Rural Communities: Government Support

Debate between Jim Shannon and Ashley Dalton

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ashley Dalton (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Charles. I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Sarah Dyke) on securing the debate. It is such an important debate for many of us here because, while we recognise that urban areas have issues specific to their communities, everyone in this room understands the specific challenges that exist for our constituents living in rural areas.

Often these challenges are not adequately considered by the Government when the finer details of policy delivery are decided, and it is to the detriment of our constituents. Special educational needs, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) referred, is a perfect example. With smaller and more disparate populations in villages and towns in my constituency, children with special educational needs and disabilities are at risk of slipping through the net. Being students in smaller rural cohorts should not prevent them from accessing the same services as their peers in urban areas. I had hoped that the SEND and alternative provision improvement plan published in March would address some of the unique challenges in rural SEND provision, but it failed to do so. None of the proposals related specifically to SEND in rural communities but spoke simply in generalisations, assuming that all geographies have the same concerns.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. One of the issues mentioned beforehand, to which the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) also referred, is that children with disabilities, whether emotional or physical, are up at half-past 4 in the morning to catch a bus at half-past 7. Their parents are up; their families are up; the whole house is disrupted. Those are special circumstances: a bus arrives at half-past 7 and there is no other choice, even though school does not start until 9 am or half-past 9. Those are real problems.

[Ashley Dalton]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member. The big question is how the Government can possibly expect to address those issues when we see no sign of their recognising them.

The challenges in rural educational provision differ from the provision of SEND in urban areas. In spread-out communities, often with non-existent public transport, it is far more difficult for SEND children to access those services. Thirty children in an urban area with a small geographical footprint and a bus every 20 minutes find it much easier than do 30 children spread over a vast geographical footprint with no public transport.

Flooding also brings challenges particular to rural areas. Of course, such challenges can occur in any part of the country—they are not unique to rural areas—but some of the issues are wide-ranging. The farmers of West Lancashire are proud to be the growers and feeders of our nation, but when their fields are flooded and their produce is written off, it does not just impact farmers and their incomes; it reduces the availability of food in our shops and it drives up prices, hitting consumers in the pocket all over the country. How can the Government support the growers and food providers of West Lancashire when they do not even have a recognised definition of flooding, and no one is recording how many floods take place each year?