Elderly and Vulnerable People: Loneliness and Isolation

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th December 2023 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your guidance, Mr Sharma, and a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas), who made an excellent speech. I congratulate him on securing a debate of such value and importance.

Loneliness and isolation can affect any one of us at any given time, and over periods of time. They can be caused by all sorts of things. None of us is immune to them. If we are to value the dignity of every single human being, we need to accept that, sometimes, the person affected could be us, or someone we know or come into contact with. These people are valuable, and we need to care about them. The consequences of loneliness and isolation are often physical as well as emotional, so we should care deeply. The hon. Member for St Ives is right to point out the particular susceptibility of younger people to loneliness and isolation.

Westmorland and Lonsdale is, of course, the most beautiful place in the whole of the United Kingdom, if not the planet, and definitely in north-west England. It is also the oldest place in north-west England: we have the oldest population of any constituency there. Nationwide, 19% of people are above 65. In Westmorland and Lonsdale, the figure is 28.5%. My average constituent is 10 years above the national average age—I am above that age now, but never mind. The consequences are significant. Look at what happened last weekend. It shows that while age and other forms of vulnerability can be triggers for isolation, so can rurality, as my neighbour, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), and the hon. Member for St Ives have said. Isolation was massively multiplied in Cumbria over the last few days, during which there was pretty extreme weather, even by our standards.

This is the moment to pay tribute to all those across our communities in Westmorland who sought to meet people who were snowed in, often in desperate and isolated circumstances: the police, all Westmorland and Furness Council workers, and people working for Electricity North West. I also thank all those who opened the doors of schools, village centres, community buildings, and indeed their businesses for strangers in their hour of need. It is a reminder of how important community is, how difficult it is to construct, and that it is an organic thing. It is a reminder of how precious it is, and in the last few days in Cumbria, we have seen it at its best, but we remember too that community is under extreme threat, especially rural communities such as ours.

I got a call a few weeks ago from an older gentleman; he was 80. He rang my office team for advice on something fairly basic. He lives in a community of about 14 houses, not too far from Hawkshead in the Lake district. He apologised—he should not have done—for ringing us and said, “This is the sort of thing I should’ve been able to find out myself. I would’ve called my neighbours, or knocked on their doors, but I haven’t got any.” There are 14 houses, but only one of them is lived in, and it is lived in by a single widowed man. I thought that was desperately sad. Across our communities, there are so many people like that gentleman.

Second home ownership has grown to the extent that many of our communities are hollowed out. Coniston, for example, which did a brilliant job for all the people stranded there over the weekend, is a wonderful community, but 50% of its properties are not lived in all year round. We need to think about how loneliness is effected—how we create isolation by allowing the market to let rip on our housing stock, and by not having full-time residential communities.

There are things the Government can do about that. The Government have promised to do something about short-term lets. The problem is that they are taking quite a while. Perhaps when the Minister sums up, he will address the fact that the Government made a promise—the Minister at the time made a promise to me during the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill’s progress through the Commons—to change planning law so that short-term lets would become a separate category of use from long-term lets. That is important, because tenants of long-term lets are long-term community members, whereas the tenant of a short-term let will change by the week. That can have a big impact on our community as a whole, but it also reduces the sense of community and the number of people living in it.

Will the Minister say, in his remarks at the end, whether the Government will keep that promise to bring in a change to the planning law in April, so that communities like mine, right the way from Appleby to Coniston, and from Windermere to Kirkby Stephen, can have a high number of homes that are always lived in, and so that our communities can fight against isolation?

A knock-on effect of so many properties in our communities in Westmorland and the rest of Cumbria not being permanently lived in is that the workforce is hollowed out. We already have an older population, which therefore has greater care needs and vulnerability. We also have a smaller reservoir of people of working age to care for them, who can afford to live in the area and serve those needs. That adds to the sense of isolation. Tackling the housing crisis is also about tackling the care crisis and the loneliness crisis.

