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24 Mar 2009 : Column 12WH—continued
Some parts of the farming community have pointed out that they can do well in the recession. The growing popularity of locally sourced and organic food has given farmers opportunities—there is potential. The increase in lamb and beef prices has been welcomed,
although of course much of the benefit has been dulled by increased costs. There are, of course, other severe impediments to the farming sector. The chief concern among my constituents is the proposed introduction of compulsory electronic identification of sheep, even though that may seem like a peripheral issue. I was alarmed when, during a recent Prime Minister’s questions, the hon. Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) raised the issue and he was roundly laughed at from the Labour Benches. The issue is a critical for hon. Members representing the farming community. The National Farmers Union revealed in a recent survey that 84 per cent. of sheep farmers in Wales said they would reduce their flock, and 32 per cent. said they would consider quitting altogether. The hon. Member for Stroud is of course right that we need to attract new people and young people into the farming sector, but that is not the way to do it in the less favoured areas of much of the country. The NFU has provided a vivid illustration of the concern in the industry about the plans in question.
I secured a debate on the matter last year. The Minister—I think that she had just been appointed—was extremely sympathetic to our cause, and there was cross-party agreement. The nationalist party in Wales, the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative party, and Labour voices as well, all sympathised very much with the view opposed to the proposal. I believe that the Council of Ministers meets this week, and it is essential that we put the matter back on to Europe’s agenda.
Mr. Roger Williams: My hon. Friend raises an important point. As I understand it, the Minister may have been discussing the matter yesterday, so perhaps she can give us some news. There seems to be a growing body of opinion that the technology is not suitable for areas such as England and Wales, which have large sheep flocks, although it might be appropriate for smaller countries with smaller sheep populations. Surely, therefore, the system should be voluntary, not compulsory.
Mark Williams: I am sure that we shall hear from the Minister about that point later. I endorse my hon. Friend’s comment about the inappropriateness of the so-called technology to our farming community.
Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con): Does the hon. Gentleman also agree that the whole objective of tagging is to ensure traceability of supply, but that once the head has come off the body in the slaughterhouse, traceability disappears, so the measure is perfectly pointless?
Mark Williams: The hon. Gentleman is right. There is a complete lack of coherence in the policy, and we need the Government to continue to make those points on our behalf and on behalf of the farming community, not least because it is strongly felt in that community that the measures already in place were robust enough to deal with the problems that the European Commission wanted to alleviate. I hope that we shall hear from the Minister whether progress has been made.
I shall leave my script now to talk more directly about the social issues raised by the hon. Member for Stroud. My constituency is rural, and I have no doubt that the sun is shining on the coast of Ceredigion today and that it all looks very rosy. However, underneath that picture is something more sinister. It is a convergence funding
area for good reason. Many of my rural and urban communities have the National Assembly for Wales designation of Communities First area, because they have some of the highest rates of deprivation in not just Britain, but the entire European Union. Perhaps my vision of the essential ingredients of village communities is old-fashioned, but it is one in which there is still a functioning post office—not the van that trundles in intermittently and disappears, and which, I suspect, will disappear altogether in three years’ time—in which there are churches and, to add to what the hon. Member for North Wiltshire said, chapels as well, and one where if there is still a last village shop, it has a sustainable future. We have heard about young people moving into a community. I suggest that if those essential ingredients of community have gone, if the village hall or old church or chapel has been sold to development when people have moved from outside and is no longer there for community use, if the community facilities and post office have gone, if the last shop has gone, if there are pressures on rural garages—something that has not been mentioned in the debate—and if the pub is under threat, there is very little incentive for young families to move into a community. That is, of course, all compounded by the economic situation.
In parts of rural Wales there is migration of young families away—goodness knows where to, given the enormity of the economic problems. The hon. Member for Stroud alluded to the fact that elderly people are moving in. That means elderly people living on the interest from their savings which, in the present climate, affects their purchasing power as well. That is the reality of rural life now. It is not in a box that is distinct from national pressures, but there is a sense of fragility about our communities, and we ignore that fragility at our peril.
