Tim Farron
MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale · Liberal Democrat · United Kingdom
“The Government aim to reclaim 30% of our land and seas for nature. I welcome that, and much of the action plan, but 70% of England’s landmass is agricultural land. Does the Minister agree that we must start by ensuring that all farmers have access to environmental schemes—not just those who apply for them the quickest?”
“I thank the Minister for early sight of the statement. On my way into Kendal this morning, before I came down to Parliament, I observed the jarring reality of fields yellowing in the dry heat and the River Kent so low that I could see the bedrock.”
“They are often under coercion, and may not realise that they are victims of modern slavery until much later, so giving people only a handful of days to declare themselves victims is cruel and, again, performative. There is nothing in this Bill to undo or relax the moratorium on family reunion, which is a safe route.”
“It turned out, though, that every single person in that young mothers group had been a victim of sexual violence between the ages of 14 and 20. There are reasons why women do not end up on these boats, and do not take those risky journeys.”
“I certainly think that people who are seeking asylum in this country should be given the right to work. First, it will help them to integrate, if their asylum claim is successful; secondly, it will enable them to cover the cost of their accommodation and many other things while they are here.”
“This Bill is riddled with bogus context and false premises, as are most debates on this issue. It is worth bearing in mind that the majority of European Union countries take more asylum seekers per head than the United Kingdom.”
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“And to ensure safe and reliable onward travel, Mr Stuart. The reality is that when someone’s train comes in, if they cannot get to their next destination they are utterly snookered. That is particularly the case in rural areas where stations are unstaffed. At night, that often creates not only inconvenience, but a lack of safety, particularly at this time of year, particularly with late-night services curtailed and particularly for those who are travelling on their own. I will finish by simply saying that railways should work for all, urban and rural alike.”
“Access to banking is surely a key part of financial inclusion. The high street banks save £2 billion a year from having abandoned our high streets and town centres. Our post offices pick up the tab and we are glad that they do, but they are not funded by the banks anywhere near enough to be able to maintain their presence. In Westmorland, we have lost Hawkshead, Staveley and Grasmere post offices, and we are set to lose Shap and Tebay largely because the banks do not fund the post offices for doing their jobs properly. What is the Chancellor going to do to make them do that?”
“Cumbria has a much higher than average number of unpaid carers, largely due to the much higher than average number of people who are older, and the situation is exacerbated by rural isolation. It is a community with a significant amount of seasonal and variable work. What is the Minister doing to ensure that carers can take flexible seasonal work without fear of losing all support?”
“What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the impact on child poverty of the Government’s rather blanket approach to changing local government funding and taking support away from rural councils? Westmorland and Furness council stands to lose 13% of its budget, which will not only exacerbate child poverty and reduce educational and life chances for children in my constituency —one in five children in Kendal already live in poverty—but undermine the Government’s plans to regenerate the town of Barrow, which underpins the UK’s nuclear deterrent and defence capability. Will the Secretary of State, at this last moment, urgently get involved and talk to Cabinet colleagues to prevent those deeply damaging cuts, which will exacerbate child poverty and put the country at risk?”
“Member agree that neurodevelopmental and early years services must be properly resourced and protected, and not sidelined, so that such children are not left without support when they need it the most?”
“I pay tribute to the hon. Member and his marvellous constituent Ivan, who he is speaking about so passionately and affectionately. Does he agree that support for autistic children and their families must be treated as a priority during and in the aftermath of pandemics and other crisis events of that sort? In my constituency, the parent of a three-year-old child who is showing clear signs of autism has been waiting for 18 months for a community paediatric assessment and just as long for dietetic support for suspected avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. That delay is already affecting his development and nutrition at a critical stage. Does the hon.”
“I would be grateful if the Minister took this matter up separately with his colleagues the Secretaries of State for Defence and for Housing, Communities and Local Government. This cut would be a colossal strategic own goal for the Government—one they would rightly get the blame for—but there is still time to reverse it. For this debate, though, the key point I want the Minister to focus on is that the closure of junction 38 southbound and then northbound, for three years in total, will be catastrophic for our communities. It can and must be avoided.”
