Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of job security in rural areas.

Rural policy is a devolved matter, and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

The UK Government is committed to improving the quality of life for people living and working in rural areas. To achieve this, we are ensuring that the needs of people and businesses in rural areas are at the heart of policymaking including in the government’s economic growth agenda.

Defra has a team dedicated to developing the evidence base on rural areas. It publishes the Statistical Digest for Rural England to provide up-to-date analysis across a wide range of subjects including information on employment and redundancy rates in rural areas.

In Q2 2024, the percentage of working-age people (16-64) in employment was 79.1% in Rural areas and 73.9% in Urban areas.

Redundancy rates in England have fluctuated over time, although both Rural and Urban areas have shown an overall decrease in redundancies over the period 2007 to 2024 (falls of 2.5 and 2.3 redundancies per 1,000 employees respectively). In Q2 2024 redundancy rates were lower in Rural areas than in Urban areas, at 3.8 and 4.0 redundancies per 1,000 employees respectively.