§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Jamieson.]
2.30 pm§ Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome)I welcome the opportunity to open this important debate about rural poverty—a subject that the House does not discuss sufficiently often.
It is a debate about perception. There is a fundamental dissonance between the perception of life in rural areas, which so many commentators and those who look on it from a distance seem to share—the cliché is the picture on the chocolate box that shows roses around the door—and the incidence of poverty that many hon. Members know to be the reality of life in many villages. There is also a dissonance between the prosperity that is claimed for many rural regions—regions with a high preponderance of rural areas whose prosperity is on the surface—and the poverty that underlies it. It is that mismatch between perception and reality that I want to address.
Today's debate was prompted by the fact that that perception might be shared by senior members of the Government—including the Prime Minister, judging by the comments that he made when he recently toured the west country. I realise that his remarks may have been taken out of context, and that that may not be his position; but if it is, I believe that it is our duty as Members of Parliament to make sure that the reality is made known.
I do not want to discuss whether we are dealing with absolute poverty or relative poverty. To a large extent, it is an artificial distinction. No one in this country shares the absolute poverty of many in the third world. However, people's lives are made immeasurably more difficult by a lack of disposable income in a society that assumes a reasonable affluence.
I am sure that the invisibility of the poor in rural areas is recognised by those hon. Members who are here today. Those who represent rural constituencies have it brought home to them at their surgeries that many people lead desperate lives.
Poverty is exemplified by the way that people have to live their lives and in the day-to-day difficulties they face. It is exemplified by difficulties of access—access to the sort of services that people in urban areas take for granted and sometimes even to those services that are specifically designed to make their lives easier. It is exemplified by the cost of living, which is often higher in rural areas. It is often more expensive because people do not have access to public transport and therefore have to use their cars, and because people often have to use smaller shops instead of supermarkets. Because those shops cannot share in the economies of scale offered by supermarkets the unit costs are inevitably higher.
314WH People suffer from the fact that services cannot react to their position, and they also suffer from isolation. The latter is an important aspect of the problem. Someone who is relatively poor but who lives in a centre of relative affluence is isolated in a way that the poor who live among their peers are not. The one family in a small village who do not have a regular income or a reasonable pension will have a pretty miserable life, as will people who live on their own and who cannot share many of the things that other people take for granted.
This is a genuine cross-Government theme, and any of five or six Ministers could have responded to the debate. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for City of York (Mr. Bayley). In the previous such debate, which was instigated by the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mrs. Organ), a Minister from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions represented the Government. They could just as easily have been represented by a Minister from the Cabinet Office, the Department of Health or a number of other Departments. Joined-up government—the phrase that we hear so often—must apply if it is to be addressed effectively.
I see no point in trading statistics with the Minister. We could spend the rest of the afternoon discussing numbers without getting to grips with the problem. How many people are living in poverty? Let us be honest—we do not know. In a document published two weeks ago, the New Policy Institute made the very conservative estimate of one in 10. That is a generous view of the number of people who are living below the poverty line, and it is probably an understatement. We know that people in rural areas are under-claiming and that the number of dependents upon people who are claiming is probably greater than is stated. We know that many people are not claimants because they exist on low pay or on seasonal employment that provides money for only part of the year. We know also that there is much migration from rural to urban areas and that people categorised as resident in urban areas of poverty are often from country areas but could not exist any longer with the privations that they suffered there.
Some indicators are simply unhelpful. For example, the incidence of car ownership could be used as an indicator of relative deprivation, but people in rural areas must have cars. I have quoted the following statistic before: people in Somerset have a high number of cars, but they are the oldest in the country. People keep their bangers together in one way or another because without them they simply cannot operate in modern society.
There is statistical evidence on poverty levels. Let us consider gross domestic product per head. It is not Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyneside or other such areas that have the lowest GDP per head, but places such as those represented here by my hon. Friends the Members for South-East Cornwall (Mr. Breed) and for Isle of Wight (Dr. Brand). However, even if statistics are as accurate as possible, they do not inform policy as they should. That is so partly because of aggregation and because policy formulation does not have a fine enough grain. That means that the south-west is considered to be relatively prosperous without taking into account that what makes it prosperous is the M4 corridor and Plymouth. Apart from that, the area is one of relative poverty.
315WH Unhelpful definitions mean that the traditional small market town falls through the gap between the rural area that might benefit from rural development area status and the urban area that benefits from urban support. Somehow, the market town does not exist between those categories, and yet it is to such towns that people in rural areas look for the provision of the services that they need. The Liberal Democrats have argued many times that mortality and sparsity factors do not inform the formulae that allow for distribution of funds, whether for education, policing or elsewhere. Whichever service one considers, the unit costs are often higher in rural areas, yet that is not recognised in the formulae.
How are we to identify those who are most affected by what I have described? To paraphrase a famous passage, I would tell people, if they live in a rural area, "Do not be old and poor, do not be young and poor, do not be a family with young children and poor and do not have a long-term illness or disability and be poor." Such people will suffer more than someone in the same condition in an urban area. If I had to pick one category of people who particularly concerned me it would be the older ones, perhaps with low occupational pensions, who do not qualify for many of the social security benefits that would otherwise kick in. They would probably have to keep a car running, as the only way of getting to the shops, and would probably suffer from extreme isolation in the village, trying to keep up appearances, which is desperately difficult.
The people that I am concerned about would probably live in detached houses, which, in a rural area, is not a sign of affluence—just of the way we build our houses. Many hon. Members who represent such areas will be familiar with what may be found behind the front door. Sometimes, if we make a house call on, say, an elderly lady, we might see that the roof is falling in, that no maintenance has been carried out and that the occupant cannot heat the place. It is perhaps in a damp area—in the sort of fenland that we have in Somerset. We know that that person is living a pretty squalid life, finding life extremely difficult, and is probably not claiming. A stigma still attaches to claiming benefits, possibly because of ignorance of entitlements, and because there is no one to give guidance and support in claiming.
