The Government’s strong rural communities programme sets out our goals for those living in rural areas. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs monitors the outcomes of the programme, and our own public service agreement for socially excluded adults requires all local authorities in rural and urban areas to report on outcomes for particularly disadvantaged groups.
I congratulate the Minister and his ministerial team on their appointments, and look forward very much to working with them. Is he aware that in areas such as the Vale of York and rural north Yorkshire there are pockets of rural deprivation that have worsened over the past 10 years? People suffer from feelings of isolation and have poor access to rural transport because of the fact that Yorkshire is the biggest county in the country. What are his proposals to include them more, especially in the delivery of public services across the board? How will he ensure that rural communities get a bigger share of the public budget, compared with urban areas, than they do at the moment?
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her welcome. I want to make three points in response to her question. First, she and the House will be aware of the work that the Government are doing to bring decision making in respect of the development of local areas much closer to local communities. Secondly, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has brought together plans for housing and for new jobs under the single integrated strategy, and that gives both rural and urban areas much greater latitude and power to drive economic development. Thirdly, the Housing Corporation has set out ambitious plans to make affordable rural housing more widely available. Obviously, the Cabinet Office will retain a very strong interest in the livelihood of those at the bottom, as that is the indicator that we are particularly tasked to monitor, but giving local areas greater power to bring together economic development plans and making sure that councils are backed by the increases in central Government funding that we are providing are absolutely key to making progress on the issues that she has identified.
May I also congratulate the Minister on his new role? I wish him every success in it. Although free bus travel has been a huge success in rural areas of Wales, including in my constituency of Ynys Môn, many groups of people, including pensioners, still feel isolated. Will he join me in congratulating citizens advice bureaux on the benefit take-up campaign that they are holding this week? I am supporting it, and I am sure that many other hon. Members will too. Does he agree that local authorities across England and Wales have a greater responsibility to make sure that pensioner groups and individual pensioners are aware of all the benefits to which they are entitled, and that each year they should distribute a list of those entitlements with the council tax forms?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his words of welcome. I should like to extend my congratulations to the citizens advice bureaux in his area on the work that they are doing. Many Labour Members are extremely proud of the work that the Government have done over the past 10 or 11 years to lift hundreds of thousands of pensioners out of both absolute and relative poverty. The changes that we have made to pensions and pension credit are central to that progress, but it is vital for everyone in public life to make sure that as many people as possible know what their benefit rights are.
In extending my warm congratulations and best wishes to the new Chancellor, may I ask him to give the House his definition of the term “social inclusion”?
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his words of welcome. In the past three or four days, I have been bombarded with so many definitions that I am going to give him a concise estimate by way of correspondence.
May I congratulate the Minister on his promotion and his elevation to the Privy Council? It is a pleasure to see such a strong west midlands presence in his ministerial team.
I have been working with the community council in Staffordshire to promote social enterprises and businesses such as community shops and community orchards that promote social inclusion. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is a useful way forward, and does his Department support social enterprises in that sort of work?
The Parliamentary Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), who is not from the west midlands, will have more to say about that a little later in the time we have been given this morning. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) is absolutely right to say that the energy, enthusiasm, enterprise and innovation that the third sector brings to tackling some of these questions is one of our greatest assets in this country. That is why the Government have done so much over the last 10 or 11 years to back those organisations. We have doubled the amount of Government support to them over the past 10 or 11 years. Increasingly, it will be for local communities to find the best ways of working with those organisations, and that is exactly why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has such ambitious plans for devolving power from Westminster and Whitehall to local areas and an expectation that local authorities will delegate power further to local communities.
The Minister is quite correct. Although housing, better employment opportunities and transport links are vital for rural areas, does he not agree that education is, too? Will he join me in regretting that one of my local schools, serving a wide rural area, the Church Lawton primary school, is being considered for closure in the dying days of Cheshire county council? Will he join me in asking the county council to look again at the matter?
It is not in my brief so I can but guess the political control of the hon. Lady’s county council.
They have just told you!
Sometimes, I do not need things written down in front of me, with the support I have behind me.
If truth be told, the number of schools in rural areas that have closed over the last 10 years is much smaller than it used to be. Overall, because of the changes we have made over the past 10 or 11 years, education is delivering on average better results in rural schools. Obviously, I shall be happy to look into the case the hon. Lady has brought to my attention and I will consult colleagues in the Government before I write to her.
I add my voice of congratulation to the new ministerial team, and commiserate with the new Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster on assuming that grandest of office at the very moment it is demoted from the Cabinet.
The new index of deprivation produced for the Government by Oxford university reports that almost 50 per cent. of neighbourhoods across England have markedly deteriorated over the past four years on the measure of geographical deprivation, which is what happens when communities are stripped of key local services. Post offices are of course the most devastating loss. More than a quarter of the network has been lost and now we are warned that thousands more will be forced to close if the Post Office loses its contract for the card account. As the Government dither, communities live with uncertainty. Given the impact on social exclusion, what is the Cabinet Office view on the future of the crucial card account, and when on earth will we get a decision?
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his rapid rise through the ranks of his colleagues. He joins a strong Front-Bench team.
If the hon. Gentleman spent a little longer looking at some of the evidence from up and down the country, he would see that people living in both rural and urban areas where there is deprivation have actually become better off over the past few years. That has not happened by accident; it is because of the extra investment that has gone into connecting people with jobs and into education and cutting crime. He brought up the example of Post Office accounts—a subject that has been debated at some length in these parliamentary questions over the past few months. He knows that about £150 million a year in subsidy goes from the Government into the post office network, so perhaps he or one of his colleagues would confirm today whether that policy is supported on the Opposition Benches. I think he would accept that £3.5 million a week in subsidy is not sustainable and that we need to make changes, but making sure that 95 per cent. of the population in both urban and rural areas live within 3 miles of a post office is perhaps an acceptable compromise.