Kevin McKenna MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Dec 2025 · Catapults and Antisocial Behaviour · Hansard source

  More

  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 17 Nov 2025 · Illegal Waste: Organised Crime · Hansard source

  More

  On Raspberry Hill Lane in my constituency near the village of Iwade, there is one of these mega illegal dumps. It has started metastasising, sprouting accessory dumps nearby, all in an attempt to evade the police and the Environment Agency. It is not just putting pressure on and destroying the countryside, but putting strains on legitimate waste processing businesses in my constituency such as Sweeep, Countrystyle, MVV and DS Smith, which are key to recycling the waste that we produce. Will the Minister tell my constituents how we are not only increasing the capacity of the Environment Agency and the police to handle this problem with extra resources, but boosting the capability of those agencies—particularly with the skills and the cross-agency working that is needed—to get to the bottom of this serious organised crime?

• 12 Nov 2025 · SEND Provision: Kent · Hansard source

  More

  I am grateful to serve under your chairship, Sir John. The stories that my hon. and learned Friend is recounting completely match those that I get in my inbox and hear in my surgeries—these stories are repeated across the county. My constituency has a higher than the national, regional and county average of people with learning disability needs, and we are just not getting the support we need. I want to flag two things. The SEND team at the council is extremely unresponsive to parents and schools and, indeed, to me and my office—I am sure that is true for colleagues, too. There is also a pattern of schools saying they can care for a child but being turned down. That is happening over and over again, and people are being forced to travel many miles across the county in a way that is simply not possible for children with this level of need.

• 23 Oct 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  I would just like to give a counter. We have heard some very interesting evidence, but my own local authority has the misfortune to operate under the committee system, which was largely brought about in a deal that created a rainbow coalition with the Greens and some other local parties. Honestly, it is a dismal failure. Contrary to the evidence that has been presented, it has made the council more siloed, and fewer councillors feel that they can engage well with the council. Frankly, it is the whim of every individual committee chair as to how they operate, often constraining meetings to an extremely short duration. That has reduced the amount of scrutiny and gummed up the business of the council. I would like to present that as evidence from someone who actually lives within a council that has a committee system.

• 23 Oct 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  It is obvious. My area has a very different socioeconomic status from that of the rest of Kent—frankly, a lot of the coastal parts of Kent are very different from the centre of Kent. The authority will not be as large as Kent county council, which currently is responsible for the biggest challenges—special educational needs and disabilities, adult social care and children’s social care. Those are a lot of the things that matter most to my constituents. Having more like with like areas in a unitary authority, the likely outcome of this reorganisation where I am, will be a massive improvement and will allow other parts of Kent to focus on their special needs.

• 23 Oct 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. The hon. Gentleman speaks with great passion, which is very much informed by his local circumstances in Hampshire. I can share my local circumstances in Kent, where the current two-tier system just does not work for my constituents. We have some great councillors in Swale and some good councillors in Kent, but over decades the system has not worked because the needs of people in certain parts of Kent are so different from the needs of people in my constituency, which is a much poorer, more industrial and more deprived area. We have been overlooked. I am afraid that the people in Tunbridge Wells, which is a great town, do not get the needs of people in Sheerness. This change will be a massive improvement for people in my neck of the woods, and that is why I support it.

• 15 Oct 2025 · Pride in Place · Hansard source

  More

  Since the announcement of £20 million for the east of Sheppey, my constituents have been fizzing with excitement. I am getting loads of responses to my online surveys, and the coffee morning I held on Saturday—the first of many I will hold—was very well attended. People had really great ideas, but they had two main things to feed back. First, they want local people to be at the heart of this initiative. The citizens of Eastchurch, Warden, Leysdown and Shellness all want to be part of it, but they want to make sure it is centred on them, not on outside voices. Secondly, they want the funding to be a catalyst for further change and investment in the area. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts on that, and I would also quickly remind her that I have three more neighbourhoods in the bottom 10% of the country—just to add that to the list.

