Rural Poverty

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her insight into the local challenges faced by rural areas. That is very helpful as we consider our approach to targeting the upcoming UK shared prosperity fund. That fund will help to level up and create opportunity right across the United Kingdom in places most in need and for people who face labour market barriers. We will set out more detail, as I have mentioned before, in the upcoming spending review.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my interests as set out in the register. First, has the Minister actually read the report referred to in the Question? Secondly, addressing in-work poverty is a subject that should concern us all. Taking that point, does the Minister accept that more rural locations have had their needs obscured and been disadvantaged by recent funding rounds, and would benefit from a fairer distribution of national funds?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I have to declare to the noble Lord that we have a phenomenal army of policy officials who have dissected the guts out of that report. I am happy to acknowledge that I have read a summary from my officials rather than the report itself.

I would point out that of the two funds that we have been talking about, the UK shared prosperity fund, which has been piloted through the community renewal fund, targets rural areas in design—to the extent that 29% of those have a higher index of local resilience and are therefore being focused on and being captured, compared with a lower percentage of 22% for urban areas—so we are seeing a great focus on dealing with rural poverty, while of course the levelling-up fund is designed with the different outcomes in mind.