Welsh Affairs

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Simon Baynes

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Simon Baynes]

Indeed, the armed forces have made a tremendous contribution to helping in the fight against covid. Currently, 411 military personnel are available to support the pandemic response in Wales, and that includes 313 supporting the Welsh ambulance service and 98 deployed to assist the seven health boards across Wales. My right hon. Friend made the point in his excellent speech that the deployment of the Royal Welsh to Estonia is another vital aspect of how the armed forces are helping us to deploy and present our position in the terrible crisis in Ukraine. That is testament to the fact that as a United Kingdom, we are stronger in our defence and in dealing with the health and wellbeing of our country. We can bring the whole strength of the United Kingdom to assist Wales and the rest of the UK. That is why, for me, being a Unionist is vital.

People and businesses in Wales have benefited from direct financial support from the UK Government. The facts are well known, but 475,000 jobs have been protected through the furlough scheme, and £2.4 billion has been provided to 60,000 Welsh businesses through the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme and the bounce back loan scheme.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly mentioned the shared prosperity fund. It is important to point out that the Government have committed, at a minimum, to matching the size of EU funding in Wales. Over and above that, as a Member of Parliament for a constituency that lies not in west or south Wales, but in north-east Wales, I must make the point that a large part of Wales received no benefit from EU structural funds. The shared prosperity funding and the new ways of financing and helping Wales give us a great opportunity to help all communities, so that we are not stuck to some rigid dogma concerning geographical areas, but we can focus on all areas where there is deprivation and a need for levelling up. The new system will be of huge benefit, and it will be a much improved way of helping communities across Wales.

Overall, Wales receives considerably more funding per head than England—about £120 for every £100 per head spent by the UK Government in England. Furthermore, Wales’s notional net fiscal deficit—the gap between total public spending for Wales and public sector revenues from Wales—amounted to £14.5 billion in 2020-21. This equated to around 18% of estimated GDP for Wales, or £4,556 per head. These are dry details, but in truth they represent an extraordinary Union dividend for Wales.

In Clwyd South, we have historically been starved of investment by the Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff bay, but we have seen renewed vigour from the UK Conservative Government to correct this injustice, with unprecedented levels of funding coming into the region. [Interruption]. Would the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) like to intervene?

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He speaks about being starved by the Government, but that is not what the Welsh people say, and it is not what they said at the ballot box in May last year.

[Simon Baynes]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point. Part of the issue that we are dealing with is that Labour almost entirely represents south Wales, and it has only one seat north of the valleys, in Alyn and Deeside. Therefore, it does not surprise me that Labour Members really do not understand how much people in north Wales feel left behind and uncared for by the Welsh Government. I am afraid that her remark bears out exactly what I am saying.

The levelling-up fund bid for Clwyd South was developed by Wrexham and Denbighshire Councils and sponsored by me, as the Member of Parliament, and it proved successful. It is vital investment for my constituency, going from the Trevor basin through Llangollen and Chirk and on down to Corwen, and bringing huge benefits to the communities, the Llangollen canal and the Llangollen railway. One central part of it is the world heritage site at the Trevor Basin, which incorporates Telford’s magnificent aqueduct. It is an extraordinary fact, but until now there has been absolutely no public investment in the world heritage site by either the Welsh Government or the UK Government. I am delighted that the UK Government have now put their money where their mouth is and supported these tremendous projects within my constituency.

These projects will have an important catalyst effect on local communities, addressing not only the issue of visitors, but the health and wellbeing of our communities through the use of the canal and so on. Very close to the Trevor Basin lies areas of derelict industrial land. My hope is that this money will not only improve the visitor experience and life for the residents of my constituency along the Dee valley, but act as a catalyst for further development of areas that are in bad need of improvement and regeneration.

It was my pledge in the 2019 election to work constructively to deliver the change and investment that Clwyd South needs. I am proud to have worked with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales and their team at the Wales Office, as well as the rest of the UK Government, to bring improvements to my constituency.

I finish with reference to the comments made by Huw Edwards when he introduced the Eisteddfod on Tuesday in the Speaker’s House and celebrated St David’s famous exhortation:

“Be joyful, keep the faith, and do the little things that you have heard and seen me do.”

I felt that those wise words had an extra resonance this week, as we are almost overwhelmed by the great events that are besetting our world. By focusing on activities that we can control—the little things to which St David referred—such as helping others, working hard, raising money to help people in Ukraine, looking after our family and friends, volunteering and taking an active interest in our community, we will find a way through the darkness and emerge on the other side, and, in the words of St David,

“be joyful and keep the faith.”

