Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Gentleman is a key supporter of better transport links in north Wales, and his work on Growth Track 360 is appreciated by the Department. The north Wales growth deal is a key priority for the Wales Office. Cross-border connectivity is crucial to that growth deal, and I agree that we need to improve transport links, whether road or rail, as part of the development of the north Wales growth deal.

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

I would like to add my condolences, and those of Labour Members, to all those affected by the heartbreaking tragedy at Llangammarch.

Wales is one of many areas in Europe that have received EU structural funds to help to improve their infrastructure. After 2020, will Wales receive the same funding as those comparator regions of Europe or will there be a reduction in funding to Wales by this Conservative Government?

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Gentleman raises the question of EU structural funds as if they were a success story in the Welsh context. They were actually a failure: £4 billion of investment, yet our comparative economic performance fell. This Government are committed to the UK shared prosperity fund, which will work for the benefit of the Welsh economy, rather than being wasted in the way in which the Welsh Government wasted our structural funds over the past 18 years.

[Chris Ruane]

I am afraid that the Minister did not answer my question, so I will come back to it. There is a lack of clarity about what will happen in Wales after 2020. I thank the Secretary of State for meeting me to discuss these issues, but will he and the Minister convene a meeting of the Wales team, the shadow Wales team and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to sort these issues out so that there is absolute clarity for the people of Wales?

[Guto Bebb]

The offer of a meeting is something I would always be happy to accept, but it has to be at the right time. In the context of structural funding, the key thing is that, for example, a strategic approach across north Wales was not possible because four counties were receiving European structural funds and two were not. We now have an opportunity for a strategic approach across north Wales, which will be supported by a UK shared prosperity fund in due course.

Energy in Wales

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2017 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your esteemed chairmanship, Mr Paisley. May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on securing this important debate? He coined the phrase “energy island” to describe his constituency. His dynamism and personal energy are recognised far and wide, in the Chamber and across Wales. In fact, I think if National Grid were to plug a couple of power cables into him, it could probably power the whole of north Wales—that might be painful, though.

My hon. Friend made a comprehensive speech, lasting half an hour—and thank God he did, because I think the debate will run short. He touched on many big projects, such as Wylfa Newydd and the tidal lagoon project for Wales, but also smaller projects, including small solar projects, Dinorwig pumping station and clean coal as a transition. It was a wide and comprehensive speech, and once again I congratulate him.

Wales as a nation is blessed with natural geographical and geological assets, which have contributed to the energy of these islands for centuries. Our coalmines supplied the energy for the industrial revolution; as we all know, the first industrial revolution in the world was in the United Kingdom. That energy was supplied from south Wales coalmines. They supplied the steel mills, the factories and the steamers that traded around the world. I pay tribute to the brave miners who dug black diamonds from the earth. As the saying goes, the earth does not give up its treasures lightly. Many miners lost their lives. In fact, there were 200 mining disasters and 6,000 men died. The first disaster was in 1766 and the last in 2011.

I pay tribute to the miners. The loyalty of and sacrifice by those brave men was rewarded by the previous Conservative Governments’ pit closure programmes in the 1980s and 1990s. The Minister may laugh, but the constituencies and communities affected are still suffering to this day.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Guto Bebb)]

There is this myth about the closure of mines by Conservative Governments. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that more pits closed in Wales under the leadership of the Labour party, under Labour Governments, than under any Conservative Government?

[Chris Ruane]

The big difference between what occurred under Labour and under the Conservatives is that the communities were left high and dry under the Conservatives. It was a political decision to close those mines. It was spite because of the industrial action by the miners. That was the big difference, and those communities are still suffering today. I want to move on to more modern times, but I thought I would just give the historical perspective.

[Albert Owen]

I hear this argument from the Conservatives about closures under the Wilson and Callaghan Governments. Those mines were exhausted; there was no coal left—that was one reason why they closed them —or they were dangerous and flooding. That was why they closed them down; it was not for political reasons, but for economic reasons.

[Chris Ruane]

I will move on now, Mr Paisley.

We now live in greener, cleaner times, but the Conservative Government’s attitude to energy, and especially renewable energy, in Wales has not changed. I was privileged to open Wales’s first offshore wind farm—in fact, according to Wikipedia, it was the UK’s first major renewable power project—which was located off the coast of my constituency, off Rhyl and Prestatyn. North Hoyle was a pilot, test-bed project for this new industry in the UK. It had the full support of the Welsh Government, the UK Labour Government, the local MP—me—and Ann Jones, the Assembly Member. Can I ask the Minister whether he supported that project—the wind farms off north Wales—when it was proposed?

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Gentleman asks whether I supported the project. The project in question was completed well before I was elected to this place.

[Chris Ruane]

Gwynt y Môr?

