Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Caroline Spelman and William Bain

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

I am delighted to be able to draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the fact that we anticipate an 80% increase in higher level stewardship schemes, notwithstanding the need for DEFRA to make a contribution to addressing the budget deficit that we inherited from the previous Government.

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

We had expected the publication of the rural impact assessment, but I am afraid that all we got was more weak excuses for the Secretary of State’s failure to produce it. If she is having trouble completing her own assessment, will she at least back the findings of last month’s report on rural poverty by the Commission for Rural Communities—soon to be scrapped by her Department—which found a lack of proper business support provided to farmers by the Government, poorer access to welfare services in the countryside and a quarter of farming households living below the poverty line, under the first Government since 1926 to try to remove employment protection from agricultural workers? Is not the reality that this is a spending review that slashes investment from rural bus services and social housing, from a Government who are indifferent to the greater inequality that their policies will cause in rural Britain?

[Mrs Spelman]

Oh dear. I think that constitutes a serious own-goal. The hon. Gentleman should surely be aware that the data that the Commission for Rural Communities was using to make its assessment relate to the period when his party was in government.