Three Dorset MPs have made a concerted and impassioned plea for the Government to give the county a fairer deal on funding support.

Speaking in a House of Commons debate, the three Conservative members – South Dorset MP Richard Drax, West Dorset MP Chris Loder and North Dorset MP Simon Hoare – cited a raft of reasons why ministers should do more for rural communities.

They said that the perception of Dorset as a prosperous county masked the fact that there were several areas of deprivation.

They asked for targeted Government investment that would unlock private funds and create prosperity.

And they stressed that rural communities should not be forgotten.

Mr Drax said: “While it is true that Dorset as a whole is relatively prosperous, that perception masks significant pockets of deprivation.

“Weymouth, its largest urban area, hosts some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the county. My South Dorset parliamentary constituency, the vast majority of whose constituents are residents of Weymouth and Portland, is ranked as having the lowest level of social mobility in the country.”

Mr Drax said he was asking for “just a little bit of money”, so that the private sector can invest on the back of the investment by the Government.

He added: “We know that the Government cannot give us all the money we want. What we want is enough money to try to attract the private sector into places such as Weymouth, Portland and Swanage, and other rural constituencies, so that the private sector can do all the hard work.”

Mr Drax said that Weymouth harbour area regeneration could not go ahead until the harbour walls were refurbished.

He told the House: “A large part of our bid for the second round of the levelling-up fund will go towards repairing those walls. Once they have been repaired, we can regenerate. Once we regenerate, the private sector will come in and do all of this, and then we will get the jobs and the investment that we desperately need.”

Mr Hoare suggested a new ‘rural tsar’ might be created to protect the interests of rural areas.

He added: “We do have deprivation and need but it is not located in one area or ward, and it makes the delivery of improvements harder.”

Mr Hoare called for additional funds, a fairer funding formula or a rural-proof formula.

He said: “Dorset Council receives only £2.5 million a year in the rural services delivery grant. Some 85 per cent of the council’s expenditure is generated directly by council tax, compared with the average unitary authority, which has to find only 65 per cent. It receives no revenue support grant where others get four per cent.”

Mr Loder also argued that rural issues were not given a fair airing in the Commons.

He said: “Why is levelling up not focused on rural areas in the same way it is on urban areas? Why does rural hardship not seem to matter in the same way as urban poverty? Why do rural jobs attract less pay than those in urban areas? Why does Transport for London get £1.7 billion of Government money to bail it out yet Dorset Council gets hardly anything - especially when we have the worst frequency rail line in the country?”

He said it was “totally unacceptable” that Dorset had one of the highest council taxes in the country but zero revenue support grant, yet in places such as inner London there were boroughs with the lowest council tax in the country that received some £24 million in revenue support grant.

Mr Loder backed Mr Hoare’s call for a rural tsar to be set up and said he would be asking Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to create a rural taskforce.