[Guto Bebb]

In relation to Gwynt y Môr, I was on the beach in Llandudno, insisting that the Gwynt y Môr project should ensure that there would be a local supply chain, and I am very proud of the fact that the further education college, Coleg Llandrillo Menai, is supporting the training of people to work on that site. The hon. Gentleman tries to score a cheap point, but fails again.

[Chris Ruane]

I am pleased that the Minister is able to say that, but as has been said, there were Conservative Members in County Conwy who did not support the project.

[Guto Bebb]

Is it not the case that the diktat for some of the wind farms was opposed by every single councillor in Conwy, including the Labour leader of Conwy Council at that time?

[Chris Ruane]

The leadership in Denbighshire was totally different, but again, we move on.

The North Hoyle project was an outstanding success, and I pay tribute to npower renewables, which has donated £80,000 a year since 2003 to local charities in the communities of Rhyl and Prestatyn. It was a blueprint for other renewable companies to embed themselves in those communities. Again, the support for these projects came from Labour politicians.

[Guto Bebb]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

No. The Minister has had two bites of the cherry. He will have bags of time at the end as well; he can expand as he sees fit.

When the previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, was a candidate for leader of his party, he tried to curry favour in Wales. He visited the Tory party conference in Llandudno, pointed to the turbines outside in the sea and described them as giant bird blenders.

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Gentleman must give way.

[Chris Ruane]

The Minister will have a chance to respond. David Cameron then went down to Notting Hill and put a giant bird blender on top of his chimney. [Interruption.]

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Chris Ruane]

It was an example of the way the Conservative party has crudely used renewable energies to change its image. As well as the wind turbine on the Prime Minister’s house, there was “Hug a Husky”, but we all know that it was superficial. As soon as the Conservatives got into power, the worm turned—the winds of change turned. The Minister will know that many in his party were climate change deniers. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn pointed out that some of them have come around, but there is still a deep, ingrained resistance to green, renewable energies in his party.

I would like to compare and contrast the position of the Conservatives with the support that Labour gave, both in the Welsh Assembly and in Westminster. Labour supported this nascent renewable energy, wind energy, and it was a great success. We are seeing the benefits of that support today—last week, in fact—with prices per kilowatt-hour tumbling as the economies of scale take hold, research improves and manufacturing costs are reduced. It was a sound investment then, and we are looking for sound investments now and in the future in renewable energies.

Labour attempted the same level of support for the solar industry in the UK. In 2009-10, we set feed-in tariffs, in conjunction with listening to Japanese and British manufacturers, at a level that would result in investment in and actual manufacture of solar panels in the UK—not in China, but in the UK, and specifically in Wrexham in north Wales. There was a plan by the Japanese manufacturer to build the biggest solar panel factory in the whole of western Europe, but when the Conservative-coalition Government got in, they reduced the feed-in tariff rates and the Japanese factory pulled out.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn said several times that what these new industries, and established industries, need is continuity—certainty for the future. Industries that will require billions of pounds of investment need consensus and continuity, to ensure that their investments will be sound and solid and the plug will not be pulled on them with a change of Government or on a whim.

We see the same measures being employed right up to today with tidal lagoons. The Labour politicians in south Wales, the Labour Welsh Assembly Government, are engaging with those companies because they realise that of the six tidal lagoons proposed for the UK, four will be in Wales. One is proposed off the coast of my own constituency, off Rhyl and Prestatyn, and one is proposed off Conwy as well. I have had a briefing from the two companies that want to take the project forward. It will be fantastic: it will create jobs and tourism; it is futuristic; and it will have a road all the way round it. That is the type of project that needs to be supported by the Government.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) and, even though he is from 200 miles away, my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn, who talked about tidal lagoons in his speech because he recognises their importance.

There is the tidal pilot project planned for Swansea bay. That will be the first purpose-built tidal lagoon in the world and it needs extra care, nurturing and attention, because it could change the way energy is delivered or harnessed on the whole of the planet. That is worth investing in. The investment that we put into wind in 2003-04 looked as though it was a bad investment at the time, because it was at a high rate, but we are reaping the benefits now, 13 or 14 years later. That is the kind of long view that we are looking for from the Government for lagoon energy in the UK, because good things will flow from it.

I am talking about research, building skills and manufacturing expertise, and all those could be exported around the world. The Government have shown little enthusiasm for this sector, and it is beginning to dry up. There is lots of enthusiasm all over Wales and especially around the Swansea area. Can I ask the Minister a question?

[Guto Bebb]

indicated dissent.

[Chris Ruane]

He says I cannot, but I am going to ask it anyway. Will he declare his love for the lagoon? There is a local campaign called “Love the Lagoon”—it involves Conservative councillors, Conservative politicians and Conservative Members who are keen to expand that because they can see the benefit for their community. Does he love the lagoon—if that is not a personal question?

