The countryside is fighting back.
MPs representing rural constituencies have demanded a better deal from the Government.
Some of their colleagues representing major towns and cities don’t like it – but they may have a point.
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The plight of the countryside has been raised by 119 MPs, who presented petitions to the House of Commons complaining that the way the Government distributes money is “unfair to rural communities”.
Petitions to Parliament are recorded in Hansard and a copy is sent to the relevant Government department. But if truth be told, individual petitions are unlikely to have much effect.
What’s different this time, however, is the sheer number of them, all raising the same issue and demanding action.
MPs who presented petitions to the House – they are handed to a Commons clerk and placed in a green bag hanging behind the Speaker’s chair in a short formal ceremony – include Daniel Kawczynski (Con Shrewsbury and Atcham), Harriett Baldwin (Con West Worcestershire), Christopher Pincher (Con Tamworth) and Michael Fabricant (Con Lichfield).
They are backing a campaign called Rural Fair Share, which aims to highlight three key facts.
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First, people in rural residents earn less on average than people in cities.
Second, the council tax they pay is on average £76 a head higher.
And third, urban areas receive 50 per cent more funding per head – despite the obvious higher cost of delivering many services in a rural area
Now, MPs in the big cities might have a few things to say about that. For a start, while average wages might be higher, cities also tend to have pockets of deprivation and crushing poverty that you don’t find in the shires.
But there’s no doubt that money is shared unequally, rightly or wrongly.
A report by House of Commons researchers found that Treasury funding for local authorities for 2013-14 came to £1,832 per household in Birmingham, £1,307 per household in Coventry, £1,118 per household in Dudley, £1,729 per household in Sandwell and £1,468 per household in Walsall.
But in Herefordshire, the figure was just £867 per household.
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Some rural areas have a county council and a district council, making comparisons a little more complicated.
But Worcestershire County Council got £556 per household, while Bromsgrove District Council in Worcestershire got £96, making a total of £652. Meanwhile, Malvern Hills District Council in Worcestershire got £118, making a total of £674.
When you look at council tax rates, the picture is reversed.
Average council tax bills per household for 2013-14, including precepts, are £708 in Birmingham, £815 in Coventry, £803 in Dudley, £695 in Sandwell and £876 in Walsall, according to figures published by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
But in Herefordshire they are £1,217, in Bromsgrove they are £1,318 and in Malvern Hills they are £1,250.
Earlier this year, a committee of MPs looked at the way rural areas were funded – and concluded they were being treated unfairly.
A report by the Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee concluded: “Rural communities pay higher council tax bills per dwelling, receive less government grant and have access to fewer public services than their urban counterparts.
“The Government needs to recognise that the current system of calculating the local government finance settlement is unfair to rural areas in comparison with their urban counterparts and take action to reduce the disparity.”
The Government does have a programme in place to try to get broadband into rural areas, the MPs said, but they urged it to do more.
And they added: “The Government has made growing the rural economy its top priority. To achieve this a number of barriers need to be overcome not least improving rural businesses’ access to finance.
“The Government must ensure that initiatives that offer financial support to the business sector...are as available to rural businesses as they are to their urban counterparts.”
Local authorities raised some of these issues in evidence provided to the inquiry.
In a written submission to the committee, Herefordshire Council called for the creation of a “rural Parliament” – an informal body with no offical power, but one that would bring together people from rural communities and decision-makers.
It also called for the creation of “an independent rural advocate to hold all ministers to account”, reporting directly to the Prime Minister
And the council said there should be more money for the countryside in the form of “a rural premium in calculations for government expenditure where services are more expensive to deliver”.
The campaign hasn’t gone down well with everyone, and perhaps that’s no surprise. In practice, if funding for rural areas is increased, it’s going to come out of the pockets of local authorities in urban areas.
And there’s a political dimension.
Many of the rural MPs demanding more money are Conservatives, with the odd Lib Dem thrown in – and many MPs in the urban conurbations are Labour.
John Spellar, who represents the urban constituency of Warley in the West Midlands, condemned the campaign, saying: “This really beggars belief.”
The Government had cut funding to his local council, fire service and police service, he said, adding: “Meanwhile some of the leafy shire and county councils are even seeing increases.
“This hasn’t satisfied them and now they want to shift even more money to their political friends.”
But the countryside won’t be silenced. The battle for a fair deal has begun.