For many vulnerable people—not just older people, but people living with long-term chronic conditions or learning difficulties, and all sorts of people in vulnerable circumstances—the presence of overnight NHS care is of great significance. I raise this for a reason: at Westmorland General Hospital, Cumbria Health on Call, which covers our out-of-ours service, has chosen in the last two months to end overnight doctor cover on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so those living in our communities can expect nobody from Kendal to come and help them, and for there to be fewer doctors available across the whole of Cumbria. If they could find a doctor to travel at 4 o’clock in the morning to someone with palliative care needs, or someone with a learning difficulty who has some kind of illness, they would have to come from Barrow or Penrith, and would probably only come to the south lakes—to Grasmere, Grange or Kendal—having already dealt with their local patients. That is deeply troubling, and puts the most vulnerable people in our community at risk.

Immobility and ill health obviously make it harder for people to get out and engage with others in and around their community, and make them more isolated. I am sure fellow hon. Members here could say the same, but I know from local statistics that one in nine human beings in my constituency is on a hospital waiting list. Not every single one of those people is housebound as a result, but a very significant number of people are significantly less mobile because of the length of time it takes them to get treated and made well, and to be able to function in our society.

I want to talk about farmers quickly—I hope it is not too jarring. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) asked an excellent question in the main Chamber the other day about the mental health of farmers, who are, by definition, an often isolated group of people. They tend to be older, although we would love to get more young people into farming and are desperately trying to do that. The transition from the old farm payments scheme to the new one is leaving the average hill farmer in my constituency over 40% poorer than they were three or four years ago. That is intolerable.

Just imagine a gentleman in his 60s who has farmed for 40 years and is the fifth or sixth generation of farmer to look after the farm. Because of the transition, he sees his business disappearing and feels that he will be the one who loses the family farm. What does that do to his mental health? What does it make him feel like? The sense of isolation and of having no one to talk to is critical, and we need to challenge that. We need to get the public policy right, so that we do not put people in those positions, but we also need to reach out to people in the most isolated situations.

The hon. Member for St Ives made a really important point about ticket offices. I will not reiterate everything he said, but because it was a railway-related issue, it made me think about the Beeching cuts in the 1960s. What we learn from that mistake is that we can be too quick to dispense with the old when we have been beguiled by the new. The new in the 1960s was the bright, new, shiny motorways, and the old was these useless old railway lines. We were wrong. What is the new and the old today? The new is obviously digital connectivity and all that. There is nothing wrong with that; in fact, it is super good, or capable of being so for many people. The old is human interaction, and the danger is that we are losing that. As we have heard, switching to digital voice and digital-only communication leaves people completely and utterly isolated when the electricity goes off in a snowstorm. I would like BT, Openreach and the Government as a whole to think carefully about how to ensure resilience.

Post offices in communities are enormously important, and I am delighted that we are making progress. The Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), has very kindly helped on this matter. In Shap and Hawkshead, we have been able to reopen post offices that were under threat of closure or had closed. That is a reminder that we should invest in post offices as community hubs, and revise the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s withdrawal from them. Post offices will have a mosaic of sources of funding, and the DVLA will be one of them.

High street banks have withdrawn from all but two of the communities in my vast constituency. Banks have saved, as a conservative estimate, £2.5 billion a year by closing down their high street networks. Why is not more than a tiny fraction of that being ploughed back into post offices, so that they can become community hubs in every single village and community? That would hopefully tackle isolation.

Bus services are obviously vital too. Post pandemic, pretty much 100% of under-65s have gone back to using buses, but there is only a 70% return for those over 65. That means that 30% of older people who were using the bus network before the pandemic are not doing so now. We need to encourage people back on to buses, and we need the buses to be there in the first place. What use is a £2 bus fare or a bus pass if there is no bus? The fact that we have not devolved to councils such as Cumberland and Westmorland and Furness the power and resources to deliver their own bus services keeps those communities isolated.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about bus services, but does he agree that one of the challenges for bus companies right across the UK is that it is very difficult to recruit and retain bus drivers? That has a real impact on services, which have not yet quite returned to pre-pandemic levels, and will never do so with this constant pressure on staffing. Of course, the Government are not addressing that with their new work visa rules.