Let us look at some of the arguments that the Government have put or may put forward for weakening their support for tidal lagoons. Will they be saying that prices for wind power have dropped so much that it will make lagoons unviable? The success of wind energy is down to early political and financial support, and we want the financial support that we offered then to be replicated now by the Conservative Government to make sure that these proposals go ahead.

The Swansea lagoon, like North Hoyle, was a test bed—a pilot project to test the effectiveness of lagoons and to learn from that experience. The cost of funding the Swansea lagoon—the pathfinder—is equivalent to the cost of a pint of milk a day for every household in the UK. That is a sound investment, as far as I am concerned. If it works, we can expand it to Cardiff bay, Liverpool bay, Colwyn Bay and England, to make sure that we stay at the forefront of this great, new, green technology.

The Welsh Government have given their full support to tidal lagoons. Senior Cabinet Ministers from many Departments have met Charles Hendry and fully engaged with him. The Welsh Government have invested in the skills demand and supply report for the proposed Swansea bay lagoon development, and have provided a £1.25 million commercial loan to the tidal lagoon company.

[Ben Lake]

I acknowledge the support that the Welsh Government have provided for the tidal lagoon. The National Assembly also declared by resolution its support for it, cross-party.

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely, there was cross-party support. I think that there are even Conservatives who support it down there. In the meantime, we have prevarication and procrastination by the UK Government on the matter of lagoons. Welsh Government Ministers wrote to their UK counterparts in April and June of this year, and I believe that the June letters have still not been responded to. Will the Minister look into that?

Tidal lagoons also have an added benefit in that they will protect the coastlines where they are located from flooding. Both Denbighshire and Conwy have suffered terrible floods. The Minister will remember the floods in the early ’90s in Sir Anthony Meyer’s old seat, Clwyd North West, in Conwy county. Five thousand homes flooded. We had floods as recently as two years ago in my constituency. There has been coastal flooding from waves and the sea. That would be prevented if we were able to establish these tidal lagoons off the coast of Wales.

[Guto Bebb]

Will the hon. Gentleman quickly give way?

[Chris Ruane]

This is the last time.

[Guto Bebb]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for quickly giving way. His point on the flood defences is really important, but does it not highlight the fact that tidal lagoons are often about more than just energy generation?

[Chris Ruane]

That is the point that I am trying to make. They are about tourism, flood defence, manufacturing, skills and research. That is why Welsh Ministers from different Departments have engaged on the issue, and that is what we want to see from the UK Government. We want to see Ministers from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and other UK Departments engaging positively with Charles Hendry, the Welsh Government and the Welsh Assembly to make sure that these projects go ahead.

One of the arguments made—perhaps not by the Minister, but by others—is that with wind power and solar power, the wind is not always blowing and the sun is not always shining. With tidal lagoons we can predict down to the minute when the energy will be created over the next 125 years. It is all down to the moon and the movement of tides. That could create a predictable baseline of support for our national energy mix, on top of solar, wind power and nuclear, so that we have a good baseload of support.

All these renewable energy sources also become more viable with the advent of batteries. The lagoon will produce energy throughout the night, and if that can be stored in batteries it can benefit the rise of the battery-powered car industry in the UK. I ask the Minister to take these issues way and to consider them carefully. Hopefully, cost will not be an issue. I believe that £700 million will be saved by the cancellation of the electrification of the Cardiff to Swansea route. Can some of that money—just a fraction of it—be used to prime the Swansea economy and to support it?

I move on now to Wylfa Newydd. At £12 billion, it will be single largest investment project in Wales over the next 10 years. It has the potential to transform the economy of not only Ynys Môn and Gwynedd, but the whole of north Wales. Again, the Welsh Government have been working flat out to secure this development. It is their No. 1 priority as far as the economy is concerned. Successful delivery will involve many Welsh Government Departments if we are to maximise the economic benefit and reduce any negative effects on the environment and culture in Wales, so there is total engagement.

Big issues need to be addressed, such as the new power station’s access to the national grid and the building of a third crossing over the Menai strait. All those ducks need to be put in a row before this project starts. Again, we are looking for engagement and consensus between the Minister, MPs and Departments in Whitehall and the Welsh Government. There are many stakeholders, including local authorities; the company itself, Horizon Nuclear Power; the North Wales Economic Ambition Board; and the national Government. There is a good mix of groups and organisations, and we need to gel them together to get this renewable energy up and running in Wales.

[Geraint Davies]

I do not mean to take my hon. Friend off track, but I will just take him back to what he mentioned a moment ago about the cost of rail electrification to Swansea being put somewhere else. I just make the point that there are many of us across Swansea who want to hold the Conservatives to David Cameron’s promise to bring about electrification, and to keep that money in that project and deliver electrification for Swansea bay.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Order. I call Chris Ruane. I encourage you to bring your remarks to an end and to start to wind up. I want to give the Minister time to respond.