What difficulties need to be tackled by Government? The most important in many ways, is access, including physical access. We talk a great deal about the public transport needs of rural areas, but they are extreme. My village has one bus a week. Anyone without transport can catch that bus, spend a week in Frome and come back again, but anyone who wants to use it for any other purpose is lost. Over a long period the services available in villages have been reduced. Shops and banks are no longer there. I could divert my argument here on to the future of the sub-post office, but I shall not do so because we have aleady debated that and the Minister knows perfectly well of hon. Members' concerns about that. The post office is a crucial element in the provision of support to people on low incomes in rural areas. It is the one thing to which they have access in a village. Losing that means losing a crucial connection between society in the wider sense and the individual.
316WH Other problems of access relate more to the workings of the system. I have already mentioned the inequalities of funding. It cannot be right, as I pointed out to Education Ministers the other day, that schools in Somerset receive £1,500 a child a year less than equivalent schools in a leafy London suburb. Although we do relatively well with the money provided, the people who are disadvantaged by the discrepancy are those who need the most help. Because the local education authority, and the children affected, are not entitled to a basic level of funding, there are inequalities in what schools can provide. That may not affect the bulk of people, who are relatively well off and relatively high academic achievers, but there are those who miss out in the process.
What I have described also applies in the health service. If there were the same distances between accident and emergency services in the conurbations as there are in the west country, people in the conurbations would be up in arms, because it can be 25 or 30 miles to the nearest hospital. That makes it very difficult for people who do not have access to transport to go to hospital, even for a regular out-patient appointment. In Somerset, the hospital car service has recently been withdrawn, so unless a person is an acute case, no transport will be available. What do you do? There is no answer to that question at present. It is also more difficult to get a general practitioner to visit.
Then there are economic problems. We could discuss the present crisis in agriculture, but we have had many opportunities to debate that, so let us just recognise that there is a significant crisis in agriculture. Agriculture is not the be-all and end-all of rural life; not everyone is employed in agriculture. However, it worried me that the Prime Minister's response to the National Farmers Union the other day did not seem to recognise that a crisis in agriculture is not confined to agriculture; it filters down through the entire rural economy. Many industries, trades and professions depend on agriculture and the people who work in them are currently finding life extremely difficult. For example, agriculture engineers and book-keepers who maintain farm accounts are going out of business and a whole range of people in downstream industries are experiencing financial difficulties. I recognise that the Government have helped the rural economy by introducing the minimum wage, which is a bonus, but can the Minister tell us what the Government's position on the Agricultural Wages Board is likely to be, as it would be interesting to know whether it will be maintained or abolished? If it is abolished, my concern is that the minimum wage will become the standard wage for many people in agricultural industries.
We need to encourage diversification in order to provide new business opportunities in rural areas and to move away from seasonal employment. It is no help to an unskilled manual worker to be moved from shovelling muck to hoovering a chalet, if it means that he continues to receive dirt wages, unable to feed his family and in employment that may be terminated at any stage.
It is important that we revivify the economies of market towns. Anyone who travels across the country will see that regional centres with big shopping centres are prospering, but the story in smaller market towns is boarded up windows and a complete lack of economic 317WH activity. The Government must tackle that problem urgently. What are the barriers to employment? There are many arguments about that. There tends to be less long-term youth unemployment in rural areas, and much policy is aimed at long-term youth unemployment. Young people move into towns because they eventually realise that no jobs will appear, and that they cannot travel to them if they do, because they have no means of transport. Also, they have no access to training because there is no local higher or further education college, so their opportunities are restricted.
Then there is social support. Affordable housing is a recurrent theme. Many young people are sent into internal exile because they cannot find affordable housing. That is because the housing is bought by people on higher incomes who come to rural areas from elsewhere, and the whole housing market is artificially inflated as a result. Many old people who are trying to keep a roof over their heads do not have the support to enable them to do that successfully. I would like the Government to be much more active in their support for care-and-repair schemes, which are probably the way forward. We should use the voluntary sector and the funds that are available to maintain people in their own homes. The Government should also encourage the take-up of benefits in rural areas in a more proactive way. That is directly within the Minister's area of responsibility.
I discussed with the Minister some months ago the number of appeals against refusal of disability living allowance. I learnt that nearly 50 per cent. of appeals were upheld, which means that something is wrong with the system. That is causing a great deal of misery to disabled people in rural areas, who feel very isolated when their support is removed.
We must do something about long-term care, which is a great concern for many people. A relatively young man, in his forties, came to see me recently. His mother is in long-term care, and he is trying to run a pitifully small farm of 40 acres, which is barely viable. His problem was that his father had left the farm jointly to him and his mother. When his mother went into long-term care, the farm was considered to be a usable asset. The man's livelihood was being eroded because of his mother's care costs. I am sure that that is not how the rules were intended to work.
We have discussed socialisation and lack of community support. Many people retire to villages because they are taken by the idea of village life, only to find that they do not fit in because they have no connections and no family there. They are on low incomes, and the support that they took for granted in London or Birmingham is simply not available. Young people have no access to leisure facilities, so they hang around the bus stop, get bored and get into trouble, because that is all that they can afford to do.
What can the Government do? I do not pretend that there are any easy solutions; the Minister will be the first to recognise that. We do not want our countryside to be suburbanised or the differences between urban and rural areas to go unrecognised. We need to consider how the indicators are framed, to ensure that we recognise the problems in rural areas. Then we must adapt policies to fit the needs. That means a shift from policies to assist the efficient operation of the system to those that deal 318WH with individual objectives. It is a shift of position from centralisation to diversification in policy, so that individual needs are properly assessed.
