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7 Jun 2007 : Column 172WH—continued
4.37 pm
Mark Simmonds (Boston and Skegness) (Con): As a non-member of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, I start by congratulating the Chairman, the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey), and her colleagues of all political persuasions on the excellent, comprehensive and cohesive report that we are debating this afternoon. As I was present when she spoke, I can confirm to those who were not that she did so with great passion and eloquence.
The hon. Lady was absolutely right to highlight the three or four key issues that the report pulls out. They include outward and inward migration. Outward migration involves people who are younger, brighter and ambitious—they want to go away to university, and they rarely come back. We have exactly the same problems in Skegness. Inward migration is often by elderly, vulnerable or poor people. The hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) made the same point, and he was right to do so.
There are also poor transport links, but I shall not dwell on them, because although it is an issue in Skegness, it is not one of the top three or four that I want to discuss. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) is right to be proud of
Southend. I am sure he knows that in a recent survey, Southend and Skegness came joint first as the best places to retire in the United Kingdom, and we, as the representative Members, can be proud of that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) was absolutely right to highlight the importance of co-ordination. In Lincolnshire, East Lindsey district council has set up a coastal action zone that pulls together all the disparate and requisite bodies to put forward a cohesive action plan to regenerate the coast. He has a great deal of expertise in regenerating socio-economically deprived boroughs from his excellent work over many years in Wandsworth, which is now a beacon in the local authority sector.
Shona McIsaac: I was there, too.
Mark Simmonds: The hon. Lady was also on the local authority in Wandsworth with me at that time, and I am sure that she learned many lessons from my hon. Friend about dynamism and how to regenerate socio-economically deprived areas.
My hon. Friend was also absolutely right to say that the Minister should feel beleaguered, although I would go further and say that she should also feel embarrassed to come here and defend the Government response to the excellent Select Committee report. The hon. Members for Blackpool, South and for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) also said, although in a very polite way, that the response was not acceptable and not up to scratch. Of course, they have to be careful, given their positions.
Before I drill down into some of the details of the issues for Skegness, I should like to put it on the record that the town is very different from Bournemouth and Worthing, because it does not have economic diversification. It is very reliant on the UK tourist industry and is a very successful UK tourist resort. I would argue that it is the leading UK tourist destination. People go there—and to Cleethorpes—from the former coalfield areas of South Yorkshire and from many parts of the midlands, such as Mansfield, Nottingham and Worksop.
Some 600,000 people visit Skegness in summer. In peak periods, there are 250,000 tourists in the town. The tourism sector is dynamic, full of energy and driven by an entrepreneurial flair that means that the private sector is prepared to put its money where its mouth is and invest in creating attractions that bring people back to Skegness, and other tourist resorts, year after year. Skegness’s tourism sector is also coupled with a hard-working public sector that understands the importance of co-operation and a link between the private and public sectors.
I want to pull from the report several key points with which I agree—I shall rattle through them quickly. The report states that
“Government has neglected...coastal towns for too long.”
I agree. It also states that the
“Government does not sufficiently appreciate the needs of coastal towns.”
I agree. There needs to be cross-departmental liaison, which is currently “disappointing”, and I shall return to that theme.
There are problems, particularly those linked to deprivation, common to many coastal towns, and that is just as true of Skegness as it is of Blackpool and
Cleethorpes. A high number of people in coastal towns claim sickness and disability benefits, and it is absolutely right to point that out. The response from the Government on that, read out earlier, was awful, and it raised a titter of laughter in the Chamber. I hope that the Minister will address that issue in her reply.
We need a national-level requirement to promote English seaside resorts to visitors, and it is incumbent on the Government to try to find ways to address such resorts’ inherently low-wage and low-skill economies, the seasonal nature of employment and the importance of economic diversification. I will make some specific suggestions on that later.
I want to put on the record some of the specific problems in and around Skegness. I want to cover the level of deprivation. Some 19.4 per cent. of the working-age population in the East Lindsey coastal area claim incapacity benefit. The area includes the constituency of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes—
Shona McIsaac: No; my constituency is in north Lincolnshire.