[Chris Ruane]

I will do that, Mr Paisley—absolutely. Our No. 1 fight in Wales at the moment is to ensure that electrification from Cardiff to Swansea takes place. We have not given up. We will still be pestering. We tabled questions last week and this week, and are organising meetings. We have not given up on that.

In conclusion, we have two great opportunities to return Wales to her former glory as a provider of the nation’s energy, this time with cleaner, greener technologies that will last hundreds of years, create tens of thousands of jobs and, most importantly, save the planet. I urge the Minister and his Government to rise up to the challenge, do their bit for Wales, the UK and the planet, and get these projects moving.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Guto Bebb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Paisley.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on a wide-ranging, detailed speech, which is nothing less than I would expect from him. He has always shown a great interest in the energy sector in Ynys Môn, and his enthusiasm and hard work in Anglesey is well understood by myself, from both before I was elected to this place and since. I suspect that he was very pleased that in June the people of Ynys Môn acknowledged that hard work when they provided him with the largest majority that he has enjoyed since he was first elected to this place in 2001. I congratulate him on that comprehensive success.

I considered the hon. Gentleman’s speech to be very wide-ranging and thoughtful. It was made in his typical manner—he always tries to be consensual and cross-party in his approach. I believe that is one reason for his recent success. It is fair to say that some of the speeches then fell into party political point scoring. That is a great shame because, as many Members have said, there is cross-party support for energy developments and opportunities in Wales. There is cross-party support for the nuclear sector in Anglesey—perhaps not from all parties in all parts of Wales, but certainly from all parties in Anglesey. There is cross-party support for the concept of a small modular reactor in Trawsfynydd, and for the concept of a tidal lagoon.

It is important to deal with the issue of the tidal lagoon at the outset. People want a tidal lagoon to be developed at Swansea. They can see the potential of the technology, and that the lagoon offers an opportunity for economic regeneration in Swansea and other parts of Wales. All Members in this place should support that. As the hon. Gentleman and other Members have mentioned, it is important to ensure that we have a cost-effective energy supply, prevent fuel poverty and avoid a situation in which businesses struggle to compete internationally due to energy prices. I therefore make no apology that this Government have commissioned the Hendry review and are taking it seriously.

My point, as the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) conceded in his speech, is that the funding of a tidal lagoon is a complex calculation that must be done by Government. He is absolutely right that we do not have to go back to the floods that struck Towyn in my constituency, for example, to understand the importance of flood defences in north Wales; there was flooding in Deganwy fairly recently. The construction of a tidal lagoon has the potential to deal with those issues, but I argue that flood defences are a devolved issue, not an energy generation issue.

A complex set of calculations need to be undertaken. The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd also said that the cost, equal to a pint of milk a day, was eminently affordable. A pint of milk a day is £3.50 a week, or £14 a month. Before being flippant about £14 a month, he should remember that not all pensioners in Wales enjoy the salary of an MP. I would expect a Labour Member, of all Members of this House, to understand that £14 is a significant sum on a pensioner’s bill.

[Chris Ruane]

If I did say £14 a month, I apologise. The figure should have been £14 a year; I hope that the Minister will take that in the spirit in which it was meant. Also, can he give us a date when the Government will respond to the Hendry report?

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Guto Bebb]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question and I welcome him to his place. The situation is very clear: constituencies such as Ceredigion and my own of Aberconwy have lagged behind in broadband connectivity in a Welsh context. He will be aware that broadband roll-out in Wales is the responsibility of the Welsh Government. It is interesting to note that Labour constituencies in Wales were prioritised over constituencies such as Ceredigion and my own of Aberconwy.

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

The May magic money tree, celebrated by the Tories during the general election, has been found planted and flourishing in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, Wales withers under Tory austerity. Some Tories have taken a principled stand on the use of pork-barrel bungs to Northern Ireland. The Tory Secretary of State for Scotland said that there should be no “back-door funding”, and the Tory leader in Wales, Andrew R. T. Davies, said:

“Any potential incentives considered for one nation…must also be considered for Wales.”

When is the Secretary of State for Wales going to do his job and stand up for Wales?

[Guto Bebb]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new position on the Front Bench, and I welcome him back to the House. I will repeat the comments that I have already made. For 13 years between 1997 and 2010, he was a Back Bencher when there was a Labour Government in this place. That Labour Government did not deliver any change to the Barnett formula, and they did not deliver a fiscal framework for Wales. This Government are delivering for Wales, and we will deliver a north Wales growth deal, which will be beneficial to his constituents.

Queen’s Speech: Implications for Wales

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. You are known throughout Parliament as a just and fair man and an excellent Chair.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. May I suggest that the hon. Gentleman does not put it to the test?

