My Lords, I, too, congratulate both maiden speakers on excellent and powerful contributions.
As others have said, the Bill as it stands leaves a great deal to be desired. Opportunities to deal with many issues have been missed, from addressing, for instance, how our creative industries could play a greater role in levelling up to including reference to climate issues in the planning elements of the Bill. Smaller but important issues have been missed, such as electrical safety in short-term lets. Electrical Safety First points out that there is an alarming situation where STLs are not covered by the same electrical safety regulations as traditional holiday accommodation, rented accommodation or STLs in Scotland.
However, those and many other issues can be covered by amendments. I want to concentrate on one issue that has not yet been mentioned: the failure of the Bill to tackle inequalities between rural and urban areas. Back in 2019, I chaired the Select Committee on the Rural Economy. Our inquiry found that rural communities and the economies in them have been ignored and underrated for too long, with government policies designed primarily for urban areas. Compared to such areas, we discovered that in rural ones: house prices were higher while wages were lower; council taxes were
higher while government support for their councils was lower; funding per head for services such as healthcare, policing and public transport was lower despite costing more to provide; and broadband, business support, banking and other services lagged way behind those in urban areas. The committee concluded:
“We must act now to reverse this trend, but we can no longer allow the clear inequalities between the urban and rural to continue unchecked.”
It is clear—at least to me—that any Bill that aims to level up should have, at least as one of its key components, steps that will start the process of levelling up between urban and rural communities. The challenge now is well illustrated by recent work by the Rural Services Network. Using government headline metrics, it demonstrated that if all rural areas together were treated as a single region, their need for levelling up would be greater than any other region in the country. However, the Bill does nothing to address that challenge, which is especially surprising given the promises made by the Government when they responded to that Rural Economy Select Committee report. Sadly, in their response they rejected our key proposal for a comprehensive rural strategy but promised—back in 2019—that all future policies would be rural proofed.
I have therefore looked for evidence that the Bill before us has been rural proofed. There is nothing in either the Bill itself or the Explanatory Memorandum that refers to rural proofing. The evidence of any desire by government to begin the process of levelling up between urban and rural communities, whether in the Bill or in any other actions, is hard to find.
Analysis by the Rural Services Network also showed that current government-funded spending power for predominantly rural areas lags way behind that for predominantly urban areas. Government grants per head for services such as police and public health and even from the UK shared prosperity fund—excluding Cornwall—are correspondingly lower in rural areas at a time when, for example, house prices are rising faster than elsewhere.
Therefore the challenge remains, despite even more recent promises that we heard when the White Paper was published. In June last year a departmental spokesman said:
“Rural areas are at the heart of our levelling-up agenda. Our White Paper is a plan for everyone, including rural communities who rightly expect and deserve access to better services, quicker transport and quality education.”
I have two simple questions for the Minister. Where is the evidence that rural areas are at the heart of the levelling-up agenda, and what happened to the requirement to rurally proof Bills, including this one? It appears that once again our rural communities are being left behind.
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