10.19 am
Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) for securing this valuable and timely debate. Rural communities are often the hardest hit during a recession, and a large factor is unemployment. People in rural areas are often at a natural disadvantage compared with those in urban areas. Large towns and cities have some advantages; for instance, comprehensive transport links and a multitude of employment choices. Many in rural areas are less able to seek employment at a considerable distance from their homes. Rural residents often have to rely for employment on a large number of small businesses, whereas urban areas provide a large number of large and medium-sized employers. When I say small, I mean really small: the average size of workplace on the island is one or two employees plus the owner. If those businesses are forced to lay off staff, or even to close, rural residents have few other options.
Many small businesses in rural areas exist in a symbiotic relationship with each other, and if one fails they all suffer. That can be a major problem for rural areas when unemployment or even recession takes hold. My constituency has had a history of relatively high unemployment, even during good economic times. We are in the bottom third in the number of residents that have employment. The recession is not helping. Indeed, the research paper “Unemployment by Constituency, February 2009” shows that we are 202nd in the United
Kingdom. We are in the fourth quintile for unemployment, and are eighth among the Conservative constituencies, so we understand what is happening.
However, matters could be worse. It is interesting to note that other nearby rural constituencies are feeling the effects of the recession more keenly. Isle of Wight was about four-fifths up the list for unemployment in February, but over the past year we have been well down the list. Other areas have a significantly increased yield: from Devon to Kent and from Cambridgeshire to Worcestershire, other constituencies are feeling the pinch more than us, although they may have less unemployment. Those areas of course are not islands, and they do not share our particular problems. Nevertheless, we will all head to rock bottom if more is not done.
Of great concern to me is the disadvantage that islanders in my constituency and elsewhere have over and above the average rural resident. Those not in employment do not often have the means to seek employment or retraining on the mainland. Isle of Wight residents have to travel to the island’s ferry terminals, cross the five or so miles of the Solent at a cost of about £10 and travel on from the mainland terminal, and then repeat it on the return journey. That is significant, and I would like it to be taken more into account. If employment dries up on an island, the unemployed literally become trapped. It is a vicious circle.
I agree with the right hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire (John McFall), the Treasury Committee Chairman, on one matter. He said yesterday that the recession will leave lasting scars if more is not done to solve rising unemployment. More help is needed for rural and island communities to help them through the recession.
Mr. Dunne: My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for Isle of Wight and island communities generally. At this time of rising unemployment, particularly in rural areas, the Government are removing employment in departmental offices in rural areas—for instance, as others here today will know, offices are being closed by HMRC in rural areas, particularly along the Welsh borders—but the Jobcentre Plus offices that were closed last year now need to be reopened to cope with the increase in unemployment. Does my hon. Friend not agree that the Government are scoring own goals, and that they should put a stop to it?
Mr. Turner: I do, indeed. I understand well the point that my hon. Friend makes, and I congratulate him on inserting those words into our debate.
The Government need to get their act together, and get their economic policies, such as the loans guarantee scheme, up and running as quickly as possible. We need to protect small businesses against the recession in order to keep the economy in rural areas going. I hope that the Government will bear that in mind when deciding which businesses to bail out. If something is not done, I suspect that those areas will lag behind the rest of the country when it comes to getting back to work; and it and may even slow recovery.
Mr. Peter Atkinson (in the Chair): I call Mr. James Paice. I beg your pardon, Mr. Paice. First, I call Tim Farron.
10.26 am
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD): Thank you, Mr. Atkinson. I am not sure whether to be flattered, but at least the hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) has a few more minutes to prepare his speech. None the less, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr. Gray) on making a powerful opening speech. The debate is of immense importance to the House. Frankly, it ought to have been attended by more Members. However, as Members representing rural areas, we are not engaged in special pleading. We have many strengths, as well as facing many challenges. However, we feel that the rural economy presents a slightly different picture to the urban one.
We are concerned that the Government, and the apparatus of government in general, lack an understanding of the workings of rural communities. For instance, a number of the excellent civil servants that I meet see the countryside as something that is to be visited on the odd weekend; they do not understand the vitality of the rural community. That is part of the malaise; it is part of the problem.