[Chris Ruane]

I withdraw. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) on securing this important debate and so eloquently illustrating her points about Brexit by way of graphic examples from her constituency. I pay tribute to her for highlighting a refreshing and original analysis of the gender imbalance in the whole Brexit debate. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), who spoke about Brexit issues and the impact on the car industry in her constituency.

This debate should have been about the Government’s vision for Wales and the rest of the UK. It debate should have offered the Government an opportunity to show their deep understanding of the needs, wants and aspirations of the people of Wales. It should have provided us all with an opportunity to discuss and improve the Government’s Wales-specific proposals. Regrettably, as contribution after contribution has highlighted, there is no such opportunity, because the Tories have no vision for Wales. The Tories have no programme for Wales. The Tories have no understanding of Wales. We are an afterthought.

The people of Wales saw through the Tory manifesto in the general election. They realised they were being sold a pup—a pig in a poke—and rejected the offer, instead choosing Labour’s visionary manifesto. That risible Tory offer stands in stark contrast to Welsh Labour’s general election manifesto. From a position of weakness, the Tory Government are now asking for consensus and agreement to get their emasculated manifesto into statute. In the spirit of co-operation, I wish to highlight some of Labour’s positive popular policies, which they are welcome to introduce. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and the Government have already flattered Labour by stealing our ideas for an energy price freeze and ending austerity, which is being discussed in the higher echelons of the Tory party. The more they steal Labour’s policies, the more they show themselves to be a party bankrupt of ideas, out of touch with ordinary people and lacking in leadership.

However, there are other policy areas where the Government could learn from Labour to create a more prosperous, healthier, fairer country in Wales. Our manifesto had Wales-specific policies. It had a proudly Welsh agenda, with Welsh values of community, equality, efficiency and hope. It shows that a UK Labour Government working with a Welsh Labour Government would not launch a power grab. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) for highlighting that aspect of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. It is a naked power grab to take powers back to Westminster. The manifesto shows that a UK Labour Government would be committed to investing in Wales, not another five years of austerity, cuts and indifference.

Many families in Wales, and indeed the UK, are financially worse off than they were 10 years ago. On average, a family is £1,400 worse off. Voters are sick to their hind teeth with austerity, which does not work. Low and middle-income earners are taking all the pain, and the high-income earners are making all the gain. Even Tory Ministers now accept Labour’s analysis of austerity. Our manifesto promised investment, reward for hard work and, most of all, hope. It made a commitment to work with the Welsh Government to tolls on the Severn bridge—I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), who highlighted that—and pledged to end years of Tory under-investment in national rail infrastructure. We promised to commit more than £700 million from a national transformation fund to fund electrification of the Great Western main line to Swansea. That was highlighted by my hon. Friends the Members for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock).

The manifesto contained a commitment to transform transport networks in north Wales, with electrification from north Wales to Crewe, which would link the region with HS2 and create capacity for new, more frequent services into Liverpool, and beyond to the north of England. The manifesto had clear support for the Wylfa Newydd project to ensure a sustainable economic legacy for Anglesey and the wider north Wales community. Those issues have been thoroughly explored by many Members today, especially on the Labour Benches. Also mentioned many times was the impact on our proposals for the tidal lagoon. I commend and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) on raising that issue.

I have outlined numerous Labour policies, but which of those bold, much needed commitments have the Government committed to fully fund in their Queen’s Speech? The answer is none—not a single one. Perhaps we should not be surprised, because not only do the Government have no vision for Wales; they have no overall mandate for Wales. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson) mentioned the Conservatives’ target seats and my success and that of other hon. Members in the Chamber today. The Tories proposed a Labour wipeout across Wales. They tried to plant their Tory tanks on Labour lawns in Bridgend, Wrexham, and Newport East. The ConservativeHome website listed the seats they were going to win from Labour Alyn and Deeside, Bridgend, Cardiff South and Penarth, Cardiff West, Clwyd South, Delyn, Newport East, Newport West, Wrexham, Ynys Môn and Torfaen.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

Order. I am following the hon. Gentleman closely. I do not remember any of that being in the Queen’s Speech in relation to Wales. Perhaps he will return to the matter of the Queen’s Speech and Wales.

[Chris Ruane]

I will return to the Queen’s Speech and Wales and probably the grubbiest element, Mr Howarth: the alliance of the Conservative party with the DUP. The Prime Minister was reduced to securing her own position by throwing money from the magic money tree, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn—the magic money tree that Conservatives alleged Labour had. Well, I want a branch of that magic money tree in Wales. Does the Minister want a branch of that tree in Wales? [Interruption.] He says he will respond in due course. I hope that will be in the positive and the affirmative.

So there is a magic money tree in Northern Ireland that is worth £1 billion. As has been mentioned before, if it was transferred to Wales, that would mean £1.6 billion that we could invest in the infrastructure of Wales. After years of cuts from central Government, amounting to £1.2 billion a year from the Welsh block grant, our constituencies are suffering because of the lack of infrastructure and investment.

