The Minister for Social Care and Mental Health (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.
Steff Aquarone
Given that we have limited time for a full ministerial response and that the Minister obviously has an interest in this subject, as do I, will she agree to meet me or set up a meeting with the relevant Minister to discuss coastal health inequalities further?
Alison McGovern
As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I never refuse a meeting with any Member of this House. I have my surgeries on Wednesdays, if the hon. Member would like to pop in and talk about mental health or social care. If he wants to talk about general health inequalities, I refer him to the Minister for Public Health and Patient Safety.
Of course, high-quality healthcare matters enormously to all of us. Our health is shaped long before we arrive at a GP surgery or a hospital waiting room. It is shaped by the homes in which we grow up and live, by our education and the opportunities available to us, and, as Labour Members know only too well, by whether we have secure and rewarding work. Our health is also shaped by our income, by the transport available to us, by our environment, and by whether the communities in which we live give people the opportunity to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.
Place and geography matter for health, but tackling inequalities between places requires action within healthcare and far beyond it. That is an analysis with which this Government agree, and I have not heard dissenting opinion in the House this afternoon.