It is crucial to extend outreach in terms of benefit take-up, but it is not easy to decide how to do that. We cannot have a Benefits Agency office in every village, but we must reach those people who cannot be reached by any other means. There should be a policy premium on accessibility, and every Government policy should be assessed on whether it improves accessibility for people in rural areas.
We also need a rural White Paper to deal with the issues. The White Paper has been delayed repeatedly, but I hope that it will be published soon and that it will encompass many of the points made today. It will be crucial to the Government's success in tackling issues in rural areas. Public perception is that the Government do not take those issues seriously, and they will have to work hard to overcome that and to understand the reality of life in rural areas.
I do not want to paint too black a picture of rural areas. They are still good places to live. I have lived in East India Dock road and Witham Friary, and I know which I prefer. However, let us not forget that some people do not share in the prosperity, or, because they have no private transport, the easy availability of services. Life for them is becoming not easier but more difficult every year, as those services are withdrawn. All service providers, commercial and non-commercial, appear to be retreating from rural areas. My plea is that the Government should reverse that process, make things available in rural areas to the people who need them and ensure that their needs are recognised every bit as much as those of people in our large towns and conurbations.
§ Mr. Alan Hurst (Braintree)I am pleased to be called in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on bringing the issue before the Chamber. There was a debate some two years ago, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mrs. Organ), in which many of the same questions were considered.
We have an almost cartoon-like picture of poverty. We are brought up with the urban paintings of Hogarth, with the reports in William Booth's "In Darkest England"—if we are learned enough—and with the novels of Charles Dickens, all of which create the impression that poverty is an urban phenomenon. The opposite of that is the golden-glow picture that people who live in towns have of the countryside—if it is not all "Cider with Rosie", there is at least pleasure, sunlight, health and vigour, and plenty. They think, "Countryside good, town bad."
Of course, the reality is far from that. People may want to commute from the country, holiday there, or spend weekends there: it is not quite the same for people born into modest circumstances in the country who do not have the resources to cope with changed times. The countryside has never been the idyll that many think. Most people lived in tied cottages, many of them would have been hired at annual fairs or markets, and their tenure of their cottage or home would last only as long as their employment, which might not have been for 319WH very long. If they lost their job and their home, there was no benefit system upon which they could fall back—they were destitute, save for the union workhouse.
We should say that things have moved on a long way. In particular, from the 1940s onwards, rural Britain enjoyed a renaissance. There was support for agricultural prices, regulation of agricultural wages, a national health service and a welfare state and the expansion of council housing in rural areas, all of which added greatly to the quality of life for people who lived in the country. Unfortunately, new threats have now appeared. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome had to deal with them in a panoramic sweep, because there is insufficient time to dwell on each of them.
Employment levels in the country have fallen drastically since 1945, when almost one million people were employed in agriculture. Two or three years ago, the figure stood at 250,000, and it is still falling fast. The real figure is certain to go lower still. It is a common feature that agriculture's ancillary industries—for example, sugar beet factories, such as that which closed recently in your constituency, Mr. Deputy Speaker, which is adjacent to mine—are no longer present in the same way. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome mentioned, the agricultural engineers will not be there to service the farms if the farms are not there on the scale that they once were.
That is not the whole picture. The countryside is also losing many facilities, because of the changing nature of the population. The village shop and the village post office—we have debated the issues twice, once in the main Chamber and once here—are under threat and have been for some time. It is not only a question of the proposals the Benefits Agency might make with regard to payments, although it has not been entirely helpful in some respects. The main question relates to the population now living in villages. Many people commute to work in a large town and some of them may be in the village only at weekends. Such people do not shop in the village shop, but in major supermarkets, sometimes in the nearest market town, but more often in the nearest major town or city, where they work. That takes away a margin of trade from village shops and post offices with the result that they cannot compete and have to close. The same argument applies to public houses, schools and social organisations. People no longer keep villages alive by spending all their active life in them and they may become places in which people occasionally sleep or stay.
It is easy to paint a black picture. I could paint an even blacker one, but we must consider the way forward. Progress must be based on realistic employment in rural areas. We must ensure that we do not create a benefit culture by adapting a working society to the 21st century. Farms should diversify as appropriate and new businesses and industries—which may be attached to farms—should serve appropriate callings and needs.
I emphasise the importance of such action being appropriate to circumstances. Putting many unusual businesses into the middle of the countryside changes the area into one more suburb. However, in certain circumstances, there may be a case for relaxation of planning controls and conditions. Government and local authorities, however, should certainly encourage new industries into such areas.
320WH Local authorities should tackle matters that they have recently been unable to deal with, including housing. We all talk about affordable housing, but that is difficult to achieve in country areas. Country people do not live in terribly picturesque cottages. In the main, they live in ex-council houses: many council houses have now been sold. If one wants to hear the local Essex accent, one should go to the council houses in which most local people now live. Farm workers' cottages have been knocked together so that two or three become a single dwelling which, almost certainly, only someone from outside can afford. The Government, local authorities and housing associations must devise effective schemes to provide houses for rent or sale at prices that can be contained at a certain level so that local people can remain in the villages in which they were born.
I am aware that other hon. Members wish to speak, so I shall conclude by touching on the provision of facilities. The Government have taken steps to encourage that by tackling rural transport and expressing a desire to integrate buses and trains. There is nothing more absurd than a train arriving 10 minutes after the last bus has gone: that breaks down the whole network essential to a rural area. We should extend taxation relief and business rate relief to shops and post offices so that it is worth their while remaining in rural areas. They should not have to shoulder yet another burden which may force them to close down and go elsewhere.
We must accept that the motor car is essential to rural life. Those who do not have cars are stuck in villages that they cannot leave. The Government have made progress by ending the fuel escalator, which bore down especially hard on rural communities. The ending of the scheme is welcomed in places in which the car is a necessity. Other schemes that recognise how essential a car is to people in rural areas may be of benefit. For example, we could encourage dial-a-ride schemes, community bus schemes and any scheme that facilitates travel between villages and between villages and towns.