• 16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q My question is in a similar vein, building on a lot of the conversation so far. My constituency is an outlier in the south-east of England and in the county of Kent, which is likely to become a devolved authority. Sittingbourne and Sheerness are two properly industrial towns. They really stand out for the amount of manufacturing and manual jobs in the area, compared with the service industries that predominate in the rest of the county and the south-east, and that has a lot of effects. Over the years, a misunderstanding, or ignoring, within the county of Kent of the industrial nature of my towns has strengthened the inequality and the depth of deprivation in certain parts of my constituency. One of the concerns that has been raised locally is that, by replicating the electoral and political structure of Kent and having Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone, which are very different types of towns, predominate the political nature of the mayoralty, we will just replicate the same problem and our needs in terms of economic development, and therefore social support and social economics, will be overridden. Effectively, we can be categorised as a little bit of the red wall in the south-east of England. One of the dangers to me is that we—

• 16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Sorry, Ms Vaz—there is. What do you think we can do when setting up mayoral authorities to prevent aberrant areas—I say that in a very positive way—within a broader, more homogenous mayoral district from being neglected? Zoë Billingham: We have some similar dynamics in the north, where certain combined authorities comprise some areas of low and modest incomes and some areas of great wealth, so some parallels can be drawn. Setting and influencing early mayoral priorities is really key. While in the north-east there are some areas of great wealth, Kim McGuinness’s priority is child poverty, and she has made that very clear. Obviously, that speaks directly to the areas of the north-east that suffer most from high levels of deprivation and child poverty. The initial setting of the mayoral agenda is absolutely essential in that. Professor Denham: I recognise a lot of what you say, because I live in Hampshire. We have Southampton, Portsmouth and the island, which was mentioned earlier and is completely different. There are two things that are crucially important. First, the unitarisation approach must be sensitive to those local geographies. Simply forcing people into a 500,000 unit because, mathematically, that is what came out of a PwC report two years ago would be counterproductive if that meant you lost the focus on those areas. That is a part of it: we need sufficient flexibility in the unitarisation approach. The second thing is to try to build in from the beginning the idea that not every combined authority needs to replicate the structures that evolved initially in Manchester and the west midlands around a centralised authority. There are different ways of structuring a combined authority, its functions and its leadership that recognise the different constituent elements in an area. If I have one concern at the moment, it is that because we are asking people to reorganise their district councils and create a combined authority at the same time, it is very hard to find the headroom for that creative thinking about, “How are the internal dynamics of this going to work in the future?” That is two things. First, we need flexibility on unitarisation, so that you do not disappear into an area that does not understand your needs. That is replicated in cathedral cities and all sorts of places right across the country. Secondly, we need to look at structuring a combined authority that builds in an understanding of those different geographies from the outset, and does not necessarily create a superior tier of authority. Zoë Billingham: May I add one more point? It is about interventions at the neighbourhood level. A welcome focus of the Bill is that, as you raised, there can be as much inequality within combined authorities as between combined authorities. Sometimes the intervention needs to be at the neighbourhood level, so that should also be introduced as a focus of the combined authority. The basis on which they intervene and where is also a useful way to address disparities within regions.

