§ Mr. Jeff Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr)I am an urban dweller and an urban representative. However, I am aware from my travels around the country and from friends and constituents who have relatives in rural areas that rural life is not quite the comfortable picture given by the glossy magazines so beloved of city dwellers.
Over the past few years, there has been a massive population shift in England. The adult population of the shires, which contain most of the rural communities, has increased by 2.7 million since 1976, whereas that of London and the metropolitan counties has decreased by 500,000 during the same period. Yet the institutional framework of our nation remains overwhelmingly urban dominated.
That has led to the ignorance and neglect of rural problems, and has affected housing, health care, transport, jobs and poverty. Even play facilities for children are affected. The idea that the country is so much better for the children does not work when one realises that skateboards do not run on grass. A rural child's first bike can be a parental nightmare.
Villages should be vibrant communities with a variety and richness equal to those in our urban villages. They should not be pushed into single-class pieces of detached suburbia surrounded by fields. Fewer than one in 10 now have a bank, a pharmacy or a permanent library.
Progress is sometimes measured in our society by economies of scale—a concept that is the scourge of small shops, small schools and small hospitals. If we do not come to terms with changes taking place in rural areas, we will have a two-tier rural society: well-heeled, middle-aged and elderly people in holiday and retirement homes making use of urban rather than rural services, and the rural poor locked into poverty, long hours, no choice, no transport and poor housing.
On health matters, I cite the joint survey last year by the Maternity Alliance and the National Federation of Women's Institutes, which found that pregnant women in rural areas face restricted choice, hospital closures and long journeys to clinics. Two thirds of rural maternity units in England have closed since 1960, yet those units are crucial. Some 32 per cent. of births in rural areas are in GP centres or community hospitals, compared with 9 per cent. nationally. Home births in rural areas are 6 per cent., compared to 1 per cent. nationally. A report was recently issued by the National Audit Office on maternity services, on which the Public Accounts Committee—of which I have the honour to be a member— will take evidence after the Easter recess.
Women in rural areas risk long journeys during labour, with the attendant risks. Most litigation currently in process relates to births in larger hospitals, not small units or home deliveries. Local maternity units do have good safety records. However, it is the fear of litigation that is behind the idea that local units cannot cope, so putting pressure on women in rural areas to travel to larger hospitals.
It is clear that the closure of local shops, and particularly of post offices, which are little used by wealthier rural dwellers, is most likely to hit those on low incomes. Fewer than one third of the rural population use local shops, but a survey commissioned a few years ago by 1393 the Department of the Environment found that those who did were the poorest. The same survey by Brian McLaughlin and his team found that public transport networks were thinly spread. Since that time, they have been spread even thinner.
The most deprived poor in rural areas are those on low incomes who have no car. They cannot get to "competitively" priced rural supermarkets, which are not as low-cost as urban supermarkets. Nevertheless, for some, the car is so essential as a means of transport that other household essentials—I emphasise "essentials"—are forgone. I freely accept that car ownership in rural areas, even two cars, is not a luxury.
Transport problems in rural areas are so serious that they have a direct effect on health care. The McLaughlin study found that a higher proportion of the rural population had medical needs, yet compared to national equivalents they made less use of general medical services such as opticians and dentists, to name but two examples.
One in seven mothers living in rural areas do not attend baby clinics after giving birth. That must be a cause for concern, and it certainly was for those who wrote the report for the Maternity Alliance and the NFWI.
I briefly mentioned the forthcoming crisis, if there is not one already, for England's 8,500 village halls. Most of them—I think about 70 per cent.—are run as charities. Much depends on the location, but the potential for the extended use of those halls to help to create employment by using new technology and all the advances in communication, in addition to being used for committees, youth groups, playgroups, the elderly, doctors' surgeries, libraries and even post offices, is quite enormous. They are under pressure and will be snuffed out if we allow the European Community—these days, I support its general purposes—to impose VAT on charities from 1992. We have a major problem on our hands and a major threat to British rural life.