We are analysing and understanding those interrelated problems. We must create employment in villages, so that people living in them are on the same level as those living in towns. We must ensure that services are appropriate for the community. There are encouraging signs. We have identified the problem and I hope that we shall have a constructive debate today on how we might move forward.
§ 3.5 pm
§ Mr. William Ross (East Londonderry)We are indebted to the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) for initiating the debate which has developed, not as some outside thought, on a farming basis, but rather on the basis of rural poverty. As it happens, I live on and own a farm. That is no secret to hon. Members who know me. A major debate on the Floor of the House on the farming industry and the rural poverty that has arisen in the past few years is long overdue.
I am well aware of all the issues that have been raised so far. The facts of rural poverty are well known to me. The local government ward in which I live has a high level of deprivation, even by Northern Ireland standards. I have always wondered just how those tables 321WH are drawn up. As the hon. Member for Somerset and Frome pointed out, people with cars are considered better off than those without. The fact that it is an old banger is not taken into account. Another factor is whether one's house is tied to a main sewer or septic tank. Those connected to a main sewer are considered to be better off than those with septic tanks. But the interior of the house has nothing to do with the sewerage. Someone needs to go back to basics and look at what constitutes deprivation and poverty in that sense. I am not happy with the measurements that are used.
We have already touched on the fact that many people in rural areas work outside agriculture. They are divorced from agriculture, which is the basic industry in rural areas, and divorced from the rural community in which they live at weekends but of which they are not in any real terms a part. I shall consider briefly the new poverty, which is apparent in rural areas and relates entirely to the crisis in farming. When I asked:
How many claims for working families tax credit come from farming families? Would not that number of claims be reduced if the Chancellor and his right hon. Friends drew down the compensatory funds that are available for farming from Europe, owing to the changes in the value of the pound?the Chancellor replied:I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue. I know that substantial numbers of claims have come in the past and still come from farming families. Self-employed people are also eligible for the working families tax credit and there has been a distinct increase in the number of applicants."—[Official Report, 3 February 2000; Vol. 343, c. 1195.]That answer points directly to the consequences of the present crisis in farming. It also shows that that level of poverty, which forces people to apply for working families tax credit, as it did its predecessors in social security benefit, is not a new phenomenon. There has always been far more poverty out there in the countryside than is generally realised. I am well aware of it. I am also well aware that many of those people in the countryside—the older generation especially have a great pride and will do almost anything before they are prepared to admit that they cannot live at a reasonable standard. They refuse, point blank sometimes, to apply for the benefits to which they are entitled. The consequence is that they live frugally. We should have great sympathy for them.With regard to farm incomes, it might be interesting to consider the situation in Northern Ireland with which I am most familiar. From 1995 to 1999 there was a fall of 79 per cent. in farm incomes. In the same period hill farming income fell by 95 per cent. If that does not constitute new poverty, I do not know what does and yet 10 per cent. of our work force in Northern Ireland still depend on agriculture and the agri-industry and ancillary industries.
That situation did not arise overnight. To some extent it was a consequence of BSE. The strength of sterling in the past few years has had a major effect. The power of the purchaser from the primary producer in the market place has increased enormously in recent years as a result of such changes as the abolition of the Milk Marketing Board, which, it must be remembered, was created to give support and strength to the primary producer. The board was much criticised in its time but it put a welcome bottom on farm prices upon which 322WH huge chunks of the farming industry were built. I was one of those who expressed deep concern about the consequences of sweeping it away and I am sorry to say that they have come to pass. All the power in the marketplace has shifted from the primary producer to the purchaser. The real problem with farming has always been that farmers buy retail and sell at low wholesale prices so they are in a weak position unless there is a food shortage, and then we know what happens.
There has also been a constant increase in the standards demanded for the production of animals—pigs, sheep, poultry, cows and so on. The costs of the various sprays, medical treatment, feed and other things have increased. Also, urban dwellers and the Government forget that, because of our position on the globe, we suffer certain constraints of climate and soil that more favoured regions of the world do not have to contend with. I remember being in Minnesota some years ago on what was, by our standards, a very large farm. The farm was in a black soil area but the amount of fertiliser used was at least equal to that used in this country. I was astonished to find that the crops that that farmer grew could not be grown here, but he was doing well from them. We live in a wet and windy climate which means that there are certain basic constraints on production and on what can be produced at reasonable cost. Governments sometimes forget that. Hitherto in this farming crisis, the Government's action has not been effective because the fall in farm prices continues and the problems of farming are not getting any better.
I have not been my party's spokesman on agriculture for some time but it seems to me that the only way in which farming—only some sectors of it—could be helped in the near future would be by drawing down the agrimoney compensatory sums, which this year could amount to more than £300 million. The Treasury will argue, as it always does, that that will cost it money, but it is costing someone else money in social security payments, which quickly add up. In those circumstances, the Government should act.
Of course, that will not help the poultry and pig problems. In November 1998, I visited a farm in Northern Ireland that had a fairly large pig production unit. Anyone who talked to the group across the road last week would have had a clear picture of the problems of the pig industry in Great Britain. The farmer in Northern Ireland had more than 200 sows. He had carried on until the beginning of the year making a loss of £30 per pig produced. His losses were enormous. The farm was floating only on a large milk herd which he also owned and on the profits accumulated over many years. It has all gone. It decreased steadily until his last sow pigged three weeks ago. It was not just that the productive capacity of a herd of 200 or more sows had gone; 14 full and part-time jobs went too, which does not help the rural economy. There was simply no other work for them to do, so they are all on unemployment benefit—an aspect too often forgotten.