Mark Simmonds: 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.
4.53 pm
Mr. Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) on securing the debate and enabling this important matter to be discussed through her work as Chairman of the Select Committee. The Committee’s report took the common challenges that face coastal towns and placed them firmly on the political agenda. For too long it has been assumed that because a town is an excellent place to spend a week’s holiday, the permanent population must be lucky to live there. In a sense they are, but as we have heard today, in many other senses they are not.
Anyone who ventures past the promenades, deckchairs and piers will soon realise that many people who reside in coastal towns are far from lucky. From the lack of affordable housing to low-value employment, the vast range of problems that plague such towns have a daily impact on the lives of residents. I commend the Committee for turning its attention to some of those issues. Although I appreciate that the Committee covered a wide range of issues, for the sake of the debate I will focus on coastal economies, demography, funding and regeneration.
As the MP for what I consider to be England’s premier coastal town, I am only too aware of the challenges faced by such towns. It is difficult to represent a holiday area as our main business is attracting visitors and therefore it is our duty to put the best gloss on the attractiveness of our area. However, we cannot ignore the socio-economic changes that have taken place in most of our seaside towns over the past 30 to 40 years, which have resulted in a number of negative features, more often associated with inner-city areas, that lie behind the facade of the palm trees.
Seaside towns could be described as 180° local economies, whereas inland communities are 360° economies. Seaside towns have hinterland on only one side, while the sea faces them on the other. Those with the most severe economic difficulties are, inevitably, a long way from the main centres of economic activity and are geographically on the periphery. Many seaside towns are a mixture of the urban and rural, the deprived and affluent, and residents and visitors. Their main industry is tourism, which is one of the fastest-growing economic activities in the world—but not, sadly, in our coastal tourist resorts.
Some 42 per cent. of British residents who opt to take their main holiday in Britain choose a traditional seaside destination. The market is worth an impressive
£4.2 billion. Between 2005 and 2006, more than 270 million day visits were made to the UK coast. However, day trippers to the coast spent on average one third less on their day out than those who visited an inland city. However, that is only part of the story. The figures do not separate tourism spending in seaside resorts from the growing number of inland attractions and markets across England. They do not recognise the fact that local tourist spending does not stay in the local economy because of the growth of nationally owned entertainment centres, pubs, hotels, retailers and superstores, where once locally owned businesses rang up the tills.
The geographic location of coastal towns means that they are likely to be end-of-the-line destinations, and with poor transport links it is harder to diversify the local economy to attract higher value employment from manufacturing and other sectors. The Government’s transport policy only exacerbates the problem, as funding and approval of major road projects is concentrated on the main arterial routes linking our main centres of population, with a number of coastal towns waiting decades for much-needed link roads.
Although the Committee has highlighted the trend of high sickness and disability benefit take-up in coastal towns, the Government have again chosen to stick their head in the sand and deny that that is a problem. Unemployment in seaside resorts remains higher than the national average. In the United Kingdom the average was 5.4 per cent., but in many seaside towns it was well above that figure.
The most recent figures produced by the Office for National Statistics on local labour markets show that in three of England’s regions, coastal towns have the highest take-up rates of jobseeker’s allowance: my constituency in the south-west, Thanet in the south-east and Great Yarmouth in the east England region. I am glad to see that the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Wright) has taken an interest in the debate. The Government fail to acknowledge that the majority of tourism sector jobs are of a low value and tend to be minimum wage, service sector employment.
High employment figures mask the cruel reality of low-value employment for both the individual minimum wage employee and the local economy that has less disposable income in circulation to help other businesses to grow. The employment figures that the Government use do not reflect the nature of the employment situation. Low-skilled jobs do not prevent young people from leaving the area, provide enough income to allow people to compete in the local housing market or provide stability within communities that already have an above average transient population. No progress will be made until the Government acknowledge that that is a problem.
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