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Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must be allowed to speak.

Mr. Yeo: I am afraid that Labour Members do not like the truth about what they have done to our rural communities. Without such practical steps, the Secretary of State's claim that her policy will protect the rural environment will ring very hollow indeed in many parts of the countryside.

In turning to that part of the statement that deals with the response to Lord Haskins' review, I make clear our support for the broad thrust of many of his conclusions and, in particular, that too many organisations have become involved in the delivery of rural policy, leading to confusion, inefficiency and a lack of co-ordination and accountability. Proposals to reduce the number of organisations to a more manageable number are therefore desirable. However, as the Secretary of State has said, since legislation will be needed to set up the new
 
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integrated agency, there seems a danger that, until parliamentary time is available, uncertainty may now blight some of the work of the existing bodies. Since the Countryside Agency is apparently to continue as a rump, there still seems to be a lack of clarity in the Government's mind about how the new arrangements will work.

Let me also make it clear that we do not agree that the regional development agencies are the right bodies to perform an expanded role in delivering any aspect of rural policy. The idea that using regional development agencies—and, possibly, and even worse, elected regional assemblies—will bring the delivery of services even closer to rural communities is so absurd that it can be proposed only by a Minister who neither knows nor cares what life is like in the remoter parts of East Anglia and the south-west.

Regional development agencies are unaccountable, bureaucratic quangos that are wasteful in their use of public resources. They exercise powers that have mostly been seized from elected local authorities, particularly county councils. The fact that their main champion is the Deputy Prime Minister should alone make anyone in rural communities suspicious of them. We all know that the Deputy Prime Minister has only one view of the countryside and that is as a vast potential building site.

It is a pity that the Secretary of State has done nothing in her period in office to protect our landscape from the unwanted and intrusive developments imposed by the Deputy Prime Minister or to defend the rights of elected county and district councils to exercise local control over the scale of new development. We will fight the transfer of any more responsibilities to regional development agencies in the context of rural policy.

I am also concerned that the important independent advisory role at present entrusted by law to English Nature will still be performed properly under the proposed new arrangements. From time to time—for example, over the issue of GM crops and their environmental impact—the independent advice that English Nature has provided has been uncomfortable for the Government, but the need for that advice and the need for an independent voice able to speak up with the authority of a statutory body remain. I am therefore concerned that the new arrangements will not fully recognise this need.

I am concerned also that, although the aim of the proposals is to streamline the machinery through which rural policy is delivered, the situation will, in certain respects, get more complicated. For example, the role envisaged for regional rural affairs forums is a move in the opposite direction. They will be talking shops for so-called stakeholders and nothing more.

People in my constituency of South Suffolk and in other rural areas are used to plain speaking. There has not been much of that from the Secretary of State today. For too long, rural communities have been at the bottom of the Government's agenda. They have been discriminated against in terms of financial support and neglected through the provision of new services, with their age-old traditions held in contempt by urban new Labour Ministers, their industries endangered by imports, often produced to lower standards than those
 
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required here, and their environment destroyed in too many areas by a stroke of the Deputy Prime Minister's pen. Judging by what the Secretary of State said today, only the election of a Conservative Government will start the process of addressing their real and urgent needs.

Margaret Beckett: I got the distinct impression that the hon. Gentleman had understood neither the statement, nor, despite his experience, the reality of what is happening in rural areas. Let me pick up on a couple of the many points that he made. He talked about ignoring the central role of farmers, but I specifically identified and recognised that, as we do through the £17 billion that goes to farmers under pillar 1 of the common agricultural policy. He is right that there are other occasions to make more detailed announcements about farming—today's statement was about rural areas as a whole. Some 25 per cent. of those employed in rural areas are employed in manufacturing, which is more than in urban areas. Some 9 per cent. are employed in tourism, with 7 per cent. in retailing and 6 per cent. in agriculture. I share his view that agriculture is enormously important, but it is a pity that he seems to think that unless we are talking about farming, we are not talking about rural areas.

The hon. Gentleman listed ways in which he thought that rural areas were discriminated against under Labour, but ignored the fact that under this Government, all councils have received more money and every area has more police services. Under this Government, £450 million has been put into supporting rural post offices. He was foolish enough to talk about post offices disappearing, but it was because many commercial rural enterprises disappeared under the Government of whom he was a member that we were forced to introduce a special rate relief for villages with only one such enterprise left. They did not all disappear under us, but under them.