The age profile of farmers and the farming community is important. It is far too high with far too many grey heads and not enough young men and women going into it. I had a farm for many years before I entered the House of Commons and I have always been aware of the difficulties faced by the farming industry. It has always been bedevilled by a lack of 323WH clarity in Government intentions. Had farming communities known sooner that the Government were not going to take realistic steps to help them through the present crisis, we would not be in the current mess because folk would have taken evasive action much sooner. As it is, many people face ruin.
It is possible to attempt to diverisfy, but there are limits to it. Not every farm can be turned into a golf course; not every farmet's son can start welding gates; not every farmer can start bed and breakfast—they may not live in a tourist area. Farms exist to produce food for human beings. My concern is that the Government are treating farming in the same way as any other industry. We could get by without home-produced coal—and we are aware of the enormous difficulties, pain and misery suffered by mining communities—because electricity can be produced through gas or other means: there are alternatives, but no one has yet found an alternative to food.
We need to grow food and we will be extremely foolish if we allow the farming industry to deteriorate because of the paucity of men and women entering it. In a moment of crisis, we could find ourselves without the capacity to increase food production or to maintain a safe reserve for our people. That is what makes the farming industry different from all others. It needs to be supported by whatever means. We simply cannot continue raising our own standards of production, but buying food from the ends of the earth knowing that it was produced at lower cost than anyone here could match under systems that would be regarded as unacceptable in this country.
Our debate is so important, and if I have trodden too deeply into the farming community, it is because I believe that improving the farming industry is basic to combating and eradicating poverty in the rural communities of this nation.
§ Mr. Tom Levitt (High Peak)I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. My constituency of High Peak in many ways mirrors the wider English community in its social, urban-rural and industrial mix. In one respect—its levels of income—it does not reflect the whole of England. It is partly because we are in a rural area and partly because not just farming, but catering and tourism—traditionally low income industries—dominate the local economy.
I have lived all my life in rural areas or market towns. Before High Peak, I lived in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew). The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) earlier referred to areas that have a chocolate box appearance, but hide real problems of social deprivation and poverty—and High Peak is a classic example of such an area.
The community of Yorkshire Bridge has around 50 houses and used to be owned entirely by the water board for its workers on the Ladybower dam. It has a letter box, a telephone box and a pub, but nothing else. It is two miles from the nearest village school, two miles from the nearest village shop and post office and six miles from the nearest train station. Its bus service 324WH is very infrequent. Going to the cinema, supermarket or hospital means a journey of 12 or 15 miles in whatever direction. I would not claim that people living there are necessarily living in dire poverty, but it is certainly an area of rural deprivation which, combined with low income and poor access to services, makes it that much worse for people who live there.
The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) has just spoken about the agricultural industry. In my constituency, the main agricultural industry is sheep farming. A couple of years ago, the typical sheep farmer on an upland Pennine farm had an annual income of about £10,000. Comparing that net income with a subsidy of about £12,000 shows that such a farmer would have been working at an operating loss during the year to which I refer. If one is faced with a 40-mile round trip to take one's sheep to an abattoir or maket to sell them for pennies, one will not relish the idea of staying in the industry. There are huge structural problems in parts of the agricultural eonomy, and they cannot be solved overnight. There is a degree of over-production and some of the solutions will take a lot of hard biting to ensure that we get that part of the economy back on its feet.
As other hon. Members have said, however, all is not doom and gloom in rural areas, even where poverty can be found. Indeed, one does not have to look far to see it. A former Conservative local councillor for the Yorkshire Bridge area is on record as having said back in about 1994 that if poverty existed in his ward he would know about it. In view of that ignorance, he was duly removed in the 1995 local government elections. There are many ways in which the tide is turning. In my constituency of High Peak, some 2,000 people benefited from the introduction of the national minimum wage. The current level of £3.60—soon to be £3.70—is more than such people would have received without the minimum wage. In just a few weeks' time, they will be a further £1 a week better off because of the change in the national insurance contributions threshold, which will apply in addition to the reduction in the basic rate of income tax that is also in the cards.
Hundreds of families across High Peak are now benefiting from the working families tax credit. The incomes of some of the people in those families were raised to £3.60 an hour by the national minimum wage. Some of them now earn £5 a week or more extra, as they pay very little tax because of the working families tax credit, which gets more help to people who are most in need. Record increases in child benefit have assisted 14,000 families in my constituency. Following local press coverage over the past few days of my call for pensioners to take up their right to the pensioners minimum income guarantee, my office has received several calls from people who will clearly benefit from it. We are doing everything that we can to encourage such people. I take the point made earlier that people must see the minimum income guarantee as a right and entitlement, and not as a benefit, charity or handout.
I represent 16,000 pensioners in the High Peak constituency. The minimum income guarantee will help 2,000 of those pensioners, all of whom will be benefiting from reduced taxation on their savings, from free eye tests, which will be introduced in April, and from help with heating, insulation and home security. Indeed, from 1 November, people aged over 75 will benefit from 325WH free television licences. In what must be the coldest constituency in England—if you look at Buxton on the weather forecast, you will find that it is the coldest town in England—the £100 winter fuel payment is very welcome.
Other measures are assisting people who are suffering from deprivation and poverty. Derbyshire has a good record on keeping small schools open and on allowing old people to continue to live in their homes through the use of the home help service when otherwise they may have had to move away. In rural areas, if you move away to live in a care home, you invariably have to move out of your community, which can be upsetting for some people.
§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. John McWilliam)Order. I know that this is a debate on rural matters, but there are too many "yous" in it. When the hon. Gentleman uses the word "you", he is referring to me, and I agree that Buxton can be quite bracing.
§ Mr. LevittThank you for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that you would be impressed to see the work being done by Derby university and others to bring new technology to rural areas to allow investment in remote learning so that people can benefit by increasing their skills, which will allow them to increase their earning power and, in many cases, to set up their own businesses. Teleworking and home working are also taking off in that area.
