Rural Communities

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Cameron of Dillington (CB)]

My Lords, a sustainable community is one where the old and the young, the rich and the poor, can live together, assist each other and have a shared vision. With a nod to the right reverend Prelate, the greatest of these are the young.

What rural communities most require from government is understanding and rural-proofing, because to deliver to remote and small communities requires government departments to put in place procedures to work out how to reach out to rural people: where there is real deprivation, where there is little or no public transport, where not everyone has a car, where services are often miles away, where broadband is either slow or does not exist and where the costs of delivery per head are higher but the budgets available per head, as has been mentioned, nearly always lower than in urban areas. Rural-proofing is also about ensuring there are no unintended consequences in the countryside of policies which are usually poorly thought out by urban-based individuals.

For instance, as the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, mentioned, I gather today that Mr Gove wishes to close 140 courts to save money for the Ministry of Justice. Has this policy been rural-proofed? It may save money for the Ministry of Justice, but will it be easier for rural people to access justice? I suspect the answer is no.

Rural-proofing is also about training. In my tour around departments last year, I really noticed the difference where Defra had run a training workshop relevant to that department. Is Defra still running these detailed departmental workshops? Does it still have the budget to do so? They are its one opportunity to affect the quality of life in rural England through the Department of Health, the Department for Transport, the DWP et cetera. Personally, I think that rural-proofing should be the responsibility of the Cabinet Office, but I will not go there today.

The two most urgent policy areas for rural communities are affordable housing and broadband. The Government, as has been mentioned by others, are making a total Horlicks on housing. The bedroom tax should not apply because there are no single-occupancy units in most villages. Then there is the abolition of affordable housing quotas, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Best, on sites with fewer than 10 houses. The almost complete absence of housing for the next generation is the biggest worry for all rural families, and these quotas provide 60% of the provision of new affordable houses in the countryside. Their abolition is madness. Then there is the proposed new right to buy, also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I have already vented my fury elsewhere on that, so I will say no more today.

On broadband, the Government have a better record. Not everything is perfect and certainly in Devon and Somerset, where we were supposed to have a beacon project, we have been badly let down by the complete incompetence of BT in spite of it receiving millions of pounds of public money. But the intentions of the Government are there and they are good. The Government just have to focus more on the actual delivery.

To underline the importance of fast broadband to this debate, apart from it being essential to help retain the young in our communities, there are many examples from around the world where government services are delivered by good broadband. You just need a special room in your village where doctors can talk to patients, courts can talk to witnesses, jobseekers can talk to the jobcentre, schools can talk to classes and business can talk to whoever. You can see why it needs a central body like the Cabinet Office to deliver this interdepartmental infrastructure. But, first, the Government really have to focus on delivering high-speed broadband to all rural communities and then get all departments to focus on how they can use it and best deliver to their rural electorate.

Lastly, I ask the Minister, and I have given him warning of this: when will the Government respond to my report on rural-proofing, which they themselves commissioned?