Rural Councils: Funding

Anne Marie Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) for securing this very important debate. I could waste time setting out the problem that he has made very clear, but what we should be doing is focusing on the solutions. Some 21% of the population—12 million people—live in rural areas. Too often, they are ignored, forgotten and marginalised. What we really need is a proper strategy for rurality. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Minister responsible for rurality across Government Departments?

Today, we seem to be focusing much more on the exact amount that goes to local government, instead of looking across the piece at the totality of money that goes through the funnel of local government for health, education and transport. What we need is an approach that looks at that in the round. The Government have to accept that the original plan in 2010, which effectively tried to shift the balance of funding away from central grants and towards council tax and business rates, is fundamentally flawed. The problem is that it has baked in underfunding, which has just got worse and worse each year.

A courageous Government would recognise the imbalance and do something that sounds almost impossible: cut what we give urban communities. We all know that times are tough. Asking for more for rural without cutting urban ain’t gonna work. It will be a brave but fair move, and this Government are all about fairness.

Devon is in exactly the same position as has been described for Dorset and Somerset, and the fear of a section 114 notice hovers. It paralyses action. It is not right for our communities, because their lived reality is that the life chances of children are considerably reduced. A primary school in my constituency is looking to lay off six teachers—think what that will do. It is a small school, and children in their first proper year of education are predominantly in nappies; one teacher’s full-time job is changing nappies. That cannot be right. Housing is in short supply, and it is not just the challenge from tourism and Airbnb. Even the Campaign to Protect Rural England launched a cry for help last night —a cry for more affordable housing from an unusual ally.

All the flood plans generally look at value for money in large conurbations, and rural communities get forgotten. The flood money is not ringfenced. In the last storm, one of my villages was under metres of water and there was a considerable amount of sewage. There was no money to put the damage right, and there is no money in Devon County Council to put in place a proper flood prevention plan. People in the village live not with carpets but with concrete floors. They say to me, “Anne Marie, there is absolutely no point in carpeting, because we know that when the next flood comes, we’re going to have to replace it, and it just makes the clean-up much harder.” They live on concrete, and that it is a fairly squalid condition to be living in. It is not right.

On transport, we are lucky if we even get a bus going to and from the same village on the same day. Transport is heavily underfunded, and it is yet another Government Department grant that simply is not fit for purpose.

What are we going to do about this? We need a fair deal for the countryside. I saw the Minister nod his head and say, “Actually, it is me who is looking across all these Government Departments,” in which case I very much look forward to him giving us some answers, because we cannot carry on living like this. It is not right, it is not fair and it is not moral. Why should my young constituents living in a rural constituency have worse opportunities and life outcomes, and why should the older people suffer because the social care is simply not there? It is not right, it is not acceptable and something must be done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

Let us see.

Let me turn to some of the points that were made in the debate. Although levelling up is often portrayed in the media—and, indeed, sometimes in this place—as being something that is solely about the industrial north and midlands constituencies, it is not. There are strategies in place for coastal and for rural levelling up. As a one nation Conservative, I could support nothing other than that. We have to have policies that are of benefit to all our people, irrespective of where they live.

[James Gray in the Chair]

[Anne Marie Morris]

Will the Minister give way?

[Simon Hoare]

Will my hon. Friend forgive me for not giving way? I am really short of time and want to try to cover as much territory as I can.

Let me turn to some of the principal points. With regard to formula reform, if my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset looks at my last question from the Back Benches to our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and at my contribution to the debate on the King’s Speech, he will recall that I made precisely that point. It is a point that he, I, most people present and others have made throughout our time here: the formula needs reform. My hunch is that we could have done it, and probably would have done it, immediately after the 2019 general election, but along came our old friend covid. As desirable as a fundamental review of the formula would be, I do not believe that trying to ask councillors and their officers, who rose magnificently to the challenge of meeting local demand during the crisis of covid, to turn bandwidth, support and attention towards thinking about solutions to formula questions would have been the right thing to do.

We need to reform the formula, as is recognised, but I suggest to my hon. Friend that now is not the right time. In this settlement, we will have to play the hand of cards we are dealt under the rubric of the formula as it currently exists. I fundamentally agree with the Opposition spokesman and others that this should never be a job of robbing Peter to pay Paul. There are acute and identified needs for service delivery due to geography and sparsity in our rural areas, but there are also acute needs in our urban areas. Deprivation is deprivation; it merely manifests itself in different quantums and different varieties in urban and rural settings.

The Opposition spokesman is absolutely right to say that we do not want some sort of bidding war or competition. Where our people are in need and have a legitimate aspiration for the delivery of quality and reliable services, they should be delivered in a cost-effective way, irrespective of where one lives. If deprivation, poverty and need are blind, so must be those who provide services and the formulas that generate the cash to be able to do so.

We know that rural services are key. We also know, as a matter of indisputable fact, that by definition their delivery costs are higher, partly, although not exclusively, due to both sparsity and geography. [Interruption.] Mr Gray, I have been directing my remarks to Mrs Latham, having not realised that the Chair had changed. My apologies, Sir, if you have taken the Chair and I have transitioned you into something that you did not wish to be.