“The towns of Kirkby Stephen and Kendal are already at capacity and breaking point when it comes to traffic management and cannot withstand a motorway’s worth of displaced traffic; they cannot withstand it at all, but they certainly cannot withstand it regularly and for years on end. Westmorland and Furness council is set to lose £39 million a year due to the new, ironically-titled fairer funding 2.0 settlement—a staggering 13% cut to its budget. It will therefore not have the funds to expand traffic management in consideration of the volume of traffic to keep those roads safe and flowing securely. Incidentally, this is a financial settlement that puts at risk the council’s crucial investment in the town of Barrow, which is critical to the UK’s defence capability, including our nuclear deterrent.”
“Having said that, the A685 is a winding, narrow, single carriageway running for 12 miles from Tebay to Kendal, and for 18 months, all local traffic will be dependent on it, meaning a huge increase in traffic going through Tebay, Grayrigg and Kendal in particular. My first ask of the Minister is to ensure that this traffic is managed along the whole of this route and that the A685 Lawtland House bridge is strengthened and kept safe through this time, when this already weakened bridge will be facing massively increased usage, carrying an enormous volume of traffic displaced from the M6.”
“The eighth bridge, across the M6, which also requires replacement, carries the A685 connecting Tebay with Kendal, 12 miles away, and is the only remaining link between the two when the M6 junction is closed. As a community, we campaigned hard to persuade National Highways not to close this bridge at the same time as the other seven, and we are grateful that National Highways has changed its mind on this point. I thank everyone who campaigned hard with us to achieve this success, which means that Tebay, Orton, Ravenstonedale, Kirkby Stephen and other villages will now at least have one connecting road to Kendal; otherwise, residents taking their children to school, and commuters, would have faced an additional 250 miles a week for an 18-month period.”
“The current plan will devastate local businesses—whose model is often completely reliant on proximity to the M6 and the junctions north and south—effectively isolating the community from the motorway for three years within a wider programme of four to six years of ongoing disruption. It also puts the safety of my constituents at risk, given that emergency services’ access to our communities will be severely curtailed for years on end. I recently spent time with our wonderful ambulance crews, who were keen that I should emphasise this point especially. The impact on our communities will be enormous. The key effects are first and foremost on the village of Tebay itself, but there will also be an impact on a much wider area. Seven bridges carry the M6 itself, and they need replacing—I get that.”
“I do not think it is just parochial hyperbole when I say that the Lune gorge is without doubt the most spectacular and beautiful stretch of the UK’s motorway network, so I suspect that when the Department for Transport and National Highways looked at that stretch of the M6 while weighing up the project in its early days, they were struck more by the scenery and far less by the very significant population that depends on junction 38 and therefore did not give them very much serious consideration at all. Local communities rely on junction 38 for access to work, school, health services, business and the operation of the local economy.”
“We argue that the junction 38 closures are not necessary, that there are clear alternatives such as temporary slip roads, and that insufficient attention has been paid to those alternatives. All the while, National Highways intends to keep heavy traffic moving through rural diversion routes and has, astonishingly, not produced a full impact assessment for the project—no assessment of the impact on the road network and no assessment of the impact on the wider community.”
“It is a great privilege to secure a debate on a matter that is causing immense anxiety across Westmorland and beyond. National Highways is planning to close and replace seven bridges that carry the M6 motorway over the Lune gorge in Cumbria. Those S-joint bridges are reaching the end of their lifespan and we recognise that this work has to be done. The wider Lune gorge project proposes bridge replacements, overnight closures, weekend shutdowns and contraflow systems operating at sometimes as little as 30 mph. Crucially, the plan also entails the closure of the southbound junction at Tebay for 18 months, followed by the closure of the northbound junction for a subsequent 18 months.”
“Secondly, given the Government’s priority of seeking economic growth, the junction closures are also a huge risk to our multibillion-pound tourism economy. Tailbacks north and south and the junction closures will mean that some of the 20 million visitors we have each year will vote with their feet, putting many of the 60,000 hospitality and tourism jobs in our county at risk, and further damaging the UK’s fiscal position. Local businesses will be hit by the closures, including—I do not think this is parochial hyperbole either—Britain’s finest service station, Westmorland services at Tebay—”
“The hon. Gentleman is a world-standard crowbar applier in this place, but that was not a crowbar—that was very relevant. England’s connectivity with Ireland via Stranraer is utterly affected by what is happening at junction 38. He is absolutely on the money, and I am very grateful for his point. We must avoid the closures of these junctions. Let us start with one group who are mentioned regularly and helped rarely: at a time when they are already facing so many threats and pressures, the closures will be a logistical nightmare for our farmers, who will face rising fuel costs, some land being made inaccessible to them, and threats to animal welfare as they have to make more arduous journeys throughout this three-year period.”
