Local Government Funding: Rural Areas

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare). I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to hold this debate on rural funding, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), who, for all the time I have been in this House, has been a strong voice and strong leader on behalf of our rural communities and fairer funding.

I will not go into as much detail on rural funding as my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset, but I will say that I was a Cornwall county councillor from 2001 and I can remember the changes introduced by the then Labour Government, which severely disadvantaged places such as Cornwall. I acknowledge that the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), and his predecessors in the last Parliament have done their best to rebalance the situation.

I am going to focus on rural transport. I was born and grew up in a small village in my constituency, where I currently live. When I first entered the workforce—I worked for the South Western Electricity Board in Plymouth—I had to get a bus, then a ferry and then another two buses to get to work. It took me some time just to get there in the morning and I would have problems if bad weather caused the ferry not to run, as I could not afford a car and therefore could not drive around to the Tamar bridge.

Today I can go downstairs from this place to the station, not look at a timetable and still see a train within a couple of minutes. In many villages, it can take two hours—sometimes days—before there is a train, and some small communities are not served by trains at all. Many work routes are impossible because of the timetables. Although it is clear that a large percentage of the population drive, it is also important to have an alternative. Everyone has periods during which they cannot drive, whether because the car has broken down, because of their age, or medical or judicial reasons, or because they simply cannot get back from the pub as it would be illegal to drive. Unlike in towns, where a local can be found a few hundred metres from home, the same journey in the country is frequently one of a few miles.

Train stations are often at a great distance and transport must frequently be found to go to a station, which means that stations cannot be a solution in their own right. There is simply not the demand for train services in rural areas. My nearest station is 8 miles away. In the neighbouring constituency of North Cornwall, there are no train stations at all. Such forms of transport cost money, especially for those who can least afford them and those who cannot drive.

Although many children in cities can walk to school, the transport infrastructure in the country is far more costly. Children often live a considerable distance from school, and because of their age, they cannot drive. That means a considerable burden on school transport, which often needs to be borne by the local authority before a child can be educated.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

One of the things my local authority—like my hon. Friend’s, it is a poor one—would like is the right to allocate the less popular bus routes with the more popular routes so that bus companies can still make a living. That power needs to be devolved.

[Mrs Murray]

That is something my hon. Friend the Minister could consider.

There is also a problem with specialist schools, which are often a considerable distance away from where children live. Facilities can also be more difficult to get to. As well as having to travel many miles to the local swimming pool or to see a film at a cinema, we have to look at essential amenities, such as doctors, dentists and hospitals. I worked as a doctors’ receptionist at one of my rural practices for more than 21 years, and I used to try to arrange people’s appointments around the bus timetable, but that was not always possible. My nearest hospital is over the Tamar in Plymouth, and getting there involves a ferry or a long trip around by the Tamar bridge. Google Maps shows it takes one and a half hours to get there by public transport.

Such matters create considerable transport costs for anyone in a rural area, and especially for any local authority that must help people to get around these vast areas. It is simply not financially viable for the private sector to run such services on a regular or affordable basis, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin) said. These rural communities, such as my own, need assistance with that extra burden. Last week, I spoke on the importance of food security, and I remind my hon. Friends that it is in these rural areas that we produce our food.

I want to finish with a complaint from one of my long-standing councillors. Councillor Armand Toms from Looe wrote to me recently, although I acknowledge that he must also raise this matter in Cornwall Council. He said in his email:

“Year on year the revenue from the Cornwall Council car parks in Looe is going up hitting the local community and tourism. Yet the town gets very little if nothing in return and has taken on public conveniences which will cost over a million pounds in the next ten years.”

I remind the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset that when town councillors have the ability to increase a precept without being called to account for it, that often has the same effect as raising council tax revenue by the back door. In Councillor Toms’ words:

“I believe that Cornwall Council is treating Looe’s car parks as cash cows.”

Those are his words, not mine. He is a Cornwall councillor, but I point out that he is not a Conservative one.