• 16 Sept 2025 · English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

  More

  Q Thank you for coming. I am very interested in the provisions around local growth plans and particularly how they affect your sectors. In the area I represent, Sittingbourne and Sheppey, there has been a feeling that we have been lacking, from the existing local authorities at both tiers, a real focus on growth locally. For instance, on the Isle of Sheppey, they are pulling together a local growth group and a local growth board. That is really important for the sense of place for areas that feel that they have already been overlooked. I am concerned that, in a big devolved settlement, that may still be a problem. I am also curious how that affects areas like the retail and hospitality sectors. Again, they may not be seen as major strategic-level elements of a growth plan, but actually they are fundamental, particularly for local communities. What are your takes on that? Andrew Goodacre: Looking at it from a wider view, we are largely supportive of devolution and what is in the White Paper. If I put the retail lens on it, though, especially independent retail, which are the businesses that we represent, they will always ask, “What is in it for us?” There is a fear among those businesses that if you look at the national growth strategy, neither retail nor hospitality really feature in there as one of the eight key areas for investment and growth. I have not seen all the local growth plans. I have looked at the north-east and the west midlands one—that is where we are based—and largely those growth plans are aligned to the national growth areas. I understand that: the mayors, the areas and the regions want to create jobs that are skilled and well paid, and that grow the local economy by focusing on industries of growth. You could argue that retail, and high street retail especially, has seen itself decline over the years as customer behaviour has changed, so I understand where the direction is, but there has to be a fear. If I was a shop owner now looking out, I would be saying, “Okay, I hear where you’re going to spend money. How does that work for me? How does that make a difference for me in my high street in Coleshill in the west midlands, near where I live?”—or in Solihull, or anywhere else in the UK that they might be? If you look at the north-east plan, I do not see high streets mentioned once—I have only scan read it; someone may be able to point me in the right direction—and in the west midlands plan, I see priority high streets mentioned. Priority high streets are where they are planning to invest and create jobs, so they recognise the need to invest in high streets in the areas where they are creating jobs. I am not sure where that leaves the others. If you look at it purely from a retail point of view, there has to be a fear that the focus on high-tech, highly skilled jobs and on creating in the local economy will create pockets of success, but it will also create pockets of neglect as well, if we are not careful. Allen Simpson: I agree with that. The element of a local growth plan that I think is really positive is the word “growth”. Quite often, when we ask local communities what they want, we are talking to them about whether they do or do not want housing, but encouraging local communities to think about what sort of growth they want is really valuable. I think you are right about the tendency that exists. Often, if you ask local political leaders what sort of growth they want, they will start talking about wanting to be a fintech hub. In an old life, when I was at a devolved organisation that used London mayoral money to drive economic development, I quite often used to get asked by people around the country how they could create a fintech hub in Devon, Dorset or wherever. I used to say, “You’re probably not going to. You’re likely not going to succeed, but there are industries that you can develop.” That might have been agritech, agricultural tourism or food supply chains, depending on where they were in the country. Your point about encouraging local communities to think about the role of hospitality and retail in driving quite visible growth is really powerful. There is something about the distribution of the value of growth that we would encourage local communities to consider. I happen to know your patch quite well—I am from Maidstone, so it is a world I know. If you look at the areas around the Kent coast, for example, which have done well over the last few years, the characteristic of the growth strategy has been to use hospitality, leisure and experience as a way of driving other forms of growth. Take Folkestone, for example, and the work around the Harbour Arm there, or Margate, or 20 years ago, Whitstable. With growth strategies that, first, ask how you make a place liveable and attractive, you find that you crowd in other forms of growth, which may be within the eight industrial sectors. I am very in favour of local growth plans, because they help to encourage local communities to ask what sort of growth they want and to be pro it. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and if you ask people what sort of growth they want, you get an answer about what growth they want. If you ask people what other sorts of development they want, often you get an anti-development answer.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Remote Coastal Communities · Hansard source

  More

  My constituency is a lot closer to here than the constituency of my hon. Friend—it is just a bit further down the Thames. We have a strong tourist economy, but due to the housing pressures across the country these days, the housing and accommodation on the Isle of Sheppey hides a masked community living in holiday accommodation all year round, particularly in caravans. That is not picked up in the Government data at either a national or local level. I am interested to hear from my hon. Friend whether that is a problem for him as well; in my community, it means that we have high levels of deprivation that simply are not being accounted for in the current Government spending plans or formulae. I welcome the Government’s revision to the spending formulae, which will help my constituency, but we could go further.

• 8 Jul 2025 · Parole Board Decisions: Serious Offenders · Hansard source

  More

  With the case of one of the killers of James Bulger, Jon Venables, coming to the Parole Board again, the need for the voices of victims’ families to be heard in the justice system is coming right to the fore. My constituent Sue, who is in the Gallery today, is being supported by the James Bulger foundation. Her son died needlessly; he was not supported by the people with him, who could have offered him aid and got him medical help. Will the Minister meet me and Sue to hear the tragic details of this case and discuss the options for changing the law to ensure that victims’ families are properly represented in the justice system?

• 3 Jul 2025 · NHS 10-Year Plan · Hansard source

  More

  On behalf of the small and often oppressed community of health policy geeks, I thank the Secretary of State for giving us a Christmas present in July—I will be pressing Ctrl+F through it all weekend. I also really thank him and his team for threading through this plan a real commitment to the quality of work for the NHS workforce. I can see already some really strong, concrete suggestions for how we can make the working lives of people in the NHS better. Most importantly of all, people in Sittingbourne and Sheppey are really glad to see that the idea of a neighbourhood health service is well fleshed out. Again, with a health policy geek hat on, we know it is the funding and the funding models that really matter, so I really commend the review of the funding formula, particularly towards rural and coastal communities. How will the Secretary of State ensure that with this new funding formula, he and his team at the centre will keep a tight grip on what happens at ICB and other levels closer to the ground to ensure that that funding gets to the areas with the most need?

