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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) on securing this debate.
Listening to the hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues, I am struck by the negative picture they paint of life in north Wales. We are debating living standards and quality of life in north Wales. I am not from north Wales—many of the Opposition Members here today are—but let me be the first to say this afternoon that north Wales is, remains and will continue to be a great place to live, a great place to work and a great place for businesses to invest.
At this time, as the economic recovery starts to gather pace in Wales, what should be seizing all of us with an interest in north Wales, on both sides of the House, is how to maximise the opportunities that are coming for Wales, so that we ensure that the economic recovery is a recovery for the whole of Wales and that north Wales is front and centre of that recovery.
Stephen Crabb
Forgive me, but I will not give way because I have not been left with much time.
This afternoon we have heard Opposition Members talking down north Wales and the Welsh economy and not recognising many of the great things that are happening in their own constituencies that we should be celebrating and promoting.
The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd, for whom I have a huge amount of time and respect, finished his contribution with a rather crude political attack on my party and my Government. Of course, it was his party that said it was “intensely relaxed” about people becoming filthy rich. His party was intensely relaxed about abolishing the 10p tax band, which hurt the lowest-paid workers the most. His party was intensely relaxed about soaring petrol prices and soaring council tax. The Government are not relaxed about such things, which is why we are doing everything that we can as the economic recovery gathers pace to ensure that people on the lowest incomes are the ones who benefit and are given incentives to move into work and be at the front and centre of maximising opportunities from the economic recovery.
It is a pleasure and a privilege to be a Minister in the Wales Office, and I have the opportunity to go around all parts of the Principality. I see many of the exciting things that are currently happening in the Welsh private sector, and I have to tell Opposition Members that much of that is happening in north Wales; it is happening in their own constituencies. Unemployment is falling in most north Wales constituencies. Unemployment is not falling everywhere, and we are not complacent about that. We want unemployment to fall in every parliamentary constituency, but the hon. Gentleman cannot stand there and say what he said without recognising that unemployment in his constituency is lower today than when his party left office. I remind him that, under the previous Labour Government, in the five years between 2005 and 2010, unemployment increased in his constituency by more than 100%.
Chris Ruane
The top-line unemployment statistics look okay, but the number of people on jobseeker’s allowance for 12 months or more was 215 in 2010, and it was 516 in 2012. The underlying trend is that the number of people who are long-term unemployed, who are the most difficult people to get back to work, is going massively upwards and there is no room for complacency.
Stephen Crabb
I am the last person to be complacent. I recognise that a huge amount of work still needs to be done, but the latest figures today confirm that the overall employment picture in Wales is positive. Unemployment is falling across Wales. Overall employment levels are increasing, which we should welcome and want to see more of.
At the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech, he talked about the decline in real wages between 2007 and 2012 in Denbighshire and Flintshire. We can go through the figures later if he wants more detail, but the vast majority of the decline in real wages happened in the last three years of the previous Labour Government, when, as a result of the economic trauma that they visited upon this country, there was an enormous destruction of wealth and real wages fell. We are now seeing a recovery in wages, including in Wales, but there is a long way still to go before we are back to previous levels.
On income tax, I recognise that many families are facing difficult financial circumstances. That is why we are putting cash back into those families’ pockets by taking the lowest-paid workers out of income tax altogether. We have now cut income tax for more than 1.1 million working people in Wales by increasing the tax-free personal allowance. We are lifting 130,000 of the lowest-paid workers in Wales out of income tax altogether by increasing that allowance to £10,000. Some 324,000 taxpayers in north Wales will benefit from that increase in the personal allowance.
Employers in north Wales are also benefiting from the fact that we are implementing in full all the recommendations of the independent Low Pay Commission. The hon. Gentleman talked about Conservative opposition to the minimum wage, but I for one never opposed the minimum wage, which has benefited the lowest-paid workers. This year, we are able not only to implement all the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations but to go further: the commission recommended freezing the apprentice rate, but we are not freezing it; we are increasing it, and we can do so because we have taken difficult decisions to restore discipline and order to our national finances and to put our house in order, which has given us the capacity and the resources to do things such as increase minimum wages.
One thing that we are committed to freezing, however, is fuel duty, and we have now seen fuel duty frozen for nearly three and a half years. This year, the average motorist will save £7 each time they fill up their fuel tank. I remind Opposition Members that, had Labour been elected in 2010 and implemented its detailed financial plans in full, as it had intended, the price of petrol would be 13p a litre higher than today. That is an example of the Government putting cash back into the pockets of hard-working people and hard-working families. Again, we can do that only because we were able and willing, and had the strength of purpose, to take difficult decisions at the start of this Parliament to put our national finances in order and to restore some sanity to national budgeting.
