Where is Brexit vision for rural areas?

THERE WAS little evidence of any party promoting policies relevant to rural dwellers during the General Election.

This was remiss. A third of voters live in rural or semi-rural areas. Challenges facing rural areas are just as challenging as those facing urban areas. Now the tragedy of Grenfell Tower overshadows all political discussions at this time – and this is totally understandable. The appalling images of the inferno and casualties are too horrendous for words.

But the tragedy has flagged up an issue of growing magnitude – the lack of affordable homes and social housing.

In the countryside, this is preventing young people, the next generation to work the land, from staying and finding work in the area in which they grew up.

That means the demographics are changing, with predominantly older people remaining in rural areas, with inadequate access to public transport. As we all live longer, this is putting pressure on the National Health Service.

Challenges facing rural dwellers boil down primarily on the lack of good access to essential services. Take rural broadband. Government policy, and indeed that of Superfast Broadband North Yorkshire, is to speed up connection to the internet.

However those people living in more rural isolated areas, with often poor mobile signal as well, are still left floundering. There is one possible solution which I am exploring with North Yorkshire Police. The constabulary is putting in a mobile communication system which enables their officers to operate in remote areas and request backup if required.

Were North Yorkshire Police to allow mobile phone operators to pay to piggyback on their service, that would be an enormous boost to rural communities. It would also provide an income strand to the police and enable them to recover the costs of their mobile network.

Countries such as Sweden, Austria and Switzerland have some of the most challenging terrain, yet still have fast and reliable wi-fi access. We should learn from them.

Other issues worthy of a national debate are the ever-increasing challenges of transport provision, healthcare, rural crime as well as fly-tipping on a grand scale.

And then there’s Brexit, which poses the greatest threat to those farmers in upland areas who stand to lose their income from direct payments and stewardship schemes.

Farmers are uniquely well placed to protect and promote the environment, improve biodiversity, develop ecosystems and prevent flooding. There is talk of alternative proposals but farmers need certainty and need to plan. They are already planning for 2020 and beyond.

Cheaper food prices were promised during the referendum campaign yet the Government is looking at higher animal welfare and other standards which will only push UK farm prices up.

Foreign farm imports may be cheaper but the standards of production fall far short of ours in, for example, the US and Argentina. Food security needs to be improved with British farmers currently only supplying 60 per cent of our needs. We should support the current campaign of leading farm organisations to support local farmers, eating fresh food with shorter supply chains.

British consumers tend to buy on price, so Government should be wary of piling on more standards and regulations on our producers.

We should not under-estimate the combined contribution made to the UK economy of farming and food – the so called farm-to-fork industry is worth £110bn and employs more than four million people.

Sadly, there has been a defeaning silence since the EU referendum campaign when all sorts of promises were made. No concrete proposals have emerged and this now falls to Michael Gove, the new Environment Secretary, who was among those to advocate Brexit.

The potential impact of Brexit on farmers, market towns and the rural economy is huge. Without access to a steady, reliable workforce from the EU, and with the loss of the market on our doorstep of 505 million consumers, there is no immediate magic wand to wave. Negotiating future trade agreements will take time, possibly years to negotiate.

I hope there will now be the opportunity for issues affecting rural communities to be fully debated as Britain prepares to leave the EU. The rural voice must be heard.