Westminster Hall
14 July 2026
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Westminster Hall House of Commons
00:47 - 00:52
Speaker 1
Order, order. Richard Quigley to move the motion.
00:52 - 02:47
Speaker 2
I beg to move that this House has considered isolation and hidden deprivation in coastal towns. Thank you, Chair. May I say what a stupendous pleasure it is to serve under your incredible chairmanship. With so much discussion in recent weeks about the North-South divide, I thought this debate would be the perfect opportunity to bring colleagues from coastal communities together for the time-honoured parliamentary tradition of comparing notes on who has been most overlooked for funding. While I joke, there is a serious point.
Communities like mine often feel isolated, not just from funding and opportunity, but from the national conversation. The challenges facing the Isle of Wight have in recent years rarely made headlines or shaped the political agenda. But 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 we can highlight in glorious technicolour the deprivation faced by coastal communities and how it is simply not seen as urgent, visible, or politically fashionable to champion by those meant to represent us. That is why I am pleased to have secured this debate and so encouraged to see so many colleagues from coastal communities across the length and breadth of the country coming together to champion the British coast.
In fact, one of the biggest challenges I've faced since being elected in 2024 has been not simply convincing policymakers that the Isle of Wight deserves government attention, but that it deserves the same level of support and intervention as other communities facing similar levels of deprivation, poor education outcomes, and lower life expectancy. Very often the island's challenges are treated as serious enough to be acknowledged, but not urgent enough for government intervention. However, I believe that deprivation and isolation in places like the Isle of Wight have reached a point where we can no longer pretend that these challenges are a hidden or unknown phenomenon. The evidence has been there for years and the experiences of local people speak for themselves. As a 2024 report from the London School of Economics argued, many of the persistent challenges facing seaside communities are driven by, in part, a striking degree of complacency and indifference.
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