THE Government has to roll up its sleeves and tackle the decades-long decline in rural services, an East Lancashire MP will tell Labour Party conference delegates on Monday.
Speaking before leaving for the Bournemouth conference, Pendle MP Gordon Prentice, said: "Under the Conservatives, people living and working in the countryside got a raw deal.
"Bus services disappeared, village post offices closed down, local people often found it impossible to find a house in areas in which they had grown up; they were priced out of reach.
"Jobs and services are the things that matter. These will be at the heart of the Government's Rural White Paper, due out soon."
The MP added: "The Government wants to see a living, working countryside. The people who will come to Bournemouth next week to demonstrate against the Government's policies on fox hunting or the right to roam are not the representatives of the millions of people who live and work in rural Britain."
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