Close urban and rural funding gap, MPs urge Prime Minister

Beverley and Holderness MP Graham Stuart led a delegation of MPs from all three parties who have rural constituencies to see the Prime Minister at Downing Street yesterday and urged him to put right “historic wrongs” in the distribution of public funds which fails to acknowledge the higher cost of delivering services in remote areas.

Mr Stuart, who chairs a cross-party group on rural services, said: “Rural areas have been punished for their prudence and efficiency for too long.

“In tough times it is essential that we move to a fairer allocation of limited public resources.

“Over recent years public spending has been skewed so as to advantage urban areas and leave rural communities in the cold. We must now make a start in putting this right.”

Mr Stuart has been campaigning for a better deal for rural areas, claiming that while average wages are lower than in cities and council tax is £100 higher per head, public funding is significantly higher in urban areas.

The cost of delivering services in sparse, rural areas is often much higher than in cities, particularly with petrol and diesel prices having soared in recent years.

“The Prime Minister was extremely sympathetic, not least because his own constituency is so rural,” he said.

“But we took him back to the fact the funding formulae for schools, health, fire and police are all skewed in favour of urban areas and said as the Government reviews its funding formulae it needs to ensure it doesn’t take the unfairness in the current system into the new formula.

“It is not enough for the Government to be sympathetic to rural life; it must act to change a system which is biased and unfair. This is the start of a rural fair share campaign and we will be using all the tools available in Parliament and outside to make the case.”

Since coming to power, the Government has scrapped the post of the Rural Advocate, who had been appointed to speak up for the countryside, as well as planning to abolish the Commission for Rural Communities.

But Ministers have built up a rural policy unit within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and insist the Government is in tune with the needs of residents and business in rural areas.