As the Member of Parliament for a large chunk of the Lake district, part of the Yorkshire dales and a large swathe of south Cumbria that is just as beautiful but not in either, I have a body of evidence to draw on in my remarks. It is important to stress the strength of the rural economy. It is important to remind people that, much more than in urban areas, businesses and industries in the rural community are more likely to have a more positive balance sheet. We export more; we do more business outside our shores than the average business in an urban area. Our contribution to the bottom line of UK plc is therefore greater.
Over the past 10 years, the growth in rural areas of knowledge-intensive services, often home-based, has been at twice the rate of that in urban areas. Contrary to public perception, the percentage of people employed in manufacturing in rural areas is roughly the same as in urban areas. There is an innate strength in the rural economy, and it is important to acknowledge that before considering the fact that the recession is hitting us, and hitting us hard—and in some ways hitting us differently from urban Britain.
Unemployment is undoubtedly rising. I draw up experience in my constituency. Kendal serves the bulk of my constituency, and the local jobcentre has seen a tripling in the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance for the first time. As we heard from other Members, we also struggle because the other jobcentre that serves my constituency closed a couple of years ago. It is at Ulverston, just outside my patch, in the constituency of Barrow and Furness, which is represented by the Secretary of State for Defence. That is having a critical effect on the ability of people living in the rural areas on the Furness and Cartmel peninsulas to find employment. The quality of Jobcentre Plus has undoubtedly increased, but it is not good if one cannot get to it. I think that that was incredibly short-sighted.
As has been mentioned by a number of hon. Members, rural areas have a higher proportion of older residents, who are more likely than others to rely on the income from savings. Negative inflation and almost non-existent
interest rates have a massive impact on the spending power of ordinary families in rural Britain, which, obviously, leads to a negative multiplier effect and people spending less money in their communities. We heard about the fragility of the rural economy from my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams), who made an impassioned plea on behalf of his communities.
The drop in demand comes at a time when many of our rural services are already under threat. We have lost rural post offices owing to a deliberate closure programme and the removal of vital services that underpin post offices. As the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) said, we have also lost village pubs, which is down not only to a reduction in demand, but to unfair competition and ownership legislation. That needs to be addressed immediately. Furthermore, over the past 20 or 30 years, we have also lost community shops, in part, due to unfair advantages granted to out-of-town supermarkets.
The recession has hit an infrastructure already weakened by bad Government policy over a number of years, but the ultimate strength of our rural communities centres on their creativity and resourcefulness. We should be proud of that and play to those strengths. I shall provide three quick examples from my constituency: the first is the Greyhound pub at Grizebeck, where I spent Friday night. It is a community-run pub that would have shut had it not been for the community volunteers running that enterprise. Secondly, I also went to the Storth post office, which is a community-owned, co-operative enterprise employing its own postmaster. Had it not been for those people, it would undoubtedly have shut. The third example is the Witherslack shop. The former post office closed down, and Post Office Ltd would not allow it to reopen, so the local people—this is a small community of 400 houses—raised £150,000 and worked with the local community land trust to reopen that outstanding local shop. All those wonderful examples, which demonstrate the vitality of rural communities, happened despite, and not because, of the Government. We need to play to the strengths of rural communities, not cause greater difficulties.
One of the great problems faced by rural areas is that we appear more affluent than we are, a point to which the hon. Member for North Wiltshire referred. Unemployment in many rural areas is relatively low, but we must not forget that employment, certainly in places such as mine, is very much part-time, low-paid and, because it is often in the tourism sector, seasonal. Another important indicator of poverty and well-being that is rarely acknowledged is the differential between average incomes and average house prices. In rural Britain, the gap between those two figures is greatest. In my constituency, the average house price, even with the drop in house prices, is 12 times the average income, which leaves the average person completely unable to afford their own home. Some 12,500 houses in my constituency were once council houses, and a few more than 3,000 still are, but now, with the great tragedy of repossession, more people are moving on to the waiting list. It is a real pressure-cooker situation and a problem that we need to address.
