Maya Ellis

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Western. I thank the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for securing this brilliant debate. My constituency is a fantastic mix of urban pockets and vast rural areas, with some incredible businesses, including Butlers Farmhouse Cheeses, James’ Places hotels and Massey Feeds. I have just come from the Countryside Alliance awards in the House of Lords, and the hottest restaurant in the north-west, Eight at Gazegill, has just won the rural enterprise award. Hon. Members have raised really important issues, including affordable housing, transport and congested country roads, but I want to focus on a particular point that I am concerned about following the spending review last week. My rural constituency in the county of Lancashire and many other areas across the UK are about to lose the last pockets of business support funding. The areas that remain without a mayoral devolution deal are predominantly rural shire counties, and in the spending review it was confirmed that the shared prosperity fund will end in 2026. It was obviously meant to be a bridging fund to replace the millions of pounds of regional development funding that areas such as Lancashire used to receive from the EU, and it predominantly funded business growth hubs and other business support. As of next year, all local growth and business support funding will be channelled into mayoral areas. I would be grateful if the Minister could assure us that further plans will be made to continue supporting innovative and high-growth businesses across our non-mayoral areas; otherwise, we are set to miss out on huge opportunities for innovation in the often more community-driven and community-embedded businesses that we value and want to encourage. I am conscious of time, so I will end by saying that I look forward to the Government building out our strategies to understand rural economies more. I support the calls for a proper strategy. We need to grip the rural opportunity in this country, and that starts with the rural businesses that keep those areas thriving.