Rural Communities

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, the Motion refers particularly but not exclusively to uplands and remote communities in our country. I will broaden the perspective from my own diocese in Chester. It includes the western slopes of the Pennines and I look over the River Dee to the promised land of the uplands of Wales. However, the diocese is primarily on the Cheshire plain. It might be thought that the problems there would be quite different from those of the upland areas, but it is surprising how they overlap, particularly at a time of economic marginality for so many farmers, not least dairy farmers, through a long agricultural recession.

The advent of a new Government provides an opportunity to rethink rural policy in general, partly because the great majority of Labour MPs represent urban constituencies and the impression has been given in our flatland and upland rural areas that policy-making in recent years has defaulted too easily, and perhaps in unintended ways, to an urban bias. I often heard that view expressed in my diocese. The diocese of Chester consists almost equally of urban, suburban and rural communities. The rural areas often feel a bit neglected after a period in which urban renewal has been a government priority—perhaps understandably and rightly, provided that the issues facing rural communities are not neglected or ignored.

I will speak partly from my direct experience of rural Cheshire. I have read the recent CRC report and agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said about its excellence, and about the wider work of advocacy that the commission has performed. I will begin with an obvious point: farming, and milk production in particular, have been through a prolonged and very difficult recession. I have seen the consequences at first hand. The farm-gate price of milk has been at or below the cost of production for around 10 years. After a rise in the past couple of years, it has slipped back again. Many farmers in Cheshire have gone out of business and there has been much rationalisation as less efficient producers have been taken over by more efficient producers, and production facilities aggregated. To some extent, that is inevitable and even right; but too easily the net effect is simply to increase supply further and maintain the downward pressure on prices. That is why recessions in agriculture last so long compared with those in other parts of the economy.

Alongside general economic pressures, the farmers of Cheshire have had to contend successively with BSE, foot and mouth and the increasing incidence of bovine tuberculosis. It is little wonder that the suicide rate among farmers has increased to such a worrying level. Life often seems to be lived on a knife-edge: a cow is taken ill or goes down and you lose at least a month’s profit. It is one of the laws of the Medes and Persians that farmers always complain, but it is easy then to deafen one’s ears to the very justified complaints of recent years. The problems have been genuine, and not only for hill farmers.

The churches in Cheshire have employed a full-time rural crisis officer—a Salvation Army captain who comes from a Cheshire farming family. He does marvellous work providing pastoral support for farmers all round the diocese. We have recently expanded that work and taken on an assistant for him, and that has been supported by the local primary care trust, which sees the benefits that the work brings to community health. I ask the Minister what the Government’s broader strategy is for supporting our farming industry, and not only in our upland areas—particularly, as has been mentioned, with the review of the common agricultural policy now in its determinative stage.

The second issue that I wish to raise is the future of planning policies as they affect rural areas—upland and elsewhere. I recognise that these are complex issues, not least near and in the national parks. However, in recent years I have been quite worried by the effect of planning policies, particularly the requirement for density of dwellings. That has produced highly dense developments, often on the edge of rural areas. That is certainly the case in the diocese of Chester, where there has been a proliferation of three-storey town houses with small gardens, which look to me like the slums of the future. These developments are often right next to rural areas.

On the other hand, planning policies in rural areas seem to be far too restrictive. Our rural communities, upland and lowland alike, need to breathe, with a degree of development and an influx of people to all types of housing. There is a case for affordable housing in particular but there is also a case for all types of housing. Young and old alike want to live in rural locations and will put up with the inconveniences that were mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cameron. It is wrong to constrain this artificially. Increasingly, people are able to work from home in any area, but that underlines the case for high-speed broadband in rural areas being a policy priority. Of all the priorities that the Government could address, it seems to me that that one will be absolutely essential. The plans to finance this were withdrawn quite recently, but it is vital that it goes forward because more and more people will be able to work from home. I should be grateful for the Minister’s comments on that.

Finally, building on what the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, said, I offer a comment on the role of churches in rural areas. There are nearly 10,000 rural parish churches in England alone and several thousand chapels and churches of other denominations. Many of the buildings have a special and significant place in their communities, and by no means only for those who regularly worship in them. Communities hold tenaciously to their churches—sometimes to the surprise of the bishop. A suggestion that a particular church should close is liable to spark a revival. I sometimes think that I should propose that all 360 churches in my diocese should be considered for closure and simply sit back and watch the results.

Church buildings in rural areas are often the last community building left open. One challenge facing the churches is to regain a proper sense of the local church building as being for the wider community. That used to be more the case before Victorian times, when churches tended to narrow their use to worship alone as other buildings were provided in the community. Nowadays, rural churches are used for post offices or even farmers’ markets. This, to me, is an entirely good development which we should all encourage. Therefore, I ask the Minister how government policy will support rural communities—particularly but not exclusively in upland areas—because it is only when communities in the totality are supported that rural communities will flourish.