“It is essential that he understands for himself the profound and unnecessary impact that the project will have on Kendal, Burneside, Grayrigg, Tebay, Orton, Ravenstonedale and Kirkby Stephen, and on the wider economy of the Lake district, the dales, Cumbria as a whole and the UK’s haulage industry. The M6 bridge work must be done to keep us safe for generations to come, but it is wrong for it to be done in ways that ignore the catastrophic impact on our residents, communities and businesses in Westmorland.”
“The solutions are here—experts have done the work and local businesses have provided the evidence—yet National Highways has not meaningfully considered the very options that would prevent economic and social disaster for our communities. My final ask of the Minister tonight is this: will he meet me, along with representatives of the local community, local businesses and their skilled highways consultants, to discuss the temporary slip road proposals and the wider sequencing of these works? If he can visit the Westmorland site in person, we would welcome that hugely, and that would help him to see at first hand the issues that our local communities are facing. But time is of the essence, so we will gladly meet him in London if that can happen more speedily.”
“The provision of new, additional off-road parking for residents on South Road in Kirkby Stephen, along with sensible highways modifications, would mostly solve the problems there too. Will the Minister please instruct his officials to take action on that point before the work on the Lune gorge bridges causes repeated chaos to the town? Fourthly, earlier this year the Government gave the green light for the A66 dualling after our lengthy campaign, and I am grateful to them for that. The plan includes an underpass close to the M6 junction 40 underneath the notoriously busy Kemplay Bank roundabout at Penrith. It is vital that the work is sequenced before the M6 closures so as to avoid crippling congestion around Penrith and to alleviate the devastating impact of running those projects at the same time.”
“In 2023 the previous Government pledged £460 million for 21 “smaller road schemes” across the north, including potentially a short new road linking the A591 Windermere Road to the A6 Shap Road just north of our thriving but often congested main town of Kendal, but in July the Department for Transport announced that the scheme’s future had been placed under review, with a final decision set to be announced by the end of the year. Given the disruption from the M6 closures already this year, the case for that road is stronger than ever. Can that project be brought forward so that it can be done before the M6 Lune gorge project happens? The third ask is for help to be provided to solve the congestion that M6 and A66 closures have on the beautiful town of Kirkby Stephen.”
“On behalf of my communities in Westmorland, my first ask is that the Minister looks at the proposals himself, takes independent expert advice from his officials, and at the same time instructs National Highways to properly, formally consider the temporary slip roads—to make certain that these very credible plans are properly evaluated. Meanwhile, as the works proceed, many full motorway closures are planned, and the apparent plan is to route the entire M6 load through the narrow streets of Kendal and Kirkby Stephen. This is ludicrous and unsustainable, and it will take ministerial intervention to put right. The second ask therefore relates to the Kendal relief road, otherwise known as the northern access route.”
“I have a high regard for so many of the people I work with from National Highways, but from the beginning of this project there has been a failure to consider the community and the Cumbrian economy. Now that National Highways is being called to account and asked serious questions, it seems as though excuses are being made rather than solutions being explored. Local businesses commissioned the well-respected motorway highways consultants BWB, which produced a detailed feasibility study confirming that temporary slip roads are absolutely possible—indeed, they are straightforward if the order of bridge removals is slightly rearranged. National Highways rejected this proposal with, at best, a cursory assessment, and it has provided no credible reasons for doing so.”
“Those junctions are to be used as crude roundabouts by extremely heavy vehicles in utterly unreasonable volumes. Again, this underlines the failure to conduct a meaningful impact assessment or present any kind of credible traffic management plan. The crucial problem that I want the Minister to focus on is the closure of junction 38 southbound for 18 months and then northbound for 18 months. It is completely unacceptable. Let’s face it—National Highways would have never even considered it in a more urban part of the network. I reiterate that we are not against the works taking place. We know that the bridges need to be replaced, but there are clearly alternatives to lengthy closures of junction 38, yet those alternatives have not been seriously considered or properly investigated.”
