Rural Communities: Government Support

Ashley Dalton Excerpts

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?

[Keir Mather]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. Does she agree that although this is an important issue, a lot of the debate on flood risk in this country centres on the number of chimney pots—houses—that will be affected rather than on the high-quality arable land that our farmers use to feed the nation in the way that she suggests?

[Ashley Dalton]

I agree with that. Talking to farmers in my community is fascinating: they cannot understand why the Environment Agency attaches a value of zero to farmland when it measures the impact of flood defences. We really need to talk about that, because without protecting that agricultural land, we are damaging not only the economics of our food providers but access to food and food sustainability across the whole country.

It is not just farmland that is affected. Flooding on roads is a major inconvenience for people in urban communities, but it brings communities like mine to a standstill. In Skelmersdale, we have been without a train station for 65 years, despite the Government supposedly freeing up £36 billion for transport projects through the cancellation of the northern leg of High Speed 2. The Rail Minister has told me in writing that it is not possible to connect Skem to the rail network, because money has already been committed to other projects, a number of which are either recycled announcements or already operational. Projects such as a station for Skem do not only support our rural communities; they unlock the potential within them. It is difficult for me to go back to my constituency and tell residents on their doorstep that the Government are supporting rural communities, when time and time again, people in West Lancashire tell me that they do not feel they are being heard.

The theme running through all these issues is that the Government simply do not understand the needs of rural communities. It is time that the people of West Lancashire had a Government who are on their side and support them by meeting the ambition out there with a bold and ambitious strategy in this place that recognises the specific needs of rural areas, but for now I fear that such a strategy is sadly lacking.