Albert Owen
I wish to put on record that I very much admire the resilience of the people of north Wales. We were not talking down north Wales; we were giving an honest picture. On fuel duty, will the Minister tell us what negotiations the Wales Office has had with the Treasury and others on the rebate scheme and how it will be implemented in Wales? I am talking about not only asking businesses, but providing leadership from the Wales Office.
Stephen Crabb
I can write to the hon. Gentleman with further details, but we are in close discussion with the Treasury on the implementation of that scheme in Wales. I have personally written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury about the scheme, and we want as much of rural Wales as possible to benefit.
We are also committed to freezing council tax in England. Let us remind ourselves that council tax more than doubled under the previous Labour Government. The council tax freeze, of course, does not apply to Wales, as it is a devolved matter. We have provided the Welsh Government in Cardiff with both the opportunity and the resources, but they have so far refused a freeze. If Opposition Members are genuinely concerned about standards of living and the financial pressures on families in Wales, they should be rapping hard on the doors of Welsh Ministers in Cardiff, wanting to know why they are not implementing a council tax freeze in the same way that we are doing in England.
There was some discussion of energy prices. Let me put it on the record that I have not heard one thing from an Opposition Member, or even from the Leader of the Opposition, about a commitment to freezing energy prices that has a shred of credibility. When the Leader of the Opposition was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, energy prices in this country soared. [Hon. Members: “They went down!”] Opposition Members cannot seek continued investment in energy infrastructure to deliver lower prices in future and to keep our lights on, while making irresponsible and crude promises that they can somehow freeze energy prices.
Housing benefit reform and the overall programme of welfare reform have been mentioned on a day when we again see unemployment in Wales fall. Opposition Members cannot be on the side of falling unemployment, while opposing welfare reform. Welfare reform is a vital ingredient in tackling worklessness at source, which is what we are seeing in Wales.
Hywel Williams
Will the Minister tell the House what assessment the Government made of the elasticity of the housing market before ending the spare-room subsidy? Will the market be able to respond to the increased demand for one and two-bedroom properties?
Stephen Crabb
We have had many opportunities to discuss the availability of certain types of housing in Wales. The housing stock differs between different areas, and I do not deny that shortages exist in certain parts of Wales. That is why we are making more than £7 million available to Welsh local authorities through discretionary housing payments to ease the transition to the implementation of our housing benefit reforms. [Interruption.] Opposition Members may want to chunter and mumble as we discuss such matters, but I am yet to see one of them stand up and give me a credible plan for how they will bring order back to our housing benefit expenditure, while tackling the unfairness of tens of thousands of people in Wales living in overcrowded accommodation or waiting for access to social housing while many people—let me absolutely blunt about it—are able to live in houses with extra space and more rooms than they strictly need.
The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd mentioned food banks and was absolutely incorrect to say that Conservatives have refused to visit them. I regularly visit my local food bank. In fact, I was a trustee of the charity that runs it, so I know exactly what food banks do. I know what they do well and what they do not do so well. From speaking to colleagues right across the House, I know that Conservatives have no fear at all about going to visit food banks. He made the point that Jobcentre Plus has been referring people to food banks since 2011, but what happened before 2011 under the previous Labour Government? They banned jobcentres from advertising the availability of food banks. They tried to cover up the fact that food banks were increasing in number on their watch. They did not want to acknowledge that food banks existed and were growing. We are not taking that approach. We see food banks as a vital part of the social economy at this difficult time, and we are working in close partnership with them.
In conclusion, I have the huge privilege of being able to get out and about around Wales. I see so many good things happening in north Wales. I will say it again for the record that north Wales remains a fantastic place to live, work and invest.
Sir Alan Meale (in the Chair)
Before we move on to the next debate, I want to remind hon. Members of the rules. If Members want to make a speech during a half-hour debate, they should seek the permission of the Member who secured the debate and the Minister. Members can, however, make interventions as long as the initiator or the Minister is willing to give way. I urge hon. Members to keep that in mind. Members are also supposed to write in before speaking in such debates, but so far only one Member has done so. I mention those rules because the attendance showed this topic to be extraordinarily popular, but the debates are only 30 minutes long, so please bear with us.