“With help from local residents, businesses and farmer groups, we did our own survey of the impact and calculated that the damage just to that relatively small section of the local community who live in the villages closest to junction 38 would be upwards of £10 million over three years. The real impact would be much wider, of course, and therefore the cost would be much, much higher. The closure of junction 38 would also mean greater pressures on junction 37 to the south and junction 39 to the north, both of which are dangerous hammerhead junctions. Junction 37 has seen three tragic fatalities and many other accidents in the last 18 months alone, yet National Highways’ current plan—such as it is—is to send tens of thousands of vehicles down to junction 37, or up to the similarly designed junction 39.”
“That is a colossal detour, with horrendous costs in fuel and journey times—and that is only for a few weekends at the beginning of next year. The Lune gorge plan is to run for four to six years, not a few weekends. The work will have an enormous negative economic impact for the whole country. The consequences have clearly not been fully thought through. Given that we know some of the impacts of the closures, we have asked National Highways for sight of its impact assessment. To my utter astonishment, it has not conducted one. The Minister can blame previous Conservative Ministers for that failure if he wishes, but he only gets to do that if he puts it right immediately this evening. Where is the economic impact assessment? Where is a credible traffic management plan?”
“Thank you. There will be an estimated cost to the service station alone of £1 million in damage if the junction is closed. Dozens of other businesses will also be affected, with millions of pounds of lost revenue, increased costs and the potential loss of hundreds of jobs. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said, there will be a huge national impact on the haulage industry. Most lorry companies use junction 38 as their halfway point on the route to Scotland and the ferry ports serving Ireland. With the closure this coming January of the M6 at Clifton—at the top end of my constituency near junction 40—heavy goods vehicle drivers coming from Scotland and the ports connecting us to Ireland will be diverted from Penrith, across the A66 to Scotch Corner, down the A1(M), and across the M62 to rejoin the M6 near Warrington.”
“If possible, I would be grateful to have sight of the workings showing National Highways’ consideration of the slip roads, and what drawings and designs it did and then discarded. I have not heard of this to this date, and I am not convinced that it did that at all.”
“I feel that the Minister is about to conclude, so I just want to press him on the meeting with myself and the local community. Is he willing to do that? He is welcome to come to Westmorland, but we would happily come down to see him here.”
“I agree with everything that the hon. Lady has said about child poverty, and I welcome the lifting of the cap, but is there a little bit of a blind spot in this Government when it comes to rural poverty? Their own figures show that by the end of next year, the average hill farmer will earn barely above half the national minimum wage. Is the hon. Lady as disappointed as I am that the Government have not tackled that in the Budget and, indeed, have not got rid of the family farm tax, which will tax many of those farmers out of existence altogether?”
“Should we not recognise that the pull factors that bring people to the United Kingdom are not the stuff we hear about benefits, but the fact that we are seen to be a decent and safe country? We should be proud of that.”
“Can applicants have a timeline for their applications, so that they know how long they will have to wait for a decision, and so that they do not choose small boats instead? It will not be an alternative to crossing the channel if people do not know about it. The Government also say that they are looking for community sponsorship to be the resettlement model for the UK. My questions are: how will that be done at scale, what support will the Government offer to communities that want to sponsor, and what changes will they put in place to make the process quicker and easier? Given that refugee family reunion is a safe route, used predominantly by women and children, will the Government’s decision to stop it not push more children and women into the hands of smugglers?”
“In the light of that, the UK-France deal announced in July is absolutely to be welcomed as a framework to build on, because an asylum seeker can apply for safe passage from outside the UK without the need to make dangerous journeys. However, for that to be an effective deterrent or alternative for people, the Government urgently need to ensure that, by the time the pilot is evaluated in June next year, there is some proper data to analyse. My questions to the Minister are: what steps is he taking to increase the number of people coming to the UK under the UK-France agreement? How is it being advertised to migrants, and how can confidence and trust in the route be increased?”
