Managing Flood Risk

Debate between Graham Stuart and Neil Parish

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stuart]

That needs no further comment apart from the natural applause that normally comes spontaneously from around the Chamber when my hon. Friend speaks on this or other topics.

[Neil Parish]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Mr Parish, you have got away with it once. I am not going to let it go twice.

Local Government Finance (England)

Debate between Graham Stuart and Neil Parish

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate on the local government settlement for 2013-14. I start by paying tribute to the Minister, who has gone out of his way to make himself available to those of us who are concerned about the impact of the settlement and to listen to us. I appreciate the way in which Front Benchers have engaged with this.

I will speak mostly about funding for rural areas. The Rural Services Network, which brings together not only local government in rural areas but all sorts of health bodies and others, has analysed this year’s settlement and found that, at first look—I do not want to repeat too much of the debate we had on Monday night—the effect of damping in the eventual settlement is to increase the rural penalty, which already sits at 50%. Urban areas, as defined by the Government, get 50% more per head than rural areas.

Opposition Members should try telling the hon. Members for Workington (Sir Tony Cunningham), for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) or for Copeland (Mr Reed) that rural areas are all leafy and wealthy. They should come to my constituency, visit Withernsea and the areas there and see whether everyone is wealthy. They are not. We need to ensure that allocations are fair, based on need.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the rural penalty, which he is describing so eloquently, is getting worse, not better? Although we are absolutely delighted that Ministers are listening to us, I believe that we can mobilise the yeomanry in the countryside if we need to in order to make our point, because we want Ministers not only to listen, but to act.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who led the Back-Bench business debate on Monday. He is absolutely right. The test for the rural fair share campaign, which I chair with my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and the hon. Member for Workington, is to have an urban-based Labour MP, moderate and reasonable—quite a number are—if not exactly getting out the bunting and cheering at the prospect, then recognising the strength of the argument in favour of fairness and meeting the needs in rural areas.

It is not some sort of grab. I think that it was perhaps too easy under the previous Government, with a Labour majority, to use deprivation and the cry from the big urban areas to keep skewing the funding more and more. It was both politically convenient and the deprivation provided a kind of moral veil. The position we are in now, with a rural penalty of 50%, is indefensible. If it is defensible, will someone please stand up and make the case?

Age is also a key driver of cost. In rural areas such as the one I represent, we have both an elderly population and a great number of people on low incomes. That combination needs to be addressed, as does the cost of service delivery, because it is more expensive to deliver many services, although not all, in the rural East Riding than it is to deliver them in north Hull. The last thing I want to do is talk down the residents of north Hull or of any other part of the country, urban or otherwise, but we need to have another look at need and ensure that we, preferably with a broad consensus across the House, can have a settlement that is fair to all, even at a time of reductions in public spending, as we are seeing now.

Local Government Finance (Rural Authorities)

Debate between Graham Stuart and Neil Parish

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of the local government finance settlement for rural local authorities.

We have only a short time for this debate—just over an hour. We were expecting a three-hour debate, but unfortunately we have been squeezed by various statements during the day and a substantial debate on Europe. However, I am happy to take interventions and will try not to speak for too long.

One can tell by the number of Members in the Chamber that this is a very important debate—on the share of grant that rural authorities are receiving from Government —that we take extremely seriously. I very much welcome the meetings I have had with the Minister and the sympathy he has shown. What we want to do this evening is take away not just sympathy but a little money, which is a little easier to put in our pockets.

The Department for Communities and Local Government announced the local government financial settlement for 2013-14. It will reduce central Government support to councils while doing nothing to address the long-standing inequality in funding between rural and urban councils. We are not asking for a change in the Government deficit reduction strategy, as we support the Government in taking tough decisions to tackle the budget deficit inherited from the previous Administration; a quarter of all public expenditure is accounted for by councils and that must be addressed. Instead, we are here this evening, even at this late stage, to press the Secretary of State to revise the proposed settlement and make good on the long-standing promise to correct this historical imbalance and give rural local authorities their fair share of central Government funding, in line with the summer consultation.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the rural penalty, which sees 50% more per head going to urban councils than to rural councils, cannot be justified, even by increased levels of deprivation in the urban areas? The additional cost of delivery in rural areas and of need in rural areas means that there is a demand across the country for a fairer settlement.

[Neil Parish]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, because I was going to say how much I thank him for his support. He chairs the Rural Fair Share campaign, and I thank him for pursuing this issue with Ministers with such tenacity and for helping to secure this debate. I agree with him entirely that the current situation just is not fair. We are not here to rob urban authorities of their money, but we are saying clearly to the Government that there are inequalities and they must be put right.