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Rural Strategy
12.32 pm
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett): I am pleased to present to the House today the Government's rural strategy 2004. As in the rural White Paper 2000, our vision for rural communities is based on delivering genuinely sustainable development, with economic and social strategies consistent with our aim of protecting and enhancing our natural heritage for future generations. Rural strategy 2004 represents an ambitious set of policy priorities for rural communities and the countryside, coupled with radical reforms to the delivery of our policies.
Fresh evidence that we have commissioned confirms that there is relative prosperity in rural areas. For example, measured in terms of average household income, 55 per cent. of households in rural areas are above the median, but the evidence also confirms that the picture is by no means uniform across rural England. Rural society is changing in ways that are blurring the distinction between urban and rural. Farming remains at the heart of rural society, and an important focus of rural policy, but employees in rural businesses are now more likely to be employed in manufacturing, tourism or retailing. Within the overall picture of relative prosperity, there are pockets of economic and social disadvantage.
That evidence shapes our approach to delivering sustainable communities and so puts a premium on policies and on delivery mechanisms that focus on that deprivation. My reform agenda sees the devolution of decisions and delivery—to get help to the areas and people that need it most. To ensure that they are able to access that help, I will ruthlessly streamline the funding support we provide. The present 100 rural, agricultural and environmental funding schemes will be reduced to three major funding programmes linked to strategic priorities, allowing us both to sweep away unnecessary rules and to simplify application processes.
Our policy has three main planks. First, while supporting prosperity across the board, we will act to help the minority of rural areas that are lagging economically. I want rural businesses to have the support they need. This year, I will put an extra £2 million into the Business Link network, to improve support and assistance to businesses, especially those in lagging rural areas. I want all rural business men and women to know that they can turn to a service that understands their needs, including the needs of agricultural businesses and businesses diversifying from agriculture, and a service to help them through the existing maze of services and grants available.
I will devolve decision making and funding for economic regeneration to the regional development agencies, to allow decisions better to reflect the needs and pressures in each region. I am increasing the funding DEFRA provides to the RDAs' single pot from £45 million to £72 million next year. To ensure that it is spent in the most effective way, each region is to put in place arrangements to facilitate rural prioritisation within a strong partnership structure. I shall not impose a single structural form—I want to encourage maximum
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simplification and streamlining—so that regional delivery partners are set free to focus on doing, rather than talking.
Local authorities have a vital role as community leaders in joining up and delivering quality services, so I intend to look at innovative mechanisms for devolving delivery even closer to rural communities. Over the course of this year we will set up a pathfinder in each region, to explore practical ways of providing more joined-up and flexible approaches at local level in rural areas, including joining up services and funding at the point of delivery.
The second plank of our policy is to tackle rural social exclusion wherever it occurs and to achieve fair access to services. Access to transport, to affordable housing and to broadband helps to underpin economic prosperity and social justice for rural dwellers. Last week, the Government announced more money for sustainable housing. My Department will act as guardian, to ensure that that money helps to address social disadvantage in rural areas.
I will devolve money for building capacity in the voluntary and community sector to each region, to be managed through the Government offices, as that sector can truly understand local need and provide innovative solutions. However, I want to be sure that we get an independent assessment of results. The need for a rural advocate is as strong as ever, so I will create a small and well-focused new countryside agency by next April, initially within the legal framework of the existing body, to act as expert watchdog and advocate on behalf of rural communities. Its priority will be rural disadvantage, and it will act as a think-tank and futures body, drawing on its monitoring of progress and best practice to suggest innovative solutions to Government.
The third plank of our policy is to protect and enhance the natural environment in rural areas, and that of our seas, coasts and rivers, and our green spaces in towns and cities. A healthy and attractive countryside brings social benefits such as tranquillity, but also economic benefits; more than 300,000 jobs depend directly on it, and rural tourism brings about £13.8 billion to the rural economy each year.
Rural England is also a treasure trove of diverse and wonderful landscapes and wildlife. Its natural beauty is an asset to be cherished and enhanced. The countryside provides us with the essentials of life; improving its health is the most valuable inheritance we can leave. Our woodlands, for example, help to mitigate the effects of climate change—one of the most serious environmental problems the world faces. Visiting the countryside does much to improve our quality of life, providing recreation, better health and a source of education and learning.