I welcome the fact that, as I understand it, about £15,000 per rural post office will be invested over the next few years, to allow post offices not only to thrive but to diversify and introduce more services, thereby allowing people to cut their transport costs. Derbyshire has benefited from the money for rural buses. We also have thriving community transport and car share schemes in our rural areas. Indeed, the ethos of self-help is very much at work, and making life better for people in such communities.
One especially interesting project underway is the prospect of the Hope Valley college becoming a technology college. Hope Valley college is an 11–16 school, 10 or 12 miles away from the nearest secondary school, and it hopes to build a network between itself and its feeder primary schools. As a community college, it has always encouraged people to use its facilities in the evening in order to benefit from increased skills and improved earning power.
In Derbyshire, unemployment is fairly low—about 3.8 per cent. according to the International Labour Organisation figures—and vacancies continue to be high. Many good things are happening, some inspired by the Government, some coming directly from local communities, and some from self-help schemes. That is all within the framework of tackling poverty and eliminating child poverty over 20 years, which is the Government's aim. There is, therefore, a bright future for people in the most deprived areas of those rural communities. Poverty is a real problem, but it is being tackled in a sustainable way. People are not looking for the quick fix, but are building over a generation after years of neglect.
§ Mr. David Drew (Stroud)I will be brief, because I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) wants to speak. I shall raise two issues. First, what have the Government done in response to the poverty agenda? Secondly, how can we ensure that that has an effect on the rural poverty that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) described? The hon. Gentleman gave us a panoramic view, and an insight into what is really happening.
The Government have identified the issue of poverty and signed up to the poverty agenda. We must congratulate them on that. In a speech on 18 February 1999, the Secretary of State introduced the Government's agenda and published the first annual report, "Opportunity for all—tackling poverty and social exclusion", a document that, although it largely considers the macro issue of poverty, relates just as much to the rural domain as it does to our urban problem areas. We must bear that in mind.
A series of documents published recently have shown that the Government are serious about tackling poverty. Just before Christmas, we had the document on rural economies. Since then, we have had "Sharing the Nation's Prosperity". Both those documents make it clear that tackling poverty, whether one describes it as deprivation or social exclusion, is part of the Government's agenda. It is essential that the Government understand that there is rural poverty as well as poverty in the urban setting which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) said, we know from various works of fiction. That debate should be taken up. We have failed to deal with poverty in rural areas for so long because it was unidentifiable. Either people chose not to identify rural poverty because of the stigma associated with it, or the statistical analyses to show that it truly existed were not available. We all knew that it existed, we all talked about it, but finding evidence for it was difficult.
The increasing amount of information on the subject has allowed the Government to set targets for rural as well as urban areas. I will concentrate on one particular area to highlight how we can take that further, drawing on the review of the index of deprivation carried out by the university of Oxford's department of applied social studies and social research. What the review is trying to achieve is highly laudable. It is aimed at identifying not only rural poverty, but deprivation in all its forms, but because of the way in which it deals with the complexities of the issue in different domains, it is worth inquiring into. I hope that in reply my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will be able to assure us that the document and the research that backs it up are being taken forward, because they not only identify, poverty in all its forms, but allow us to put in place the policies that are needed.
What does the review allow us to do? It moves the debate towards a more concentrated effort in understanding what can be measured. It suggests analysis that is ward-based rather than by enumeration district, an examination of the indices to make them finer-grained and more finely tuned, and disaggregating the information so that it can be dealt with at local level. We could devise a series of principles that we can pick out and understand, and which can relate to all aspects of poverty across our countryside.
327WH If nothing else, I hope that the Minister will be able to say some encouraging things. Those of us who represent rural or semi-rural areas are not trying to capture that particular mechanism, but we believe that it is an important way to take the debate forward, and will allow us to come to some conclusions about how the Government should attack poverty and deal with difficult conditions. The debate will, I am sure, suggest an important direction for the Government, and the Minister may have some good things to say to us on that basis.
§ Dr. George Turner (North-West Norfolk)Other Members have painted in much of the analysis, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) has emphasised the importance of certain documents. The rural group of Labour Members produced our audit a year ago, and we have seen some documents from the policy innovation unit. There has been a fair amount of analysis, and I could add to that from the experience of my constituency.
My constituency is a vast rural one, which has suffered from agricultural decline and from some of the other ills that rural communities have experienced in the past 20 or 30 years. We need to take two points from the analysis into account. First, the problems that we are discussing are not new. During the lifetime of the previous Government, 100 village schools closed in Norfolk, and we have witnessed the decline in the numbers of those who work on the land. Agricultural workers have needed to move to market towns to take up low-paid employment, because they cannot afford the transport costs—and there is no public transport anyway. Empty homes have been bought by incomers for use by holidaymakers. That helps the economy, but the problems with which the Government are dealing have been left to fester for a long time. There are financial problems about low pay and incomes and problems of isolation related to transport and access to services, be it the doctor's surgery or the shop.
We must look for structural solutions as well as the band-aid measures that the Government provided in their first year or two. The minimum wage has provided first aid for many of my constituents, and the minimum income guarantee has helped many of the 22,000 pensioners in my constituency. The working families tax credit is helping large numbers of people as well. However, those measures are meant to deal immediately with the problems of poverty while time is taken to work out what must be done to change the structures. We must change the long-term future so that people no longer need to rely on the minimum wage, because they are paid more. They must have the ability to create their pensions, so that they do not need the minimum income guarantee. We will not succeed in government unless we put a medium and long-term programme in place at the same time as the crisis measures.
I hope that the analysis will result in a rural White Paper, which I presume has been delayed only because it has been coupled with the spending review. If we do not balance our policy on resources with the issues that must be faced, we will not solve the problems in the right way. That was the failure of the previous Government's rural White Paper.
