Helen Morgan

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I would need to see the detail of that proposal and what it would mean. Shropshire is already a unitary authority and is essentially at the bottom of the list for a devolution plan, so that seems too far off. There seems to be no prospect of stabilising the financial situation until there is a firm plan to ensure that the powers needed to turn the area around, and the resources to go with them, are firmly in place. We urgently need clarity on that. The hardship and austerity in rural areas has come about largely as a result of the removal of remoteness as a factor when calculating what it costs for a rural authority to deliver services across a vast area. The County Councils Network estimates that that has removed £300 million from its members’ budgets—an amount that the Government expect to be made up by increased council tax. Shropshire council has been squeezed at both ends—first by years of Conservative maladministration, and then by Labour cutting its funding, despite the obvious need —and it is far from alone. Rather than tackling the problem head on, the Government have underfunded rural councils, which has perpetuated rural deprivation. That is particularly acute where people lack access to services, and it is hidden, unlike urban deprivation. While door-knocking in my constituency, I met a delightful elderly gentleman living in a small cottage, and I was astonished to also meet his grandson, who was apparently living in his shed in the garden because he was unable to find anywhere else to live. Such cases go unnoticed in homelessness statistics, because families and communities find their own solutions to wrap around those individuals, but no one thinks a shed is appropriate accommodation for that young man. He should not have been allowed to fall through the net. A lack of funds for local transport perpetuates isolation and leads to a vicious cycle, stunting economic growth and creating further challenges for the council’s provision of services such as social care. When members of the Casey commission came to Shropshire to talk about the challenges of delivering social care in a rural area, they were astonished by the notion that carers must have a car because there is no transport in the evening or on a Sunday. Yesterday, the Prime Minister spoke of the importance of local transport and publicly provided services. We all agree with him, but Shropshire’s bus allocation has been cut despite the fact that it has lost more bus miles than anywhere else. Revenue funding is due to drop £175,000 in 2027-28. The Secretary of State for Transport, in an answer to me about step-free access at Whitchurch station, implied that the funds will be spent where the people are, not where the need is. She said: “When we are investing in the accessibility of stations in the future, we need to get maximum benefit for the travelling public.”—[Official Report, 16 July 2026; Vol. 789, c. 1059.] Previously, that has meant that the funds go to the most densely populated areas, not to those where there are no real alternative forms of transport. The patchy public transport network across North Shropshire means that it is almost impossible for most residents to manage without a car, and that brings further associated costs. Those who cannot access a car, whether they are young or old, become isolated and unable to access opportunities, education and services. Similar patterns of deprivation are reinforced through Government funding for education in rural areas, even though they often already struggle with teacher recruitment and retention. Schools in North Shropshire received an average of £6,460 a head last year, compared with a national average of about £7,910, but outcomes at GCSE and key stage 4 are consistently lower than the national average, and indeed the west midlands average. How can the Government justify lower funding when the outcomes are already lower? Surely every child deserves the opportunities provided by a properly funded education. That applies to capital spending in education too. One shocking example in my constituency is a primary school in one of the most rural parishes that still has outside toilets, in their original Victorian red-brick building. A lady told me during my summer tour this year that her granddaughter was too afraid to use the toilets because they are full of spiders and had an accident at school as a result. That is unacceptable. That is the kind of thing that people remember when they are 50 if it happened to them when they were seven at school. Young people in rural areas are having their horizons limited as a direct result of Government policy. That needs to change, urgently. In what way are the Government tackling inequality if rural and coastal areas are persistently underfunded, despite their worse outcomes? My constituents rightly perceive an entirely broken system in which every year they pay more and receive less. That is obviously unfair and is opening the door wide to populists and extremists who exploit the situation with divisive messages to divide our community and simple but unworkable solutions. The new Prime Minister has given us all hope by promising growth in every postcode. He will fail in rural areas if he does not address the obvious unfairness that Government policy combined with the pressures of ever-increasing demand for social care are delivering. Proper devolution will help rural councils tailor public services to the areas that they serve, but there must be acknowledgement of the need for a fair allocation of resources to go with those theoretical powers. I hope the Minister can provide details in his response.