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24 Mar 2009 : Column 6WH—continued
Let us start with the Select Committee report. Certainly I have some pride in what we penned. It is a good analysis of the problems and comes up with a number of solutions. There were two key points of inquiry that we started from. The first was the degree to which the rural economy can mainstream policies. We see this with the recession at the moment. The recession has an impact, but policies can also impact on the rural economy
in the same way as they do on the urban economy. I have never believed that we have a sacrosanct rural economy that sits in splendid isolation and is different from the rest of the country. I feel strongly that we caricature the rural economy in that way to our cost. We also too often fall into the trap of believing that there is one rural economy and that we can have policies that embrace that.
That is one reason why some of us were never happy about having any form of Ministry of rural affairs. It tends to make people believe that they can pull levers, but as the Select Committee has found time after time with our inquiries, DEFRA is unable to pull those levers in the rural economy, because so many of them are with—dare I say it?—higher-order Departments such as the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Department of Health and the Department for Transport. Nevertheless, DEFRA can have an influence, and one of the good things that it has introduced is the idea of rural-proofing to see how wider policies are playing a part in the rural economy. That has become part of our lexicon.
The second point of inquiry was to consider the potential for economic growth. Again, I am a wee bit disappointed that although the hon. Member for North Wiltshire quoted Stuart Burgess on a number of occasions, he did not refer to what Stuart Burgess said on that issue. He came up with astounding figures when he said that the unlocked potential of the rural economy is worth between £236 billion and £347 billion. All parties need to consider that as their starting point. One problem is that we are not considering how development can be a keynote element in what we talk about and do.
My area is suffering because, again, there is a misunderstanding of the Strouds of this world. My area has a higher percentage of people employed in manufacturing than the national average and a higher percentage than anywhere else in Gloucestershire. At the moment, a number of the bigger firms face difficulties, which has a knock-on effect on the smaller firms. That said, one of the strange elements for someone such as me, who calls continually for a local supply chain, is that not having as much of a local supply chain as we want has meant that there has not been as great an impact on some of those smaller firms as I had feared. However, we do need to find ways to forestall some of the worst impacts of the recession.
Like other hon. Members, I am involved every week in negotiations to try to protect jobs—principally to secure training opportunities in two of the larger companies in my area, Renishaw and Delphi. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will take this point away, although of course it is not her responsibility: we need to ensure that we get wage compensation into the automotive industry, so that we can give value to that training. I and a number of other hon. Members are calling for that.
Interestingly, agriculture is having almost a counter-cyclical impact on the economy. I do not believe that farming is going through an unalloyed period of joy. Nevertheless, the figures from 2007-08—the latest year for which we have figures—showed growth of nearly 40 per cent. in total income from farming. That can only be a good thing at the moment, because that
money is going into the rural economy. The Committee’s current inquiry is on food security. Without wishing to prejudge it in any way, I think that the future must be in our growing more of our own food. That means more farmers and more land. Although I could argue with the Government about the set-aside rules at the moment, perhaps we need to move on and consider the opportunities to which I have just referred, because that will help our rural economy and it really concentrates our minds on what opportunities there are.
There are other impacts on the rural economy. I think that the Government have a good record on protection of public services—bar the Post Office, which I shall deal with separately. In my area, we have blocked the closures of village schools, other than in one case, in which there was an amalgamation. In other parts of Gloucestershire there have been closures, but that is because there are, in effect, no young people living in those villages any more. All parties have to face up to the fact that there has been rural depopulation. There has not necessarily been a huge movement of people away, but there has been a change in terms of social class—we know about the cost of living and the cost of housing in those areas—and we have also seen the ageing of the countryside. That is having an enormous impact, and the more rural and peripheral the areas, the greater the impact has been. We must do something to overcome that.
When Labour came to power in 1997, some of us set up the Back-Bench group of rural Labour MPs and we did a rural audit. I think that that document has stood the test of time. I pay tribute to Peter Bradley, who was the chair. He is sadly no longer with us. We found that the overwhelming issue in rural Britain at that time was access to good public transport. Lack of such access was the reason why people either could not or did not live there. When we examined the issue again, housing had clearly moved way up the agenda. I suspect that at the moment the issue of jobs would be paramount in most people’s minds. Again, we have to turn that into an opportunity, rather than just seeing it as a threat.
As the rural advocate, rural tsar or whatever we want to call Stuart Burgess has been saying, there is clearly untapped potential in the rural economy. That has as much to do with jobs as anything else. We must recognise that we have to create jobs in rural Britain, and that we can do so. If we do that, we have to have people who can live in rural Britain, and we have to have reasonable transport so that people can move about there.
The Government, with their rural transport grants and some of the things that they have done on health and a rural policy domain, have done well. The issue of the Post Office, however, is a running sore. I believe that the closures were often unnecessary and hurried and could have been dealt with in other ways. I have to say that dealing with Post Office Ltd or Royal Mail is part of the problem because they seem to have a death wish in terms of the services. I am pleased that at long last—through ideas such as the post bank and offering postal services, rather than the complete panoply of things that one would expect in a post office—we are beginning to move on and see how a flexible approach can begin to lock those services in.
