Wales Bill

Debate between David T C Davies and Hywel Williams

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Hywel Williams]

I do not want to detain the House, but Wales did have a separate legal system for many centuries, codified by Hywel Dda.

[David T. C. Davies]

You rightly told me off last time, Madam Deputy Speaker, for misusing the privilege of being called early and I do not wish to be told off again. What I would say is that I am a democrat and I recognise that much of what has been given to Wales has come about as a result of referendums. What is on offer in the Bill regarding stamp duty and land tax is not that significant. As for giving borrowing powers, I am a pragmatist and if they are going to be used for the M4, I would very much like to see an M4 relief road, so I will willingly go along with that. And of course, income tax powers will not be devolved without a further referendum. I would certainly be encouraging people to vote no in such a referendum, and perhaps for the first time I would be on a different side of the argument from the Secretary of State. Nevertheless, I recognise democracy and I recognise that he is offering a referendum. I appreciate the changes in the Bill which he has made as a result of the scrutiny by the Welsh Affairs Committee. My welcome, frosty and formal as it is, stays in place and I look forward to seeing the Bill progress through the House.

Welsh Affairs

Debate between David T C Davies and Hywel Williams

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

No, I think that, as people on different sides of the political fence recognise, great difficulties would be caused if, in an area where most people live along the border, one side cut VAT while the other kept it at the original level. That differential would create enormous economic problems. What I would be interested in doing is looking at the economic case for a cut in VAT for tourism across the whole of the United Kingdom, or at least across all those bits that wish to remain in the United Kingdom, and retain the benefits that come from that.

When we consider what the Assembly has actually managed to achieve, we should be very cautious about giving it further powers, particularly over policing, which is what is being discussed as a result of Silk 2. Let us consider the areas where the Welsh Assembly already has complete powers, such as inward investment. Inward investment has been a disaster over the years since the Assembly was set up. We went from being one of the most successful regions of the United Kingdom in attracting foreign inward investment to being the second lowest region. There are a number of reasons for that, many of which we heard when the Select Committee investigated this issue. We heard stories about people who were set up in so-called embassies in other parts of the world but could not even speak the language of the country they were supposed to be selling Wales to, and people who were not seen or heard of. We heard stories from Brussels that, while Scotland—to be fair—and Yorkshire and other regions of the United Kingdom had been very successful in raising their profile, nobody had ever heard of anyone from Wales. At the same time we have had problems with education, which is an important factor when companies decide where to locate. I believe there is also an issue with energy, which the hon. Member for Ynys Môn also mentioned and which I shall come back to shortly. Certainly, however, the record on inward investment has been a complete and utter disaster.

Education is now a story not just for the Welsh papers, but for the national papers. The PISA—programme for international student assessment—results were a disaster for those of us who have children in the state education system, as I do, and I went through it myself in Wales in the 1980s. The latest GCSE results for English came out today. I quickly looked at them on the BBC website and apparently they are much worse than expected, although the Welsh Assembly is once again quick to try to distance itself from the poor results.

I believe there is a particular problem, which was summed up by Lee Waters. He worked, I believe, for a number of Labour Ministers in the Welsh Assembly. He is a man of many qualities, but not voting Conservative is not one of them; it is a shame that he does not. He hit the nail on the head today in an article in The Times when he wrote about the fact that the Welsh Assembly was deliberately trying to do things differently in areas where it had the power just because it could—not because it could do a better job, but simply to try to show that it was not going to follow what England does.

Ministers might not like me saying this, but if we compare what has gone on in England with what has gone on in Wales, we can see that the English education reforms have simply built on the reforms that Tony Blair put in place but was unable to carry out. I read his memoirs with great interest, and I was struck by the way in which his health and education policies were reflected almost exactly in the policies that were in the Conservative manifesto. It is therefore quite bizarre that Labour subsequently attacked our policies so vigorously, given that the ideas came from Labour itself.

[Hywel Williams]

What does the hon. Gentleman make of this week’s press reports that Labour will, if it ever gets back into government, adopt the reforms that are being promoted for England by the Secretary of State for Education?

[David T. C. Davies]

I very much welcome that, of course. It is not particularly surprising, however, because reforms such as the introduction of academies, the use of the private sector and the better use of inspections were all being suggested by Tony Blair. He started to implement them under Andrew Adonis but, for one reason or another, was unable to complete them. It is not in the least bit surprising that Labour Members now recognise that we have built on their reforms, and extended and widened them a little. Why would they want to go back on them? The problem is that we have two Labour parties in the United Kingdom. In England, we have a sort of new Labour, which to some extent recognises the need to deal with business and the private sector, if only so that it can get taxes off them in order to spend them. In Wales, we have a kind of old Labour, red in tooth and claw, that still has not woken up to the fact that the 1970s finished about 40 years ago.

