MPs seek rural taskforce to deliver ‘turbo charge’
ATASKFORCE is needed to turbo-charge rural Britain’s prosperity, Conservative MPs have told the Government.
As MPs debated levelling up rural areas of the UK, Tory MP Chris Loder told the Commons he would be asking Rishi Sunak at Prime Minister’s Questions next week to set up a taskforce.
Fellow Conservative MP Selaine Saxby said she believed rural Britain would “be better cared for” during Mr Sunak’s time as premier, but other Tories warned ministers: “Please don’t forget us.”
West Dorset MP Mr Loder told MPs: “When I see the Prime Minister next week, I would just like to let the minister know in advance that I will be asking him very clearly to set up a rural taskforce so we do not have the extent of these debates again where we are sharing continually the difficulties of which we face, because I want rural Britain to get turbocharged, to lead the way.
“We are so fortunate in rural Britain today that some of the most entrepreneurial, creative, innovative solutions are found in this country in its rural areas.
“And we need those solutions to help the wider country. Indeed, I think some other urban areas of the country will do well to take them. So I’m going to ask the Prime Minister next week if he’ll set up a rural taskforce.”
Mr Loder said a suggestion by Conservative MP for North Dorset Simon Hoare to have a “rural tsar” was “one very well-made”.
North Devon MP Ms Saxby opened the debate, telling MPs: “We have to find ways to join up our thinking at Westminster and to recognise that if we want to level up rural Britain, it is not just Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) that can deliver that.
“Council structures need urgent reform, not just the funding they clearly need to tackle the additional costs rurality brings.
“The now-Prime Minister was a signatory to this debate whilst he was in between jobs, so to speak, and speaking with him last night I do have confidence that rural Britain will now be better cared for and that levelling up will reach into our remote beautiful communities.”
South Dorset MP Richard Drax warned ministers: “Please don’t forget us. I think we have heard that from every speaker in the House so far.”
Mr Drax said rural constituencies were “so easy to forget” for ministers and compared the levelling-up programme to a teacher dividing a birthday cake for schoolchildren.
“We always hope that we get that slightly bigger slice,” he said, adding: “The point I am trying to make is that cutting up the cake is incredibly difficult and the Government is facing all kinds of financial problems right now, but what I would ask for on behalf of South Dorset is at least a slice of this cake.
“I don’t want all of it, I don’t want half of it, but for my constituents can we please at last have a fair share of the cake? Because we have lost out again, and again, and again and again.”
Communities minister Lee Rowley said: “It’s been an incredibly interesting and important debate. It demonstrates the ability of us to have a nuanced, detailed and open conversation about the challenges and the opportunities which face our rural communities.
“And by doing that we have the opportunity to be able to try and make progress in the long term to support these communities as we develop in the coming decades.”