Let us move on to the private sector. The situation is in a sense gloomier there, partly because of the current state of the economy, but more than anything because
of the way in which many of our villages have changed in terms of social stratification. We have seen the closure of shops and pubs, and we have seen other services dependent on them suffer. We could argue all day about the causes of that. I am pleased to see the work being done by the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland). With the help of some of us, he has just made a submission regarding the Select Committee on Business and Enterprise inquiry into the future of pubs. That looks at, very straightforwardly, the role of pubcos—pub companies—which I think has been largely negative, and the way in which they have encouraged the closure of many pubs. The impact on shops has a lot to do with the lack of a market threshold and people not buying in their local shop. That is causing immense problems.
That brings me to where I see many of the answers. We need social enterprise because that is the way to keep services open. I have three voluntary shops in my constituency, and I am likely to get two more. The three existing shops are at North Nibley, Cowley and Whiteshill. Another is operating as a pseudo-social enterprise at Chalford, and I hope that a further shop will shortly open in Horsley. All of that has come about because of the will-power of the local population, with some help from outside. That is the way we need to go.
I want to link that to another issue. I pay tribute to two academic colleagues from the university of Gloucestershire, Nigel Curry and Stephen Owen, and to Kate Braithwaite from the Carnegie Institute, who have taught me what really goes on in rural areas. I want to advertise their work and I encourage the Minister to look at it, because there are some very interesting ideas about how we can provide, protect and improve services in rural Britain.
The other issue that I want to link to is asset-based rural community development, which uses the property base in rural communities. Like other hon. Members, I have argued strongly that some buildings are underused—the church is an obvious one, and there are also the village halls. We need to look at that asset base and do some interesting things with it. That is crucial at this time in the recession. That asset base gives us an opportunity, and that is where the state can help centrally. Innovative grants and support in the form of advice and encouragement are long overdue. That is where we need to go. We need to learn the lessons from what has gone wrong. Too often, the rural economy is seen as an anchor that pulls things back, but it can be a driver. There are opportunities, and I want us to act on them.
The key areas of housing, transport and jobs keep coming back, and we need to act on those and act quickly.
Mr. James Paice (South-East Cambridgeshire) (Con): I hesitate to prolong the hon. Gentleman’s speech, but I am slightly puzzled. He started by telling us that it was wrong to say that there was any such thing as the rural economy, that it was all the same or that it would be a mistake to divide it, but he is now telling us that the rural economy is to lead the way forward. Which is it? Is there a rural economy or is there not?
Mr. Drew:
There certainly is a rural economy, but my point is that it is a caricature to believe that we can just separate it from the wider economy. I am making specific points, and I hope that the official Opposition also have
some, but as far as I know, their only point of policy is to reintroduce hunting, which rural Britain needs like a hole in the head. I will take lectures from no one about who is doing things in the rural economy, because there is a vacuousness in the official Opposition’s approach, which is depressing.
To conclude, I am looking for the Government to recognise that the rural economy manifests the same problems as the wider economy. However, there are real opportunities at the moment, and we must not lose them in all the wider talk. We have problems with manufacturing that need to be addressed, but we also need to look at other issues, which come down to the usual things: providing leadership; recognising that there are no one-size-fits-all policies—policies need to evolve from the bottom up; concentrating on co-operation and on building a consensus; and making sure that we put resources in. That will not sort the recession out this time, but it will pay dividends in the long run when people are encouraged to live and work in rural areas and to deal with some of the problems there, including the ageing of the population, which causes huge problems in terms of care provision. That is what I hope DEFRA will do.
Mr. Gray: I would not have intervened had it not been for the fact that the hon. Gentleman was clearly not listening to my contribution, in which I laid out precisely what we would do. Is he seriously saying, however, that the two or three things that he mentioned—providing leadership, working from the bottom up and social enterprise—will help? The debate is about the effect of the recession on the rural economy. We are talking about tens of thousands of people across Britain losing their jobs and businesses going bankrupt right, left and centre. Does he seriously think that the two or three very laudable little enterprises that he mentioned will make a blind bit of difference to the recession in general?
Mr. Drew: I thank the hon. Gentleman for intervening, because that just shows how clueless the official Opposition are. They do not understand rural Britain—what they have said is tantamount to that. I am talking about the wider need and about how we regenerate rural areas, which is crucial in this time of recession.
I do not want to go on, because we clearly have a difference of opinion. I am pleased about that because it shows that the official Opposition have no policies on this issue and that they are part of the problem. I get fed up with Conservative councillors spending all their time blocking development that could be crucial to the prospects of the rural economy, whether it is housing, economic development or some of the other issues that we have mentioned. I am glad that we have had a difference of opinion. Normally I work on a consensual basis, but if the official Opposition want to say that they feel they can wave a magic wand at the issue, that is up to them. I am looking at the real problems of rural Britain and at how we face up to them.