If we are serious about tackling deprivation and social isolation, which is prevalent, particularly of women in rural communities, who suffer from poor transport, we need action not only to secure and to improve existing facilities but to improve access to them by better transport. I receive enough complaints about the lack of buses in my heavily built up constituency, where the only blades of grass are in three or four public parks, but bus frequencies of more than 30 minutes are 77 per cent. in urban areas, but only 14 per cent. in rural areas. Bus frequencies of one per day or fewer are only 6 per cent. in urban areas but 62 per cent. in rural areas. We know that that causes massive problems for the millions of people who live in rural communities,
With transport—I do not put these in any order of importance because the people directly affected are aware of the importance of the problems—housing is by far the biggest problem in rural communities. I understand and share the concerns about development pressures and the environment, which must be addressed, but one in five of the population in England live in rural communities. That is millions of people and they are entitled to jobs, homes and a decent quality of life, but that is under attack because of the lack of "affordable" housing.
I well understand the changes in policy and emphasis, particularly through the Housing Corporation, but they 1394 are too slow. When I was shadow housing Minister—I took professional advice on this—I could see the sense in the geographical "rounding off" of villages and small towns with extra homes to stop sprawl. I was accused of wanting to build right across the south downs. However, as a result, I support Lord Vinson, the chair of the Rural Development Commission, who said recently that the housing needs of rural people would need, on average, only
a handful of houses in every sizeable village".Those homes must, of course, be affordable homes.I want to illustrate the seriousness of the housing problem with two examples of real people. I do not intend to give the real names or locations. Barry and Judy, both in their 20s, started married life a couple of years ago in the third bedroom of Judy's parents' council home. They both come from old-established families in the village. They have been on the council list and have received no offers. Barry's ancestors are listed in the county records as farmers and his great-great-grandfather was a wheelwright—there may have been more than one all those years ago.
A cottage in the next village, just two miles away, came up for sale. It was two up and two down with no bathroom, and was priced at £30,000. They could just afford it if they both kept working. They started negotiations with the estate agent, but he advised the vendor to withdraw from the offer and to increase the price to £50,000. That was the end. Barry and Judy now live in a council flat seven miles away with no hope of returning to their local community.
My second example concerns Ian, the son of a farmer. He is getting married next year and wants no future other than to remain in his rural community and to work the land. He has no hope of a rented home in the area, so he wants to build a small bungalow on his father's farm. It will not be a mansion or an executive pile in the middle of a meadow, but a small bungalow set among the other buildings on the farm. The local community agrees that it would be a sensible thing to do, but permission to build there has been refused.
I began by saying—and I do not apologise for this—that I am an urban dweller and representative. I have no ready-made solutions to what I know are serious social and economic problems in rural areas. I know that part of the reason for the political neglect is that our current electoral system discourages the political parties from campaigning equally throughout the country. No one has ever contradicted me on that. It is a fact of life that in our system, votes cast in urban and rural areas do not have equal value in the link with elected representation.
The failure of rural communities to stop the closure of small schools and hospitals and to ensure that young adults can live in the same community as their families shows that under the present system the rural voice has no clout. However well intentioned the policies emanating from the centre—where most policies emanate—the people they affect remain without influence.
Most people—including myself—do not like change, but change happens whether we like it or not and we cannot opt out, wherever we live and whatever our position in society. The closure of a rural coalfield causes change to the rural community and that change is devastating and negative, especially if the closure is unplanned. Commuters moving into villages and taking them over, sometimes to stop others joining through new development, causes change. I read of an example 1395 yesterday in the midlands. One aspect of that change has been the closure of 20 per cent. of local banks and 100 post offices a year for several years. We must attend to the consequences of such change.
No one seeks a policy for rural communities that would turn villages into living museums. Those who visit the villages, those who have friends and relatives there and those who live there do not want such a policy. We require a policy that allows local communities greater control over their own lives than hitherto. We need active balanced communities for the next century, but if shops, schools and hospitals continue to close, and jobs to disappear, and if local people are forced to move away to find a home, there is no way that the problems of rural communities can be solved. Our urban-dominated nation should and must address those problems because they affect millions of people.