[Tim Farron]

The big problem in areas such as mine is that the workforce is too small. There are various reasons for that, but the two principal ones are the lack of affordable homes for local people to live in and the silly visa rules, which prevent the economy from working properly. If we are going to control our borders, why do we not control them in our interests, rather than just make silly points? I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady’s point, which is not silly but very important. If we are to staff rural services, we need a workforce big enough to do that.

Digital connectivity is vital for maintaining face-to-face human contact, which can mitigate loneliness and isolation and build resilience. Digital connectivity is so important. As the Government move towards Project Gigabit, which is a good thing, we should not think that one size fits all. There are communities that would be better served by switching back to the voucher system that we used before, and by our allowing community providers such as B4RN in Cumbria to deliver services. I was at a public meeting on Saturday in Murton about the communities in Murton, Hilton, Ormside and Warcop. How can we connect those communities? We can wait years for Project Gigabit to catch up, because they are in the deferred scope, or we can invest now and use the voucher system and B4RN.

Finally, we have heard a lot of talk about Margaret Thatcher in recent days and weeks, for all sorts of reasons. She once famously said that there was no such thing as society. Much as I admired the lady, I disagreed with her, but sometimes things can become self-fulfilling prophesies. Over the last 40 years—I certainly do not blame just the late Prime Minister for this at all; it is something we all bear responsibility for—there has been a privatisation not so much of our economy but of ourselves, an atomisation and a loss of community that is deeply troubling.

Places like mine are very beautiful, but are therefore expensive to live in. Another former Prime Minister, Lord Cameron, talked about the big society. The problem is that if we do not intervene in our communities and our housing market, they are available only to people from high society, and not to the big society. I want a community that is accessible and available to all. Particularly at this time of year, if we believe in the innate dignity of every single human being, we need to think practically about how we include people. We need a public policy that builds community, rather than knocking it down, and that intervenes when the market builds the opposite of what we want.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I, too, am delighted to participate in this debate on the loneliness and isolation faced by elderly and vulnerable people. I echo the thanks to the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for bringing this important debate forward.

Older people are especially vulnerable to loneliness and social isolation, which have a serious effect on their physical and mental health, as we have heard. Hundreds of thousands of elderly people, and especially those over the age of 75, are lonely and cut off from society across the UK. According to Age UK, more than 2 million people in England over the age of 75 live alone, and more than 1 million older people say they go over a month without speaking to a friend, neighbour or family member. Some 282,000 older people in Scotland feel lonely some or most of the time. More than a quarter of people over 75 said they felt lonely some or most of the time within the previous week, and almost one in five of those aged 60 to 74 reported feeling very lonely. One in four people aged over 60 said they do not meet a friend, relative, neighbour or work colleague socially with any regularity.

Those living alone are most likely to feel lonely: four in 10 of single pensioners—38%—report feelings of loneliness. More than a third of those with long-term health conditions feel lonely, and people who live in socially disadvantaged and deprived areas are almost twice as likely to feel lonely as those living in the least socially deprived areas. We know that loneliness is associated with a 50% increase in the risk of dementia, a 29% increase in heart disease and a 32% increase in the risk of stroke. Of course, we know from previous debates that loneliness is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide. Those stark and frightening statistics remind us that loneliness is a public health emergency. Loneliness among heart failure patients is associated with a nearly four times increased risk of death, whereas 68% of lonely people have an increased risk of hospitalisation and 57% have an increased risk of visiting the emergency department.

People can be lonely for a variety of reasons: getting older, losing mobility, no longer having the hub of family around them, retiring and not having the social contact that work often brings, the death of spouses or friends, friends moving away, or disability. Whatever the cause, it is shockingly easy to be left feeling alone and vulnerable, which can lead to depression and, as we have heard, a serious decline in physical and mental wellbeing.

