Reporting Back: Oliver Ryan MP Burnley, Padiham and Brierfield

Hello everyone! A quick update on what I’ve been up to recently – I’ve visited the new Enterprise Branch that’s opened here in Burnley. It’s always a terrific sight to see investment coming into our town. I also popped down to St CoE Primary in Cliviger, where I answered questions from their school council. It’s always an honour to see how bright the next generation is.

If you’re interested in learning more about my recent activities, please join me at my surgery at Unitarian Padiham Hall this Saturday from 10am to 12 noon.

This week, I want to talk about one of my proudest moments as your Member of Parliament: the landmark proposal of the first-ever Men’s Mental Health Strategy.

For years, men in communities like ours have been hit hardest by poor health and left with the least support. Former miners and industrial workers – men facing respiratory disease from a lifetime spent down the pit or on the factory floor – have been carrying the cost of historic neglect. That begins to change.

This Labour Government is investing £3.6m over the next three years in suicide prevention projects focused on middle-aged men – the group most at risk. Suicide remains one of the biggest killers of men under 50, with three-quarters of all suicides being male. That is a crisis. This is the start of facing it.

There will be a new national partnership with the Premier League’s Together Against Suicide programme, run with the Samaritans, using football – the one place men show up consistently – to reach men who would never walk into a clinic.

There’s also a £1m investment into the Respiratory Pathways Transformation Fund. This will specifically target ex-miners and industrial workers with high rates of respiratory disease – genuinely transformational for communities like ours. Mining was dangerous work, leaving men with serious long-term health impacts. It’s an issue that deserves attention, and I’m proud it’s finally receiving it.

But the strategy also confronts one of the most urgent public health crises affecting men today: gambling addiction.

For the first time, gambling-related harm will sit at the centre of a national health strategy, with a major expansion of NHS mental health support for gambling addiction – a problem overwhelmingly affecting men and devastating families and communities.

The first Men’s Health Strategy won’t fix decades of neglect overnight. But it’s a new approach: facing reality, not hiding from it.

As always, if you need advice or support, get in touch with me at [email protected], call 01282 216398, or visit my office on Grimshaw Street.

Speak soon, or until next time,

Oliver.