Wales Bill

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

Absolutely. The only thing I would contest in my hon. Friend’s intervention is the suggestion that Leighton Andrews is the best Assembly Member in Wales. That particular accolade goes, of course, to Mick Antoniw, the AM for Pontypridd.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. It is best if in this Chamber we discuss principles, rather than the party political chances of individual candidates.

[Owen Smith]

I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I simply point out that the explanatory notes referred to the rationale behind the measure as being to help the party political chances of the minority parties in Wales. That is clearly what this is about.

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[Owen Smith]

No, I will not.

Our proposal to allow the Welsh Government to set a progressive rate of taxation in Wales would allow power to be transferred to Welsh people to guard Wales against the damage to social justice done in Britain by a Tory Government who propose to cut taxes further. The motivation is similar to that for devolution in its first inception: a Tory Government in Wales exercising—in the miner’s strike, the poll tax and other measures—a political strategy that reveals how they turn their face against social justice in Britain and use Wales as a means to exercise such injustice. We have recently seen that in the war on Wales, and the way in which Grant Shapps, the chairman of the Tory party, and the Secretary of State—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. [Interruption.] Order. The hon. Gentleman must not appear to be concerned or to question when he is called to order. [Interruption.] Order. I must say that if Conservative Members are not quiet, the shadow Secretary of State will never get to the end of his lengthy speech. In doing so, I trust that when the shadow Secretary of State refers to a Member of this House he does so, as is proper, by their constituency, not their Christian name and surname.

[Owen Smith]

I am very sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was not, of course, rolling my eyes at your good self, but at the Secretary of State. I put on the record that my inability to recall the name of the constituency of the Minister without Portfolio, might have something to do with the multiple aliases that he deploys outside this House and which make it very difficult to recall how to refer to him within it.

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[Hon. Members]

It’s not in the Bill.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. Hon. Gentlemen must not shout from a sedentary position. If the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) is not in order, I will tell him that he is not in order. I am sure that he will remain in order.

[Alun Cairns]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will do everything I can to remain in order. I want to refer briefly to a point made by my hon. Friend, who was criticised by Opposition Members. It related to a letter from the chief medical officer in England to her counterpart in Wales on the powers of devolution in Wales, seeking an investigation. How could that ever be interpreted as an attack on Wales, when it was from one clinician to another?