastal places. This particularly hits our young people and the opportunities open to them, and in the short time I have, I want to talk about that.

Professor Ovenden-Hope has written about the concept of educational isolation in places such as ours. The problems include recruiting teachers, getting to school, and low aspiration due to the distance that young people have to travel to get further and higher education. The education maintenance allowance, set up in 2004, was a real boon to places such as mine. The two FE colleges in the middle of Cornwall grew massively, but that meant that sixth forms shut. Although there is a great system of education and apprenticeships, the EMA’s abolition left a real problem, with students across Cornwall having to travel long distances to those FE colleges without the money to help them do that. There was a bursary, but bus routes were scrapped, the private providers left, and we have been left with young people really struggling to get to education—further education particularly—and to the work placements and job opportunities that are so important for them.