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Mr. Archie Norman (Tunbridge Wells): I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his statement. The White Paper has been long awaited and much delayed. The right hon. Gentleman said that he did not want to divide town and country. It is a pity, therefore, that he was unable to deliver on his promise to issue the urban and rural White Papers simultaneously, so that we could see how they related to each other.
None the less, we are glad that the rural White Paper is finally here. There is no doubt that, when Conservative Members have studied it, we will welcome some of its proposals--not least tranquillity measures and access to emergency services, about which we have read in the newspapers, and, as we have heard today, help for small abattoirs. All those measures will be welcome.
However, may I remind the House of the state of rural life under this Government, to which the Deputy Prime Minister referred? We face an unprecedented crisis in farming. It is probable that, during the life of this Government, some 50,000 farmers will lose their livelihoods for good. The suicide rate among farmers is
the highest on record, and there is a rapid and increasing loss of green fields to development under this Government--[Interruption.] Yes. Crime is rising in the countryside faster than anywhere else, rural pubs are closing at a rate of six a week and post offices at a rate of two a week, and the stealth tax burden is falling most heavily on the shire counties. There has been a 34 per cent. increase in fuel duty and, as we heard yesterday, council tax in the shire counties is likely to rise by 30 per cent. during the life of this Government.The test of the White Paper will be whether it addresses the guts of that a crisis. What, if anything, in the White Paper will result in a single farmer staying in business as a farmer? Will anything lead to a single housing estate not being built, or to a single crime being prevented?
The White Paper relaxes planning restrictions in a number of areas, but does it do anything to reverse the accelerating loss of green fields to development--the vicious circle of the decline of the inner cities and the concreting of the countryside? Does the Deputy Prime Minister recognise that his commitment to force councils in the south-east to build 900,000 new houses--50 per cent. on green fields--and those in the south-west to build 460,000 new houses, of which more than 60 per cent. will probably be built on green fields, will only perpetuate the loss of the countryside? Proposing in a White Paper to build over it is no solution. We need less interference and more local control over local planning. All the tranquillity measures in the world will be as nothing unless the right hon. Gentleman's central planning diktats on housebuilding are revised.
Does the Deputy Prime Minister realise how hopelessly superficial some of the measures in the White Paper, such as those on e-inclusion, are? Post offices are closing at rate of two a week. It was the Government's decision to withdraw cash services from post offices, putting them into crisis. Putting a computer terminal into a post office is a perfectly nice idea, but it is completely superficial and will make no substantive difference. Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that the real issue for e-commerce in the countryside is the rolling out of broadband? Every forecast and everything that the Government have done suggests a permanently disadvantaged countryside--because of the Government's failure to deregulate telecoms in order to ensure that such rolling out takes place.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister clarify the position on rate relief? He said in the statement that the plan is to ensure that rate relief for village shops and post offices is made mandatory. However, the White Paper states:
- We are consulting in our Green Paper Modernising Local Government Finance on an expansion of the village shop rate relief scheme.
Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that most people living in the countryside depend not just on buses but on cars? We welcome investment in rural bus services, but does he not understand that less well-off farmers--whose incomes have, as he said, dropped by 65 per cent.--pensioners and parents taking their children to school in
remote areas rely on the car? They have borne the brunt of stealth taxes. A 3p cut in fuel duty would go much further than any proposal in the White Paper to boost the rural economy.Is there anything in the White Paper that will prevent a further rise in rural crime? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware--he did not mention it in his statement--that there was a 6 per cent. increase in burglaries in the countryside in the last year alone, which was a reverse of the trend experienced under the Conservative Government; that there was a 23 per cent. increase in car crime; and that the driving force behind the increase in crime is the reduction in the strength of rural policing by 1,750 under this Government? People in the countryside now have to go to town to see what a policeman looks like. Is there anything in the White Paper that will prevent a similar rise in crime next year?
Is not the £40 million that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned money that had already been announced, representing no real-terms increase in the expenditure on police in the countryside? Is any of the £1 billion-worth of investment in the countryside that he has claimed genuinely new money? If any of it is money that has not been previously announced, what is it and how much does it amount to?
Does not the White Paper make the Government's attitude to farming clear? Of the 176 pages of the document, only 11 relate even remotely to agriculture. To sum it all up, on page 86, in response to the worst crisis in agriculture since the 1930s, the Deputy Prime Minister unveils--wait for it--the "electronic rural portal". That was not quite what the farmers had in mind.
Is not the real truth that the urban White Paper was the right hon. Gentleman's top priority? That was seen as something of a flop, and the rural White Paper is the afterthought. It lacks any vision; is fragmented; and is degraded by emphasis on glossy gimmicks. The right hon. Gentleman made his view of country people clear at the Labour party conference. He gave the impression today that he was talking about a foreign country. The fact that he does not understand the countryside may be understandable, but the fact that he does not care about the countryside is unforgivable.
