Rural Communities

Simon Hart Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Roger. I will keep my comments as brief as I can, given what you have told us. I begin the debate by thanking a number of organisations for making contributions that have been very useful not only to me, but to other colleagues—in particular, the National Farmers Union, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Countryside Alliance, the Dispensing Doctors Association and BT.

We have been told that the election in 2015 will be fought largely on urban ground, but I hope that in these opening remarks, I can persuade my hon. Friend the Minister that although we might be small in number in rural areas, we are certainly large in political significance. These days, 20% of the population either live or work in rural areas.

As good Conservatives and, I suspect, good Liberal Democrats, we are always pretty sceptical about the concept of an urban-rural divide, just as we are sceptical about a north-south divide. As good Conservatives, good Liberal Democrats and, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), would no doubt claim, good socialists, we embrace cultures and traditions—[Interruption.] He is objecting to being described as a socialist, I suspect. Even some of the more quirky and weird traditions, we welcome and embrace and, hopefully, champion.

However, although rural isolation is a dream or an aspiration for some people, it is unquestionably a challenge or even a nightmare for others. I say that because the challenges facing rural communities are often the same as those facing urban communities; they just emerge in a slightly different way. Those challenges include deprivation, poverty—particularly fuel poverty, which I know other hon. Members want to touch on—the perhaps more limited choice of educational opportunities in rural areas and the cost of fuel, particularly as that applies to medical needs or basic provisions. Let us not forget that rural fuel can be up to 5p a litre more expensive than the fuel that people can buy in urban areas.

There are also challenges in relation to the availability of rural transport and affordable housing, particularly in national parks. I know that one or two hon. Members are lucky enough to live in or near very beautiful parts of Britain. Not surprisingly, the house prices in those areas are much higher and therefore much further out of reach of those who perhaps were born and bred there and want to remain there for the purposes of their job or family life. The availability of health care is often much more of a challenge in rural areas than it is in urban areas, and the fear of crime—not necessarily crime itself, because the incidence of crime is lower in rural areas—is higher, particularly among elderly people. The last challenge is access to financial services. That is a given if people are lucky enough to live in an urban area, but can become and is increasingly becoming a nightmare for people in rural areas. About 300,000 people in rural England do not even have access to a bank account.

There are also challenges for businesses in rural areas. We can take my own constituency of Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire as an example. Someone might want to make relatively minor modifications—minute improvements—to the infrastructure of their factory or depot. They might want to engage in some rather limited activity. However, if they are in a national park or another sensitive area, they have to prepare themselves for a long and expensive fight with the local planning authority, which in so many cases has as its default setting “You must be joking,” rather than “How can we help your business?”

In some places, if people want to compete with their European colleagues by means of an internet-based business, they can forget it. The same is true in relation to mobile phone coverage. I remember my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) mentioning that mobile phone coverage was better in Uzbekistan than in Cumbria. That is ludicrous. As I think I have mentioned in this Chamber before, I cannot talk to hon. Friends in adjacent constituencies because I cannot get mobile phone reception in west Wales. That is a ludicrous disadvantage, and we suffer because of it.

If a company is, as many companies are, a haulage-based business located in rural areas, often around the ports on the coast of England and Wales, what can it do about its overheads when its only two overheads are fuel and people? When it comes to its lorry fleet, what can it do to address the costs that current fuel prices are imposing on those important businesses?

This is an opportunity for the Minister to lay out the Government’s achievements—that will probably include the achievements of Departments other than his own, because this debate is deliberately wide ranging—and to ask himself, as we have asked ourselves, this question. Is rural patience being stretched at the moment? The Government have done well on broadband, food labelling, red tape in farming, and planning, certainly in England—not as yet in Wales, regrettably, thanks to the Welsh Government. I think that, in time, the Government will be seen to have done well on health and health provision, too. However, the rural jury is still out on affordable housing, post offices, mobile phone coverage, fear of crime and, more recently, on VAT on caravans, fuel poverty and transport costs as well. It is therefore not necessarily a rosy picture of Government enthusiasts in rural areas, but they are there for the picking.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is giving us a most interesting tour d’horizon of problems in rural areas. None the less, he has not touched for the moment on one important area—local government finance. Does he agree that the Government’s forthcoming review of local government finance across England should enable us to change the situation—to correct the anomaly whereby the Government spend about £200 per head in rural areas and about £400 per head in urban areas? Surely that is wrong and the forthcoming review of local government finance and, incidentally, of health finance as well should correct that anomaly.

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend is spot-on. He also highlights some of the difficulties that arise from the definitions of rural and urban. In the past, not just the previous Government but probably the Government before them struggled to get a proper definition that enables that anomaly to be ironed out.

We probably all agree, on both sides of the House, that rural people are entrepreneurial, innovative and, above all, patient. They feel that they perform well despite government, rather than because of it. That does not necessarily apply specifically to the current Government. It is just a general feeling on the part of rural people that they have the skill and determination to overcome the obstacles that sometimes the Government inadvertently put in their path.