• 3 Jul 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  Given the welcome news in today’s new 10-year plan for health that the NHS app will be upgraded and be central to the way that patients take control of their own healthcare, can the Leader of the House please advise me how I can best use parliamentary time to challenge the scourge of mobile notspots in my constituency, particularly in villages like Iwade?

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate, both inside and outside the House. There has been a great deal of passion, and sometimes that passion flares up while we debate this really intense and personal subject, and obscures the deep and profound compassion that we all feel. How each of us faces death is deeply personal, and the decisions surrounding it must honour every individual’s dignity and choice. Our goal must be to ensure that all patients are protected, while we empower people at their end of their life with greater autonomy and agency to make the choices that are right for them. Having spent many years as an intensive care nurse in the NHS, I have witnessed the realities of end-of-life care countless times. I have seen patients find peace in their final days, but also patients who have been unconscious or unaware that their death was coming. I have seen others endure pain and anxiety that no palliative intervention—none—would alleviate for them. Those experiences have deeply influenced my perspective on assisted dying. They have reinforced my belief that individuals should have the autonomy to make decisions about such a personal and profound part of their life—the end of their life. That is fundamental to dignity at the end of life. Consent must always be freely given, fully informed and revocable at any time, as it is right now for anyone who agrees to, or decides not to, undertake onerous, painful treatment that medical and clinical staff say might save or extend their life. Every one of us can refuse treatment. It is so important to understand that, because we have had lots of discussion about coercion. I have to lay it out for the House: there is a lot of coercion in the system currently. Well-meaning families and clinicians provide a degree of coercion. Clinicians, clinical teams and multidisciplinary teams are set up to try to detect that, and to have conversations with patients to get to the nub of their real wishes. I have a lot of faith in my clinical colleagues, and I have faith that this happens, as a result of collective action by multidisciplinary teams—that is how healthcare works today. I am really pleased that after extensive debate on this Bill, particularly in Committee, we have gone from a judge making the decision to having a panel, because that reflects best practice in clinical work. We now have a multidisciplinary team and a multidisciplinary approach to assessing what the patients wants.

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  No, I will not. Many colleagues have talked about whether this debate has been too short, too long, too complicated or not complicated enough. I have heard questions about whether the Bill is ready to for us to hand on to the House of Lords. To be clear, I believe that it is. It is really important to remember that we have been debating this issue not just during this Parliament; the debate has gone on for decades. I remember being taught by a really strong advocate for palliative care when I was a student nurse; he was dead set against assisted dying. His argument was that if we bring in assisted dying, it will mean that palliative care will never get the funding and resources that it needs—something that so many people have said. That was nearly 30 years ago, and we have not grasped that nettle as a country. At the end of this debate, I really hope that we can finally bring to fruition the ambition of almost every Member of this House: the ambition to ensure that palliative care works and is accessible to everyone in this country. However, if we do, that is not a reason not to have assisted dying. Assisted dying is the choice of many people in this country, and I want it to be a choice for me. If I get to that point in my life, I want that choice available to me, and that will be true for some other Members. Still others do not want to ever have that choice, but it needs to be there. I want people to think about themselves as well.

• 20 Jun 2025 · Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I will not. It is important to think about ourselves as well. Sometimes we Members of Parliament think it selfish to think about what we may need, but it is fundamental, because this is about individuals. This is about each of us at the end of life. The Bill is much stronger than it was at the start, and I was already convinced that it was the right thing to vote for. I really think it is ready for us to hand on to our colleagues in the other place. Many members of the public are behind us, and I commend the Bill in its current from. I will vote for it on Third Reading, and I hope many other people will too.

• 19 May 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend has jumped ahead of me on that—not surprisingly, given his background as a mental health nurse. That is absolutely true. We do need to invest more, but we need to think beyond the NHS. Although this is the Mental Health Bill and it has “health” in its name, this issue is much bigger than the services that the NHS can provide. There is a weakness in this Bill. The concern I have, which several other Members have mentioned, is that it does not tie us down to a tight timeline for this transformation. The Bill provides a get-out. That is done to ensure that services in the community are properly set up, but I worry that that the timeline will slip and slip. The time to move is now. People have been languishing for too long in settings that do not offer them a therapeutic way forward, and in places that are frankly inhumane and breach what we would all consider to be our human rights. The Minister is here and listening, and I recommend that he thinks about how we can get an active plan, so that we do not let this issue slip, but actively ensure support for services in the community, invest in them where needed, and foster them.

