Basic Payment Scheme

Debate between James Heappey and Simon Hoare

Thursday 28th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend does the farmers of Dorset a great service in raising those issues, which I intend to speak on at some length because they are hugely important.

I have the great honour of serving on the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, and one thing that I have observed is that we talk about energy security with great urgency—we are willing to bend our backs in government and in this place to ensure that we achieve energy security—yet we seem to be slightly less concerned about food security. I put it to the House that in many ways our food security is as important as our energy security and any other type of security, in that while the going is good we can rely on international markets, but when the going is bad, it is absolutely essential that we can feed ourselves. We must therefore be sensible and urgent in how we support farming to ensure that we maintain the sector.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Like others, I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Given the huge volatility we have seen in the gate price for farm produce, whether that is livestock, meat or milk, and acknowledging that agriculture is the backbone of our south-west of England economy, does he share my concern that failure to get payments in full and on time could prove the tipping point for farmers who have been trading at the margins for too long? They may put up their hands and say, “I fought the fight to the end, and I am now giving up.” That would have a devastating effect on our combined Dorset economy and across the wider south-west.

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend speaks with great authority, and he is absolutely right. Many farmers in Somerset, Dorset and across the south-west and the United Kingdom have had a difficult couple of years with the price of milk, beef and pork, and that has led to real challenges for them. This could be the time at which the bank manager turns round and says, “There is no opportunity to extend credit lines. I am afraid that enough is enough.” My hon. Friend’s point is absolutely right and rather tallies with what I was saying. We must not underestimate the importance of supporting our agricultural sector through difficult times, because we will need it to be as capable in the future as it is now.

Local Government Funding: Rural Areas

Debate between James Heappey and Simon Hoare

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare]

No, and for reasons that I will explain to my hon. Friend in just a moment.

If I took Members to my North Dorset constituency—this echoes what my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness, the hon. Member for Workington and others have said—they would see that it looks lovely, and it is lovely. But we have poor public transport, notwithstanding the excellent service that Damory tries to provide with the budget it receives from the county. The majority of my residents are retired. We have poor and patchy broadband. We have an historical low skills base. We have a poor road infrastructure. One of our straplines is, “Come to Dorset; there are no motorways.” Forget motorways; we have no dual carriageway in my constituency. Indeed, a passing place on a B road is greeted like an oasis in the desert. Access to affordable housing is constrained. The average salary of a vast number of my residents is well below the national average—the national average is about £24,000, but in my constituency it is about £17,500. A large number of my constituents are tenant farmers, or those associated with agriculture, living in tied accommodation.

Therefore, although those wonderful rolling hills and green pastures of the Blackmore vale look enchanting, and while the area of outstanding natural beauty of the Cranborne Chase is indeed beautiful, there are pockets of deprivation in those rural areas, for example in Blandford Forum, Shaftesbury and Gillingham, and for some unknown reason no wise expert in either the Treasury or the Department for Communities and Local Government can find a perfect mechanism for measuring that rural deprivation. That is a huge gap in how we approach the settlement.

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is speaking with his customary eloquence. I simply rise to add to his list of challenges. It is not just public services that challenge us; the inability to access banks and other amenities means that people in our communities have to travel that bit further to do their banking or grocery shopping, and that all adds to the cost, particularly when it comes to public transport.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He can add to that litany the fact that something as simple and mundane as a waste collection service costs far more in a rural area than it does in an urban area. It is far easier for a large rubbish truck to trundle up and down the terrace streets of Cardiff, Bristol, Manchester or Birmingham than to go up hill and down dale, and from one house here to two farms there, so it is more expensive. The costs of getting children to school on transport provided by the county council is higher. The cost of everything is higher. It costs more to heat homes, because they all predate cavity wall insulation, and because conservation area status and listed buildings simply preclude double glazing, solar panels and the like.

At every step, when we analyse it in the cold light of day, there is precious little reason to live in a rural area today. The difficulties are compounded when a Conservative Government who had had at the heart of their manifesto the firm commitment, on which I certainly stood, of rural-proofing these things, free from the fetters of the yellow peril of the Liberal Democrats—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] The House is free of it now, too. The Government are now suddenly appearing to shirk the task that Conservative Members wish them to undertake.

Let me deal with the three things that I find particularly irritating within the proposed settlement and pick up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray). If only Dorset County Council had four years to deliver the medium-term financial strategy that it had planned—the £13 million-worth of savings that it had identified—but Dorset, like Buckinghamshire, has been given two years, and then its revenue support grant disappears. That is why I am afraid I cannot welcome what my hon. Friend asked me to welcome. East Dorset District Council, in which part of my constituency falls, sees its RSG disappear after one year. With no prior warning, no consultation and no advice, its medium-term financial strategies are now shredded.

That is unfortunate, because the local government of Dorset was significantly reviewing what it did. Exciting proposals were coming forward and a vivid debate was going on about large unitary districts, a combined authority and so on, all with the expressed aim of helping my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor achieve what we all want to see—economic efficiency, with services delivered at the best possible price for the council tax payer. All those potential proposals have had to be put on hold while a reduced officer corps desperately tries to focus on which service is more, or less, important and must not just have the fat trimmed off—we have gone through the surface of the bone and, in some instances, are sucking out the marrow.