The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, on securing this debate. It has been an important discussion and I welcome the opportunity to respond. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, on his maiden speech and give him a warm welcome to this House. I very much look forward to working with him as we go forward on these issues.
I just want to look at the actual Question, which was:
“To ask His Majesty’s Government what are their priorities for rural communities over the next two years”.
I think this debate has gone much more broadly than that. Many of the issues that we have discussed are going to take more than two years to resolve, so I think much of what I am going to be talking about is also going to be long term as well as short term.
The Government are committed to improving the quality of life for people living and working in rural areas, so that the full potential of rural businesses and communities can be realised. To do this, we need to ensure that the needs of people in rural areas are right at the heart of policy-making and I think that has come across very strongly during this debate. I also reiterate that I genuinely value rural communities. They are my communities. I have always lived in a rural community and I will continue to be a strong voice for rural communities in the department.
Farming, forestry and other traditional land sectors are essential for delivering so much of what we value in our countryside. However, businesses found in rural areas are just as diverse as those in urban areas. We know that around 80% operate outside agriculture and related sectors. In addition, more people in rural areas are employed in microbusinesses than in urban areas and yet, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans so clearly explained, there is significant potential for economic growth, with average productivity in rural areas being 86% of the England average. This was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness.
Our manifesto was clear: sustained economic growth is the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people. Our approach to delivering this growth right across the country will focus on three pillars: stability, investment and reform. We have already started to deliver on our commitment to restore stability for farmers by continuing the rollout of the sustainable farming incentive. We will go further by optimising our schemes and grants, ensuring that they produce the right outcomes for farmers, and that includes small, grassland, upland and tenanted farms, while delivering food security and nature recovery in a just and equitable way.
We have recognised the specific challenges and opportunities that make rural economies distinctive, acknowledging the importance of funds such as the £110 million rural England prosperity fund, which provides targeted support to rural businesses and communities. We also know that a prosperous rural economy will need to be underpinned by improvements in rural connectivity—both transport and digital—the availability of affordable housing and energy, and access to a diverse range of community services.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, was particularly concerned about housing and I thank him for his support of our ambitions in this area. Home ownership is out of reach for too many—too few homes have been built and very few are genuinely affordable, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said. Our housing shortage drives high rents and high prices. We are committed to improving the quality of life for people living and working in rural areas and part of addressing this is going to be through the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation. We want to work with councils and housing associations to build the capacity to ensure we deliver the homes that people need.
We will reform planning laws so we can build the homes our rural communities desperately need, while protecting our green spaces and the natural environment. Noble Lords mentioned the National Planning Policy Framework. We have launched a consultation to reform this and as part of that we will consider how to build more homes in the best way and introduce a wider set of growth-focused interventions that will build them in the places that people want to live in, supported by the correct infrastructure. A number of noble Lords asked about the land use framework. We intend to publish this later this year as a Green Paper.
The Government are also committed to tackling fuel poverty. It is our ambition that the warm homes plan will transform homes across the country by making them cheaper and cleaner to run, including the many households in rural areas that are not connected to the gas grid. That includes me. Decarbonising off-grid properties will reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and build our energy independence. It will protect customers from high and volatile energy prices, keep us on track for net zero and, at the same time, improve air quality.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, talked about the fact that a lot of the energy projects will have little value for local communities. I make the point that nationally significant infrastructure projects, NSIPs— that includes large grid connections—have community benefit programmes as part of the process that they have to go through, and work very closely with local communities. We will also be setting up Great British Energy. It will support local and combined authorities and community energy groups to roll out small and medium-scale renewable energy projects in their areas.
The Government recognise that people living in rural areas often have greater distances to travel to access essential services, such as employment, education and training, and other social and recreational activities. That has come across clearly in this debate. We understand that it is much more costly and time-consuming when you have to travel great distances and the travel connectivity is not good. The noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, talked about some of the transport challenges and gave examples in her area. One thing we are determined to do is to deliver better bus services, and we have set out a plan of how we can achieve this. It is based on giving local leaders the tools they need to ensure that bus services reflect their needs. I am sure we would all agree that one size does not fit all when it comes to transport services.
