Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Graham Stuart

Thursday 15th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

  Many of my farmers in South East Cornwall already find it difficult to deal with the amount of paperwork they have. Some will have seen the entertaining but very informative show by Jeremy Clarkson, as he worked his farm. How is the Department proactively going to help our farmers achieve global sales?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Graham Stuart)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her championing of her constituency and Cornwall’s farmers. We are opening markets, as we have discussed. We are activating farmers with our “Open Doors” campaign, and we are grateful for the support of the National Farmers Union and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board. We have a mentoring scheme, which I was delighted to launch in the south-west, and we are leading trade missions such as “Spring into Japan”, to make sure that on a greater scale than ever before we are engaging more farmers’ produce with global markets, leading to jobs and prosperity in her constituency and beyond.

Local Government Funding: Rural Areas

Debate between Sheryll Murray and Graham Stuart

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

On this side of the House, but, I am pleased to say, in all parts of the House. They are here because they want a system that is fair to all. Conservative Members represent rural areas, but we also represent suburban and urban areas. We do not want a system that is reverse-gerrymandered, an unfair mirror image of the previous system. We want a system that is demonstrably and objectively fair to all, as far as such a system can reasonably be delivered.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the absence of representation on the other side of the House shows that this aspect of funding does not seem to affect different parts of the country in different ways? Labour Members representing urban areas do not feel the same concern, because their constituents do not have the same worries.

[Graham Stuart]

Historically, most of the Labour party’s support has come from the urban heartlands. That may have led it, when in government, always to use concentrated deprivation as an excuse for moving funds to those urban heartlands, at the expense of rural areas. As I said at the outset, it is important to bear in mind that people in rural areas are not part of an idyll. They are not richer; indeed, on average they are poorer.