328WH My background is in electronic engineering, and modern technologies and computers will be important. Post Office modernisation could bring the ability to access Government services from the village post office, which would be of enormous significance. One of my ex-colleagues is working on a project that, if available in a post office, would mean that voice recognition technology would project on to a screen in sign language the speech of the person behind the counter. The scope for technology in rural areas is great, so we must ensure that it is exploited.
I have only a short time available, but I shall outline what I think the other key issues must be. We have to deal with low aspirations. For decades, the aspiration in too many of my constituents' families has been to get through school years and go into easily accessible but low-paid employment. Historically, unemployment in my constituency has never been great, but wage levels have been far too low. Educational opportunities will be taken only when we raise aspirations. We must consider education and training, which must be accompanied by other reforms to the rural economy.
I welcome the modest reforms of the common agricultural policy, and the modulations that the Government are trying to make to the development plan. That is a much better way to support the rural economy. We must ensure that our planners do not have a rulebook mentality about what should be prevented. The mood in local government must be such that planners consider how to help the economy and protect the environment. That balance has not always been struck.
The importance of transport and access has generally been recognised. I welcome 200 per cent. the abandonment of the fuel escalator, but I do not want another measure to replace it. The increases in fuel costs over the past year as a result of the rising price of oil have hurt poor workers in my constitutency who have to use a car to get to work. Whatever transport measures the Government introduce to help such people, they will never have bus services. We have had a wide-ranging debate, and I hope that the Minister can assure me that we can expect long-term solutions.
§ Mr. Eric Pickles (Brentwood and Ongar)I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on having initiated an interesting and informative debate. Most of our anti-poverty mechanisms relate almost entirely to urban areas, as that is where poverty has been most manifest. Rural poverty is largely hidden, and, because of the nature of the countryside, spread over a large geographical area. Nevertheless, the way in which we should approach rural poverty has many similarities to strategies, some of which have been successful, in urban areas.
The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) is absolutely right. The problem relates to aspirations. A single anti-poverty measure is not appropriate. The problem requires a combination of education, employment opportunities, housing, transportation and benefit incentives. The way in which those elements work together will determine whether the Government successfully tackle rural poverty.
I hope that the Government will tackle the problem of wilful blindness. I do not know what came over the Prime Minister on his recent visit to the west country. If 329WH he intended to persuade the countryside that he was on its side, he singularly failed. His "Crisis? What crisis?" attitude has hindered initiatives to restore the confidence of the countryside. Against the background of wilful blindness, we seem incapable of reversing a worsening trend.
In discussing countryside employment, we are not dealing only with farming, but farming is the mortar that holds together a lot of the countryside. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome rightly said, farming has a knock-on effect on the rest of the rural economy. In the past two years, farm incomes have fallen by 75 per cent. Local government spending per head in rural areas is 60 per cent. of that in urban areas. Rural post offices face closure. We are aware of the effects of high fuel duty and we understand the lack of rural jobs and the high cost of housing. It is not surprising that the New Policy Institute found that one in 10 people in rural areas live below the poverty line.
The accountancy firm Deloitte and Touche, which has been investigating farming incomes over the past 10 years, recently reported that last year farming profits dropped by more than 50 per cent.—the greatest fall that it has recorded. It is perhaps not surprising that, according to a recent National Farmers Union survey, two third of farmers' children do not want to follow their father or mother into the family firm.
There is a time lag in the appreciation of the prosperity of the countryside. The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not give a clear answer to his parliamentary question about the number of people who would qualify for the working families tax credit. The National Farmers Union has said that 46 per cent. of farmers are on incomes that would qualify them for the working families tax credit.
We have some of the highest petrol prices in Europe, which means that the poor must spend a disproportionate amount on the running of their cars. Hon. Members may recall that in January a geographers conference was held in Brighton. It examined the problem and said that a new class of poor was being created in rural areas because of the rise in petrol costs. There was a debate in another place on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's recent report on urban poverty. Research was also undertaken at the university of Aberdeen, which found that the cost of running a car often prevents young people from buying their own home. Most young people need their own transport to hold down work. Public transport is regarded as unreliable and often timetables do not match the work schedule. Such research puts a question mark over rural transport and the cost of running a car and it is no surprise that the Countryside Alliance found that the £50 million road transport package made little or no difference.
The Minister will have to reply to many questions for which he has no direct responsibility. However, he does have responsibility for rural post offices. The Government's plans to have benefits paid directly into bank accounts will put at risk a third of the country's sub-post offices, many of which are in rural areas. The National Federation of Sub-Postmasters said that the plans were a
disaster for sub-postmasters, disaster for those people who are drawing their benefits and pensions (and for) people who want their post offices that are closed".330WH We all know from our postbags about the difficulty that the closure of sub-post offices will cause. I have received several letters from the constituents and, to save time, I shall quote from just one. Mr. Johnson from Hook End, a rural area in my constituency, is a full-time carer for his wife, who suffers from multiple sclerosis. He wrote that, if the local post office were to close,I will have to request the assistance of a neighbour to sit with my wife while I have to journey into Brentwood for the total sum of £39.90, minus the expense of petrol and parking fees and the total inconvenience of doing so and all that it entails.I am sure that the Minister is sympathetic to such a complaint, because, when in opposition, he was most diligent in writing to sub-postmasters. On 17 May 1993, he wrote:I am writing to you in response to widespread concern about the impact of Government proposals to change the method of the payment of pensions and other benefits…I can see no reason why people should not have a choice in the way they receive their payments.He enclosed a petition with the letter and ended it by stating:If you have any points you would like to make to me on this issue please don't hesitate to get in touch.I suppose that this debate provides the opportunity to contact him and I look forward to hearing how he intends to safeguard not only the post offices in York, but those in Somerton and Frome, High Peak, Brentwood and Ongar, East Londonderry and the constituencies of others who have spoken today.In conclusion, the problem is that the Government mistakenly view the countryside as prosperous suburbs. It is important that we recognise that rural poverty is slightly different from urban poverty. To do that, we have to put together a package that takes into consideration the special characteristics of the countryside. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Hugh Bayley)I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on securing the debate. It has been a wide-ranging and extremely well-informed discussion, with contributions by hon. Members from the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.
