Rural Areas: Public Services

Baroness McIntosh of Pickering Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the provision of public services in rural areas.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have secured this debate and I look forward to hearing the contributions of other noble Lords, in particular my noble friend Lord Haselhurst, who is making his maiden speech. I welcome my noble friend the Minister to his place. I refer to my interests on the register: I work with the Dispensing Doctors’ Association; I chaired the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for five years; I grew up in Teesdale, one of the most rural areas in the Pennines, and represented another in north Yorkshire for 18 years in the House of Commons; I am an honorary vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities; and I a member of the Rural Affairs Committee of the Church of England synod.

Living and working in the countryside is the envy of many, yet rural dwellers face challenges of which their urban counterparts are blissfully unaware. That is why I am delighted to have secured this debate on the challenges and costs of providing public services in rural areas. Public services are coming under increasing pressure in rural areas. Delivering health and social care, affordable housing, adequate transport to work or to visit the doctor or dentist, and accessing the digital economy via broadband and mobile phones are major challenges facing rural dwellers. For years, successive Governments have failed to tackle these issues. Officials appear to be metro-centric and urban based, and in many cases have never been exposed to the challenges of rural life.

Funding per head of population for education, health and other sectors is less in rural areas than in urban areas. For example, taxpayers in North Yorkshire pay two and a half times more council tax than residents of Westminster yet receive less government funding, have 29% less core spending power per capita and receive fewer services. Average weekly wages, however, are 86% higher in Westminster than in North Yorkshire. Rurality is poorly reflected in the current formula for council funding. Population density is given eight times more weighting than rurality. North Yorkshire has 707 parishes with populations below 5,000, with the majority of these below 350. This demonstrates the very sparse and dispersed nature of the county’s population.

There is often a higher proportion of middle-aged and older people living in rural areas. They can suffer fuel poverty because of the higher costs of vehicle and heating fuel. There are clear pockets of rural deprivation given the background of low pay, higher living costs and a lack of affordable homes. Finding an affordable home, travelling to a job some distance away, using the electronic prescription service in rural GP practices, reporting an emergency with a poor mobile phone signal, and access to local post offices and banks for individuals and small businesses are some of the everyday challenges that rural communities face.

Planning decisions can throw up perverse consequences in rural areas. The Campaign to Protect Rural England notes a failure to recognise the views of local communities and the value of open countryside. In my view, there is no good reason to prefer garden cities taking rafts of rural area for housing over sites in urban areas with established infrastructure and brownfield land. We must protect areas of outstanding natural beauty and our national parks but be mindful of the needs of those who live and work there.

The Government rightly laud their policy for a digital economy. However, they must grasp the fact that digital access in the countryside, which represents the 5% hardest-to-reach broadband access, precludes rural GPs accessing electronic prescriptions to the benefit of the patient and precludes farmers downloading and completing farm payment claims online.

The recruitment and retention of new GP partners in rural areas is of concern. I should confess here that I am the daughter of a GP and the sister of a GP. Poor mobile signals and poor internet access will hamper the new NHS app and the use of smartphone technology for interacting with the NHS. Dispensing doctors face an increasing number of perverse incentives in the drug reimbursement systems, and the forthcoming implementation of the EU falsified medicines directive will add costs to practices via the workload and costs associated with the scanning technology used to verify these medicines.

In the recently published report Bricks and Water, we concluded that there was only limited and patchy co-ordination on planning for housing and water at a catchment scale, with a current lack of sustainable drainage to prevent flooding. We urge neighbouring local authorities to co-operate more and call for the new environmental watchdog to be truly independent yet accountable to Parliament, facing both Defra and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and giving strategic advice on housing growth and water management issues.

As far back as July 2013, in its report on rural communities, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee identified local authority funding, rural broadband, not-spots in mobile phone coverage, affordable housing, access to public transport and developing the rural economy as crucial factors that needed to be addressed. That was five years ago, but the issues are still so familiar today.

In early July of this year, the Post-Brexit England Commission published an interim report on threats to rural areas after leaving the EU. It found a deepening divide between rural and urban areas, unaffordable homes, an increasing skills gap and poor connectivity to the internet—I think there is a theme here. The commission recommends greater powers to local authorities to tackle the problems; to give all councils the ability to borrow to build new homes; to devolve funding and control over skills and employment schemes to local areas; and to plug the adult social care funding gap, which is expected to reach £3.5 billion by 2025.

Recently, the House of Lords ad hoc committee reported on the implementation of the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006. It criticised the Government for abolishing the Rural Communities Commission and ceasing to rural proof policies. It recommended that the Cabinet Office oversee the rural proofing of policy in all departments.

This week sees the 160th Great Yorkshire Show, celebrating the countryside and showcasing farm produce and livestock. From deliciouslyorkshire food to the cattle lines to the craft goods to the fur and feather, producers across the region take great pride and joy in showing their produce at the height of the season. As we marvel at the craftsmanship and husbandry of the produce on display, I urge the Government to be mindful of the everyday needs of country folk.

There must be more joined-up, cross-departmental policy, and rural dwellers should be treated equally with their urban cousins. I urge the Government to come forward with a way and means of rural proofing all policies, alive to the challenges of public services and the cost of delivering these in rural communities. I can think of no better person to deliver on this issue than my noble friend the Minister, who will wind up the debate today.