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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Alun Cairns)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) on securing this important debate. We have heard a range of contributions. It was certainly interesting to hear that of the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd, although of course my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) highlighted the impact of the dead hand of Labour on the Vale of Clwyd and every other constituency. He also reminded us that Labour signed up to the public spending commitments set out by the Government for the forthcoming years; whenever the Opposition criticise this Administration’s cuts, they must demonstrate which they would make instead of ours.
The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) highlighted the fragility of the private sector in Wales. I challenge some of the points that he made about that fragility, as the private sector is thriving in terms of creating employment, but the greater stability and security that we can offer such businesses will allow the sector to be more robust than ever. My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) highlighted a host of contradictions made by some Opposition Members and discussed Labour’s tactic to grow wealth by swelling the welfare state, which is clearly economically illiterate and does not stack up. My hon. Friend was absolutely right.
The hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) focused on welfare reform, and seemed to complain about the benefit cap of £23,000 proposed this morning by the Prime Minister. I remind him that many people in Wales who work hard day in and day out do not earn that much salary. If he does not support a £23,000 benefit cap, the money saved by such a cap would need to be found in cuts elsewhere, which I hope Labour will outline.
The hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) covered a range of issues. He seemed to suggest that public sector jobs were good and private sector jobs were bad, which I absolutely reject. He also highlighted the issue of zero-hours contracts. The Government are tackling the abuse of zero-hours contracts, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Labour party itself, and even Labour MPs, use zero-hours contracts. He rightly focused on the living wage and minimum wage. We encourage as many employers as possible to live up to the living wage, but I point out that a number of Labour-run local authorities in Wales do not pay the living wage, and I encourage Labour Members to consider that within their budget plans and affordability measures.
The hon. Gentleman closed on the minimum wage and said that the Labour Government would increase it; I think that the latest policy to which they are committing is £8 an hour. However, a Labour former Cabinet member has highlighted how unambitious that is; even under past projections, by 2020 it will not buy much. If historical increases in the minimum wage were projected forward, they would go well beyond that. In reality, Labour is talking about cutting the minimum wage for hard-working people.
Guto Bebb
Although I aspire for people to be paid more than the minimum wage, it is important when we discuss it not to forget that many of those on the minimum wage pay significantly less tax as a direct result of this Government’s policies to ensure that people keep more of the money that they earn.
Alun Cairns
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making an extremely important and valid point. Some of the data and statistics highlighted by Opposition Members were somewhat selective, and we need to take the totality of Government changes into account; doing so highlights the progress that has been made.
It is also important to remember the context in which this debate is taking place. We need to remember that when Labour came to power in 1997, Wales was not the poorest part of the United Kingdom. Since then, sadly, there has been a complete shift in culture. That is simply illustrated: in a population of 3 million, there are 200,000 people in Wales who have never worked. The Government needed to act. We were simply not prepared to allow the previous trends to continue, whereby, sadly, the economy of Wales was being compared to those of Romania and Bulgaria; whereby parts of Wales were blighted with worklessness; and whereby a third of the working-age populations of some communities were claiming out-of-work benefits.
We have taken key steps to deal with that legacy of worklessness and a welfare system that encouraged dependency. As a Government, we have put in place a long-term economic plan to deal with the situation that we inherited—in 2010, Wales was, sadly, the poorest part of the UK. That fact will always come back to haunt Opposition Members. They talk about wealth, prosperity and growth, but they left Wales as the poorest part of the UK, despite receiving in 1997 an economy that meant Wales was not the poorest part of the UK.
We developed a plan to stabilise the country’s economy, to deal with years of financial mismanagement under the last Labour Government and to get the people of Wales and Britain back to work. That long-term economic plan is paying dividends. It surprises me that during the last hour or so I have listened to Opposition Members playing down the progress of the labour market in their constituencies.
For example, in the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd’s constituency, unemployment more than doubled between 2005 and 2010; there was a rise of 105% under the last Administration. Since 2010, unemployment in Vale of Clwyd has dropped by a third. Surely he welcomes that as a positive outcome.
Alun Cairns
The hon. Gentleman points back to 1997, but I can speak only about the time since 2010, when this Administration came to power. However, I remind him of what I said before: in 1997, Wales was not the poorest part of the UK but, sadly, by 2010 it was. That happened under both a Labour UK Government and a Labour Welsh Assembly Government. Thirteen years of Labour Administrations in Wales between 1997 and 2010 left Wales as the poorest part of the UK.
On a positive note, I hope that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the fall in unemployment in his constituency since this Administration came to power. The picture is similar for youth unemployment in the Vale of Clywd; it went up by 82% under Labour, but since 2010 it has come down by a third. Why does he not recognise the positive steps that the Government have taken in that regard, and why is he not congratulating the businesses in his constituency that are creating these jobs and employment opportunities for his constituents?
It was a privilege to visit Clogau Gold in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency just a short time ago. It is expanding, exporting, and creating wealth and employment locally in the Vale of Clywd. I regret how the hon. Gentleman is talking down his own area; that is hardly creating the mood to attract investment and to encourage companies such as Clogau Gold to continue to spend money on investing, exporting and creating yet more wealth.
Jonathan Edwards
The Minister talks of the “long-term economic plan”, but have not the deficit reduction targets of his Government been missed by a country mile? One of the major reasons for that is that the jobs being created are low-wage in nature, which means they do not generate the revenues the Treasury was expecting.
Alun Cairns
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point; we need to recognise the context in terms of deficit reduction. Given that we had been so over-dependent on the eurozone as our export market and that the eurozone went into near-meltdown, naturally that hit the Welsh economy disproportionately harder than we would have liked. That is why the long-term economic plan aims at growing exports, such as those of Clogau Gold in the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd’s constituency, well beyond Europe—to the middle east, to the far east and to the fast-developing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. Excellent progress has been made in that regard.
Would I have liked the deficit to have been cut further? Of course I would. However, the process is about achieving a balance between reducing the deficit and creating wealth and employment. The Government’s record is positive in that respect. We need to remember that last year the UK was the fastest growing economy in the G7, and that Wales is the second fastest growing part of the UK. We are absolutely up there at the top; we need to recognise and celebrate that, rather than hearing the arguments that we have heard from Opposition Members. It is in their interests to talk Wales down, creating more dependency and trying to create a sort of depth of Labour voters to look to Labour for help rather than looking to the private sector for wealth as well as opportunity creation and generation.
Overall, the picture throughout the whole of Wales is positive, just as it is in the Vale of Clwyd. I could highlight more statistics about north Wales and the south Wales valleys, but the reality is that long-term unemployment is falling and the Work programme is having a major effect. Jobs Growth Wales has a part to play, but we must remember that the independent assessment of Jobs Growth Wales highlighted that 73% of the people who found jobs through it would have found jobs elsewhere.
Let us pool our ideas and resources, to try to get people off welfare and into work through the positive culture of cutting tax, growing the economy and reducing unemployment, in exactly the way that the Government have done.