Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill

My Lords, yesterday it was my privilege to introduce in the Church of England’s General Synod a report on the future of the rural Church and its contribution to rural life. In the debate that followed, speaker after speaker drew on their own experience to call the attention of the synod to the hidden nature of many of the problems and challenges facing our rural communities. Rural poverty, social exclusion and restriction of choice—especially for women, young people and the very old—may be found in small isolated pockets and thus hardly able to show up on the radar of the larger scheme of things, yet they are deeply real to those for whom they are the experience of their daily lives. Many of those people, especially in the remoter and more sparsely populated areas of rural England are, as my right reverend friend the Bishop of Norwich put it, invisible citizens. The creation of the CRC, as I understand it, is partly designed to ensure that these invisible citizens are made visible and their voices, so often drowned out by metropolitan noise, are heard. It seems perverse, therefore, to oppose the creation of a national body with such an important remit. Of course there are regional differences, but rural disadvantage, rural poverty and rural needs must be viewed from a national perspective, and national solutions must be found and championed. Many of those who spoke in the synod debate yesterday voiced the need for a strong and independent rural advocate, backed by a body properly equipped for the task and able to provide robust rural-proofing of that wide range of government activity that shapes for good or ill the lives of rural people and their communities. Who, for example, will seek effective rural-proofing of the Government’s choice agenda, when for many in rural areas it is precisely the lack and impossibility of choice that lies at the heart of impoverishment and social exclusion, and a restriction on effective community development? I make the point in no spirit of contention, but merely as a statement of real need. As the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, knows, I have listened very carefully to the arguments of those who say that issues of this kind are best dealt with at the local level, but I am afraid that it is a vain hope and entirely unrealistic. Some of the bodies suggested as those able to fulfil a local role, like the RDAs, themselves need rural-proofing, and in any case the RDAs still have to prove their capacity to bring about rural regeneration. I here declare an interest as chair of the Devon Strategic Partnership. Together with all my fellow chairs across the south-west, I have deep concerns about RDAs as the sole or principal conduits of rural delivery or channels of rural advocacy. They do not have the membership, experience or remit sufficient to be effective in these roles. Similarly, the regional rural forums, as important as they are, exist for a different purpose—a purpose best served by a strong and independent national body structured to give strategic coherence to their articulated needs. I want to make a plea: obviously that the CRC should exist, but also that it should be a powerful and independent voice on behalf of rural communities. But I have another plea. The Churches of this country, and the Church of England in particular, have the most widespread rural network of any organisation. Our churches do not exist to provide visual candy for rural brochures produced by RDAs or regional government offices; they exist because they play a profound role in rural society. I could give many examples of nursery groups operating in village churches, after-school clubs and hospital car services—there are countless examples of the way in which the Churches, including Church schools, contribute profoundly and willingly to rural living. They are major stakeholders, and contribute so much to the social capital so vital to a strong and sustainable rural life. I look for a broad-based Commission for Rural Communities representative of the key stakeholders in rural life. I also look for a reassurance that the Government and bodies such as the CRC, when set up, will listen to the voices of all those organisations which constitute civil society—among them the voluntary sector and the rural Church—when strategies are devised. Again I speak from my own experience of partnership working and local area agreements when I say how easily and frequently the representatives of the voluntary and community sectors, and of the private and business sectors, are driven from the table when representatives of local and national government are there in too large numbers. The concluding speech on this Bill in the other place ended with this rhetorical flourish:"““The context of the Bill is the vision of rural England . . . at whose heart is the pursuit of sustainable development, so that social, economic and environmental issues are taken into account in the shaping of policy””.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/10/05; col. 257.]" It is a vision, but it will come to fruition only if the voices of the rural communities and those who work for them, including the Churches, are really heard. The General Synod yesterday passed a motion calling on the Church of England to reassess the adequacy of its own support at a national level for the future of rural England. I hope that this Committee will do no less. The Commission for Rural Communities, properly constituted, can be a good opportunity to ensure that that happens. Let us have it; let it flourish; let it stand as part of the Bill.