Richard Quigley MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Sept 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

  More

  May I say how happy I am to welcome my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to her place? I know she will continue to be a fantastic champion for the Isle of Wight. Per capita—not the pension people but per head of population—the island tops the league for tech and advanced manufacturing, but despite our brilliant pedigree, under the previous Government, we were continually overlooked for funding and investment. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that she will use her office to secure sustained growth in our postcodes, so that the island can finally receive the recognition, investment and job opportunities that its contribution to our economy deserves?

• 14 Jul 2026 · Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation · Hansard source

  More

  The hon. Member, my neighbour, is correct. He will not be surprised to know that I have already raised the issue at least once, if not several times, with the potential incoming Prime Minister. It is not just islanders’ wallets that are impacted, but our council budgets, public services and ultimately the sustainability of the island. Earlier this year, the fair funding review left the Isle of Wight council facing a £13 million a year funding shortfall, despite the additional costs and challenges I have already described. If that does not demonstrate that current funding formulas are failing places like ours, I do not know what does. There is nothing fair about a funding review that overlooks the additional costs of island life and then expects local services to deliver the same or more with significantly less. The truth is that being an island or a coastal area comes with unavoidable costs. Even when positive changes are made nationally, they often take longer to reach us, if they reach us at all. Research undertaken by the University of Portsmouth has identified an island factor: the unavoidable additional costs associated with delivering services on the Isle of Wight. The study found that our island status creates extra costs through self-sufficiency, dislocation and what it termed the “island premium”, estimating an added cost of £380 per resident every year, but costing the Isle of Wight council at least £23 million a year extra just to stand still when compared with a similar-sized authority on the mainland. That is coupled with our deprivation, which is often hidden in plain sight. Unlike in some parts of the country where deprivation is concentrated in large urban areas, our challenges are widely dispersed across the island. Areas that experience significant levels of child poverty, poorer health outcomes and educational disadvantage sit directly alongside communities that are comparatively affluent and rank far more favourably in the Government’s indices of deprivation. That phenomenon has been described by academics as “nested deprivation”, where pockets of deep need exist in areas that appear on average to be doing relatively well. The consequence is that deprivation can be masked by neighbouring prosperity. That helps to explain but not justify how the Isle of Wight’s two constituencies can rank among the most deprived and left behind in the country on some measures, yet still miss out on funding opportunities such as Pride in Place. In other words, our deprivation is not hidden because it does not exist; it is hidden because it sits behind postcard views, nostalgia and pockets of affluence, fuelled by second-home ownership that can distort the reality. Such deprivation makes the challenges already facing the country much harder to deal with on the island. Delivering special educational needs and disabilities provision on the island or in a coastal area brings additional challenges, from recruiting and retaining specialist staff to ensuring that there are enough specialist places available. Unlike many mainland communities, families do not have the same range of nearby alternatives when local provision is stretched, and accessing support off the island can mean significant additional cost and disruption. With an ageing and often isolated population, the healthcare inequalities highlighted by Professor Chris Whitty in his 2021 report on coastal communities ring particularly true on the Isle of Wight, where we continue to see higher than average rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia, all while patients must travel across the Solent to access specialist treatments such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy.