Government Policies (Wales)
Debate between Chris Bryant and David T C Davies(9 years, 12 months ago)
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David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Once again, we have listened for about 40 minutes to the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) treat us to his tales of economic doom and gloom and woe. It must be getter harder and harder for him to maintain that in the light of the ever-better financial news. I had an interesting morning in the run-up to this debate: I decided to read through a few of his previous speeches. I went back to 2010, when he quoted an Oxford Economics report, saying that the coalition Government would be able to create only 4,000 private sector jobs. I wonder whether he remembers saying that. The reality is that so far, over the course of this Parliament, we have created 100,000 private sector jobs in Wales alone. In the same speech he talked about net increases in unemployment continuing until 2025. The reality, of course, is that unemployment is now at its lowest level since 2008.
In a subsequent speech on 11 November 2011, the hon. Gentleman spoke of a 4% contraction in GDP over the course of the Parliament. The reality is that so far over the course of this Parliament we have had a GDP of 7.8%, and I got that figure from the House of Commons Library earlier today. We have the fastest-growing economy in the developed world. I am so proud to be standing here supporting the Prime Minister and the excellent Secretary of State for Wales he has just appointed.
Chris Bryant
If we are going to talk about speeches that other Members have made, I remember the Prime Minister saying that the deficit would be cut completely by the end of this Parliament. I remember him saying that the debt would be falling. I remember him saying that net migration to this country would fall below 100,000. None of those things has come to pass, so let us talk about the Government’s failures.
Chris Bryant
The Prime Minister even said that no disabled people would be affected by the bedroom tax, but two thirds of those affected by it in Wales are disabled.
David T. C. Davies
If the hon. Gentleman would be kind enough to give way, I will talk about those things. First I will leave him to think about this headline: “UK unemployment rate falls to lowest level since 2008”. That is from The Guardian just a few weeks ago. But let us talk about the debt, because after all, we inherited a debt of around £800 billion.
David T. C. Davies
Yes, it has gone up. We also had a deficit of £160 billion, and we have not managed to do as much as we wanted to do with that. I would have liked to see us do more with it. But the reality is that there has been no coherence from Labour Members, because every time we have suggested ways to cut the deficit further, they have opposed them. They sit there trying to convince the world that they have a coherent economic policy, when they have condemned us for borrowing money while at the same time demanding that we borrow more. That is why people will not trust them with the economy.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) talked about immigration. Again, I would have liked to see us go further, but immigration from outside the European Union has been reduced significantly, and we cannot do anything about immigration from within the European Union—he should know, because he is the biggest Europhile in this place. We cannot do anything about freedom of movement, but we are going to offer a referendum on it.
Wales Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and David T C Davies(10 years, 7 months ago)
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David T. C. Davies
Obviously, I am speaking as an individual Back Bencher; it was hard to get any agreement on certain of these issues from the Welsh Affairs Committee. Let me make it clear that I am not speaking for anyone in the Conservative party either—I am entirely on my own on this one, and probably always will be.
I would like to see one improvement that can be made to this Bill. If we consider the powers the Welsh Assembly has already been given, we can see that it has not done terribly well. We have had the sight of the Welsh Minister for Education and Skills apologising, on Boxing day, I believe it was, for the lamentable state of education. As someone who has been through the state school system there, and who has three children in that system, I feel that very strongly. Nor have we seen a good performance from our national health service. Large numbers of people in cross-border areas such as Monmouthshire are desperate to be treated by the coalition Government-run NHS in England. We have even had the spectacle of a Labour Member of Parliament being banned from going before the Health and Social Care Committee in the Welsh Assembly because she was likely to tell a few home truths that members of that Committee did not want to hear. There has thus been a failure even to carry out the proper scrutiny role.
What I would like to see from this Bill is the opportunity not to take powers away from the Welsh Assembly, but to recognise that where there are problems, individuals ought to be given the choice. Somebody in Wales who is ill and wishes to be treated in England should have the right to access the NHS in England, with the cost of treatment being deducted from the block grant. Similarly, if someone in England was happy to wait twice as long as they needed to and be treated in Wales, they could be treated in Wales, with the cost of their treatment being added to the block grant. That would be an excellent way for us to maintain the commitment to devolution while allowing everyone to enjoy the benefits of a national health service.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman thinks it would be much better to move to a federal system. My problem is that that denies the history of all the different parts of the United Kingdom: the whole of Ireland was a kingdom until the partition and so on; Scotland had a completely different legal system even when the Crowns were joined together; and Wales never had a separate legal situation. Asymmetric devolution is actually the most sensible way of progressing.
