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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, even though he has now vacated his seat, I should like to join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Rana, on his excellent maiden speech. He will be a very valuable Member of the distinguished community that is your Lordships' House. I should like to talk about poverty and social exclusion in rural Britain. The Government are quite often accused of being relatively indifferent to poverty and inequality in general in our national society, but that accusation is surely false. They have been a redistributive Government. According to the latest statistics, some 2 million people have been moved out of poverty since 1997; about 800,000 of them are children. Although the Institute for Fiscal Studies has recently cast some doubt on this, it seems fairly clear that the Government are in line to reach their target of reducing child poverty by a quarter by the end of the current financial year. A large proportion of older people—I do not think we should use the term "pensioners" any longer—have been moved out of poverty. Some 30 per cent of people over 65 who were in poverty in 1997 are no longer in such a condition. The overall level of economic inequality has, contrary to what many say, actually stabilised over the past two or three years. Economists normally measure this by a complex device called the Gini coefficient. For 30 years, economic inequality in this country has been on the rise, but now it has stabilised it has not yet begun to decline. Most analysts agree that the reason for the stabilisation of economic inequality is the raft of anti-poverty programmes that the Government have introduced. Without them, overall economic inequality would have continued to increase. The Government have quite rightly placed an emphasis upon anti-poverty programmes in urban areas. It is right to do so because some of the most deprived of all communities in our society are to be found in our cities. The statistics show that some 24 per cent of people living in urban areas live in low-income households. That compares with 18 per cent in rural areas. Levels of unemployment tend to be lower in rural areas. Persistent poverty—or embedded poverty, if you want to call it that—is also lower in rural than in urban areas. However, poverty and social exclusion in rural Britain are massive problems for the country. Eighteen per cent of people living in low-income households equates to 2.6 million people. It can be argued that despite what the Government have achieved already in terms of poverty reduction and maintaining a limit on inequality—commendable though it is—they have, essentially, if I can use a rural metaphor, plucked the low-lying fruit. That is, they have got quite a lot of people out of poverty, including children, but these are often people who have been living close to the poverty line or who live in areas where jobs are fairly widely available. Those two conditions do not count in many rural communities. Therefore, alleviating and reducing social exclusion in rural areas has to be fundamental to the Government's project of producing a more inclusive society overall. Nor should we think that rural poverty is alleviated by living in beautiful countryside. Most of the rural poor do not live in beautiful countryside. Cornwall is one of the most beautiful counties in the country; it is also one of the poorest. But the poor do not, by and large, live by the beautiful beaches; they do not live by the beautiful coves; they do not live by the rolling hills. They quite often live in windswept ex-housing estates or on caravan sites. The category "rural Britain" is very wide. Many different communities would fall under that general classification. But I think it is generally agreed that there are several important differences, to which the Government must pay attention, separating a good amount of rural poverty from urban poverty. These are fairly well known. First, there is dispersion, which is true almost by definition. The poor in rural areas are more dispersed than they tend to be in urban communities. That has important knock-on consequences, however, because often the Government have as a criterion the saturation level of poverty in a particular area. It therefore follows that in some rural areas people who need access to government programmes do not necessarily get it. Secondly, as other noble Lords have mentioned, there is quite substantial inward migration, especially to more picturesque rural areas. That produces tremendous strains on the housing market. It is a great mistake to suppose that affordable housing is a problem only for those living in urban communities. Especially for the poor in more remote rural communities, it is a tremendous problem, and it is very good that the Government have instituted some plans to help to try to cope with it. Thirdly, there are specific problems for rural youth. Young people living in rural communities are often culturally isolated; they are often socially isolated; they face difficult economic conditions, such as with getting jobs. They often have to leave their local community in order to get jobs. Although young people have many problems in our urban communities, they have parallel but different problems in rural society. Finally, of course, there is the much debated issue of transport. Those people in more remote rural areas who most need transport find it least accessible, and there is a generic problem of providing effective transport on an economic level when not that many people are going to use it. That is a continuing problem of country life. I welcome what the Minister said in her introduction. I welcomed the passion with which she spoke about the importance of reducing social exclusion in non-urban areas. The Government have done a lot. They have recognised that there are specific problems in the countryside as regards exclusion, inequality and poverty. But have we done enough? I think the answer is "No". Can we do more? The answer to that is "Yes". I conclude by listing some of the considerations that the Government should take into account. First, I welcome the proposal in the new Bill that the three agencies which deal with countryside be integrated. It surely will allow for more effective administration and will help with the kinds of things which we need to alleviate in rural areas. But why stay there? Why not integrate the diverse programmes which the Government have instituted with poverty, inclusiveness and community-building? If one were to look at Cornwall again, no fewer than 100 government programmes relate to social exclusion, building better communities and so forth. Why so many? Why should they not be more closely integrated? I am in a certain sense a social policy expert. Even I cannot follow what the impact of all these programmes is. What it means is that the Government do not get the credit that they should for the impressive results that they have achieved in reducing inequalities. I remember reading during the recent general election about a woman being asked on the doorstep, "What have the Government done for you?" She said, "Nothing". When it was then pointed out that she profited from the working families' tax credit, she said, "Oh, is that anything to do with the Government?" These things need to be put together in a more egalitarian programme which would have application for country areas. Secondly, we need to make a big push on child poverty in rural areas. The Government are committed to reducing child poverty by 50 per cent by 2010. That is going to be very hard to do, but it cannot be accomplished if we do not reduce child poverty very substantially in rural communities. We do not know that much about the conditions of child poverty in rural areas, but we know that there is quite a big difference between the dynamics of child poverty in most urban communities and the dynamics of child poverty in rural communities. More specifically, in urban communities, child poverty is very often associated with single-parent households. In rural communities, it is much more often associated with low-income households. Sure Start has been extended to rural areas, but the Government must do more if they are going to have a realistic chance of meeting their objective of reducing child poverty by a half. Thirdly, we need a more specific and developed policy for rural youth. We need not just a cultural policy, or a social policy to help rural youth to network and meet one another, but an economic policy too. Many younger people in rural communities find themselves in a job market which is seasonal, part time and where there are very poor job prospects. We need intervention to create more effective job markets in such rural areas. Finally, one of the big problems associated with rural social exclusion is the so-called "deep rural". In the deep rural areas are people who live in tiny communities quite a way from even market towns. There is good evidence that many of the most intractable problems of poverty reside there and that the kinds of programmes that have been used to help regenerate market towns will not work for the deep rural areas. I suggest a slightly radical solution. If one takes an interest in international development issues, as I do, and looks at what has been done for the very poorest people in developing countries around the world, one is amazed to find a proliferation of programmes where, as it were, high-tech meets low-tech. High-tech innovations have been massively important in helping poor communities; for example, the use of information technology to develop local credit schemes; local smart cards; information on local businesses. These schemes have been pioneered in Bangladesh, Mozambique and in the Punjab, yet we find hardly anything here aside from one or two experimental schemes. We must do more, and high-tech is the way. The countryside is not just 4x4s; the countryside is not just frustrated hunters; the countryside is not just struggling hill farmers. It is some millions of people who live in the countryside, but whose future does not belong in agriculture. The Government must address themselves to them. If I may borrow a term from "The Full Monty", I hope that the Government will give me an assurance that they will confront these issues in an open and "fully frontal" fashion.