Social Mobility (Wales)

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my colleague and hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) for securing this debate. He spoke about the positive impact of Labour policies such as Sure Start and the national minimum wage on social mobility. My hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) spoke about the importance of early years education, and about the Government changing the definition of childhood poverty. My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), which borders north Wales, spoke about cross-border issues that pertain to social mobility, and I pay tribute to his work as chair of the all-party group on social mobility.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) spoke about infrastructure, railways, the digital divide and EU funding. I will touch on some of those issues in my short speech, although hopefully there will be no repetition. My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) spoke passionately about promoting ambition and enterprise across Wales, and my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) spoke about child poverty, and about how we have a more equal society in Wales. I congratulate all my colleagues on their contributions.

In its report into social mobility, the London School of Economics highlighted 1958 as the golden year. I was fortunate to be born in that year, and I was one of only 8% of children who, 18 years later, went on to university. Many of my close friends did not manage to go to university, although they were still successful. Some pursued careers as businessmen, some worked in construction and recruitment, and some moved away from the town, and indeed the country—one of them lives in New York, one in Sydney, and one in Amsterdam. One of my friends went on to become vice-president of 21st Century Fox in Europe, Africa and the middle east, and two of the lads from my council estate went on to become multi-millionaires. All came from humble backgrounds. Our parents were labourers, dinner ladies, waitresses, plumbers, and cleaners, but they had a burning desire that their children would do better than themselves, and most of us did.

Sadly, and increasingly, that is not the case today, and prospects do not look good for the future. The Social Mobility Commission’s latest report is a scathing indictment of the lack of social mobility in the UK, and it predicts an even bleaker future. The full report is too big to address today in the eight minutes that are left for me to speak, so I will confine my comments to issues such as transport, digital connection, leaving the EU, and regional policy, over which the Minister and his colleagues have greater influence.

First, I want to consider the question of whether work pays in the UK in the 21st century. The quantity of jobs is not the issue; it is the quality of those jobs, because they simply do not pay enough to allow workers to bring up a family. In 1997, 43% of children living in poverty were in working households, but today that figure has shot up to 67%. Overall, 57% of people living in poverty are in households with a working adult. Work should be a pathway out of poverty; it should not lead to a worker being imprisoned by poverty.

As many of my colleagues mentioned, gains were made under Labour. The national minimum wage was brought in, despite vitriolic opposition from the Conservatives. In 1996, I conducted a survey of low pay in my constituency, and found a taxi driver earning £1 per hour. Women were working 12-hour shifts through the night in care homes on just £2.50 an hour. The Social Mobility Commission points out that since 2008, young people’s wages have fallen by 16%—they are now paid less than they were 20 years ago—and a national living wage could help overcome many of the defects in our current system.

I mentioned the digital divide in a recent speech on rural Wales in Westminster Hall, because only 43% of the country is connected by 4G. Rural areas of Wales are losing out, and the majority of my constituency—indeed, the majority of Wales—is in a rural area. If we do not address the digital divide, our children and young people will not have access to a modern means of accessing information and will not be able to work remotely in our rural communities.

If we cannot take the work to the people, we should at least make efforts to take people to the work. That should be the case in Wales, but we need to update our rail system. I feel that we in Wales are being left behind—electrification proposals for the line from Cardiff to Swansea have been withdrawn, and the electrification of the north Wales line has still not been clarified. I hope that the Minister will provide some clarification when he sums up the debate. Last weekend, The Times stated that at 51p per track mile, the UK has the highest rates in the whole of Europe. That compares with 33p in Austria, 31p in France, and just 5p in Latvia.

In north Wales, the majority of unemployment blackspots are on the coast—Holyhead, Bangor, Colwyn Bay, Rhyl, Flint, Shotton. If rail prices were more affordable that would make accessing job opportunities along the entire north Wales coast, and indeed in north-west England, far easier. Enabling young people to gain access to those jobs would also lead to greater social mobility, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas), who has done so much to raise the issue of rail connectivity with the Mersey Dee Alliance across the Welsh-English border. London has already benefited from excellent infrastructure projects such as the Jubilee line and Crossrail. High Speed 2 will start from London. Will it suck in more jobs to London? Should it start from Manchester so that we can rebalance our national and regional economy? I call on the Minister to do his job and ensure that we in Wales secure parity with the rest of the UK on rail investment.

My next major concern is the impact of the loss of EU structural funds on social mobility in Wales. Wales has gained £9 billion in private and public sector funding over the past 17 years. It is the only area of the UK that is a net gainer from those structural funds, and we must ensure that an equivalent to those funds is kept in place in Wales. The Minister, and Conservative Members, gave reassurances that Wales would not lose out as a result of Brexit, but I think there is a real danger that we will, and those who will suffer the most are the poorest people and those who need that social mobility.