Strengthening the Union as it Relates to Wales (First sitting)

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Simon Baynes

Tuesday 18th January 2022 General Committees

[Simon Baynes]

I am pleased that I am the one of the trio who made it across the line in Clwyd South. I have every respect for the hon. Gentleman as a Member of Parliament and a vigorous representative of his constituents. With regard to his point about the programme put forward jointly by the two parties, it is important that there is clear accountability for Plaid Cymru in that arrangement. It strikes me that they are trying to have their cake and eat it by supporting the Government but not being quite part of them, and not being willing to be held to account for what they are doing. There needs to be clarity in how they operate and what they are trying to do.

To go back to my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire, the Labour party in Wales needs to be clear whether it is really supporting the Union, or whether political expediency is allowing it to blur the line. There are two particular quotations that its members have come up with recently: they have called the UK nothing more than “an insurance policy” and said that support for the existence of the UK “is not unconditional”. Welsh Labour needs to be clear about where it stands on the Union, to the benefit of everybody across Wales.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Would the hon. Gentleman not agree that saving lives is above everything? The Welsh Government have put saving lives above everything. If that runs contrary to what the UK Government are doing in England, they are doing more to cause the break-up of the Union than anyone else.

[Simon Baynes]

I thank the hon. Member for her contribution. I have listened to many of her contributions in the Chamber and I have a great deal of respect for the vigour and integrity of what she says, but in this case, actually, the death rate is higher in Wales than in England. This is not a statistic that I particularly wanted to dwell on, because we are all in this together, but to be specific, the death rate is 260 per 100,000 in England and 289.5 per 100,000 in Wales.

With reference to the intervention by the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, the Welsh Government cannot have it both ways. We have seen some of that already this morning: they try to blur the line on whether they are responsible for the death rate and the way the covid crisis has been dealt with, but on the other hand, day to day, they are always saying how good they have been in treating the pandemic. All I am saying is: let us have a bit of honesty and accountability on these matters. I think that would benefit everyone.

In conclusion, the last two years have shown the huge support that the Conservative Government are delivering for Clwyd South and the rest of Wales. Only the Welsh Conservatives can be trusted to defend Wales’s place in our strong United Kingdom.

COP26: Devolved Administrations

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Simon Baynes

Thursday 16th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anna McMorrin]

The hon. Member is making some excellent points about local community initiatives. Does he agree though that some things need the impetus and leadership of the UK Government, particularly on waste? At the moment, there are still 3 million items of non-recyclable packaging being produced every single day.

[Simon Baynes]

I agree that the UK Government do play a vital role in this, and I take on board the point that the hon. Lady is making about waste, but I will come on to other aspects of what the UK Government can do later in my speech.

The Prime Minister has said that there is a huge role for Wales and the Welsh Government, stating:

“It’s a huge undertaking by the whole of the UK…Every part of the UK is now working together…to lead the world to get everyone to commit to net-zero by 2050”.

I know that UK Government Ministers frequently speak with their Welsh Government counterparts at the COP26 devolved Administrations ministerial group and liaise with the Welsh Government’s new Minister for Climate Change. As a strong supporter of the Union, I am pleased that the Welsh Government have said that they plan to attend COP26 as part of the UK delegation, as well as to join events with key international networks such as the Under2 Coalition and Regions4. They have also said that they are working closely with event organisers. The future generations commissioner has said that COP26 represents “significant opportunities” for Wales to showcase its achievements in tackling climate change “on a global platform”, and that the Welsh Government have been in discussions with COP26, including on hosting fringe events.

Let me turn to one of the more contentious issues that we have heard about this afternoon. If I may, I will summarise it using the words of the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for whose work and commitment to the environment and climate change I have very high respect. She used the word “transitioning”, which is really important in this debate, because I honestly do not think that any of the devolved Administrations or the UK Government get everything right all the time.

I take on board the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire about having an inclusive debate, but I would constructively suggest that there are areas for improvement by the Welsh Government. For example, they have been slow to establish long-term arrangements for environmental governance. The Interim Office for Environmental Protection is now up and running in England, but the Welsh Government have ruled out joining the OEP and are instead looking to establish a commissioner for the environment. This brings delays—and that is my point about transitioning.

Another such example is that, despite committing to introducing a clean air Act, the Welsh Government have announced that it will not be introduced in the coming parliamentary year. Again, the delay is disappointing. I am sure that some Labour Members could provide constructive explanations as to why the delays are taking place, but delays there are. We should really respect the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) that transitioning to the great climate change revolution that we all want is not always the easiest thing to achieve.

