Beccy Cooper MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Sept 2025 · Prison Rehabilitation · Hansard source

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  Rehabilitation is a vital part of prison health programmes, but when prisoners develop infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, they can be isolated from organised programmes such as rehab. Given the risk that interrupted TB treatment can fuel antimicrobial resistance, what steps is the Department taking to ensure that prisoners receive both uninterrupted medical care and continued access to rehabilitation?

• 2 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill · Hansard source

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  This devolution debate today is a continuation of the conversation that has been doing the rounds in Sussex since the announcement that we will be in the first wave of new regions to begin the devolution process. The Bill will allow us to unlock resources at a regional level and to use them to best serve the needs of our communities. It provides the framework for cohesive, strategic planning across Sussex for the housing and services that we need, generating good employment and the freedom to travel easily. Done right, it is an opportunity for greater democratic engagement and participation. Let me turn to a couple of the issues that have been doing the rounds in this conversation in Sussex. The first is planning and transport. Businesses in Worthing West and across Sussex are currently gridlocked by failing east-to-west travel routes and by public transport that is too often unaffordable, unreliable or absent outside of our town centres. A regional transport authority with legal responsibility for buses, trains and active travel will be able to leverage investment and design services that actually meet the needs of our communities. We want travel planning that connects people and businesses, enables eco-tourism to flourish in our beautiful South Downs and lets residents move across Sussex without relying on a crumbling 20th-century system that is built around cars and that no longer serves us. On housing and infrastructure, with this Bill we can align housing, planning and infrastructure finally to deliver the right homes in the right places across the region. In my constituency, almost one in four residents are now aged 65 or above, yet much of our housing stock is not fit for older age. The shortage of suitable homes limits our ability to attract working-age people to the area. Along with so many other areas, we face a dire lack of rented and affordable social housing. Only at a regional level can we plan housing that meets our needs now and into the future: homes that are accessible for our older population, affordable for young families, and supported by infrastructure to create thriving, mixed communities, networked and easily accessible across Sussex. Finally, I will focus on the new duty on health inequalities. I welcome the Bill’s introduction of this duty, which is crucial for the rural and coastal communities in my constituency and across Sussex. The chief medical officer’s 2021 report was clear: coastal areas suffer a persistent “coastal excess” of ill health even after accounting for age and deprivation. Rural areas also face hidden deprivation that regional averages fail to capture: limited services, high fuel poverty, isolation and inadequate access to care. These are lives cut short and opportunities denied. The Bill will compel leaders in Sussex to consider health in every policy—transport, housing and skills—embedding public health in all decisions, and that is something that we can learn from at a national level too.

• 15 Jul 2025 · SEND Provision: South-east England · Hansard source

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  Oh, I am sorry, Sir Edward.

• 15 Jul 2025 · SEND Provision: South-east England · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) for securing this debate. The crisis in SEND provision is inextricable from the crisis in health and social care, and it is a shameful legacy of the neglect of the austerity years, but funding is not the only issue. What we see with SEND in West Sussex happens because education, health and care are not integrated. SEND provision suffers because there has been little to no working relationship between the local education authority and the integrated care system. As a doctor, it pains me to ask this, but where is the health in education, health and care plans? There is little parity of responsibility for outcomes, and no joined-up work towards shared goals. The profound neglect of specialist services, such as speech and language services, that support early health needs to be addressed, and health also needs to be far better integrated into the EHCP system. For our schools and families in Worthing West, Sussex devolution is an opportunity to create a system that actually works, where education, health and social care colleagues work together on the issues and outcomes that families and schools so desperately need solving. Yes, we need to address the demand for SEND provision through proper investment in services, preventive healthcare and investment in schools, and yes, we need early intervention and proper access to specialist services, but we also need a functioning system where education and early years have a strategic voice outside siloed local education authorities. In West Sussex, we have seen years of county council delays and mismanagement, and a complete breakdown in support for SEND children, their families and schools. Like all the other hon. Members here, I have had the privilege of visiting schools and colleges across my constituency. Without exception, they have outstanding teachers and leaders crying out for more SEND support, whether it be the need for specialist staff and training, or for physical space and facilities. Many of them have been waiting for years for decisions from West Sussex county council to build these facilities, let alone actually seeing any funding to directly address the issues that out-of-county settings have with transport costs, which continue to spiral beyond control. Worthing High, for example, has been unable to move forward with planned expansions of its specialist support centre due to local authority delays and budget reductions. The school finds itself battling the local authority and unable to meet the demand for special social communication support without additional space, which it has actually identified. Northbrook college has had to find funding for increased levels of physical and medical need, with EHCP provisions that it is not equipped to provide, despite its best efforts. Oak Grove college is an excellent example of a local special needs provider, but it, too, is waiting on a decision to expand—again, into land that it has identified—and on funding that has been promised. In the meantime, it has taken the excellent, innovative step of providing support outreach to mainstream schools from within its capacity. The SEND system is not working, and neither is the two-tier system of local authorities. It is time for a new model of regional school boards, with increased accountability, shared goals and, most importantly, multi-year funding settlements to address issues of demand and supply of SEND services—