I hope the Minister will address the issue of the magic money tree for Wales when he winds up. We are in the mother of Parliaments. We are one of the best democracies in the world, yet we are reduced to pork-barrel politics for Northern Ireland, which is not a way to run a democracy. We need fair, open and transparent funding across the UK. Our people are crying out for it. The Minister knows his people are crying out for it. That is why his majority was reduced by such a massive amount and why I am here today. I will not have a word said against my benefactor and patron, the Prime Minister, who has allowed me to return to this place.

[Chris Elmore]

Hear, hear.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank my hon. Friend for his “Hear, hear.”

The debate has been very good. There was not much to debate because there was not much in the Queen’s Speech to benefit Wales, but we have picked over what little scraps there were. We have done justice to the people of Wales by analysing the Conservative programmes, or lack of them, proposed in the Queen’s Speech.

North Wales Economic Infrastructure

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mark Tami]

All right, then; I will make that point. That example illustrates the fact that no matter how big a company is or how long it has been there, if events turn against it, the impact can be devastating. More recently, UPM paper mill, which I consider to be a benchmark employer—I certainly would not have put it on a list of companies in difficulty—announced that it would be cutting 120 jobs from its 370-strong work force. Why? Because the demand for newsprint worldwide has declined. When the recession hit, people stopped buying newspapers and magazines. Even as we slowly come out of recession, people’s habits have changed and they use the internet more, so demand has not picked up again.

In 2001, Corning Optical Fibre, a high-tech firm on Deeside industrial park with more than 400 employees, closed virtually overnight when world demand for optical fibre suddenly collapsed. So sudden was the collapse that I remember seeing at the factory millions of pounds-worth of equipment that was still in its wrapping and was never fitted. The lesson is that we cannot rest on our laurels.

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

My hon. Friend speaks of the collapse of investment at Corning. What assessment has he made of the changes that the Conservatives made to the feed-in tariff when they came back into power in 2010? What impact did that have on Europe’s biggest solar panel factory in Wrexham?

[Mark Tami]

Wrexham is not in my constituency, but people who lived in my area worked at that plant, and I saw that it had a devastating impact. One of the worst aspects of the situation was that the company was, I believe, encouraged to take on a lot of employees because it saw growth, but that was cut from under it by the changes that the Government introduced. We cannot simply assume that everything will be good, and we must make sure that we give existing employers the support and encouragement that they need to invest and grow.

We must also look at what we can do to encourage new employers and companies to come to the area. I am not talking so much about financial assistance, but we can offer a high-quality, highly skilled work force and employers can look to grow their businesses. Large employers such as Airbus—with more than 6,500 employers on site, it is one of the largest manufacturing plants in western Europe—have a role in encouraging their suppliers to site themselves nearby. Airbus has been successful in doing so, and we now have about 2,000 employees who work for Airbus’s supply companies. That makes sense for the supplier and the prime, because it is much easier to sort out problems if people can walk or drive across from one company to another than it is if goods are brought in from a long way away or even from a different country.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way yet again. He mentioned the fact that some 7,000 people work in the Airbus factory in his constituency. There is another factory in Filton, near Bristol, and 70,000 people are involved in the supply chain. What impact would withdrawal from the EU have on the 70,000 who work in the supply chain of the joint European Airbus?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)]

It is a huge pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) on securing the debate. At the start of his remarks he made an important point when he identified north Wales as not so much a discrete region, as part of the much larger and important north-western economic region. That is extremely important, because I frequently feel that people in Whitehall and—dare I say it?—Cardiff do not understand north Wales’s relationship with the large cities of north-west England such as Liverpool and Manchester.

That is why I echo what the hon. Gentleman said in applauding the work of the Mersey Dee Alliance, an extremely important vehicle for cross-border co-operation. It should be given even more recognition and regarded as a statutory consultee by not only the Westminster Government but the Government in Cardiff on all aspects of economic development in north Wales.

I want to focus my brief remarks on rail transport in north Wales, because, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, that is an important element of the north Wales economy. I am optimistic. Like him, I attended the event organised by the North Wales economic ambition board and I believe that Members of Parliament of all parties support working towards electrification of the north Wales main line.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned what he called the Wrexham to Bidston line. He is right that hon. Members have debated that old chestnut in this House for many years. The economic case for electrification of that line is probably stronger than ever, but I think that, because we are Welsh, we tend to look at that through the Welsh prism: Wrexham to Bidston rather than Bidston back towards Wrexham.

What has changed over the past few years has been the establishment of two important enterprise zones: one, as the hon. Gentleman said, is in Deeside, but the other is at Wirral Waters in Birkenhead. The Wirral Waters enterprise zone is almost immediately adjacent to the station at Bidston, and those two zones could benefit immensely from being linked by a fast, electrified line, which would put Deeside within easy commuting distance of the centre of Liverpool.