10.5 am
Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) on securing this important debate.
I should say at the start that there is rurality and rurality—the hon. Gentleman alluded to that—and there are differences in the communities that we represent. We have heard about the farms on the periphery of Upminster and we have heard from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. However, I represent a very rural, sparsely populated constituency of 440,000 acres and 147 villages.
The recession affects all parts of the country, of course, and national political and economic dimensions permeate every part of our constituencies. However, my point to the Minister—I am sure that she understands this—relates to the fragility of the rural community and particularly of its sparsely populated communities. I do not necessarily subscribe to the view that the recession is hitting rural areas harder than urban areas, but we none the less need to respond to that fragility. Rural communities find themselves on the brink and are struggling to ensure their future viability.
Like all hon. Members, I have been having discussions with small businesses in my constituency. Such businesses play the most vital role in our rural communities. More than half the people employed in my constituency are employed in micro-businesses—businesses that employ fewer than nine people. About two thirds of the people employed in my constituency are employed by businesses with 49 or fewer employees.
The chief concern of such small businesses is still the lack of credit from the banks. They are also concerned by the charges that the banks are levying. A Federation of Small Businesses survey found that 16 per cent. of small firms have seen an increase in their bank fees in recent months, while 33 per cent. said that the banks were imposing changes in their financial arrangements that would prove detrimental to their futures. The case has been well rehearsed, but there is a mismatch between what we hear from the Government in this place and what is being done on the ground.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) suggested, there is also concern about the forthcoming 5 per cent. rise in business rates in England and Wales. The RPI in September 2008 was the determining factor, but inflation was then at its peak. Although my hon. Friend did not use the word today, he described the situation as “madness” during the last week’s Welsh questions, and indeed it is—it is difficult for any of us to disagree with him. It is bad enough to hit businesses with a massive rise in business rates at any time, but when we are in the grip of the worst recession for a generation, it is entirely counter-productive. If our intention is to kick-start the economy, we should encourage businesses far more proactively. I urge the Minister to take back to the Treasury the message that we need an averaged RPI when we look at business rates, rather than a figure at a particular point in time.
My hon. Friend and the hon. Member for North Wiltshire alluded to empty property rates. The introduction of a £15,000 threshold is helpful, but many businesses are still suffering from having to pay full rates. Again, I ask the Minister to take that concern back to her colleagues.
The hon. Member for North Wiltshire is a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) mentioned
its excellent report, so I hope that they will not mind me, as an interloper from Wales, briefly touching on it. The report focused on the potential in the rural economy, rather than just on the concerns that many of us have. I find it odd, as, I think, the Select Committee did, that DEFRA has not quantified the potential in rural communities. I hope that the Minister will give her backing to that recommendation. The sum that has been mentioned of, I think, £237 billion, represents huge potential for the rural community.
The report rightly highlights the position of rural issues within the Government, and points out that instead of making a rural affairs target a departmental strategic objective, those matters should be part of a cross-Government public service agreement. Of course, although DEFRA must pay attention to rural needs, other Departments certainly do not rural-proof their policies. I can give two parochial examples of that from west Wales. The new motorcycle testing regime requires testing to be carried out at a multi-purpose test centre. There will be none of those centres in Ceredigion or Powys, so my constituents will have round trips of 150 miles. The other example is the closure of tax offices. The closure of the office of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in Aberystwyth, in my constituency, was justified on the grounds that it was the smallest tax office in the country. Neither of those decisions was rural-proofed.
I have only one, very mild, criticism of the report, and that is its focus on the Commission for Rural Communities as the body that will have to consult on rural benchmarks and indicators. The CRC is an excellent body, with an excellent rural communities tsar, but it is an England-only body, and given that aspects of DEFRA policy are not devolved, I hope that Welsh bodies and Ministers will be consulted about non-devolved matters.
It is not possible to overstate the importance of broadband in the future of the rural economy, which would be significantly boosted by a universal service obligation, as Lord Carter identified in his report “Digital Britain”. We await the final report for details about how that can be achieved. There are significant issues to overcome in some of our communities, not least of which is topography. We want a thorough report, but I hope that that will be swift. The new universal service obligation could certainly alter BT’s current position as the supplier of internet infrastructure, and my concern is that with uncertainty about the future of the new USO, BT may be reluctant to carry out the work until the new system is in place. We need action on that now.
Much of rural Wales is blighted by “not-spots”. It is not just a case of the speed at which broadband can be accessed; it is more that there are no broadband connections at all. Broadband is vital for rural communities, and they are mindful of its importance. The broadband think-tank Point Topic recently released a figure showing that 26.9 per cent. of people in Wales are unable to get 2 megabits per second connection. In that respect, Wales is second only to Northern Ireland, which has a figure of 32 per cent. BT claims that 99 per cent. of homes in Wales can access broadband, but that is not the experience in my constituency.
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