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4.24 pm
Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con): I shall transport the House from the boroughs of London to beautiful Devon, which is looking particularly good at the moment. The primroses are out in the banks, as are the celandines, and there is a touch of green in the hedges. I hope that many Members will spend their Easter break in my county.
I shall raise some problems in rural Devon. The size of my rural constituency is 600 sq miles. It is made up of small market towns and very small villages. Today, as I was thinking about what I wanted to say about Devon villages, I received a letter from the Countryside Agency advising me that the vital villages programme will close to new applicants. At the heart of this is the fact that the agency has had a reduction of £104.5 million in its settlement. Therefore, it will have to readjust its last published corporate plan.
The purpose of the vital villages programme was to enable villages to plan for their own future and to come together with the community to consider the vital services that all villages need. I fear for the survival of some of my villages where they already have problems with maintaining village halls. We have had much to say about village halls but they are important to a small community. I think particularly of my most northerly parish of Morebath, which is on the Exmoor border. Unfortunately, the village hall became so unsafe that it had to be demolished. The land is still available but the community must save from scratch to build a new hall.
In the south of my constituency, I have an acute problem in a small village called Gittisham, near the town of Honiton. Only a week ago, the occupants of 27 homes, all owned by one landlord, were advised that their tenancies would be terminated. That represents two thirds of the village. The impact on the community speaks for itself. Members should visualise the impact in the context of a town. If two thirds of a town's community were told, "You have three months' notice", that would present a real problem to that town or that community. I am working with all the agencies that are trying to find a solution to that acute problem.
East Devon district council, which constitutes the housing department in that part of Devon, is faced with having to rehouse these people. It already has 3,600
people on the housing list waiting for a home. Families with children will want to remain connected with their local schools. Elderly people will have packages of support from their social services department. I have written to the Minister, Lord Rooker, and I hope that his Department will fast-track an answer to me today so that when I return to Devon for the Easter recess I can meet the community and, if not solve the problem overnight, at least identify some options that might alleviate the acute problem that is faced in this small village.Every village has the problem of post office closures. In my postbag today, I received a letter from the Payhembury parish council in east Devon, to advise me that it is concerned that it will lose access to its local village petrol pump because of action taken by the Environment Agency, which in following through a small spillage of oil has identified that although that problem has been sorted, the very small petrol station will have to fix some kit to the petrol pumps. The capital investment will be more than the petrol station makes in profit from the pumps. I hope that the Minister, who is smiling, is smiling sympathetically in response to the problem. If Payhembury loses its petrol pumps, motorists will have to make a 15-mile round trip to get petrol.
A small shop is attached to the petrol station. If the pumps go, there is a risk that the village shop will be lost as well. These are the day-to-day problems in villages in glorious Devon.
It seems a most untimely decision to curtail the activities of the Countryside Agency in its support for villages and rural communities that face myriad problems. My message to the Minister on the Treasury Bench, who I know will take up these matters with the appropriate Government Departments, is please to think again about the problems of rural communities.
At the heart of rural communities, of course, is the farming industry. My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) mentioned the impact of the changes to the common agricultural policy and the very difficult problems we will have on the uplands. I am worried about that because the landscape will change—it will go back to nature. That does not mean that it will look more beautiful than it does now. It will look unkempt and wild, so there will be a big environmental impact.
As my hon. Friend rightly pointed out, that is not land on which one can grow crops, but it is suitable for rearing animals. Is it not ironic that at a time when we may not be able to support farming and animal farming on the uplands, we face the prospect, through changes to the rules on animal transportation, that we may end up eating more horses? Perhaps that is the game plan. We will not eat cattle and sheep; we will have to resort to eating horses.
We have been pressing the Government to use their powers to ensure the protection of horses, particularly horses that go abroad and end up in the meat trade, especially in France—a subject I know about, having been responsible at one time for equine health. We are begging the Government to ensure that the long-standing protection of our ponies on Dartmoor and in the New Forest—those low-value horses that we have always protected from being sold off as cheap meat
abroad—is maintained in our British law. I urge the Government again today to use that power to ensure that our horses are protected.I know that hon. Members are concerned about the time, but I shall raise one more issue. I was bitterly disappointed yesterday. I tried not to show it. I tried to be brave about it. After months and months of putting my name in the ballot for a question at Prime Minister's Question Time, I came up in the ballot yesterday, but I was No. 9 and that number was not reached. I must admit that I did not know until yesterday morning that I was in the ballot. I had got so used to not being drawn in the ballot that I had forgotten to look. It is rather like the national lottery—I forget to look to see whether I have won anything. There it was: No. 9, so I spent most of yesterday morning preparing the killer question to the Prime Minister, which I never had the chance to deliver.
I shall deliver the question now to the Minister on the Treasury Bench. It is about why the Prime Minister persists in denying the United Kingdom a referendum on the EU constitution. Within a year after the Government came in, they had had four referendums. Since they have been in office, they have held 34 referendums. So keen were they to move to referendums to give people a greater say in decision making that they introduced the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. That showed us that they were serious and that they had a long-term plan to keep on holding referendums. What happened?
The Government promised a referendum on the euro, but every public opinion poll has shown that, even if they held a referendum, they would not win it. The same is true of the constitution. The Prime Minister uses all sorts of excuses. First he says it is a matter for Parliament, and he prays in aid the fact—I shall say this very slowly—that an EU constitution is not a constitutional matter. Discuss. We will try and discuss it as much as we can. It is illogical to suggest that a matter to which so much time has been devoted and on which there is a document on the table entitled "EU Constitution" is not a constitutional matter.
I shall indulge myself by elaborating on the question that I intended to put the Prime Minister. There has been a lot of talk about a speech made in Berlin on the EU constitution, but one speech was made before my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition made his, and that was the speech made by the right hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Mandelson). In Berlin, in 1998, he said:
- "Today, people want to be more involved. Tony Blair's Government has already held two referendums and three more are at some stage in prospect, not to mention more citizens' movements, more action from pressure groups. Democracy and legitimacy need constant renewal. They need to be redefined with each generation. Representative government is being complemented by more direct forms of involvement from the internet to referendums. This requires a different style of politics and we are trying to respond to these changes."
Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Con): They are bottling out.
Mrs. Browning: They are bottling out. I am grateful to my hon. Friend.
If I am ever fortunate enough to be successful again in the ballot for Prime Minister's questions, I shall return to that subject because the British people deserve to have a say in a constitution.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. At least five, perhaps six, hon. Members are trying to catch my eye in the remaining 60 or so minutes available. In a spirit of good will as Easter approaches, perhaps hon. Members will have regard to their colleagues so that everyone can be fitted in.
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