Only a few weeks ago, Network Rail announced proposals to create a new hub at Shotton, which provides an enormous opportunity for hon. Members to press Network Rail and Merseyrail to look again at the prospect of electrifying that important line. That would effectively put those two enterprise zones within a 15-minute commute, which would create enormous synergy. Perhaps we could then speak in terms of extending electrification down as far as Wrexham, for which the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) has pressed for many years. However, if we take an incremental approach and initially think about improving that important stretch of line, we will lay the foundations for an enormous boost to the economy not only of north-east Wales but right across the region, from the River Conwy to Ellesmere Port and beyond. The Minister could do well to put that to Network Rail; the time is right. We need to do as much as we possibly can to integrate the north Wales economy even further into the Merseyside economy.

In the next Parliament there will be considerable debate about so-called English votes for English laws. When one has regard to the extent to which not only public services such as health in north Wales but the economic considerations we are debating today are bound up with those across the border and tapped into the north-west economy, one sees that it is essential that whatever arrangements are put in place should give proper recognition to the legitimate concerns of north Wales Members.

[Chris Ruane]

Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that Welsh Members should be able to vote in the British Parliament on health, education and transport issues?

[Mr Jones]

I have already said many times and I am quite happy to repeat—that is why I started by saying that frequently I think politicians in London and Cardiff do not fully understand the north Wales element—that whenever any such issues touch and concern the interests of the people of north Wales, their representatives should have the right to speak on those issues in this Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) on securing this important debate.

My proudest moment as an MP came in 1999, when I secured access to European objective 1 funding for Denbighshire and Conwy. The map was redrawn after I lobbied my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain), who was a junior Minister in the Wales Office at the time. Since then, more than £200 million has been invested in economic infrastructure in my county alone. I believe that the same amount has been invested in the county of Conwy, which is represented by the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones).

That important injection of investment has helped the economies of Denbighshire, Conwy and the whole of north Wales. It has helped to fund projects such as the £10 million redevelopment of Rhyl harbour; the £4 million Drift Park development on Rhyl promenade; buildings in Prestatyn, such as the one colloquially known as Tango towers; and, 10 years ago, the best European regional development fund project in the whole European Union, the Opto-electronics Technology and Incubation Centre, or OpTIC. All that investment occurred because we are partners with Europe. It will disappear if we pull out.

We have another seven years of European funding to go; possibly another £100 million to £150 million could be pumped into my county and constituency, if we stay in the EU. We will not get that funding if we pull out. Since 2009, the economy of north Wales has benefited from £1.2 billion of European funding. That is a massive amount of money to inject into the economic infrastructure of north Wales. If we leave the EU, not only will we lose that funding, but companies such as Toyota have said that they will pull out. Airbus will not get its future investment. Seventy thousand jobs in the UK depend on Airbus—do we really want to lose them?

In north Wales, there is £800 million-worth of public procurement, what with the police, the fire service, the health authority and local authorities across the region. Public investment from the public sector, which Labour believes in, is helping to prime the north Wales economy. If public procurement is handled properly, the economic multiplier can be seven times what is put in. If public money goes to a local firm with local contracts, employing local people, that money stays in the local community; if it is given to a multinational company, it will disappear, or there will be no economic multiplier.

I am proud of Labour’s public investment and procurement record in Wales. I will give some examples from over the years. Labour invested in Rhyl college. In the past, people who lived in Rhyl had to travel 25 miles to and from Deeside college every day, or 20 miles to and from Llandrillo college—40 miles a day, or 200 miles a week. Labour founded the college in Rhyl, and then Denbigh college was founded, so local people could upgrade their skills locally.

That is in the past, but the Welsh Labour Government are currently investing £35 million in the refurbishment, redevelopment and rebuilding of schools in Denbighshire. Denbighshire county council is also investing £35 million, so that is £70 million overall. The £35 million that Denbighshire is investing is the result of excellent funding over the past 10 or 15 years. In my patch, local Conservatives have criticised that investment in their own local authority. In 1997, investment in Denbighshire local authority was £63 million; today it is £163 million. They have criticised Labour for the investment that is allowing us to build schools.

I recently visited Rhyl high school, which is under construction and set to cost £23 million. The builders, Willmott Dixon, told me that of that £23 million, 60% will be spent within a 30-mile radius of Rhyl. That will localise procurement and maximise jobs, skills and investment in our local economy. I congratulate Huw Lewis, the Education Minister in Wales, for going ahead with that excellent £70 million investment in our local economy.