The development of more affordable housing would not only meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people in rural Britain who are desperate to escape the abysmal housing, or who have to move away from
rural areas, which robs them of their vitality, but give a vital boost to the construction industry. That has to be done in a bottom-up and effective way. There is the will within rural communities—we are the opposite of nimbies—to build new more affordable homes, but the Government’s one-size-fits-all regional spatial strategy is not the answer. It is counter-productive and a nonsense in a district such as mine, where more than half the land mass is in a national park so cannot be touched. That is why the regional spatial strategy should go.
We need to support rural communities in coming up with their own solutions. For example, in my area, we have trailed a “home on the farm” initiative, which allows farmers to develop under-used or disused farm buildings and turn them into affordable homes for local families. In the past few weeks, the first was built at Selside just north of Kendal. We also need to maintain consumer demand in rural communities and acknowledge the damaging impact on some of them of excessive second-home ownership. We need to consider ways of managing that problem, putting covenants on new builds and perhaps giving local authorities some tax-varying powers.
It is vital that farming, which is the backbone of the economy, be put at the top of the agenda. It tends to survive recessions—it tends not to do too well out of the booms either—because even in developed economies people still have to eat. They might change their demands and where they shop, but the bottom line is that they still need to eat. We are also blessed by the fact that British farmers are some of the most entrepreneurial in the world, producing the highest quality food and meeting by far the highest environmental and animal welfare standards in the world.
It is important to note, however, that British farming is at a crossroads, because despite the industry’s huge strength in quality and innovation, the unit of production—the family farm—is under enormous pressure from the overly powerful players higher up the chain, such as, most notably, the supermarkets. The impact on the farming economy of this unfair market is huge. Despite British farming’s many strengths, we have still lost 900 million litres of dairy production in the past three years, and dairy farmers still leave the industry at a rate of two a day.
Anecdotally, in my constituency, six out of every seven hill farmers have no line of succession. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire referred to livestock farmers’ incomes, but it sounds like his livestock farmers are doing better than mine. Average hill farm incomes are significantly less than £10,000 a year, so no wonder that many question whether they have a future in the industry and struggle to persuade their children to follow them. Furthermore, I endorse the comments of my hon. Friends the Members for Ceredigion and for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams) about sheep tagging, and I hope that the Minister will refer to the situation in Europe.
It is important that the Government accept the Liberal Democrat proposal for a supermarket regulator, rather than a toothless ombudsman, to provide control and power within the market and to ensure that farmers get a fair price for their produce. It is also important that we make good use of the public money invested in agriculture. It seems a nonsense that we are wasting £7 million a year handing out tiny cheques to people at
the bottom end of single farm payments—people who, bless them, are not farmers—when that money could be redistributed and spent on, for example, setting up a new hill farm apprenticeship scheme. We should certainly do that.
I endorse the comments of the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) about public sector jobs in rural areas. It is beyond me why the Government are pressing ahead with their tax office closure programme at a time like this. During British tourism week, it is important to ensure that we support British tourism and recognise that, in England, the funding for the marketing of tourism is dire compared with other parts of the United Kingdom. We should also recognise that, in the Lake district alone, we have a £1 billion industry giving vast amounts of money to the Exchequer, but getting very little back for marketing support.
There are real ways to boost our rural economy. We can make the food market fair through a supermarket regulator. We can ensure that taxpayers’ money designed to support farmers does actually do so, and that it is not wasted on bureaucracy, but directed at helping a new generation of farmers to bring new vitality to the industry. At a time when we are wasting more than £10 billion of food a year, we could help farmers by investing in new anaerobic digestion facilities on farms—where people want them—to create clean energy and to dispose of waste. We could back companies in rural areas that want to reduce energy usage while creating employment. I must mention the croppers who provide the paper for Hansard who want a biodigester for their site in Burneside, but need £200,000 of public of money to buy one. That would be a massive service to the community, if only they could get it. We need a new deal for the countryside. Rural Britain should be seen as a living and vibrant set of communities that must be able to reach its potential and play to its strengths. We need a Government who understand rural communities and who are on the side of the many in those communities.
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