I gave my debate the title "The Problems of Rural Communities". I am humble enough to admit that I do not have the solutions. I hope that I have put the problems across positively, rather than negatively, but I admit that I have referred only to the problems and not to the solutions. I invite the Minister to reflect upon them.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory)I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) on securing the debate and on his choice of subject. He represents an urban constituency—a very urban constituency —but he clearly has a considerable knowledge of rural issues and has thought carefully about them. I was brought up in the country and I represent a rural constituency, so I value the opportunity to debate these matters and to explain how the Government are creating a framework with the dual objective of preserving an attractive rural environment while at the same time creating a healthy rural economy.
Before I go into detail, let me put the problems of rural areas into context. At the end of his speech, the hon. Member for Perry Barr said that change was constant. I agree with that. In the past 20 years or more, we have seen huge changes in Britain as a whole. Old traditional industries such as steel, coal and shipbuilding have declined somewhat and certainly shed labour. Agriculture, too, now employs fewer people. Those industries have been replaced by others—particularly in the service sector—which have grown up and now employ more people. The age profile of the population has also changed. We have more elderly and retired people, many of whom wish to retire away from their place of work. Our attitudes to home ownership have also changed and that has led in part to increases in house prices in some areas and the consequential difficulty for people living in villages in affording local housing.
These changes are not exclusive to rural areas; they are common to the economy as a whole. Rural areas are affected by the trend and they have their share of the problems, but in some areas the problems are no greater than those in other parts of the country, and in some they are less severe. Rural areas suffer some disadvantages. The hon. Gentleman touched on some of them, including greater distances and problems of access. But they can be 1396 compensated for, perhaps, by the fact that rural areas have fewer problems of overcrowding and environmental dereliction, which are probably more acute in urban areas.
I agree that there is a considerable amount of misunderstanding about rural issues. There is no such thing as a rural idyll. That is an illusion and perhaps the result of Britain being a urban society. Surprisingly few people have first-hand experience of the countryside. People do not understand the complex social and economic forces at work. The same is true of countryside issues; people often take a simplistic view of conservation and environmental matters. I therefore welcome any opportunity to increase mutual understanding between country and town. One of the reasons why I support greater access to the countryside is that it gives city dwellers an opportunity to get out and experience the countryside, to meet people in the countryside and to improve their knowledge and understanding of it.
I want to list some of the ways in which the Government are taking a range of steps to tackle some of the problems to which the hon. Member for Perry Barr referred. We are having some success, but we are keeping the situation under review. In an evolving and changing economy, new problems arise as old ones are solved or become less acute. We are certainly not working towards a two-tier rural society with well-heeled, middle-aged and elderly people in holiday and retirement homes while the rural poor are locked into poverty and poor housing.
We are aware of the dangers of creating such a stratum in our rural areas. However, to some extent, that would be a caricature. When I was elected, many people were concerned about our villages dying. It was said that young people would move away to the more exciting towns where recreational facilities were better. Now some people are expressing the opposite fear that our villages are being overwhelmed by people moving to them after retirement or using them simply as bases from which to commute. However, that is not a realistic picture and the issues are not polarised in that way.
Newcomers to villages are often essential. If we are worried about the fact that there are not enough people to keep the local post office open or about the village shop not having enough customers or the village school not having enough pupils, we must welcome newcomers. As the hon. Member for Perry Barr said so perceptively, we do not want to create or preserve living museums in our rural areas.
The Government are aware of the problem. Our main task in rural Britain is to encourage the enterprise of those who live and work in rural areas and to increase activity by the private sector. Another task is to make the best possible use of public money—which must always be limited—in the pursuit of those aims. We also want to make full use of the opportunities to influence others to use the money to the best ends by concentrating that money in areas with the greatest need. The picture is varied and not all areas suffer from the same problems.
In general, we want to create a climate in which small businesses can flourish. The Government act through legislation or by providing pump-priming finance. To do that we have set up and are funding a range of agencies. The chief agency in England, and the best known, is the Rural Development Commission, which is sponsored by my Department. It is the main agency for diversifying the rural economy. 1397 courseThe RDC's tasks are to highlight rural problems, to create a climate in which rural businesses and services can prosper and to initiate action to improve the economic and social development of rural areas. It achieves that by harnessing the voluntary and private sectors in the knowledge that the public sector cannot do everything on its own. Similar tasks are undertaken in Wales primarily by the Development Board for Rural Wales and the by the Welsh Development Agency. In Scotland, the Scottish Development Agency and the Highlands and Islands Development Board fulfil broadly similar functions.