• 19 May 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  I commend the hon. Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) on a powerful and vital contribution to this debate. In fact, I commend everyone who has spoken so far, often from personal experience and expertise. This is unfinished business, and this Bill is long overdue. I have been reflecting on my first placement as a pre-registration student nurse. I went straight into a mental health ward. I am not a mental health nurse; that was not the route I took, but not because anything I saw there particularly turned me off it. However, it was a remarkable experience. When I walked into the unit for the first time, I was shown a burned pool table; it had been burned down the day before. The staff apologised and we moved on. The staff were full of compassion, but also frustration, and one of the things that they were frustrated with was the Mental Health Act 1983. This is some time ago; we are talking about 1996. In one of my very first teaching sessions on that unit, I was told about all the things that needed to be changed in the Act, so it is slightly surprising that I have wound up in this place, with the opportunity to change and challenge those elements. The points made to me then were particularly about the challenges for different communities, and the way that people from different ethnicities and cultures were assessed for mental ill health. The Bill will help to adjust that, and hopefully we can mitigate those problems, and move beyond and progress from the 1983 Act. Some things were not even properly on people’s radar then; for example, there was less understanding of neurodiversity, autism and learning disabilities, and the inappropriate way that they were covered by the Act. Many Members have talked about the large number of people who are autistic or have learning disabilities who are incarcerated. That has been described as an offence against human rights, and I believe that to be true, but I also believe that it will be challenging to overcome. In 2019, the long-term plan for the NHS was brought forward by Baroness May, and several Members of this House had a key part in driving forward that change. It said that we should challenge the detention of people who are autistic in mental health locations that people are left in for a very long time. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball) that the average length of stay of someone who is autistic or has learning disabilities and is detained under the 1983 Act is 4.7 years. That is a lot longer than many people with psychotic illnesses would need to be detained. That long-term plan for the NHS had great intentions, and made suggestions for overcoming the issue and liberating people from detention. It was not just the pandemic that came soon afterwards that kiboshed them: it is really hard to drive change in the system when the Mental Health Act protects clinicians and senior people in the NHS in not driving forward that change that is needed. To drive it forward, we need a change to the Act, and that is what we have in front of us. I commend everyone who has worked hard on the Bill to ensure that patients’ voices are heard. In my constituency of Sittingbourne and Sheppey, we have big mental health challenges. We have the highest suicide rate in Kent and, I think, the 37th highest suicide rate of any local authority area in the country. That means that 37 other Members in this House have even bigger challenges when it comes to suicide and mental health provision. I am sure that what many of those places and Members have in common is the challenge of economic deprivation and inequality, which—let us face it—is the biggest driver of poor mental health outcomes. That was mentioned admirably by the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), who talked at length about the complexities of the 1983 Act. I commend him for his insight on the challenges of changing that. We have to change things across the board—in housing, access to employment and transport, things that are way beyond the bounds of the Bill. We should use this Bill to drive that forward. We should look around our communities and see the creative approaches that we can use. On Saturday, I had a lovely day out in the sunshine at Curly’s farm on the Isle of Sheppey in my constituency. It is an active farm, set up by two fathers to support their son, who has profound learning disabilities and autism. It brings in children with learning disabilities, autism, mental health challenges and behavioural challenges generally. It is something like the Challenging Behaviours Foundation, which my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Lauren Edwards) talked about, and which is also very active in my constituency; I was glad to host an event for it. The farm really shows us that when we get people out of institutional settings and outdoors into different environments, they can thrive in a way that they do not in school, or in healthcare settings. It is transformational to the lives of the children and young people who go there, who often go on to work in agriculture. I am sure that many other hon. Members see that.

