Introduction

This chapter examines the institutions and structures through which rural policy is devised and delivered at national, regional and local scales. The institutional map of rural policy forged through three successive New Labour governments is markedly different from that which they inherited from the Conservatives in 1997. Perhaps this is not surprising, for as Jamie Peck (2001, p 449) has reminded us the state is, after all, a “political process in motion”. As new governments come into office, consolidate their power and attempt to deliver their own political strategies they can be expected to alter the institutions through which they govern. What is perhaps less expected is the extent and pace of change – especially in an area of policy not traditionally identified as a major concern for the Labour Party. For in less than a decade since taking power, New Labour has utterly transformed the structures and institutions of rural policy.

This chapter traces these transformations. It does so by exposing the dialectic that lies at their heart – that between the general concern of New Labour with reforming the constitutional and political structure of the UK state (known as its ‘Devolution Settlement’), and its particular response to a series of political, economic, social and cultural pressures emanating from the countryside. It is at this intersection between the broader processes of devolution and the specific responses to rural change that we find the driver for the transformation of the structures and institutions of rural policy under New Labour. The chapter will first explore the outcomes of this dialectic in England, before moving on to look at rural policy in the other devolved territories of the UK.

New Labour's regional agenda and its impact on rural policy

The first impetus for change in the development and delivery of England's rural policy came from New Labour's devolution agenda. In Scotland this agenda resulted in the establishment of a new Parliament, and in Wales and Northern Ireland it led to newly elected Assemblies. As will be seen, rural policy was one of the areas devolved to these new institutions. In England, however, devolution was a fairly restricted activity, being administrative rather than electoral (with the exception of London) and solely focused on the regional level.

However, despite its limited scope, the statutory powers and functions of the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in particular had significant implications for rural policy.