Local Government Finance (England)

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate on the local government settlement for 2013-14. I start by paying tribute to the Minister, who has gone out of his way to make himself available to those of us who are concerned about the impact of the settlement and to listen to us. I appreciate the way in which Front Benchers have engaged with this.

I will speak mostly about funding for rural areas. The Rural Services Network, which brings together not only local government in rural areas but all sorts of health bodies and others, has analysed this year’s settlement and found that, at first look—I do not want to repeat too much of the debate we had on Monday night—the effect of damping in the eventual settlement is to increase the rural penalty, which already sits at 50%. Urban areas, as defined by the Government, get 50% more per head than rural areas.

Opposition Members should try telling the hon. Members for Workington (Sir Tony Cunningham), for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) or for Copeland (Mr Reed) that rural areas are all leafy and wealthy. They should come to my constituency, visit Withernsea and the areas there and see whether everyone is wealthy. They are not. We need to ensure that allocations are fair, based on need.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the rural penalty, which he is describing so eloquently, is getting worse, not better? Although we are absolutely delighted that Ministers are listening to us, I believe that we can mobilise the yeomanry in the countryside if we need to in order to make our point, because we want Ministers not only to listen, but to act.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who led the Back-Bench business debate on Monday. He is absolutely right. The test for the rural fair share campaign, which I chair with my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) and the hon. Member for Workington, is to have an urban-based Labour MP, moderate and reasonable—quite a number are—if not exactly getting out the bunting and cheering at the prospect, then recognising the strength of the argument in favour of fairness and meeting the needs in rural areas.

It is not some sort of grab. I think that it was perhaps too easy under the previous Government, with a Labour majority, to use deprivation and the cry from the big urban areas to keep skewing the funding more and more. It was both politically convenient and the deprivation provided a kind of moral veil. The position we are in now, with a rural penalty of 50%, is indefensible. If it is defensible, will someone please stand up and make the case?

Age is also a key driver of cost. In rural areas such as the one I represent, we have both an elderly population and a great number of people on low incomes. That combination needs to be addressed, as does the cost of service delivery, because it is more expensive to deliver many services, although not all, in the rural East Riding than it is to deliver them in north Hull. The last thing I want to do is talk down the residents of north Hull or of any other part of the country, urban or otherwise, but we need to have another look at need and ensure that we, preferably with a broad consensus across the House, can have a settlement that is fair to all, even at a time of reductions in public spending, as we are seeing now.