Helen Morgan

I thank all hon. Members who have come along and made excellent speeches—particularly team south-west, who have turned out in force. They all highlighted the difficulties in delivering services in sparsely populated areas with vast distances to travel. They spoke about the impact on highways funding, the importance of generating economic growth, the cost of delivering SEND, and the proxy creation of district councils through the re-empowering of town and parish councils to deliver things that the unitary council can no longer afford to deliver because they are not a statutory requirement. They were really good speeches. I am very disappointed that the Minister wound up with a speech that kind of told us that everything is actually fine. On the day that the local government finance settlement was announced, I sat on the Opposition Benches, along with all my colleagues, without a clue about what my local authority had been awarded because it was not findable, we had not been told and it could not be googled, yet everyone on the Labour Benches appeared to know what their settlement was and congratulated the Minister on its delivery. That is symptomatic of a pattern of this Government. They tell rural areas, “Everything is fine. It looks pretty. Go away and stop worrying, and actually, we are going to focus on urban areas.” We all recognise that urban areas need investment and are not thriving as they should be—this is not about pitting one area against another—but rural areas need fair funding and devolution. In a council that has stripped back every single employee that it can, there is no capacity to generate economic growth or transform the underlying financial structure of the council, because nobody has the time in the day to do it. They need that devolution funding to rethink how they deliver services in a sustainable way for the future. I hope the Minister will take those points on board. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered Government support for rural upper tier local authorities.