MPs from a cross-party campaign group have secured a Parliamentary debate on rural funding, after setting up the Rural Fair Share Campaign, which suggests government cuts are being meted out too heavily on rural regions.

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The campaign's most vocal supporters are its chair Graham Stuart and Neil Parish, both conservatives, and MPs for rural constituencies in Yorkshire and Devon. They maintain that, despite higher living and transport costs in rural regions and fewer essential community resources, government spending in urban areas is 50 percent higher per capita than in small towns and villages.

Neil Parish said in January that, although the government acknowledges a growing divide between rural and urban Britain, moves to redress this disappeared in its December settlement.

The debate will be taking place on Monday (11th February); the 45 MPs backing the Rural Fair Share campaign argue that the government should address the disparity in spending, which has been perpetuated under the 2013/14 Local Government Financial Settlement. Though consultation on the settlement has closed, the campaign, which is supported by ministers from the three major parties, is attempting to encourage its authors in the Department for Communities to re-visit their policy.

The campaign's supporters hope to encourage Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles to close the funding gap between urban and rural regions.

During a meeting of the Backbench Business Committee in January, Mr Parish said, "We are not here to steal from urban authorities, but we want to have a debate to put pressure on Ministers to look again, the sooner the better."

Upon its publication, Birmingham City Council leader Sir Albert Bore said the government's Financial Settlement, which promises deeper, more painful cuts across the board, heralds "the end of local government as we know it" and may mean some local authorities become 'financially unviable'.

Cuts delivered under the settlement are so severe that councillors in Liverpool warned they would "Spark Riots" and West Somerset Council, upon discovering it had been effectively bankrupted, began investigating the possibility of transforming itself into a 'commissioning authority' and laying off almost all of its staff.