“Imagine being an 18-year-old young man from Eritrea—a persecuted Christian likely to be conscripted to murder his own people as they flee the evil dictator Isaias Afwerki. He has made his way through the lawless, deadly chaos of Libya, crossed the Mediterranean and found his way through Europe—as if the 30 miles across the channel is a terrifying threat compared with that. As the Home Secretary has rightly said, we need to change people’s calculations at the moment of decision. A viable, safe route will change the calculation of asylum seekers, so that people no longer feel the need to pay smuggler gangs. We talk about Ukraine and Hong Kong. It is worth bearing in mind how many Ukraine and Hong Kong refugees are in those boats: none, because there are safe routes of one kind or another for those people.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for an excellent introduction and for securing the debate. I ought to draw people’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and the support I get from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy Project. Humanitarian visa routes are an effective tool to tackle irregular migration, alongside efforts to target criminal gangs. From the failure of UK immigration policies under several Governments that focused only on deterrence, we know that that does not impact the irregular journeys of refugees. The push factors are too strong, and it is not hard to see why.”
“Westmorland has 3,500 empty properties—the fifth highest number of any local authority in the country. The council has invested in three additional staff to make sure we bring some of those properties back into permanent use to house homeless people, but what powers could the Minister give the local authority that would bolster its existing powers to requisition homes that have been empty for a long period of time to be used as temporary and emergency accommodation for people in communities like ours?”
“In March this year, farmers were one day being encouraged to apply, then the next day, the door was slammed shut. It is still shut.”
“We must reverse that damage, because that figure for self-sufficiency will only further decrease unless we take radical action. At the heart of the food security problem is the counterproductive transition from the old payment scheme. Conservative and now Labour Governments have persisted with the same flawed approach—a stop-start payment system that leaves farmers unable to plan even a year ahead, even though farming demands planning cycles over years or even generations. Farmers are being asked to make long-term decisions about land use, stock numbers, crop planting and environmental improvements based on schemes that change suddenly, launch late, or simply close with no warning. The sustainable farming incentive is a prime and awful example.”
“It is vital that our land use policy ensures that we produce the food that Britain needs. Leaving the European Union perhaps held one single, solitary silver lining: that we would leave the common agricultural policy and be able to set out on our own with something a lot less counterproductive. Yet even that silver lining turned darker, and the last Conservative Government must take responsibility. They are singularly culpable for ignoring our farming communities, taking their votes for granted, and completely botching the transition to the new environmental land management scheme. Nobody knows—and I could not say—whether they did that harm to our farmers by accident or design, but outrageously, we now have an agricultural policy that actively disincentivises the production of food. That is madness.”
“Britain is not secure unless it is food secure. The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills made a really important point when she quoted the former MI5 director general Baroness Manningham-Buller. I have an additional quote from her: “The more self-sufficient we are as a nation, the better our ability to withstand price spikes, geopolitical shocks and instability around the world. The truth is, we are moving in the wrong direction”. She is sadly right, and that is horrific. Various figures have been bandied around, but DEFRA’s own figures show that in 1984, the UK was 78% self-sufficient. If DEFRA is right, we are now no better than 65 %; the NFU’s figure is more like 60%, and I think that I am more likely to believe it. Either way, there is clearly a massive decline in our self-sufficiency.”
“It is a genuine joy to serve under your guidance, Dr Murrison. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) not just for her good speech, but for securing this important debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller), Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) and South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), as well as the hon. Members for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) and Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), all of whom made excellent contributions and made this a really thoughtful, worthwhile debate. I hope I have not missed anybody out. I also welcome the Minister. It is possibly the first time she has addressed Westminster Hall in her current role as the new Minister; I welcome her and look forward to many exchanges.”
“We will also have an overarching food security strategy across every Government Department, because we declare that the fundamental error of this and the previous Government is that they have bought the lie that there is a contest between whether we produce food or whether we restore our natural environment. That is nonsense. Without farmers we will not eat, and the best environmental policies in the world will simply remain useless—bits of paper in a drawer—unless we have farmers putting them into practice. Farmers in Cumbria and across the whole United Kingdom are vital to food security and to our natural environment. It is time we listened to them and made Government their help and not a hindrance.”
“It is the role of the Government to back them and produce an overarching strategy, across every part of national and local government, to ensure that food security is a practical priority. The Liberal Democrats would ensure that ELM schemes are boosted with an additional £1 billion-worth of investment towards active farmers and would reverse the damaging family farm tax, which is killing investment in farming and will further suppress food production. We will ensure that food security is formally considered a public good through the ELM schemes.”
