Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Murphy of Torfaen and Hywel Williams

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy]

I hope that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench will elaborate a bit more on the matter, but my guess is that they discussed the issue of reserved powers at earlier stages and a new clause is necessary to revive the debate on that on Report. I agree that this measure is relatively modest in asking that a report be laid, but I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) will clarify that we are in favour of reserved powers, as described by the Leader of the Opposition in north Wales. There is no equivocation at all about whether we want reserved powers. We do. The new clause is framed in this way so that the House can debate what is an important issue.

[Hywel Williams]

From my reading of new clause 4, it does propose a reserved powers model, but that is contingent on a report not on the reserved powers model, but on borrowing by Welsh Ministers. The Opposition seem to be yoking two different things together. I suspect that it is a delaying, or even a wrecking tactic.

[Paul Murphy]

It certainly is not a wrecking tactic. I have made the position clear. I am just a Back Bencher, but Labour Front Benchers will also make it clear that the Labour party is committed to reserved powers for Wales. In the light of what is likely to happen in Scotland, that becomes much more important.

Welsh Affairs

Debate between Lord Murphy of Torfaen and Hywel Williams

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy]

Indeed, we do not know that. People have been temporarily blinded by such substances and have had large lumps come out on their bodies, and it could be that in the long term they will suffer even greater illnesses.

One of these groups of shops, called Chill South Wales, has a Facebook page on which it promotes its products. The most recent post is an image of four children’s cartoon characters with a range of drugs paraphernalia. We have looked at the list of 394 Facebook friends; many of them are still at school and some are as young as 12. Those young people have no idea what they are taking and no way of knowing the possible dangers or the long-term health risks. These products are just as dangerous as illegal drugs, if not more so as people unwittingly think that they are safe because they are legal and are being sold on our high streets. That could not be further from the truth.

To be fair, I think the Government are doing what they can by using temporary class drug orders to ban substances as they come along, but it is a game of catch-up: as soon as one substance is banned, another appears in the marketplace. More than 250 substances have been banned, but more are appearing at a rate of one a week.

The Home Office review is to be welcomed.

[Hywel Williams]

As a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology, I visited a forensic lab just outside London and was shown a selection of the drugs that had been confiscated in the few weeks before our visit. The system is now privatised and those I spoke to reported that they found it very difficult to keep up with the novel substances as they were imported, mainly from China. Is the right hon. Gentleman content that the Government are putting enough money into the forensic service to keep up with these novel drugs?

[Paul Murphy]

I certainly think that many more resources need to be put into this and we should use all available avenues to alert and warn our young people of the dangers of these drugs. Our schools, colleges, education services and local authorities must do all they can to let people know how terrible, dangerous and toxic these drugs are.

We must certainly consider giving local authorities special powers to close down the shops and I think that we should legislate to do so. Perhaps we could adopt the model they have in New Zealand, where the onus is on suppliers to prove that the substances are safe. A lot more thought must go into this.

Today’s debate is, of course, about Wales, and this is an ideal opportunity for the UK Government and the Welsh Government to work together, as they have different responsibilities but the same aim of trying to deal with these terrible things. I have worked with my local Assembly Member, Lynne Neagle, on this matter. I believe that there is a case for the Secretary of State or the Minister to contact their counterparts in Cardiff Bay to see whether we can tackle this appalling abuse. One great advantage of a Welsh affairs debate is that we can raise such issues on the Floor of the House of Commons, which since devolution has not been quite so easy to do. I am sure that our constituents do not see the distinction when it comes to the Welsh Government being in charge of health and the United Kingdom Government being in charge of criminal justice. Both Governments need to ensure that we deal with this terrible plague affecting our young people in Wales.

Welsh Affairs

Debate between Lord Murphy of Torfaen and Hywel Williams

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy]

I do not because, as I said earlier and as the Minister will remember, the purpose is to set protocols between the Welsh and United Kingdom Governments. Indeed, the Welsh Affairs Committee inquired into cross-border health issues not long ago. I merely say to the House that when legislation goes through Westminster, even if it ostensibly relates only to England, there are implications for Wales. There are other examples. A number of the health bodies that are to be abolished affect England and Wales; one relates to alcohol and another to health care of a different sort. There is also the training of medical staff, which obviously cannot be done solely in Wales. That has to be done in England as well.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), when I tackled him on the cross-border issue, having heard whispers from the Secretary of State for Health, said that arrangements would be made to allow people on one side of the border to register on the other? He did not seem to be aware that people in my constituency currently travel to Liverpool and Manchester, for example, quite satisfactorily to receive specialist health care and that that is threatened by the privatisation that that lot are bringing in.