Digitisation is at the heart of the Government’s agenda. We are committed to ensuring that rural communities, many of which are still reliant, as we have heard, on 3G, are not left behind as part of the switch off. In rural areas, 4G coverage is increasing thanks to the shared rural network, which the Government will continue to invest in to ensure coverage where currently no major mobile network operators provide 4G coverage.
While I am on the topic of digital, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, asked about Project Gigabit. I think it covers 85% of UK premises at present; the idea is to have nation-wide coverage by 2030. I am very sorry, but I cannot confirm—I am going to keep saying this—the continuation of things and funding until we have gone through the spending review; unfortunately, I just cannot do that. It does not mean that it is not happening, but I cannot confirm anything.
The noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, asked about mobile coverage. He will be interested to know that the Minister of State for Data Protection and Telecoms recently wrote to Ofcom, on 28 August, asking it to update him on the steps it will be taking to improve its reporting of mobile coverage, including timescales for this work, by the end of October.
Opportunity can also be a challenge. Too many young people and children are defined by their background. It should not matter who you are or where you come from. The Government are committed to supporting rural schools in order to break the link between young people’s backgrounds and their success. As part of this, we will be recruiting 6,500 new teachers in key subjects.
We intend to boost rural and agricultural skills by reforming the apprenticeships levy into a growth and skills levy, to give businesses the freedom and flexibility to upskill their workforce, and by opening new specialist technical excellence colleges, to give rural communities the chance to fit skills to the needs of their local economies and empower rural business to play a bigger role in the skills revolution.
The noble Lord, Lord Cameron, talked about health, as did others. As we have heard, the delivery of and access to health services such as GPs, dentistry—which we have not heard about today but which is critical—and women’s health services is a particular challenge in rural areas, especially as it takes longer to access services due to longer travel times. At the time people are most likely to need care—namely, when they are getting older—they increasingly live in areas where it is most difficult to provide that care. In England, integrated care systems will have a key role to play in designing services that meet the needs of local people. To do this, they will need to work with clinicians and local communities right down at neighbourhood level.
We are doing more to use the transformative power of technology, such as virtual wards. I have seen virtual meetings with GPs and patients where I am in Cumbria. This allows care to be delivered into people’s own homes and in areas with a shortage of GPs or healthcare staff. Because of that, areas where rurality can be a barrier can benefit disproportionately.
Mental health is also a big issue. We want to make sure that mental health care is delivered in the community, close to people’s homes, through new models of care and support, so that fewer people need to go into hospital. We are setting up a young futures mental health hub for under-25s in every rural community. In addition, we are supporting charities that focus on farmers’ mental health and well-being through grant funding. This is helping them to offer support to farmers and their families, as well as helping to build resilience in farming communities.
The noble Lord, Lord Harlech, asked about crime. We will tackle rural crime through a cross-government approach—for example, by increasing police patrols in rural towns and lanes, and by punishing anti-social behaviour, agricultural crime and county lines, with stronger laws to crack down on farm equipment theft and fly-tipping. We are also actively looking at ways to better tackle livestock worrying.
A couple of noble Lords asked about vets. We are very aware of the challenges around veterinary services but, on a positive note, we have been doing farm visits with vets and have had a really positive response.
My noble friend Lady Ritchie asked about collaborative working—in fact, I met Mr Muir this morning. Collaborative working across the devolved Governments, through cross-departmental work and into communities is critical to the work we are carrying out.
I would be happy to have the right reverend Prelate the Bishops of St Albans’s recently published report, which we will take back to the department. He might be interested to know that on Thursday, Daniel Zeichner, the Rural Minister, will host a rural round table that will include the Rural Coalition.
I have run out of time, so I shall say that we recognise the importance of rural communities and businesses and continue to do everything in our power to ensure a prosperous future.