• 19 May 2025 · Mental Health Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

  More

  I absolutely agree. We should flip this around from a delay until we are absolutely ready to an active process of deciding what good looks like. Two weeks ago in my constituency, I ran a mental health conference. That was largely because, as I was going around as a new MP talking to every different organisation I could, mental health was right at the top of nearly all their worry lists, whether it was the food bank, the schools, the police, the prisons, or organisations in my community that had set themselves up to support people with mental health. I have a MenTalk in Sittingbourne and a MenTalk in Sheppey; they work in different ways, but that shows the level of pressure that exists locally. All of those organisations brought out mental health as their biggest worry, even if it was not their primary purpose. Just bringing people together and getting them to talk together—people who perhaps had not talked to each other until that point—really made a difference. You could see it in the room on that day. I am sure I am way behind the curve compared with a lot of other Members who have been doing this sort of stuff already, but for me, it really showed that we have got to be active in pushing this forwards. What we have learned from 2019 and the long-term plan for the NHS is that it is the implementation that matters. It is not the words in the strategy; it is getting an implementation plan really tight and fast on the ground. Given that the impact assessment talks about 2027 as a key point, I would like to see a commitment in the Bill to produce a workable plan by 2027 at the latest—one that can give us the road map we need for the future. That has been called for by organisations such as Mencap and the National Autistic Society, so I really commend it to the Minister.

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I am very grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. I was interested to hear what he said about the various experts talking about regional migration policies. Unfortunately, my constituency suffered from a regional migration policy in living memory as the Isle of Sheppey was separated from mainland migration during both wars in the previous century. That has left a lasting impact of deep, profound socioeconomic damage to Sheppey because people could not get on or off the island, and we could not get the workers we needed. That has left a deep legacy of distrust between the island and the rest of Great Britain. We do not want to replicate that across the whole of the United Kingdom and that is why I oppose the Bill.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Nursing Career Progression: Inequalities · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister for her answer. Nurses across the profession are increasingly taking on complex roles and responsibilities, yet many do not have access to higher pay bands that reflect these changes, and there is too much variation around the country. As well as looking at this, will the Minister ask the Department of Health and Social Care to implement a consistent model for supported, structured progression from band 5 to band 6 for early career nurses based on the completion of key competencies and the acquisition of necessary experience?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Nursing Career Progression: Inequalities · Hansard source

  More

  6. What steps his Department is taking to help tackle inequalities in nursing career progression.

• 20 Mar 2025 · Coastal Communities · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for securing this debate, which is timely and overdue. I am glad to hear from Members who live in coastal communities all round this great country about the places they represent, many of which—this is where I am grateful to my parents—I visited on caravan trips around the country when I was younger. The tourism industry in this country will be pleased about this debate, but I am also grateful to hear about the challenges and inequalities that many of our communities face. The report by Professor Chris Whitty was important for me when I was working at the NHS; it fleshed out some of the unique challenges that many coastal communities share, including inequalities in access to healthcare, and in health and employment outcomes, as well as transport difficulties—the list goes on. The coasts of this country are not only the interface between land and sea, but the interface between many of the greatest challenges that we face as a country. I am pretty certain that every Member in this debate will be able to give examples from their constituency of high levels of inequality, of social deprivation, or of challenge, often against a backdrop of beautiful, stunning landscapes, access to nature, and places where people want to live, and where many—not just those on holiday in a caravan—want to visit on a daytrip, or retire to. It seems a terrible shame that somehow we have got ourselves locked into a system in which places that should be among the most desirable in the country face some of the biggest and most entrenched challenges. Some of those challenges are intrinsic to being by the water. For example, damage to buildings and the maintenance cost of housing and infrastructure is higher at the coast, yet that is not accommodated for in a lot of our public spending decisions, when we think about our infrastructure and how we support people in maintaining their houses. If anyone goes to Sheerness in my constituency and looks around, they will see that much of the social housing in that coastal town is damaged and degraded, largely because of the impact of the sea. It also faces the financial challenges that the rest of the country faces. Sittingbourne and Sheppey has some unique features. It is a rural community, but there are two industrial towns in my constituency. There is a coastal community with nature reserves and wildlife, but there is also big industry, big power stations, and massive paper mills. There are real opportunities that I think we can capture and build on. The reason I have twin towns in my constituency is because of the sea and access to water, yet we are not taking advantage of that in transport terms. I very much endorse the call for a Minister for coastal communities, but the one thing I would really like the Government to commit to is developing a cross-cutting coastal strategy that addresses all those needs.