Local Government Funding: Rural Areas

Debate between Victoria Prentis and Graham Stuart

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend has said, except one thing. We are not just the party of rural England. We are the party of the whole United Kingdom, and what we want, what we have pressed for, and what this campaign has always sought on a cross-party basis, is a system that is fair to all.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I do not represent some rural idyll. I represent two large and growing towns, Banbury and Bicester. I feel particularly strongly about the fact that because of the shortfall in local government funding my council is having to make some very difficult funding decisions that will affect areas of real deprivation. They will affect, for instance, children’s centres and health and wellbeing centres. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is a worry?

[Graham Stuart]

Absolutely. It is a worry. The distribution of funds becomes more important, not less, during a period of flat or reduced expenditure. It is a bit like when the sea goes out and all the undulations—the inequities—are suddenly exposed. That is what happens during a period of sustained control over public finances, which Conservative Members recognise as being inevitable following the economic wreckage that was left behind by the Labour party.