As the co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Combating Loneliness and Connecting Communities, a particularly challenging aspect of my work is understanding how to best tackle the cross-cultural and intergenerational aspects of the loneliness epidemic.

Loneliness is never experienced the same way more than once – each case is vastly unique and personalised, a fingerprint of ideographic social experience. We must make every effort to understand this nuance. Be it the student moving away from home for the first time; the carer who is unable to leave their post; or someone with disabilities that hinder their social engagement – loneliness is an intricate fabric of societal hurdles.

With this in mind, meeting with the Japanese delegation to the UK to discuss how our nations experience and respond to loneliness was both an honour and deeply engrossing. In the words of Intergenerational England, a leading non-for-profit focused on social cohesion and connecting communities, this was a “quietly historical moment”.

This meeting thus signalled the beginning of what I hope to be a long and meaningful relationship between the UK and Japan – connecting nations through the mission to connect communities.