Mr. Prescott: The more questions the hon. Gentleman asks, the less definitive becomes his approach. I shall respond to some of his questions--I think you would rule me out of order if I attempted to answer every one of them, Mr. Speaker.
May I deal first with the delay. We announced in 1998 that we would commit ourselves to a White Paper. We are within the timetable for that. I said that the document would possibly be published before the summer. A number of decisions, especially those announced in the Chancellor's pre-Budget statement, made it necessary to publish the White Paper after that statement, and we decided to do so today.
There has been some debate about whether the urban and rural White Papers should be published at the same time. Different views have been expressed, but I arrived at the view that we should separate them. People in rural areas and Labour Members representing rural constituencies said that if we put the two together it would look as if the urban view was overwhelming the rural view. I did not necessarily accept that view, but I could
see the difficulty. I accepted that it was better to make two statements, and I hope that the House welcomes that and that we can concentrate on rural matters today.The hon. Gentleman referred to a catalogue of decline. After my statement, I thought that he might have held back. I have referred to the decline in the number of village schools, shops and transport services, which we are addressing in the White Paper. All of it took place during the Conservative Administration. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that a rural White Paper is necessary to deal with these matters, I have to tell him that it took the Conservatives 16 years to produce a rural White Paper, and 12 months later they produced a progress report that said that not much progress had been made. There was plenty of talk but no action, and no policy was implemented. Within three years, the Labour Government have produced White Papers on urban and rural affairs and implemented a series of proposals for change to meet the requirements. That is a far better response than one White Paper in 16 years under the previous Administration.
On the question whether farming is in decline, that has been pretty evident not only for the past two decades, but for longer than that. The population employed in agriculture has continued to decline. Although Tory Members now represent only a minority of rural areas, they must know from their experience, as do my colleagues, who represent the majority of the rural areas, that there has been considerable decline in the industry and many difficulties resulting from the changes in agriculture policy.
That is undoubtedly true, and it is why my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has produced a number of agriculture policies to deal with those difficulties. The most recent is the action programme to tackle the problems facing the industry in the past few months. Yes, the industry is in decline. At the request of the industry and rural communities for more favourable circumstances for diversification, we have produced our proposals and made extra resources available.
It is true that we have given greater priority to affordable housing. That is largely because many authorities were engaged in selling their housing stock as second houses--or executive homes, as the hon. Gentleman would call them. [Interruption.] Yes, whether we like it or not, the quaint country cottage has become the executive second home, and that has denied people who want to live in the area the chance to have a home.
Yes, we have increased the amount of money available for affordable housing. We have also increased the possibility of new resources by removing the 50 per cent. discount on council tax. That is a matter on which I must consult, but Wales has already introduced such a measure and shown that it can work. I want to make sure that the extra money taken by local authorities who withdraw that discount will be directed to providing affordable housing. That is a priority and it is one of the matters on which we differ from the Opposition.
On the question whether we are building on greenfield sites, we have carried out a review of PPG3 and PPG6, which deal with supermarkets--a subject on which the hon. Gentleman has much more experience than I do. Much of the greenfield area was developed for that purpose.
The same argument applies, whether the planning is for the south-east or the south-west. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I cannot comment on planning arrangements still to be brought before the House. In general, however, as we have made it clear time and again, priority should be given to brownfield sites for housebuilding. We also believe in greater density and better quality design. That, in our view, would meet the demand for housing in the south-east with no greater land take. It is simple mathematics to divide the land by the number of houses and determine the density required. Our proposals will not lead to a greater demand for land.
We have increased the green belt by 30,000 hectares in three years, whereas the previous Administration added only 1,500 hectares to the green belt. Again, that shows the difference between us. Our record on the green belt, development and planning agreements is far better.
On rural crime, the hon. Gentleman cites the statistics rather selectively. We all accept the British crime survey report; I have heard it quoted by the Opposition. Let us first remind ourselves that throughout the period of the Tory Government, crime doubled in rural and urban areas. It doubled. The hon. Gentleman seemed to suggest that it had subsequently got worse. The British crime survey report shows that between 1997 and 1999, burglaries went down 20 per cent, rural violence went down 22 per cent. and vehicle theft went down 20 per cent. That is not consistent with the suggestion that crime has got worse in rural areas.
The statistics deployed by the hon. Gentleman are typical. The greatest hypocrisy in his argument is not only that he asked what new money there is--clearly, there is new money, as I have told the House--but that he made no commitment to continue that extra public expenditure. We know that the Opposition would maintain the expenditure on health and possibly education, but they would not maintain other expenditure. Recently, the Opposition Treasury spokesman, the hon. Member for Croydon, South (Mr. Ottaway), said:
- We have made it quite clear that we do not intend to match the Government on public spending.
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