Beccy Cooper MP: speeches 2024

Speeches

• 12 Sept 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  The Darzi report published earlier today clearly outlines the importance of prevention. One aspect of that is the provision of good-quality school meals and increasing the uptake of free school meals. May I request consideration of a debate on an opt-out free school meals scheme, perhaps on the basis of universal credit?

• 2 Sept 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T9. Worthing West is 90% developed, and I am often contacted by residents who support new developments—particularly social rents and for first-time buyers—but are concerned that we must also value our increasingly urban green spaces. What steps are being taken to balance urban green space provision with our need for housing, to ensure all our communities are able to thrive and stay healthy?

• 25 Jul 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  May I ask the Leader of the House to find time for a debate on the long-overdue need to update gambling regulations? The most recent legislation is from 2005, which was long before the growth of online and mobile opportunities. I recently met representatives of Gambling with Lives in my constituency and heard some heartbreaking stories about people who have lost their loved ones to the terrible illness of addiction. The law should protect children and vulnerable adults, with more effective regulation. Will she please allow a debate in Government time on this issue?

• 23 Jul 2024 · Immigration and Home Affairs · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to make my maiden speech among such an outstanding group of people. I hope that people who have seen the maiden speeches over the past few days, and will watch them in the days, weeks and months to come, might see some of the warmth, kindness and decency that I have met in my fellow MPs in these first couple of weeks in Parliament. I am the newly elected Member for the beautiful constituency of Worthing West. Nestled between the south downs and the English channel, we are often described as that area just west of our big sister, Brighton. But, as with all younger sisters, we have many often unsung merits, about which it will be my absolute pleasure to tell the House a little today. Worthing West is made up of two thirds of Worthing town, the other third now being ably represented by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tom Rutland). In this part of my constituency people can find Worthing town centre, our beautiful old lido building, and the recently returned Worthing wheel. Before being elected to Parliament, I had the great privilege of being the leader of Worthing council. Our vision for Worthing is for it to be both the fairest and the greenest coastal town in the UK, an ambition that I am sure my coastal colleagues will try to wrestle from me. Alongside an ambitious decarbonisation plan, work on Worthing’s town centre gardens will begin this autumn in a community and council-led project. We are also privileged to be part of the Sussex Bay project, a movement of radical collaboration initiated by Adur & Worthing Councils with the mission of restoring a healthy blue ecosystem to our seas and waterways in which nature, people and the local economy can thrive. Worthing West is also home to the beautiful coastal and country villages of Ferring, East Preston, Angmering, Findon, Clapham and Patching. I can tell any keen campers—I have not been in Parliament long enough to know how many MPs actually like being without wi-fi and a good latte, but I am hoping to find a few—that the Fox Wood campsite in Patching is a firm local favourite. There are two very handy pubs near the site, The Fox and The Worlds End, which serve the most excellent food when your fire will not light and even the kids are sick of beans on toast. I am only the second Member of Parliament to represent Worthing West. It was first formed in 1974, and for the past 30 years has been represented by Sir Peter Bottomley, who I know was very well respected here as the Father of the House. He was known for working cross-party on a variety of important campaigns, including leasehold reform and the infected blood scandal. Sir Peter and I share a great affection for Worthing West, and during the election campaign we often bumped into each other enjoying a quick cuppa with constituents. I should confess at this point that I am a northerner originally, adopted by the south as one of its own, and a good brew is a must-have for a day to start and end well. We have many excellent cafés in our area. To anyone who is listening to my speech and thinking that this newbie MP is not doing too bad a job of selling the merits of her home town, I can thoroughly recommend the cakes at Sea Lane café on Goring beach, the coffee at both Coast café and Finch in Worthing town centre, and the breakfast at the Bluebird café in Ferring, among many others. At this point, I should also confess that my extolling of the virtues of cake—and all credit to the House staff for the incredible muffins in the parliamentary café—is tempered by the fact that I am by profession a medical doctor, and, as my children will testify, I am reasonably obsessed with making sure that cake is part of a healthy balance that allows us to enjoy all the different types of food. To be fair, my children would not necessarily recognise that description and might just say that their mum is a bit of a nag with a carrot obsession and an aversion to playing computer games for too long, but such are the joys of parenthood. When people ask what type of doctor I am—and I definitely do not have the patience for a PhD—the response that I am a public health consultant is often met with slightly puzzled stares, a recalibration of what they have heard, and the decision that I am probably a GP by another name. However, I am delighted to join my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) to represent public health here in the House. It is the reason I chose to go into politics. It is the art and science of keeping populations well and helping people to live healthy lives. I appreciate that today’s debate primarily concerns home affairs and immigration, so I will talk about public health on the basis of the explicit principle that health is essential in all things to ensure safety and security for all people. As part of my public health training I spent time with the Health Protection Agency, now part of Public Health England. That training stood me in particularly good stead during the pandemic, when I found myself with a daily slot on BBC Radio Sussex talking about covid, debunking myths and providing reassurance that our fantastic scientists and public health specialists were doing everything possible to develop vaccinations and to keep us safe. The results of the covid inquiry, published last week, revealed the clear conclusion that investment in preventive measures is always money well spent, and that was sadly lacking before the pandemic. Public health funding was cut by 25% between 2015 and 2024, so there are some salient lessons to be learned quickly about prevention being better than cure. My time in local government, as a public health consultant and subsequently as a councillor and council leader, taught me that politics is often the frontline where we grapple with the issues that arise from inequality and inequity—two indicators which tell us that the decisions made by those of us in a position of influence are not yet decisions that are maximising the health and wellbeing of the people we represent. The resources required to meet basic human needs should be available to everyone, regardless of where we live or which family we are born into. For people like me in public health and politics, there is a wealth of data and evidence—as well as, I would contend, basic common sense—showing that when resources are not allocated fairly to allow everyone’s basic human needs to be met, we all suffer for it. People do not thrive without clean water, clean air, access to green space and good food. Our physical bodies become far less resilient to illness when those are not available to us, and the same is true of poor housing, poor education and poor jobs. The causal link between poor housing conditions and poor health outcomes is long established, with health outcomes associated with poor housing costing the NHS an estimated £1.4 billion every year. We know that exposure to poor housing conditions, including damp, cold, mould and noise, is strongly associated with poor health, both physical and mental. Inequalities in life expectancy are increasing, especially for women. In Worthing West, a woman living in one of our poorest areas will live an average of 8.3 years less than a woman living in one of our wealthiest areas, and for the population as a whole, the time spent in poor health is increasing. As Sir Michael Marmot so saliently put it, “If health has stopped improving it is a sign that society has stopped improving.” When people become physically and mentally ill, potential is lost, and before you know it, your country does not have a national health service; it has an overwhelmed national sickness service. I am so proud and privileged to be part of the Labour intake of 2024. For too long now, our politics has been making people sick. This is the start of a journey that I very much hope will lead to a politics that helps to keep people well for many generations to come. Reducing inequality and inequity will allow everyone to do better. The politics of health is the narrative of our nation. A Government who focus on the health and wellbeing of the people we serve are a Government who enable us to rise together to face the challenges of both today and tomorrow.