Public Services: Rural Areas

Matt Rodda Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith) for securing this debate. He gave a really long speech of considerable depth. I am not going to repeat that, purely because I do not want to repeat any of the things he has said in such detail.

I am grateful for the debate because it offers an important chance to reset the narrative that has gone around over recent months about our rural areas. It has been suggested that our rural areas are suddenly in crisis because of things that have happened in recent months. Let us be clear: our rural areas are in crisis because of 14 years of under-investment and the betrayal of the post-Brexit deals that undercut our famers, making their lives much more difficult than they were previously. That needs to be put on the record.

In many ways, our rural areas are suffering because they are too robust, too resourceful, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland said, and too innovative, so they have not been seen to suffer as much as other parts of the country may have done. I have a couple of examples of that from my constituency.

House prices are an issue in my area, as they are across much of the rest of the country. In one village, Hook Norton, people working in local shops and even artists—people valued by the community—have had to leave because they could not afford to stay. Not content to allow that to continue, people in the village set up a community land trust and invested capital in purchasing land to build properties. Last year, the trust opened 12 affordable homes in the village, catering to local communities. The scheme has its own power generation and the homes are covered in solar panels. It is a brilliant example of innovation and looking after the community in the face of challenges from elsewhere.

In the village of Middle Barton, in my constituency, bus services had been cut by the previous Conservative county council, because of decisions made by the Conservative Government in Westminster. Local people took it upon themselves to set up their own bus company, although, granted, it was manned by volunteers. Last year, not long after I was elected, I had the privilege to open the new bus scheme and see the two brand-new buses serving the community, ensuring that people there are not stranded. Those buses are electric, so they are thoroughly in keeping with our climate agenda.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about rural bus services in Oxfordshire. My seat of Reading Central has a boundary with Oxfordshire, and we have noticed in our area that the complete withdrawal of services by Oxfordshire county council was a terrible mistake. Luckily, Reading Buses, a council-run company, serves some of the neighbouring parts of Oxfordshire, near Reading, including villages like Sonning Common, but I have enormous sympathy for his residents in the northern part of the county. I offer my support to those local companies that are obviously doing a very good job.

[Sean Woodcock]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention.

A further example is the village of Charlbury, where there is an installation called South Hill solar farm, a community-owned solar farm providing energy to 1,200 residents. It is an incredibly popular and well-run scheme. It is in an area of outstanding natural beauty, but absolutely everybody there loves it. I mention it because this Government’s ambitions are not contrary to the ambitions of those in rural areas. This Government’s ambitions rely on delivering in rural areas, whether on housing justice, improving public health or, above all, delivering growth, which is our main focus.

However, people are being held back, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland said. They face a double whammy of poor connectivity in relation to transport—we have already touched on buses—and to access to broadband and decent communication services. My plea to the Minister, in my final remarks, is that he makes it clear to his Cabinet colleagues that people in rural areas do not want anything different to what is wanted by those in the urban seats, which may previously have been seen as the Labour heartland. People in rural areas want exactly the same as those in urban areas: access to good health services, education, jobs and affordable housing, and the same opportunities as everybody else.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Zeichner]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Let us speak outside this debate about that particular case; I am not qualified to comment on it at the moment.

Rising energy costs also pose a challenge to rural communities and businesses, and I am all too aware that fuel poverty rates are higher in rural communities. We also have many homes that are off grid. My party’s manifesto was clear: we are determined to lower bills, boost energy security and protect our environment by setting up Great British Energy. GB Energy will also support local and combined authorities and community energy groups to roll out small and medium-scale renewable energy projects, with the goal of increasing local generation across the whole country by up to 8 GW of capacity by 2030.

[Matt Rodda]

In my constituency, there is an excellent small renewable scheme, and I wish to raise that with the Minister and perhaps point out the need for further similar schemes elsewhere. It is a low-head hydro scheme on the River Thames in the village of Caversham, where several hundred users benefit from cheaper electricity. However, there were significant obstacles to setting up the scheme. May I meet my hon. Friend to explain those issues? There are many other weirs along the River Thames. Most of them are not used for such schemes, yet almost all of them are potentially suitable sites for this type of wonderful renewable energy, which offers residents in rural areas a cheaper form of energy.