Yesterday, together with Jim Paice MP, the Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Rural Affairs, I was at the Royal Show in Warwickshire, where we launched Rural Action, the Conservative agenda to revitalise our rural communities.
Rural England has suffered a decade of disrespect by Labour. Quiet communities have become angered by a Government which won’t even listen, still less give them a say.
Local services have been withdrawn, rural communities have been denied a voice, and power has been taken away from local people. 1,400 rural post offices have disappeared since the year 2000. There are now 200 fewer rural schools than when Labour came to power.
We desperately need a new government which understands rural areas and cares about them. So we are setting out solid proposals to empower rural communities, protect rural services, respect rural people and revive the rural economy. And we are also launching a grassroots campaign, Conservative Rural Action, to promote our ideas throughout the countryside.
We will reverse Labour’s centralisation, ending the years of insensitive dictat from Whitehall, and set about restoring the voice of rural areas in decision making. We will scrap limits on surplus places so that good small schools can prosper and new ones can open where parents want them. And we will give rural communities the power to expand and build the homes they need, subject to the agreement of local people.
We will ensure fair funding for rural areas by removing the political element from the allocation of grant for individual local authorities, and take into account the social value of rural services like post offices. But tough decisions will have to be made about overall spending over the next few years. So we need to ensure that services are made more efficient and bureaucracy is reduced. I am taking a long, hard look at the quangos which fall under Defra. There are too many officials with clipboards marching around the countryside.
Marginalising rural communities isn’t just unfair. It’s also a massive waste of potential. The countryside cannot be a dormitory or a museum. It is a place where millions of people work and which could be home to vibrant businesses and sustainable jobs growth of the future. So we will reduce the barriers to rural business growth through reforms to the tax and planning system, and by supporting community broadband schemes to bridge the ‘digital divide’.
Rural communities are crying out to be heard. They should no longer be ignored. To find out more about our campaign, visit www.conservativeruralaction.com.
( 4 comments ) Tags: centralisation, Conservative Rural Action, rural
Comment by jacqui on July 8, 2009 at 8:56 pm
I note the huge number of rural post offiices closed and rural schools another issue of policy at the moment is the lack of support for our rural public houses who are being pushed out of trade, the local pub in many villages is the central hubof the community. We need to offer positive policies in support of the publicans.
Comment by foze on July 8, 2009 at 10:10 pm
That’s very clear that the communities are ignored in alot of thing’s and Im sure that our good party can hear and understand that the people need more
respect and more trust from us and that must happend very near in all the mater’s not only in food or farming field.
Fawzia
Comment by Graffotti on July 10, 2009 at 1:04 pm
The new Use of Mathematics A level will further disadvantage students in rural schools, who already have limited access to “double subject” maths, because small schools will not have the staff to teach different lessons for the more able students and will probably just dumb everyone down to the level of the easier course.
Combined with the moves to encourage students to stay at home, brighter students from rural areas will be denied the opportunities they deserve.
Comment by Hugo on February 13, 2010 at 2:53 pm
I love the sense of community in rural areas.
In my village, the city people with little sense of community have caused others to forget and neglect how importance a community is.
We have a beautiful local pub, but it is struggling to remain open despite it’s potential to be the centre of the community once more.