Much of the quality of our landscape and its biodiversity depends on how it is managed by farmers and others. The changes that we are introducing as a result of CAP reform will enhance the positive and reduce the negative impact of farming methods and land management on the environment. As recommended by Lord Haskins, we will establish an integrated agency to deliver our policy objective of a healthy countryside valued and used in a sustainable way. The new agency will be a powerful, independent statutory non-departmental public body, building on the world-class
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strengths of English Nature, the Countryside Agency and the Rural Development Service. Its remit will be the integrated management of our natural heritage that the challenges and environmental threats of the 21st century demand. That will include biodiversity, landscape, and the sustainable use of the countryside, including recreation and access. It will have a remit to carry out its functions within a sustainable development context. It will work closely with the RDAs—and elected regional assemblies, if established—to ensure that the natural environment is taken into account in regional policy making and activity.
The formal establishment of the integrated agency will require primary legislation. I hope to introduce legislation next year and to publish a draft Bill, as an early step. In the meantime, while each of the three bodies will remain responsible for their own statutory duties, they will come together into a confederation of partners by April next year. To help that partnership working, I will move the Rural Development Service from the policy core of DEFRA and give it the autonomy that befits a major delivery body.
This package of policy and delivery reform is aimed at delivering services in a more streamlined and customer-friendly way, through radical devolution to regional and sub-regional partners, as well as to our own delivery agents. The significant streamlining of our funding should make things easier and simpler for our customers. These arrangements are aimed at improving effectiveness in the delivery of our three policy priorities, within an enduring framework of sustainable development. They will also deliver efficiencies, exploiting operational synergies and removing duplication. They have been developed in an inclusive and transparent way. They will build on the excellent work being done across the country by those working for DEFRA and its family, and beyond DEFRA. They will provide greater freedom to staff to get on with delivering what our customers need from the Government, and I am confident our people will rise to that challenge.
I want these reforms to be workable, but sufficiently flexible to meet future challenges and changes. I commend the approach and its implementation to the House.
Mr. Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) (Con): I am grateful to the Secretary of State for the letter that she sent me first thing this morning, although the website referred to in it did not contain any detail of the rural strategy, and for a copy of her statement, which for various reasons, including a mishap—I am not sure whose—I have only seen in the past 15 minutes or so. I welcome the recognition that some rural areas do not share the prosperity enjoyed by other areas, but I am afraid that I do not share her view of how their needs should be addressed.
First, on agriculture, I appreciate that the Government may have more to say about farming-related issues tomorrow, but the Secretary of State's two-and-a-half- page letter—headed, "Rural Strategy 2004"—does not mention either agriculture or farming, and the statement that she just made scarcely did so. That will alarm many people who depend on that vital industry for their livelihood. It suggests that, even now, Labour Ministers do not recognise the central role that farmers play in protecting, maintaining and enhancing
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the rural environment, and the extent to which prosperity in many parts of the countryside is still very directly related to the fortunes of agriculture.
The statement is made against the background of severe problems in many rural communities. Under Labour, rural councils receive less cash support from the Government than their urban counterparts; under Labour, rural communities have fewer police per head of population than their urban counterparts; under Labour, rural bus services receive less support than their urban counterparts; under Labour, homelessness in rural areas is rising; under Labour, police stations in rural areas are closing; and under Labour, post offices in rural areas are disappearing and the proportion of households in rural areas with access to affordable broadband connections is only a tiny fraction of what it is in towns.
Against that background, the proposals summarised in the Secretary of State's letter this morning and in much of the statement that she has just given to the House are vague, often riddled with jargon and sometimes of limited relevance to the needs of rural communities. A dairy farmer worried about the spread of TB, a rural community whose environment is about to be destroyed, against its wishes, by the development of nearby greenfield sites at the insistence of the Deputy Prime Minister or a neighbourhood blighted by illegal fly-tipping will draw no comfort from the waffle that we have just heard from the Secretary of State, such as
"setting up regional pathfinders";
"bringing together partners at regional and sub-regional level";
"consultation about the Department's list of indicator districts in relation to PSA targets".
Why will the Government not stand up for rural communities in a practical way and give local councils, which are democratically accountable, the power to decide how much development takes place on greenfield sites in their districts, what kind of building is allowed and where it should go? Why will the Secretary of State not address the rapidly growing menace of fly-tipping, a problem partly caused by her Department's incompetence in not preparing for the implementation of new laws? Why not, for example, make fly-tipping an arrestable offence now? Without such practical steps her claim—[Interruption.]
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