Someone who is lonely probably feels it is difficult to reach out because there is a stigma surrounding loneliness, despite its prevalence. Older people tend to find it difficult to ask for help because they often feel it compromises their pride. It is worth pointing out that, although my focus today is primarily on older people, loneliness affects people of all ages, as we have heard. However, it is truly shocking to think of the hundreds of thousands of older people across the UK who go a week or more without meeting a single friend, relative or neighbour. I have to say at this stage that taking away the free TV licences for over-75s did not help. TV is not a replacement for social contact, but it provides an important connection with the outside world, and older people who live on their own often rely on the television for company.

The Scottish Government’s loneliness strategy is a great start, but there is still a long way to go, as the statistics tell us. Tackling loneliness should be a public health priority across all Governments and Departments. The fact is that society has changed. The social fabric that once bound us together is not as strong as it was. We are much less likely, no matter our age, to know who our neighbours are or to speak to them. Each household is much more detached from the households in its vicinity, so neighbourhood support is not what it once was. That even applies in my lifetime—I have seen that change.

Since 2000, the number of people in Scotland aged 65 and over has increased by a third, while the number of children being born has fallen by 6%. In my local authority of North Ayrshire, the projection is that in the next 10 years, 35,000 people will be aged 65 and over, which will be a quarter of North Ayrshire’s entire population. That has huge implications for tackling loneliness and for our social care provision. There will be a 50% increase in over-60s in Scotland by 2033. Currently, 21% of rural dwellers are over 60, and that is of course set to increase. There are huge challenges for us in those shocking statistics, and we need a plan and strategy for how we as a society will deal with that, because it will put a huge strain on our ability to tackle loneliness and to reach out and care for older people. That work of reaching out to care for and support people who are lonely is going on across our communities, as we have heard.

Digitisation and the technical revolution have often left old people feeling more isolated and more left behind. Social spaces are now being replaced by machines—self-scanning at tills in supermarkets is the work of the devil in my view, and online banking again takes away yet more social contact. Even libraries are under threat—libraries where people can go not just for heat but for a kind word and a conversation. The ticket offices referred to earlier were never really an issue in Scotland, because in Scotland our railway is under public ownership. When the idea of closing tickets offices was mooted, the Scottish Government consulted the people of Scotland and decided to protect every single ticket office that was open at the time.

There is a problem with digitisation, and I want to pay tribute to the organisations in my constituency that do wonderful work to combat loneliness in towns across North Ayrshire and Arran, such as Arran Community and Voluntary Service, the Beith Community Development Trust, CLASP HOPE—the Community Led Action and Support Project’s Helping Older People Evolve scheme—in Stevenston, the dementia cafés that operate in Ardrossan and Saltcoats, and Cafe Solace in Kilbirnie and Ardrossan, which provides a nutritious three-course meal for a couple of pounds. As important as that healthy meal is, people do not really come for the food—they come for the banter and the chat. I occasionally have the pleasure of serving food in that café, and I can assure everyone that it is not really about the food, nutritious as it is.

Of course, there are also the men’s sheds, which have been mentioned already. We have wonderful men’s sheds in my constituency in Garnock Valley and Ardrossan. We also have a vibrant allotment sector, which includes the Elm park allotments in Ardrossan, the organic growers of Fairlie, and the Kilbirnie allotment in Sersley Drive. I also pay tribute to the Silver Line helpline service, which has already been mentioned. I know that Age Scotland offers advice, friendship and support, and I want to pay tribute to its impressive “Share What You Love” campaign.

Loneliness is a blight that we must continue to tackle, and we are perhaps more mindful of it as Christmas approaches. For many people, it is true that Christmas is the most difficult time of the year with the jollity surrounding us simply reminding those who are lonely just how desperately lonely they are. The condition is prevalent all year round, regardless of seasons. It truly is a public health issue, and we need to recognise the work done by our volunteers each and every day to help combat it. We need to keep shining a light on it to ensure that we are mindful of the issue in our communities every single day.