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William Hague has been making waves in the news in his position as Shadow Foreign Secretary for the Conservatives. With a victory for the Tories in the next election looking ever more likely, Linda Haywood probed the views of the former party leader. Read the fifth in the set of serialised articles here:

Matthew Taylor’s report on the “Living Working Countryside” was handed to the government on 23 July. It recognised that whilst average rural wages are £4,655 lower than the national average, the cheapest quarter of homes are £16,000 more expensive in rural areas than in urban ones. As a result, first time buyers are leaving rural areas to make way for richer retirees and second home owners who push up house prices. Whilst this may seem fair to many, farms are running out of labour and there are not enough young people in rural areas to run the shops, pubs and other services which underpin viable communities.

The report’s author, Liberal Democrat MP for Truro and St Austell, Matthew Taylor, said: “If we fail to build the affordable homes to enable the people who work in the countryside to live there we risk turning our villages into gated communities of wealthy commuters and the retired.” The report considered the effect of second homes and: “concludes that they raise issues for a relatively small number of smaller communities where lack of full time residents puts schools and other services at risk. It suggests the Government should trial planning rules designed to control further conversion of full time homes to second homes/holiday letting in one or more of the national parks.”

William Hague’s constituency of Richmondshire includes the coveted Yorkshire Dales National Park, North Yorkshire, which commands average house prices of £195,198 compared with £127,724 in Bradford (Source: Land Registry). Many young couples are converting sections of family property rather than attempting to buy their own houses in the area. Others simply head for the cities, taking with them much needed skills in agriculture, building and rural land management. There is currently a net outflow of people aged between fifteen and thirty.

As MP for Richmondshire, what can you do to increase job opportunities and affordable housing for young people in the Dales? Would you make any moves to cap the number of retirees or second homes in rural areas?

There is a great need in this country to provide more affordable rural housing and I believe that part of the solution lies in delivering new and imaginative ways of helping people actually buy a house, such as through wider shared equity. The Government’s centralised, top-down approach to housing planning has not been a success and local communities should be given more control to shape their development. In my personal opinion it would be unfair to cap the number of retirees or second homes in rural areas. Over 400,000 young people have left rural areas in the past twenty years and we need to analyse why this is happening so we can address the root causes. More investment in skills training is certainly needed so that the training gap in rural Britain is filled.

Another threat to Hague’s rural constituency is the future of upland farming. Hefted herds of sheep take fifteen years to learn how to survive in the harsh conditions of Britain’s moorland. They are responsible for the unique landscape that graces Britain’s uplands and have been threatened in the past by the various payment schemes that aim to stop overgrazing by paying farmers to maintain land rather than profitably graze animals.

Hilary Benn has just announced the new “Uplands Entry Level Stewardship (UELS) Scheme,” which will affect many of your farming constituents. If elected to government, would you wish to significantly alter the system of payments for upland farmers?

Upland farmers suffered considerably under the government’s mishandling of the Single Payment Scheme and we welcome the new Uplands Entry Level Scheme.