Levelling Up Rural Britain

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Lee Rowley

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. What he said demonstrates the level of nuance and depth of the debate on our side of the House and the frankly cartoonish response put forward by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I hope the Minister will also agree that the real problem with the Scottish nationalist party is that it does not want the British Government to have any relationship with the Scottish citizen and that the ability of the British Government to assist in levelling up in Scotland is why they have such resentment on this. It is because there are many people in Scotland who voted to be British citizens in the referendum, which we won and the SNP lost.

[Lee Rowley]

My hon. Friend makes a strong point.

I have only three and a half minutes left, so I will try to address a number of the points that have been highlighted by colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), along with my hon. Friends the Members for Witney (Robert Courts), for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson) and for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), among others, raised the point about connectivity, be it of the physical kind, in terms of buses and public transport, or the virtual kind, in terms of broadband. They are absolutely right to advocate on the challenges that this brings. We all know that there have been challenges associated with buses in the past few years. When the level of decrease of passenger use is so profound as it has been with covid, of course we want to try to work through how we can support rural communities. That is no different in my constituency. We have to try to look at the innovative solutions that my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch highlighted with regards to a demand response to travel, while also ensuring that people have good quality bus services over the long term.

I had the pleasure of discussing many of these things with the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), along with the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris)—the representative of that rural idyll—during the Committee stage of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale made some strong points about the importance of skills, which is the subject of one of the missions in our White Paper, demonstrating our commitment to that and highlighting the importance of trying to make progress on public transport connectivity and accessibility.