Levelling Up Rural Britain

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Alex Norris

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

I have news for the hon. Lady. If we add all these funds together—high street funds and brownfield funds, for instance—we see that all but four of the 150 upper-tier local authorities are worse off because of the cuts that have been made to the council. So the reality is that even the winners have been losers so far. If what we are getting is more of the same, we will regret it—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady can shake her head, but it is true.

To move on to a couple of points of my own, we have seen the weakening of the foundations of our rural communities through unaffordable housing for younger generations, cuts to transport funding, GPs and dentists stretched to breaking point and community hubs such as village shops, post offices and pubs closing. These issues have plagued rural areas. In many ways, they reflect the problems being faced across the country, but the impact is more harshly felt in our rural towns and villages because, if they lose their cash machine and it is the only cash machine, for example, that has a very significant impact.

The net result is that young people have had to get out to get on, moving far away from their homes and loved ones to find decent opportunities. They take their spending power away from the towns and villages, which costs us our high streets, pubs, banks and post offices—the social fabric that binds us. That has left people growing old hundreds of miles away from their children and grandchildren, and they are feeling the aftershocks in every part of their life: declining prosperity, an eroded sense of community and a growing sense of insecurity.

The evidence is clear that we need a levelling-up settlement that works for rural Britain. We know that 50% of the rural population live in areas that have the poorest accessibility to services based on minimum travel times, compared with just 2% of the urban population. The average weekly household expenditure on transport costs in rural areas is £114, compared with £76 in urban areas. As the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) and the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) said, median workplace earnings are £2,500 a year lower in rural areas than in urban areas.

The case for change is strong, and we on these Benches argue that the problem has been a model that has involved flying the aeroplane on one engine; we have backed one small part of this country and not invested enough in our communities across the country to build thriving cities, towns, villages and coastal communities so that they can all reach their potential. That important point was made by the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) with regard to coastal communities.

I know that time is short, and I am keen to hear the Minister’s response, so I am going to make three suggestions that we believe would make a significant difference to rural communities and provide a bit of an alternative between us and the Government. First, we have pledged the introduction of a licensing system for holiday lets—along the lines of what we are already doing in Wales—in coastal and rural communities, so that we can protect communities’ local character but still allow them to reap the rewards of thriving tourism. A stronger licensing system will allow genuine holiday lets to be identified while ending the injustice of young people being priced out of their own neighbourhoods, only for those homes to stand empty for months on end.

The hon. Members for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates) made points about transport in rural communities, and we know that the loss of bus services has affected rural communities particularly hard. Our second proposal is to prioritise addressing the rural transport crisis by ensuring that councils can improve bus services by regulating and taking public ownership of bus networks while also extending the powers to re-regulate local bus services to all areas that want them, not just to combined authorities with elected Mayors. Having heard what the hon. Member for North Devon said about elected Mayors at the beginning, I am hoping that that will be music to her ears.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I happened to be shadow Transport Secretary when the great John Prescott was Secretary of State for Transport, Environment and the Regions. He said that he was going to do all sorts of things to revive rural buses, but rural bus services still went into decline. Can the hon. Gentleman not move forward and think about the community bus services and the digitised hopper mobile bus services? We need to completely rethink rural transport, and going back to regulated bus services is not the future of bus services in rural areas.

[Alex Norris]

We have a point of difference on that. Yes, those models and that creativity in local communities is an important aspect of this, as are enhancements in technology, but I think that local oversight and control to ensure that there is full coverage would enhance services, rather than leaving them to the market as we have done.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

It did not work before.

[Alex Norris]

The hon. Gentleman makes a strong case for the status quo, but frankly the status quo does not work.

Finally, we will put local people back in charge with a new community right to buy, giving communities the opportunity to take control of pubs, historic buildings and football clubs that come up for sale or fall into disrepair. At the moment, local groups have a right to bid for such assets but it is clear that that has not worked. We will augment that to ensure that communities can make the most of the new right by improving the community ownership fund to ensure that seed capital is available for communities to generate revenues so that they can invest in their town, village or city and ensure that the proceeds of growth benefit those who live there. These are meaningful interventions that will have a meaningful impact on our rural communities. This lies in stark contrast to the Government’s levelling-up plans, which are so inconsequential that Ministers will not even release the impact assessment.

Again, I appeal to Conservative Back Benchers, many of whom I know to be independent-minded people who believe in the importance of doing things right in this place. The impact assessment on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill has been ready since July, but the Government will not release it. We have had all the Bill’s stages up to the end of Committee without the impact assessment. If we are serious about levelling-up rural Britain, let us have a conversation on the facts. My efforts to get the Minister to change his position on releasing the impact assessment have not worked. I ask Conservative Back Benchers to help, because we need a proper conversation on the facts.