I return to the point made by the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) about the UK Government’s involvement. I am pleased that the Government have committed £90 million to innovative Welsh net zero projects across the country. Wales has the opportunity to benefit from further UK funding, including the active £289 million industrial energy transformation fund, the £250 million clean steel fund, the £240 million net zero hydrogen fund, and the £1 billion carbon capture and storage infrastructure fund. I feel strongly that the UK Government, just like the devolved Administrations, are playing a constructive part in the process.

I join hon. Members from across the UK in my optimism and best wishes for the conference, which the eyes of the world will be following, and I look forward to continuing to champion the role of Wales and the UK in rising to the greatest challenge of our age.

Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies (Environmentally Sustainable Investment) Bill

Debate between Anna McMorrin and Simon Baynes

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 11th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

I, too, would like to acknowledge the hard work of the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) in securing this debate and bringing the Bill to the House. The excellent work of co-operatives and community benefit societies is felt very deeply in my constituency of Clwyd South and elsewhere in Wales and the UK. As the hon. Member mentioned, many people are very grateful for the help and support they have provided, particularly during the covid-19 pandemic. Often, they have been in a position to fill in the gaps in provision, which has been so important over the past few months.

I, too, pay tribute to Wales as the birthplace of the co-operative movement. I grew up just south of my constituency in Montgomeryshire, and Newtown, the centre of that county, is where Robert Owen was born in 1771. He is a much admired figure, although

in my opinion he should be better known to the outside world, as I am sure the hon. Member would agree. His progression through life was very interesting, in the sense that it was on a truly United Kingdom basis. He grew up in Newtown; then he went to work in England, where he ran a mill in Manchester; and then went to help his father-in-law run his mills at New Lanark, which became probably the most famous aspect of his work. He was therefore represented in three of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom. I also agree with the hon. Member, however, that there is something in the culture and society of Wales that has a great affinity with the co-operative movement.

I welcome the intention of the Bill to introduce another mechanism by which to promote environmentally sustainable investment. I, too, agree that the bottom-up approach is extremely important in such environmental investment. I have seen that very much in my constituency—for instance, in Corwen, which has an interesting hydroelectric scheme that was developed by the community. That was one of the reasons why earlier this year I supported the Local Electricity Bill, a private Member’s Bill that would make it easier for such projects to feed their electricity into the national grid.

I strongly support such a localised projects, and the Dee valley in my constituency is full of innovative environmental schemes. Heat pumps are an important part of that, and diversification through environmental projects is extremely important for the farming community, which often finds itself struggling in current circumstances. The co-operative movement is an important part of how the farming community operates, so building environmental projects from the ground up through the co-operative movement makes good sense.

I welcome the UK Government’s record in this area and the progress that they continue to make in improving the environment for everyone’s benefit. We have heard various statistics quoted this morning from both sides of the House, but we should be in no doubt that this Government and, to be fair, previous Governments have made considerable progress. For instance, carbon emissions fell by 42% between 1990 and 2017. There is plenty more to do, but we are on the right trajectory. I am pleased that the Government have renewed their commitment to environmental projects—for instance, by committing to plant 40 million more trees, restore peatland to capture carbon and create the community-led nature recovery network to create and enhance local habitats and by tripling the funding that helps to preserve the globally significant biodiversity in the UK overseas territories and their waters. These are just a few of the many examples of this Government’s commitment to the environment.

As was touched on earlier, the Government have also sought to find the right conduits to promote the environment through the financial world. In July 2019, the Government published their “Green Finance Strategy”, which details action in three areas: greening financial services, accelerating investment into the UK’s clean growth and working to position the UK at the vanguard of the global green finance market. Progress has been made in environmentally sustainable investment, and it continues to be made. Like others, I pay tribute to the enormous contribution made by mutuals and co-operatives to our diverse UK economy, including in Clwyd South and across Wales and the UK. The importance of the sector is shown by the fact that the all-party group for mutuals found that mutuals generate more than £130 billion of income each year.

It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves of the precise wording of the Bill:

“A Bill to enable co-operative and community benefit societies to raise external share capital for the purpose of making environmentally sustainable investment; to make associated provisions about restricting conversion to company status and the distribution of capital on winding-up; and for connected purposes.”

It is entirely admirable to consider ways to increase our ability to invest in co-operatives. Those are admirable aims, and I am pleased to hear about the close co-operation and consultation that has taken place between the hon. Member for Cardiff North and the Government, as that is crucial.