“The proportion of the population in households experiencing food poverty is 11%, but for children the figure is 18%. Schools, hospitals and care homes rely too heavily on imported food that could be produced affordably and sustainably here at home. A national food security strategy would bring coherence to these challenges. Instead, we have delay. Of course, food security is national security, but simply mouthing those words will not help us to rise to the challenge of ensuring that the UK’s vital food supplies are protected against various threats. The Liberal Democrats are determined to offer a plan for food security that encourages and rewards those who labour 365 days a year to feed us, and to whom we are enormously grateful.”
“A proper framework would give clarity about where food production must be protected. At present, the delay in publishing the land use framework is actively undermining food security. Thirdly and finally, on top of all this instability we are still waiting for a national food security strategy from the Government. I always hear that the Government have acknowledged that food security and national security are linked, but they have not acted with seriousness or urgency to get an action plan in place. We cannot hope to secure our food supply without a plan that links food production, affordability, nutrition, public procurement, fairness in the marketplace, farming, nature and trade. For instance, about a quarter of the food grown in the United Kingdom, amounting to up to 5 million tonnes of edible food, is wasted every year.”
“Those hill farmers will have to sell, usually to bigger, less productive estates or a big city corporation seeking to use the land for offsetting, often leading to a monoculture, not a restoration of nature, and certainly not for producing food. The family farm tax is not just unfair; it further incentivises a reduction in Britain’s ability to feed itself. It is a strategic disaster as well as being unjust. Secondly, the Government’s failure to publish the land use framework that they promised is causing huge uncertainty and damaging our ability to feed ourselves. Without a clear national strategy, decisions about land are being made in the dark. Farmers cannot know whether to prioritise food production, long-term environmental projects or diversification. Developers and investors act on speculation rather than strategy.”
“Just imagine what that does to the wellbeing and mental health of the people on whom we depend for our food and for nature. The impact is particularly acute for hill farmers, such as those around the lakes and dales of Cumbria, who maintain some of the most treasured landscapes that we have, and yet they endure some of the lowest farm incomes. The University of Cumbria’s figures show that by the end of next year, the average income for a hill farmer will be just 55% of the national minimum wage. Of course, the proposed inheritance tax charges cause further damage. Those same hill farmers—who are earning, let us say, £15,000 to £16,000 a year—will be hit with a typical tax bill of around £20,000 a year over 10 years.”
“Basically, if someone is wealthy enough to afford land agents and to have the luxury of being able to spend time off their farm, they can get into a scheme. However, if they are working for 90 hours a week to keep a roof over their head, they are outside it. It has been a redistribution of public money from the poor to the rich and away from food production. Now, for the first time since the 1940s, England has no universal option for farmers. When farmers cannot rely on payments, access schemes or forecast their income, we run the risk of losing them altogether. That is a crushing blow for farming families—people who farmed their valley for generations and have realised that perhaps on their watch, they will lose that farm.”
“It is completely unacceptable and the consequences have been huge. I had a public meeting with farmers, on the day after the SFI drawbridge was pulled up, I think, and there is huge anger and disillusionment. There are people who will now not even look at the schemes because they do not trust them anymore. I ask the Minister: when will SFI reopen, and will she ensure that it is accessible to the maximum number of people? Of course, all that is happening at the same time as the Government’s choice to slash the basic payment scheme—what is left of it—by 76% this year alone. The BPS—the old farm payment scheme—has been phased out at sprint speed while its replacements have barely limped into existence, and with small, family farms at the back of the queue.”
“Will the Minister commit to an emergency home insulation programme beginning this winter for people on the lowest incomes so we can drive down their bills now and, more importantly, for good? Will he also acknowledge, given our recent conversation, the realities of rural fuel poverty? In Westmorland, like in many other rural communities, 25% of houses were built before 1900, making them so much harder to insulate and more expensive to heat. Will the warm home discount be tailored to cut bills in rural communities too?”
“The recent Cumbria Tourism business survey showed that 56% of businesses are struggling to pay their energy bills, with an astonishing 14% actively considering selling up or closing down. Once a community loses its pub, it loses its heart, and it very rarely gets it back. Ahead of the Budget, will the Minister speak with the Chancellor and others in the Treasury to back the Liberal Democrats’ call for a 5% cut in VAT to support this vital industry, which is, after all, at the forefront of sustainable business practices and at the heart of so many of our communities?”