Those agencies have achieved a great deal. For instance, the RDC estimates that it assisted in the creation or retention of some 3,900 job opportunities through its workshop programme in the financial year 1988–89. The Development Board for Rural Wales holds 474 factories and has sold a further 87. Together, they provide 8,500 jobs in rural Wales. Many other agencies also help to diversify the rural economy, by stimulating the flow of resources into more remote rural areas. They include the English and regional tourist boards, English Heritage, the Sports Council, the Countryside Commission and the Nature Conservancy Council.
The hon. Gentleman talked with some knowledge about rural housing problems. Of course many people want, when they can, to buy rather than to rent a home. We have been very successful in giving council tenants the right to buy, and it would certainly be wrong if council tenants in rural areas were to be denied that opportunity. We are concerned to maintain the viability of rural communities. We recognise that affordable housing for local people to rent or buy has a key part to play. Our rural housing initiative, which was announced in July 1988, set out for the first time a specific policy on low-cost housing in smaller villages. Over the past two years we have introduced a series of measures to promote the provision of low-cost housing in rural areas.
We are increasing the level of investment in rural areas through housing associations, which have a major role to play in providing affordable housing both for rent and for low-cost sale, in particular through shared ownership. We have greatly increased the public funds available to the Housing Corporation, so enabling it to establish a special rural programme aimed at villages with a population of fewer than 1,000. When fully up and running, the programme should provide 1,500 homes a year for rent in small villages and 350 a year for low-cost sale.
We are introducing a scheme in some rural areas whereby housing associations can repurchase former shared ownership dwellings when the occupier moves on, thus ensuring their retention as low-cost housing. The Housing Corporation will guarantee to make the necessary funds available without reducing its rural rented or shared ownership programmes elsewhere.
Of course, public sector provision is not enough. We are also taking steps to encourage landowners and developers 1398 to help in providing affordable housing for local people. In particular, in February 1989 we announced changes to planning rules whereby local planning authorities may, in exceptional cases, release small pockets of land, not previously designated for housing, for low-cost schemes to meet local needs, subject to conditions that ensure that the houses remain available to local people.
Rural areas can also expect to benefit from the encouragement that we have given to private investment in the rented sector through deregulation and the tax incentives available under the business expansion scheme.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned health. General practitioners are the first line of health care. I remind the House that in England there are special rural practice payments for general practitioners when at least 10 per cent. of their patients in a rural area live four miles or more from the main surgery. In Scotland, there are similar provisions.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned maternity services. I understand that the clinical view is that women should be encouraged to have their babies born in hospital when possible. That must usually mean the larger and fully staffed consultant units of district general hospitals which can provide the full range of services, including those necessary in any emergency.
It is a trend of modern medicine to have larger units providing that full back-up, and hospitals of that size are inevitably located in urban areas, and it is not feasible to provide smaller community hospitals with the full range of staff and equipment. District and regional health authorities are alert to the problems experienced in rural areas, and they make provision for travelling and try to ensure that mothers living in rural areas nevertheless have proper access to such hospitals. In order to minimise the risk, provision is made so that during ante-natal care a woman who lives in an isolated area and is judged to be at risk from labour can be admitted to hospital before the expected date of confinement. I do not accept that the NHS is unresponsive to the needs of rural areas or that the standards of service that they receive are necessarily inferior to those provided in towns and cities.
We cannot expect public transport in sparsely populated rural areas to be as good as it is in towns and cities. Nevertheless, under the Transport Act 1985 we opened the way for operators to provide flexible bus services in rural areas on a commercial basis. When it is not possible to provide a service commercially, local authorities have continuing powers to subsidise such services. We have also introduced the rural transport development fund specifically to assist in the provision of rural bus services.
I am aware of some of the problems raised by the hon. Gentleman. We are not complacent about them. We are also aware that future changes will throw up new problems, and we are keeping the matter constantly under review. Our aim throughout is to protect the historic and valuable countryside that is our precious heritage, while providing excellent facilities and services for those who live and work in those areas.