[Paul Murphy]

That is the sort of benign ignorance to which I referred earlier. I am not saying that the Ministers in the Wales Office are in that category, because they understand these issue. That is their job, as it was my job when I was a Minister. The issue is that other Government Ministers often have to be told about the sensitivities and complications that exist between Welsh and English issues. That is why it is not simply the case that the West Lothian question is the obvious thing we need to deal with. Not one Parliament in the world has separate classes of members who vote in the way the commission could suggest.

Commission on Devolution in Wales

Debate between Lord Murphy of Torfaen and Hywel Williams

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy]

The hon. Gentleman knows that historically I was opposed to devolution—I changed my mind as the years went by—but we had to accept what the people of Wales decided. In 1997, they decided on devolution, albeit by a small majority—we must remember that the Conservative party did not get a majority of Members of Parliament, but we still have a Conservative-led Government—and in the referendum held earlier this year the overwhelming view of people in Wales was that there should be extra powers. It was the people who decided what they wanted in the end, and I agreed with them this time.

I repeat that we do not want to hear about consensus, given that that was abandoned by this Government when they introduced the Bill to reduce the number of our Members of Parliament. For the first time since 1832 we will have fewer than 40 Members of Parliament representing Wales in this House. I am not arguing about the nature of equal constituencies—that is for another debate—but I am saying that the reduction from 40 to 30 in the number of Welsh MPs reduces the influence of Wales within the United Kingdom. I will address that in a few moments’ time.

Part I of the commission’s remit is to deal with money: the financial responsibilities and the remit of the Welsh Assembly. We are told that this is all about accountability, but the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) just referred to the devolution settlement of 1997. Such a settlement also took place in Scotland and later in Northern Ireland, where I played a part. In all those settlements that issue of financial accountability was raised, and it was argued by some, “If a parish or community council can raise revenue, why cannot a Government in Edinburgh, Belfast or Cardiff do so?”

When I chaired the talks in Northern Ireland on whether there should be income tax powers in Northern Ireland, the meeting lasted less than an hour. People in Scotland decided that they would have the possibility of tax-varying powers, but those have never been used. We in Wales rejected this from the beginning, and there was a reason for that: the resource base of Wales is much lower than that of Scotland—the resource base of Northern Ireland is even lower than that of Wales—and therefore the amount of money that could be raised by income tax in Wales or Northern Ireland, and, to a certain extent, in Scotland, is infinitesimally smaller than the amount that could be raised in England. This proposal was therefore abandoned.

The idea of how we finance our devolved Administrations, therefore, came down to the idea of the block grant. That system is not unique. The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) referred to asymmetrical devolution, and that is what occurs in Spain, except that there they have devolution everywhere. They get their money through a system of distribution of block grants and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) said, they are able to ensure that there is proper distribution of money so that poorer areas are helped by richer areas such as Catalonia.

[Hywel Williams]

There is of course the exception in Spain of the Basque country. I am not arguing for us to adopt that model, under which the Basque country is taxed and money is sent down to Madrid, rather than the other way around.

[Paul Murphy]

Yes; I am talking in general terms and that may well be an exception. A block grant, based on need, going to various parts of the devolved administration is the system that was decided on. That is why we have to be very careful; we tinker with this at our peril.

An issue on which the Secretary of State and I had an exchange back in May was about whether, were there ever to be income tax-raising or varying powers in Wales, we should have a referendum to approve that. She stated in her answer to me:

“He is quite right that giving tax-raising powers would involve another referendum”.—[Official Report, 11 May 2011; Vol. 527, c. 1148.]

It would not be constitutionally right or proper for there to be tax-raising or tax-varying powers in Wales, so far as income tax is concerned, without the people’s saying so.