15:10 Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)

Coastal communities are integral to the UK’s environmental, social and economic wellbeing. The covid-19 pandemic profoundly impacted on our coastal communities, exposing and exacerbating long-standing social and economic structural challenges, which need an urgent and co-ordinated response for there to be a sustainable recovery. Coastal communities are also the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, with erosion and flooding posing an ever greater threat to both the built and natural environments.

However, we must not focus solely on the challenges facing coastal communities, because they also offer fantastic and unique opportunities. Coastal communities have unleashed nature-based potential both on land and in our oceans—for renewable energy industries and in the fight against climate change, which can also drive social and economic benefits. Our coasts and seas contain some of the UK’s most varied ecosystems, and investing in coastal restoration and adaptation projects offers low-income coastal communities opportunities that yield financial returns on investments, create jobs, stimulate local economies and regenerate and revitalise the health of our ecosystems.

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15:50 Caroline Ansell (Eastbourne) (Con)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq, and I thank my near neighbour my hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart). Three minutes is not enough time to do justice to the beauty of my coastal community, but Debussy composed “La Mer” there, so I will rest there. Nor is it enough time to do justice to some of its challenges, so I will focus on just two aspects: climate change and transport. I put it to the Minister that therein lie both opportunity and threat, and it is all about the sea.

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16:02 Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)

Throughout the debate we have heard a great deal about Members’ huge affection for our coastal communities, their way of life and what they have to offer as places to live and visit, and as places where people can work and raise families. Sadly, as we have heard, they are also places that face particular economic challenges. Despite the prosperity that openness to the sea can bring or has previously brought, our coastal communities can experience particular combinations of economic and social fragility. For example, they often have a heavy dependency on tourism and seasonal labour to take advantage of the economic opportunities. There is also a heavy dependency on a relatively limited number of industries in many cases, and such places are more prone to high levels of unemployment. Their attractiveness and proximity to the sea mean that there is real pressure on house prices and a lack of affordability, particularly for young people—all of which can feed into a cycle of decline that builds in business fragilities. Coastal communities are also at the sharp end of the effects of climate change, including coastal erosion and the impact on biodiversity. They are key to the success of our future energy policies, delivering energy security and tackling climate change.

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