David T. C. Davies
That is a reasonable intervention from the hon. Gentleman. I respond simply by saying that a federal approach is not a perfect solution, but it is probably the least worst solution, and it is better than waking up in 20 years and finding that we have fully fledged independence. Wales has had a slightly separate legal system; I believe that Henry VIII allowed Wales a measure of independence, except for Monmouthshire, which was brought into the Oxford assizes—we do not need to go into that now.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and David T C Davies(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Bryant
Yes, that is true because of the structure we have in this country. Sometimes Members talk of checks and balances, which is really an import from the American system where the constitution was expressly written so as to have checks and balances. Incidentally, one of those checks and balances in the American system was that each state should have two Senators regardless of the number of people living in it. For instance, Rhode Island is tiny compared with California, which is larger economically, politically and in every other sense than a large number of countries in the world, but the two states only get two Senators in the Senate. In the British system, we do not have quite the same checks and balances—particularly if the House of Lords is dominated by a coalition in which two parties manage effectively to have control of both Houses, of the Executive and of the legislature.
I do praise some of the things that the Government have done since they took office, such as setting up the Backbench Business Committee. I hope that the whole of business could be handed over to a business committee, because I think that the role of the legislature needs to be reinforced so that the Executive is held better to account.
Various arguments have been advanced for cutting the number of MPs from 650 to 600, one of which makes international comparisons. I have heard the Deputy Prime Minister use that argument several times but it is completely fallacious. It is wrong to compare the British Parliament with the Spanish Parliament, for example, because the vast majority of Spain’s Ministers do not sit in the Spanish Parliament. The Executive are not created out of the Parliament. Similarly, in other countries—the United States being the most obvious example—the Executive do not spring from the legislature, so there are not 95 people who automatically have a second job as a Minister or a Parliamentary Private Secretary. That comparison is therefore inappropriate.
If we are to make any kind of comparison, we must bear in mind differences in the level of devolution or federalisation from one country to another. Comparing the United Kingdom with Germany, for example, is inappropriate because the Länder has far more significant powers than any local authority in England and more powers than the Welsh Assembly.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the checks is for the Government to allow ample time for all clauses in a Bill to be discussed? They have clearly done that on this occasion, but we will not get to relevant Welsh issues because he has spent the past half hour speaking.
Chris Bryant
Bearing in mind what the hon. Gentleman used to say when he was in opposition, I should have thought that he would support the scrutiny of legislation—and one has to talk to scrutinise legislation. No, we have not had enough time to scrutinise the Bill because there are four clauses and some schedules on which we have not had any debate at all. In addition, the Government have tabled 100 pages of amendments that we are going to debate on Monday, which means that we will not be able to debate issues such as the one that he is interested in—cutting the number of Ministers. I shall not take any lectures from him on how long one should speak in the House or on how much scrutiny there should be.
Chris Bryant
No. I think that that is a slightly facetious point, but we should have a day to debate a clause that will reduce the number of Members of Parliament from 650 to 600, and rejig the boundaries in a way completely different from anything in the past, without any public consultation, without the proposal appearing in any public manifesto, and without any consultation across the parties. None the less, the hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely fair point: some clauses do not need a whole day’s debate.
David T. C. Davies
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, although I do not want to extend the debate for too long. He must know perfectly well that two manifestos said that the number of MPs would be reduced and that the reduction now proposed is a much smaller one, which should be something that he could support.
Chris Bryant
No. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present at the beginning of my comments—he was doubtless opposing the Government’s measures on S4C—but as I now apparently have to rehearse the argument for him, I can tell him that I was making the point that the number has been arrived at for entirely partisan reasons. It is not the number that was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, nor the one that was in the Conservative manifesto.
Chris Bryant
Yes, it is higher than both those figures, because it manages to reach a level that hits the number of Labour seats but not the number of Liberal Democrat seats. That is why the number has been chosen, and that is why I oppose it.