Clause 1 - Mandatory rate relief onformer agricultural premises
Rating (Agricultural Premises and Rural Shops) Bill
10:30 am
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
Is it not preposterous to suggest that north Somerset is not rural? It flies in the face of reason to tell anyone who has been on the high Mendips that that is not rural. There are no doubt Labour Members who have the same problem; they could have within their constituencies rural communities that are not classified as rural simply because of the present system.
The amendment would strike out the relevant condition. The Secretary of State could still intervene—there would be no problem with that—if a local authority were spuriously to classify a settlement as rural. There are plenty of ways in which that could be done. However, to suggest that simply because one individual asserts that a local authority area is not rural, then no community or farm within it is rural and none of the population is a rural dweller, seems an extraordinary state of affairs, which the amendment would rectify.
I commend the amendment to the Committee and, if the Minister is not minded to accept it in the terms in which it is drafted, I ask him to consider the means by which rural areas are identified by the Secretary of State. He should consider whether there is a case for identifying parts of those local authority areas that are not entirely rural in nature as rural for the purposes of this and similar legislation. At the very least, he should revise the present list, because it is entirely inadequate and is unfair to many people whom I think the House would wish to support.