Rural people are unquestionably the key to economic regeneration and job creation in rural areas. There is the statistic, which some people might say is trite, that if every small or medium-sized enterprise in Wales hired just one person, there would be no unemployment in Wales at all. That is the raw statistic. Of course it is simplistic, but we are not talking about anything that is out of the reach of most people who have aspirations for their business. Such people epitomise the strivers politicians from all quarters always talk about. We refer to them as if they were our friends. They are the people who are there to bring the country out of recession, and that, indeed, is what they are doing. Sometimes, however, I question whether we quite recognise the additional challenges people in rural areas face in running their businesses.

As the shadow Minister will recall, we used to accuse Labour of doing things to, rather than for, the countryside. That is the nub of my opening remarks, from which my questions arise. I hope the Minister will be able to describe to us how he will be part of a re-energisation of rural communities. I hope he will remind rural communities not only of the fact that the Government are on their side, but of how they are on their side.

I hope the Minister will also be able to tell us about the Government’s plans for broadband and mobile phone coverage in not only rural areas, but isolated rural areas. If the Government’s plans for 95% of the country go ahead, as I hope they will, the few people left in the furthest retreats of rural Britain—the other 5%—will, through a fairly obvious logic, be put at a further disadvantage.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a fabulous point for rural communities. I view broadband as the fourth utility nowadays. Does he agree that companies will start to go back to urban areas unless we get broadband right? That would further exacerbate the difficulties rural communities face in surviving.

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend makes a good point well. The struggle to compete with their urban neighbours has already put that question in the minds of some companies and organisations. What a tragedy it would be if the things my hon. Friend talks about happened. That would go against every one of the principles of not only the Conservative party, but the Liberal Democrats and Labour, too. We should not go down that road.

I hope the Minister will set out the real prospects for fuel costs. I hope he will not say what various people who send us briefs from time to time tell us—that fuel would have been more expensive under Labour. That argument does not work in west Wales or, I suspect, anywhere else. We will start convincing fuel and transport-dependent rural businesses that we take their plight seriously only when the price of fuel comes down. I am not going to say to businesses in my area, “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. It would have been much worse had there been another Government.” Let us not deploy that argument; it does not work, it is disingenuous and it is disrespectful to companies worried about whether they can get through to the end of next month, let alone the end of next year.

I hope the Minister can persuade us that young families will be able to afford to buy a house in the area they wish to work in, the area they were born and brought up in or the area they want to stay in and continue to make a contribution in. Perhaps he can tell us how they will be able to do that.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend pay tribute to, and comment on, the opportunities rural communities have under the community right to build scheme to become developers? Small developments can help the affordable housing situation in villages, but many small villages have been prevented from undertaking any development in the past.

[Simon Hart]

That proposal is welcome. In some areas, of course, it has been subject to bigger planning obstacles than predicted, notwithstanding the improvements that have been made to the planning process, certainly in England. If my community is anything to go by—this is particularly true in the national park, although I do not want to get personal about the national park—even small developers have to pay a significant sum, almost by way of a hidden tax, to undertake such development, and that is a disincentive. I fully recognise my hon. Friend’s positive message, but there are some negative ones, too, and we need to address them if such proposals are to be universally fair.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recognise that there is a fundamental need to distinguish between protecting and preserving the countryside, which are two different things? To protect the countryside, we need development and change so that communities can expand and look after their schools and shops.

[Simon Hart]

I wish I had thought of that myself because it is such an important point. We are sometimes distracted by the preservation argument, but the countryside is actually all about people, jobs and communities, and the landscape, which we are sometimes fixated by, is only a consequence of the tender stewardship of generations of dedicated enthusiasts of the rural big society. My hon. Friend is right to point out that unless we have the conditions and facilities to encourage that, everything else we, the nation and our foreign visitors admire about the countryside will be compromised.

My next question for the Minister—it is not a sarcastic question—is which bits of the recent Budget does he believe give hope and encouragement to businesses in rural areas? Which bits remind them that they should welcome life under the coalition and let them see some sort of vision arising out of the Chancellor’s recent comments?

In drawing to a conclusion, I want to refer to the views of voters and constituents in west Wales. I do not know whether I am unique in this respect, but voters in my area do not really give a damn where the Prime Minister went to school. They have no interest whatever in who he might or might not have to dinner, and they certainly have no interest in what might or might not be on his tax return. All they want to know is whether the Government are bold, trustworthy and competent, and whether the Government’s values are the same as theirs. Those are the things I get asked about—not all the other fluff and nonsense that floats around this place from time to time—and they probably reflect the views of rural, and indeed urban, people across Britain.

In my short opening remarks, I hope I have been able to provide an absolutely open goal for the Minister to aim at. I hope he can convince us that we can continue proudly to defend the reputation of the Conservative party as the party of the countryside.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—