Rural communities left out of Tories’ levelling-up fund

The government’s flagship levelling-up fund is unfairly skewed towards “red wall” seats and away from pockets of rural deprivation, according to a new study. Calculations used to allocate the government’s £4.8bn levelling-up cash seem “arbitrary” and opaque, a report commissioned by the Rural Services Network (RNS) and written by economics consultancy Pragmatix has found.

Rather than a transparent methodology “there has been a lack of clear and consistent explanation for how ministerial judgement has been applied”, the report said. “The outcome has been funding allocated in greater proportions to northern nonmetropolitan urban locations – and away from more rural authorities.”

“Although detailed, the government’s complex algorithms for allocating funds remain partial, judgemental and, too often, confused,” the report’s authors said.

Ministers also overrode civil servant guidance about how to allocate money in the Towns Fund in order to tweak the minimum size of settlements that would qualify, the report said. This ruled out many rural towns with sparse populations in their catchment areas, in favour of more tightly-packed urban areas.

Other measures, including using benefit claimant counts, can also distort the picture of deprivation across the country. This is because there may be fewer people on benefits in rural areas, but

they may be suffering from in-work poverty or insecure seasonal work. It gives a gives “falsely positive view” of rural locations, the report said.

“Wages are lower in the countryside, but many of the living costs are higher,” said Graham Biggs, chief executive of the Rural Services Network. “So rural standards of living, especially for those who can’t afford or are unable to commute to the cities for work, are low. If the government used an objective measure of living standards, more money should be being targeted at levelling-up rural communities.”

The RNS’s drive to reconsider how poverty is measures and funds allocated is aimed at changing government’s approach ahead of the launch of the Shared Prosperity Fund. This fund is meant to try and plug the gap left behind by EU programmes that sought to try and mitigate inequality throughout the bloc.

The UK should rethink tackling poverty by considering by giving out funds to local authorities based on the standard of living people can afford in their areas.

The fresh findings come after Tory backbenchers were confronted with a separate set of data revealing the impact of poverty in rural areas. A study from by Sheffield University showed that in Wycombe, the constituency of Tory MP Steve Baker, 14 per cent of people were going hungry and nearly 30 per cent were struggling to access food.

Yesterday, Mr Baker said on social media that the figures supported his and other Conservatives’ argument that the £20-a week uplift for universal credit should be kept.

“On the surface, Wycombe is an area of affluence, but it has some areas of true deprivation,” He said, adding that cycles of lockdowns and Covid-19-linked restrictions have “pushed many to the edge”. He said that this was one reason why he had argued for restrictions to be lifted sooner. The uplift for universal credit “should ideally be kept”, Mr Baker said.

A Treasury spokesperson said they were supporting “all areas of the country to level up”. Rural areas will benefit through better

broadband, investment in bus services and the ongoing fuel duty freeze, they added. “We will publish a levelling up white paper later this year, setting out more details on how we’ll help improve livelihoods, spread opportunity and drive economic growth – as we build back better from the pandemic,” the spokesperson said.

Analysis: a competent trade strategy is long overdue

The clarity of a country’s approach to agriculture in talks is often a good test of how robust its trade strategy is, according to a host of long-suffering negotiators.

There’s a reason why: agriculture is often the most politically sensitive issue a nation’s leader faces when they sign their name on the dotted line on a trade pact in front of the cameras. Make an ill-considered step one and by the following, day the road can be blocked by tractors. Farmers, and rural communities, have long memories for what they perceive as political betrayal.

And for all the noise surrounding the red wall, many senior Conservative MPs have strong farming ties in their constituency. Trade secretary Liz Truss is no exception. Her South West Norfolk seat has sugar beet farmers who are none-too-happy about the liberalisation of sugar imports that’s come with post-Brexit trade deals. Sugar cane, of which Australia is a huge producer, will soon rush in more readily under a new trade agreement.

Many of the decisions that impact most on farming have come out bit-by-bit: drip-fed in technical detail. But that’s not a strategy that can last forever, as the recent row over the structure of phasing out tariffs on products such as a lamb and beef under the Australia trade deal, was ultimately revealed to amount to opening the UK market up pretty much overnight.

For now, the government is stalling on its reply to a report from the independent Trade and Agriculture Commission it set up, and then promptly disbanded. By The Independent’s calculations, it’s been four and a half months since the final version of the

report was published. That response, several farmers told The Independent, was meant to be the government’s moment to set out in black and white how they were going to win from trade, and exactly what they were going to lose.

The view from the other side of the negotiating table of the Australia agreement in principle (a shorthand for trade deals before parliaments ratify them) was clear: they had hoped for, but certainly not expected to achieve tariff-free, quota-free access for agricultural products. There was shock as well as celebration in Canberra. There may have been some smart reasons why, given the aim of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), it made sense to take the political pain of upsetting farmers in talks with Australia this time round, rather than rerunning it in later rounds of talks.

But there’s a cost to not being upfront and delaying detail and clarity on its position for the trade department. Community consent is a huge part of not only getting deals through parliament (though other than delaying tactics, it’s largely a case of like it or lump it for MPs on trade agreements in the UK) it’s at the heart of implementing agreements and making an overall trade strategy work. Just ask some of the New Zealanders who lived through enough protests in recent years to know trade missteps are politically costly.

If the UK doesn’t get its act together with an open, clear approach to agriculture, it risks winning the battle for a deal with Australia, perhaps even with New Zealand, but perhaps losing the war with a deal for CPTPP.

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