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Rural Communities (Recession)

My hon. Friend makes a tremendous point. Surely the point is that we have put an awful lot of money into the NHS in recent years. This party supported the Government on that, but we want to get something for that money. It is galling for people in rural areas who see more money going to the NHS but then see the closure of heart units, stroke units and other services. We are paying consultants a lot of money, and we should be able to determine where they practise. That must be within the competence of the Government. To strengthen rural communities, we should start by using the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, which was mentioned earlier, to give them the right to preserve key services. We need elected local health boards, so that those who threaten to close key services such as the ones that we have been talking about can be directly held to account. We need to ensure also that the boards of the national parks that do so much good for our national environmental heritage, which are largely unaccountable to the communities that live within them, contain directly elected members. We in Cumbria pride ourselves on being a microclimate meteorologically, politically and economically. The ability of the rural communities of Britain to be economic microclimates, and in turn to be an engine room for economic recovery, is clear. We are determined to make our own luck. The strength of our rural economy centres on the creativity and resourcefulness of our communities. I look at ways in which communities have fought back in my area, such as the Witherslack community shop, the Storth community co-op post office and the Greyhound community-run pub at Grizebeck. Those are wonderful examples of communities providing social glue and economic impetus in defiance of economic hardship. All those things, I should add, have been done despite Government policy. So let us have a new deal for rural Britain that will ensure sustainable, vibrant communities and a countryside for everyone, young and old, irrespective of financial background, that is equipped not just to beat the recession but to be renewed and to prosper in the decades ahead.