Next Monday Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness, will be meeting with the Prime Minister, David Cameron, at 10 Downing Street to continue the fight for fairer funding for rural areas.
Graham will be leading a cross-party group of MPs to Number 10 after the Prime Minister agreed to a meeting to discuss the discrepancies in funding between rural and urban areas. Graham is Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Rural Services and has been relentlessly championing the rural cause for a number of years.
Graham said: “Rural areas have been punished for their prudence and efficiency for too long. In tough times it is essential that we move to a fairer allocation of limited public resources. Over recent years public spending has been skewed so as to advantage urban areas and leave rural communities in the cold. We must now make a start in putting this right.
“We will be asking the Prime Minister to take a personal interest in changing the way public funding is assigned so that allocations are always on the basis of need. It is not enough for the Government to be sympathetic to rural life, it must act to change a system which is biased and unfair.
“Currently, people in rural areas earn less on average than those in cities, pay council tax which is £100 higher per head and then see government grants to urban areas 50% higher than those in the countryside. The cost of delivering services in sparse, rural areas is higher than in cities and those on low incomes are peculiarly disadvantaged.”
The MP continued: “Rural England has had too weak a voice in government for too long. I know the Prime Minister understands and cares about the English countryside and I hope we can get him to join us in campaigning for change. The new government provides an exciting opportunity to put right historic wrongs and celebrate and support all those who live and work in the countryside.”
This meeting comes on the heels of Graham’s apparently successful efforts to boost the rural economy by encouraging the Prime Minister to combat overly burdensome regulations that were preventing a local pork producer, Cranswick Country Foods, from exporting products to the Far East. According to a statement by the Food Standards Agency, following Graham’s inquiry at the first Prime Minister’s Questions of 2012, they now expect to be able to approve the plant.