[Wayne David]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just important that the same level of funding continues, but that it is allocated on the basis of need and not redefined for other purposes by the Government?

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely. EU structural funds were allocated around Europe on the basis of need, and four of the six counties in north Wales—including the Minister’s own area of Conwy—are some of the poorest areas in Europe. As a north Walian and a Welsh MP, the Minister should be campaigning with us to ensure that Wales does not lose out.

[Guto Bebb]

rose—

[Chris Ruane]

I am afraid I have almost taken my 10 minutes, but I thank the Minister for the work that he has done on the growth deal.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (in the Chair)]

Order. I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Gentleman’s excellent speech, but he does in fact have 15 minutes, should he require them.

[Chris Ruane]

Then I will give way to the Minister.

[Guto Bebb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because on this occasion I was going to make a constructive point. He makes the case for EU structural funds, which I will discuss in due course. However, a strategic approach for the whole of north Wales was precluded under European structural funding, because it was confined to the four counties in the west, rather than a strategic approach across the whole of north Wales. There will be some advantages to being able to hone our own response when putting funding into north Wales.

[Chris Ruane]

Those funds were allocated on the basis of need for the whole of Wales. I was very fortunate in managing to persuade the then junior Minister at the Wales Office, Peter Hain, to accept European structural funds for the Minister’s county of Conwy and the county of Denbighshire. Thirteen counties had been chosen, and those two had been left out, but as a result of representations made by myself, Elfyn Llwyd, Gareth Thomas and Betty Williams, along with council leaders, we were able to ensure that those counties were included.

As a result, there are many projects in the Minister’s own constituency and county—I think Venue Cymru is one of them—that have benefited massively from that investment. The Minister quite often intervenes on other Members and pooh-poohs that £9 billion, saying we do not need it. Maybe he wants to send it back. Perhaps he should go to Venue Cymru and say, “All of this is a waste of time; we don’t really need this.” Perhaps he should consult those workers and ask them if the jobs created in his own community are a waste of time. Perhaps he would like to put them back on the dole.

My wider point is that we have benefited from the structural funds. In my constituency, we have the OpTIC research and incubation project—a £40 million strategic project that looks at the opto-electronics industry in the whole of north Wales, which comprises about 35 companies and 2,000 workers. The projects builds on that strength, hothouses new companies on the back of that and creates excellent opportunities for local people to progress without leaving north Wales. Some will want to leave, and some will want to leave the country, but we should give those young people the opportunity to be socially mobile without being geographically mobile, so they can stay in their communities.

The OpTIC project in my constituency would not have taken place if it had not been for the additional money sent into the county from Brussels. The point that many of us have made today is that we want that additional money to carry on coming to our areas of Wales, not out of favouritism but because of need—need that was recognised and rewarded by Brussels. A big dollop of jam came to us, and we do not want it to be taken away and spread thinly over the UK. We want that money where it is needed, which is in west Wales and the valleys.

On the growth fund, which I mentioned before, I am grateful to the Minister for inviting us, on a cross-party basis, to meet him, his civil servants and north Wales council leaders in the Wales Office the other week. I hope that that additional funding, which we desperately need, will be allocated or reallocated through that north Wales growth fund. I also welcome the announcement of the mid-Wales growth fund, but I do not want to see the funds that were to be allocated to north Wales halved, with the other half being sent to mid-Wales. [Interruption.] The Minister laughs, but will he give us a categorical assurance that the funding that we get for those funds will be comparable to the best England has had? Areas such as Manchester received £238 per head. I tabled a parliamentary question on the amount of growth deal funding for each of the city deals in England, which was answered yesterday. That information was not given to me, but I want to make sure that the money that we get in Wales matches the best they have had in England.

The growth deal is a perfect vehicle to make sure that that additional investment that we had from Europe is maintained, and that we are able to improve the social mobility of our young people. On the growth deal funding, what percentage will be new money? What is the balance of funding between central Government, the Welsh Government, local government and other funders? What will the likely level of funding be?

Some progress has been made on social mobility over the past 20 years, and many of those gains were made as a result of the actions taken by the previous Labour Government. The Social Mobility Commission commends the centrality of early years services, which have been embedded in the UK. It was not there in 1996; it is there now because of Sure Start and other early years programmes across the whole of the United Kingdom. The commission calls early years services

“a new arm of the welfare state”,

so that has survived. However, it mentions a lack of progress on many other fronts; indeed, there has been a retrenchment in areas such as young people’s services, work and divisions in society.

The Minister is here, and he has heard representation from Members from across Wales, and even from across the border in England. I ask him to listen carefully to what has been said, to do his job and take that back to his Government, and to make sure that Wales gets the fair deal it deserves, to make sure that we have social mobility in future.