The hon. Gentleman made a totally unwise and inaccurate remark about English Nature and GM crops. English Nature advised us to run the trials, which we did, and after we received the results of the trials, a scientist from English Nature told us that he could not understand why anyone would oppose something that was better for the environment. Of course, however, that is quite consistent, because the only Government who brought GM products on to the market in this country were the Government of whom he was a member.

The hon. Gentleman said that people like plain speaking and that rural areas have been at the bottom of the agenda under this Government. The plain-speaking truth is that if the Conservatives' stewardship of rural areas had been as he said, and if they had not taken many rural areas and their support completely for granted, we would not now have some 180 Labour MPs representing rural and semi-rural constituencies.

Andrew George (St. Ives) (LD): I thank the Secretary of State for providing me with an advance copy of her statement, although that happened after the Prime Minister rose to his feet for Prime Minister's questions—within half an hour of the statement itself. I did not receive a letter from her, although I have received a communication to tell me that the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who shares
 
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my surname, received the letter rather than me. Perhaps the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs needs to examine its bureaucratic procedures.

I understand why the Department has been drawn into the vortex of incredibly fluffy thinking that often arises when talking about rural development. Indeed, paragraph 40 of the candid report that the Secretary of State penned in autumn 2003 to review the progress of the rural White Paper said that

"defining effectively what is meant by the concept of 'rural areas' versus urban"

areas has been a challenge. In the same report, she said:

"The White Paper's inevitably aspirational nature means that it has not always been easy to pin down what it has actually meant in practice, and different groups and individuals have tended to interpret it differently. This in turn has made it harder to be specific about the outcomes that the Government wants to see in rural areas and to target resources to those areas and people with greatest need."

At least she acknowledged that, three years after the publication of the rural White Paper, the Government were not clear about what they were intending to do in the first place.

The problem is that on top of the labyrinth of strategies, initiatives, pilots and projects, the rural strategy will fail if it merely adds to the strong sense of fatigue among the agencies, local authorities and Government Departments that are expected to implement it. The streamlining of initiatives and the funds announced today by the Secretary of State will help, but at least she was honest in her review of the rural White Paper when she said that among its "successes" it was "increasingly understood". It should now recognise the problems conventionally found in strategies created to give the impression of purposefulness, compared to the determined action required in rural areas today.

I agreed with the principles that the Secretary of State set out, the general thrust of the reforms that she mentioned to clarify and devolve matters and the work to avoid rural areas becoming the exclusive preserve of the better-off. What has she done since the autumn to define what rural areas are, and do all Departments agree with the definition, especially the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister in its delivery of housing policy? Does the strategy supersede the rural White Paper? Will she explain in plain English the core objective of the strategy and is she confident that it will this time be understood across Government Departments?

Has the Secretary of State discussed the strategy on rural-proofing with her colleagues in the Treasury, who I understand are working tirelessly to ensure that Britain is removed from objective 1 and other European regional development aid? If that is the case, the money that the Government are proposing to add to rural regeneration might not even begin to match that withdrawn from the most needy rural areas that will lose aid.

The Secretary of State said that money will be given to regional development agencies, but will it be apportioned according to need or simply on the basis of rural populations? What will be the role of the fully independent sector in rural delivery? Over decades, we have had the tried and tested process of rural community councils throughout rural England providing an excellent means of delivery, so bypassing
 
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them or giving funds to regional development agencies so that RCCs must try to draw money from them would not be a good mode of delivery. She should use the existing method of delivery to ensure that the money gets to the ground, and I would like some reassurance on that matter.

On the environment, farmers are pivotal to delivering what the Government want throughout the countryside, but they are going out of business at the rate of 12 a day. Lord Haskins says that he thinks that the fact that farms are becoming larger is a good thing, although I do not know whether that is Government policy. What are Government doing to ensure that there are sufficient farmers so that their targets for the countryside may be met?

The biggest challenge facing rural areas today is housing, so what is the Department going to do about that? If rural areas are not to become the exclusive preserve of the better-off, sustainable action is needed to ensure that rural areas are there for rural people.

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