Commission on Devolution in Wales

Debate between David T C Davies and Hywel Williams

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to be here on a Thursday discussing Wales. Unlike some Members, I shall not be offering a welcome, cautious or otherwise, to the Silk commission. I have no doubts about the motives or the knowledge of any of those taking part in it, some of whom are well known to me, but I feel that we could save ourselves a lot of time and money by doing away with the commission and getting on with what we all know is going to happen. We know that the commission is going to spend until the summer of 2012 looking into the granting of fiscal powers to the Welsh Assembly. I suspect that all sorts of things will appear in the newspapers and on BBC Wales, and that there will be a debate or two. The usual faces of the great and the good in Wales will be wheeled out in support of all of this, and there will be public meetings on wet weekday evenings in various parts of Wales, to which a small representative sample of the public who all like the idea of giving further powers to the Assembly will turn up. At the end of it all, we will be told that the vast majority of people who responded were in favour of giving further powers to the Assembly, and those further powers will be given. Then phase 2 will begin, in which, I see from the report, we will consider “varying” the powers of the Assembly. Well, we all know what that actually means. It means increasing the powers.

[Hywel Williams]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be taking a rather “conspiratorial” view of these developments in Welsh politics. Does he think that the referendum, too, was a conspiracy?

[David T. C. Davies]

It is not a conspiratorial view; it is a view based on the history of what has been going on. We seem to be locked in a kind of constitutional groundhog day, with the same sequence of political events repeating itself over and over again. The process starts with the Welsh Assembly being granted a whole load of powers and saying, “That’s it, we’ve got all the tools we need for our toolkit.” That seems to be the popular term at the moment. “We’ve got everything we need now. We’re just going to get on with the job.” Then, a few years—or, in this case, a few months—later, it says, “Well, actually, we can’t do the job we need to do. We just need a few extra powers.” Then a commission of the great and the good is set up, often with the same people appearing time and again. They go off and consider the matter, public meetings are held, and they come back and say, “Yes, we need a bit more.” Perhaps a referendum is held, or perhaps there is just another Act of Parliament or some statutory instrument. The Assembly gets what it is given and everything goes quiet for a few months. Then the whole thing starts up again. We are in the first phase of the cycle at the moment. This is not a conspiracy; it is just how things have been happening in Wales since about 1999.

I would be delighted if we really were going to consider varying the powers of the Welsh Assembly, because I assume that varying can cut both ways. It could mean that, rather than just handing the Assembly new powers, we could look at taking a few powers away from it, once in a while. I suggested that in a Westminster Hall debate a few years ago, when Wales was doing particularly badly on the health service, but it did not seem to meet with much approval from anyone—certainly not anyone in my political party. The very fact that it had been suggested was a source of outrage to many.

The Welsh Assembly can take powers away from local authorities that are failing in Wales and, quite rightly, it has used them from time to time, so I see no reason why the Silk commission should not look realistically at the possibility of removing powers from the Welsh Assembly in devolved areas if standards have clearly dropped below those that all in the United Kingdom are entitled to expect.

Another area that I suspect the Silk commission will not look into—the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) mentioned it—is environmental taxes. To my mind, that would be very interesting indeed. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, Tata and other manufacturing companies in Wales that use large amounts of electricity are very angry about the way in which the environment has been used as a means to impose all sorts of extra tax burdens. The issue of the environment is worth exploring, but now is not the time or place—[Hon. Members: “Come on.”] It is very tempting, but I see Mr Deputy Speaker imperceptibly shaking his head at me. It is not for me to pose the question of why the temperature has not got any hotter since 1998, despite the fact that large amounts of carbon dioxide have gone into the atmosphere. That is not a question for today, but it is a very interesting one none the less—and I have never heard a satisfactory answer to it.

Let me move on to a more important question. If we accept that things will at some point start getting hotter because of carbon dioxide, requiring us to put all sorts of taxes on our industries, and if Welsh industries such as steel are affected, surely it is only right that those taxes be applied not just across the whole of the European Union or Europe but across the whole world. If we do not insist on that as a starting point, all that will happen is that those manufacturing industries—so important to us in Wales for jobs—will simply relocate to other parts of the world where those taxes are not being applied. It will not make a jot of difference to global carbon emissions, which will continue to come from wherever those factories relocate, but it will make a difference to jobs and the amount of tax that the Treasury collects within the UK. I would love to see the Silk commission looking into that idea, but I am afraid that I shall probably be disappointed.

You might conclude, Mr Deputy Speaker, from what I am saying that I am in some way against devolution—[Hon. Members: “No, never!”] I am not. I am devo-realist. I was against the idea of a Welsh Assembly and I have voted no at every opportunity ever since, but I say genuinely that I have a very high opinion of the abilities of the individual Members of the Welsh Assembly. I had the pleasure of working with them for eight years. I do not doubt their motives. I do not doubt the credibility of people like Rhodri Morgan, Dafydd Elis-Thomas or Nick Bourne, even though I might disagree with them on many fundamental issues.

My problem with what we are doing is very simple. The West Lothian question is the elephant in the room here. Every time we give further powers to the Welsh Assembly, we are weakening the United Kingdom. I believe that even some Labour Members, in their quieter and more reflective moments, share some of these concerns. Surely the priority for us constitutionally should not be thinking about granting further powers to the Welsh Assembly, but ensuring that all citizens of the UK have the same constitutional powers. The issue is about addressing the fact that we here in the Westminster Parliament vote on how the English run their schools, discuss how the English run their hospitals, yet we do not accept the right of anyone, including Members of Parliament, to have any say in how these issues are dealt with in Wales.