All Government Members greatly respect the Bill’s aims and intentions. However, my professional background has given me experience of factors that might militate against the Bill’s good intentions. For 25 years, I worked in the financial and business world and on solutions to help companies raise funds for a wide ranges of purposes, including environmental improvements. For the past 15 years, I have been on the other side of the fence, having set up two charities and served as a trustee in non-profit making enterprises, during which time I worked with co-operatives and community benefit societies.

From that experience, I learned—I accept that the Bill does not state that this should always be the case—that one size does not fit all with community investment. I have spent many hours, particularly in the past 15 years, working with community groups and considering ways to create a structure for them to gain membership and financial support. Co-operatives are an important part of that, but other structures also suit the circumstances, and we must bear that in mind.

That practical hands-on experience makes me concerned that the Bill may undermine the integrity of co-operatives and expose them to exploitation as investment vehicles, rather than socially beneficial institutions. I fully accept that the hon. Lady seeks to place safeguards in the Bill, but if external finance is brought in, there is a fundamental question of what the consequences will be on the co-operative. Like previous speakers, I have concerns that the green shares proposed in the Bill might unintentionally create a capital instrument with similar characteristics to a mini-bond.

I am pleased that the Treasury has conducted a review of the currently regulatory arrangements for the issuance and marketing of non-transferable debt securities such as these mini-bonds, and I am pleased that process is ongoing. It is important to consider the outcome of that review before consideration is given to the creation of any capital instrument similar to a mini-bond.

A further consideration—again, this has been touched on previously—is that investors may underestimate the risks that green shares expose them to, because of the ethical ambitions that are rightly attached to the instrument. Ethical investment ambitions are entirely laudable, but they have various aspects that can militate against them. The first is the long lead-in period for investment return, and the second is their sensitivity to changes in the regulatory environment, as we saw with the electricity feed-in tariffs a few years ago.

The hon. Lady may well be right that this is the right vehicle in which to place that ambition for green investments, but from my experience of working in the financial world, I know they are often quite difficult investments. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) mentioned how people who invested in the car industry in 1900 would have lost their money, and one of the key things in the investment world is the difficulty of being the pioneer. Often, not the pioneer but those who come later get the return. I am concerned that the vehicle created would be almost a hybrid co-operative, given the external investment, and whatever we say about the good intentions of a co-operative, at the end of the day investments made through it need to have a return of some description, otherwise it will be a loss-making enterprise.

[Anna McMorrin]

The hon. Member is making some excellent points that need to be examined as the Bill progresses, but this form of legislation is in place in other countries, so we can take the evidence of what has worked, for example, in Australia.

[Simon Baynes]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. I cannot claim to be an expert on the legislation in all the different countries around the world, but I would assume that it operates in different contexts. I am just trying to make a general point, from my own experience of investment options, that they can sometimes be a very complicated way of putting money into the green environment. That is the simple point I make.

The other point I would like to touch on is the exit from the co-operatives. To go back to the precise wording of the Bill, it is also

“to make associated provisions about restricting conversion to company status and the distribution of capital on winding-up”.

I totally understand where the hon. Member for Cardiff North is coming from on demutualisation, and we have all seen examples of demutualisation in the past that have perhaps not turned out as well as everybody expected, but one of the problems in the financial world—at the end of the day, if people are to invest in green shares, it is in a sense a financial investment—is that we have to leave an escape route for people. If something goes wrong—as we saw in the Co-op itself when it had huge financial problems in its lending arm which, I believe, has now been hived off—removing the ability to exit those problems is a very big ask. While the intentions are very admirable, that is not necessarily wise for the long-term health of the co-operative institution.

In the 2020 Budget, the Chancellor announced that the Government would bring forward legislation to allow credit unions—obviously, a form of financial mutual—to offer a wider range of products and services. That will support credit unions to continue to grow sustainably over the longer term and will allow them to continue to play a pivotal role in financial inclusion. This also needs to be taken into consideration in the preparation of this Bill.

I agree with the hon. Member for Cardiff North that locally based financial support is crucial. I became increasingly frustrated during the covid-19 crisis by the performance of the high street banks and the fact that they have vacated the local market for the provision of finance. I am sure that many Members on both sides of the House felt the same way. We have built up a series of contacts in those banks so that we can take our constituents’ concerns to them and say, “Please can you unblock this problem?” The fact that the big high street banks no longer know their customers on the ground in the regions is a major issue. The intention behind the Bill, and indeed behind the credit union proposals, is to fill the gap in the market for locally based co-operative vehicles—rather like those in Germany—that provide finance to local businesses.

I strongly commend the hon. Member for Cardiff North for her excellent speech and for introducing this Bill, but I hope that I have highlighted effectively some of the difficulties that it presents, despite the fact that it was created with the very best of intentions.