There are real differences between urban and rural areas, but many elements draw together town and country, such as shared services and economic interdependence. Refreshingly, no hon. Member tried to play off the interests of rural areas against those of urban areas. As a Government who seek to represent all people in all communities in all parts of the United Kingdom, we need to respond to needs and to poverty, whether in rural or urban areas. Trying to set two areas against each other does a disservice to people in both.
The hon. Gentleman asked what the Prime Minister said on his recent visit to the west country. The Prime Minister acknowledges the depth of poverty in the countryside and we have responded to that—through our rural development plans, for example, which will provide an extra £1.6 billion over the next seven years for development in rural areas. The Prime Minister's 331WH personal intervention meant that Cornwall received objective 1 status, which will provide the assistance that it needs.
There are problems in rural areas. The hon. Gentleman raised that of bus services. He said that there was just one bus a week to his own village. Twenty-two per cent. of villages have no bus services. The Conservative policy of bus deregulation was a disaster for rural areas, as I know only too well. Somerset is a rural area, as is mine, but the population density of North Yorkshire is 70 per sq km, which is half that of Somerset.
The hon. Gentleman also welcomed the impact of the minimum wage on the countryside. Sadly, the Conservative party voted against that measure. I am pleased that the Liberal Democrats have abandoned their proposal for regional variations in the minimum wage. That policy would have led to many rural areas with lower wages having a lower rate of wage protection than that introduced by the Government through the national minimum wage.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Dr. Turner) and the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome raised the important issue of improving the accessibility of benefits to people in rural areas. We have seen the value of NHS Direct in improving health advice to people in rural areas and we must learn the lessons from that for other national Government services such as benefits, and local government services such as social services.
§ Mr. David Heathrose—
§ Mr. BayleyI have so many hon. Members to respond to that in fairness to them I shall press on.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) mentioned the lack of information on rural deprivation. The Government's review of the index of local deprivation addresses that. We propose to introduce elements in the index, including that of access to services. Increasing the weighting will benefit rural communities and their local authorities. It will also allow the data to be disaggregated at ward, rather than just district, level and help to pinpoint the pockets of poverty and deprivation in rural areas that so many hon. Members have been at pains to emphasise. Indeed, during the past two years the increase in standard spending assessments for shire counties has been higher than for England as a whole, which reflects the fact that the Government recognise the need for additional resources in shire areas—we are putting our money where our mouth is. In Plymouth, many local authorities have developed their own local strategies for combating poverty. That is important in dealing with the issues that we have discussed today, and I hope that more authorities, shire counties and urban authorities, will do that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Hurst) referred to the huge fall in the number of people working in agriculture during the past 50 years or so. However, there has been growth in other employment areas, and although I accept that averages mask many differences, unemployment is extremely low in many 332WH rural areas. In the constituency of the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome, unemployment is 2 per cent. In Plymouth, Sutton, it is 7.5 per cent. In Great Yarmouth, a very rural area, it is more than 10 per cent., so there is variation. There is a heavy burden of unemployment in many rural areas, as well as areas in which the burden is much less.
Since May 1997, there has been a significant fall in long-term unemployment of about one-third in all parts of the country, but interestingly, it has fallen by 36 per cent. in accessible rural areas, by 37.5 per cent. in remote rural areas and by only 30.9 per cent in urban areas. There has been a significant fall in long-term unemployment everywhere, but the largest fall has been in rural areas.
The hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) referred to the working families tax credit. He said that there had been a good take-up of the tax credit, which reflects the problem of poverty and low income in rural areas. The Labour party supported the introduction of the working families tax credit—sadly, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats opposed it—and it is making a big difference to the issue of poverty in rural areas. The same goes for the national minimum wage. My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Mr. Levitt) said that 2,000 people in his constituency had benefited from that. Again, that measure was introduced in the face of stiff opposition from the Conservatives, who said that it would destroy jobs, yet jobs are being created in rural areas, unemployment is falling, and the wages of people on low incomes are rising as a result of the Government's policies.
My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak also raised the important issue of the minimum income guarantee for pensioners, which boosts the incomes of the poorest pensioners in rural and urban areas. In the House last week, we agreed to increase the value of the minimum income guarantee in line not with prices, but with earnings. That increase was supported by all parties except, of course, the Liberal Democrats.
My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk asked when the rural White Paper would appear. It will be published later this year, in tandem with the urban White Paper, because the interdependence between the two is important.
The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) made several important points but, given the time, I can respond to only one of them. I must respond to his challenge about post offices. Like me, he might have received a document from the House of Commons Library, which lists the number of post offices that have been closed in recent years. The number of Crown post offices—directly controlled by the Government—that closed while the Conservatives were in power was 974. The number closed by the Labour Government is six. Of course, we do not directly control sub-post offices as they are private businesses, but 3,435 closed while the Conservatives were in power and closures continue at much the same rate. Something must be done about that. The Government propose to rectify the problem by modernising the Post Office. We shall allow it to provide a wider range of services in order to seek new business. When the Conservatives were in government, they wanted to use automated credit transfer, which would mean that people would not have the right to collect benefits in cash from the local post 333WH office. People should have choice. I argued for choice then, and I am pleased to say that the Labour Government are introducing choice.
Those who complain about the threat to post offices should do what I have done for many years. I have always supported my local post office, so I opened a Girobank account and went to the post office rather than the bank to withdraw cash.
§ Mr. Deputy SpeakerOrder. Time is up. Would those hon. Members who do not want to stay for the next debate please leave quickly and quietly?