Rural councils deserve cash windfall, MP tells Commons

The claim by Conservative MP Graham Stuart was made during a fiery debate in the House of Commons about the Government giving out £300m in ‘transitional funding’ to rural councils in Conservative heartlands and also to London authorities.

The representative for Beverley and Holderness said he was furious to hear Labour criticism of the money as their party had created an unfair funding system for rural areas and an unlevel playing field for many years.

He said: “When in power, they skewed the whole system.

“They could not find a way to put the money into Labour areas without coming up with a falsehood.

“They put density into the formula at four times the weighting of sparsity, when there was no evidence whatsoever of any link between density and need. It was they who skewed the system, and it needs to be put right.”

Conservative-run Craven Council in North Yorkshire will get a four per cent increase to its budget worth £230,000. However Barnsley, Leeds and Wakefield will not receive anything from the fund despite battling significant budget cuts.

It is understood that many Conservative leaders were deeply unhappy at the cuts facing local authorities as revealed in the local government finance settlement in December.

Intense lobbying over the winter from Conservative MPs is said to have convinced the Government to cushion the blow, or they may have risked facing a rebellion when members are asked to back the plan.

Mr Stuart told the Commons that rural areas tend to have the oldest populations, yet when the Conservatives came to power in 2010, there was a 50 per cent premium going to urban councils with much younger populations.

He said he also took offence to a ‘nonsense’ insinuation from Labour that Withernsea in his constituency is “living it up in some rich, prosperous rural idyll”.

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Greg Clark said: “After 10 years it is appropriate to look again at the cost of providing services in different areas—rural as well as urban – and at the changes in demographic pressures in that time.”