Energy has been mentioned, and it is key in north Wales. The £20 billion investment in Wylfa is fantastic news—it will mean 8,000 jobs. The tidal lagoon going from Penrhyn bay to Prestatyn will be 28 km long and 11 times bigger than the Swansea bay lagoon. It is set for £5 billion of investment, of which 56% will be spent in Wales.

[Mr David Jones]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman on the attractiveness of the tidal lagoon project. It is, of course, a private sector proposal, as he will know.

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely. It is a private sector proposal, and that is good. I am not saying that private sector investment is bad; I am saying that to castigate the public sector, day in, day out, decade in, decade out, is wrong. The public sector has a vital part to play in providing essential services and priming our economy. If it goes ahead, the tidal lagoon project will bring £5 billion of investment, which will help to transform the economy of north Wales, especially alongside the £20 billion investment in Wylfa.

About 10 years ago, I switched on 30 turbines at North Hoyle off the coast of Rhyl. When he was at the Conservative party conference in Llandudno as Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister referred to those turbines as “giant bird blenders”; he then went back to Notting Hill and stuck a bird blender on his house. That shows the Conservative party’s lack of belief in renewable energy. Another indicator of that, from a north Wales perspective, was the changing of the feed-in tariff in 2010 so that the biggest solar panel factory in western Europe, in Wrexham, had to close down.

On transport, I agree entirely with my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) that we have to see transport connections in north Wales not from a north Wales perspective but from a European perspective, linking Dublin, Holyhead, Manchester, Hull, the Baltic states, Crewe, London and the rest of Europe. We must invest in a strategic trans-European network. We cannot be left as a branch line when billions of pounds are being pumped into HS2, HS3, HS4 and whatever. We need to be a main artery linking Dublin to the rest of Europe via north Wales and Holyhead.

That is so important because £53 billion in trade flows each year back and forth between Ireland and the UK. The principal port is Holyhead, and we want to keep it that way. More trade is conducted between Britain and Ireland than between Britain and Russia and Britain and China put together. That is how important it is. That is how important the transport links are. We must also have electrification, and connections to Manchester and Liverpool airports are really valued—we need a connection right into those airports.

In this very Chamber about 18 months ago, I mentioned a hovercraft connection between Liverpool and Rhyl. We had one more than 50 years ago—the first hovercraft passenger connection in the whole world—and we want to see the project taken up again. We have had some support from a Conservative Transport Minister, and we are looking to the Welsh Government to support the project. A hovercraft connection could bring 200,000 visitors to north Wales each year.

The right hon. Member for Clwyd West mentioned private sector investment. I welcome the excellent work done by councillors and officers in Denbighshire to attract Neptune Developments from Liverpool to Rhyl to develop £30 million or £40 million-worth of tourism infrastructure. The news was reported in the Daily Post some six or seven weeks ago, and it is a fantastic development. We must ensure that the hovercraft lands exactly where the development is going to take place.

I have discussed hard infrastructure, but there is also soft infrastructure: people, and how we treat them. Under Labour, the future jobs fund put 420 young people back to work in my constituency. The first malicious and malign act of this Conservative Government in June 2010 was to end the future jobs fund. The Welsh Government took up the baton and developed Jobs Growth Wales, which has an 80% success rate at getting young people back to work or into training. That is excellent work.

In 2007, I established the Rhyl City Strategy, which has helped to put thousands of people back to work or into training. We need decent housing for local workers. The Welsh Government are pumping £28 billion into west Rhyl to create housing for people to buy. This is fantastic investment from the Welsh Labour Government, but it will all be put under threat if the Tories get in on 7 May.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Roger. Also, given the north Wales connections with the aircraft industry, I add my words of condolence to those of my right hon. and hon. Friends on this sad day after the air crash in France.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) on securing his second debate on the economic infrastructure of north Wales. I also congratulate all right hon. and hon. Friends on their contributions to the debate—a measure of their continued determination, as it is of all north Wales Members, to see north Wales prosper. We have heard excellent contributions from everyone.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) said it was a shame that he is the only representative of north-west Wales present; no other parties from the north-west are represented in the Chamber. It is a shame that Plaid Cymru Members are not here—perhaps they have something else on of rather more importance.

That, however, is one of the lone party political points that I want to make today, because the debate has not been party political; it has been a constructive debate with an enormous amount of consensus—

[Chris Ruane]

I did try!

[Owen Smith]

For all my hon. Friend’s attempts, we were largely consensual.

There was a huge amount of agreement in the Chamber about the challenges that face north Wales on the economy and its infrastructural links and what we need to do about energy, transport, rail, road, schools building, housing and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside summed things up when he talked about north Wales as an industrial powerhouse. We have terrific, world-beating companies in all the constituencies represented in the Chamber today. We need to ensure that those companies are nurtured and grow, and that the certainty required in terms of investment is maintained by whoever wins the election in May. Any uncertainties such as those about the future involvement of the UK in Europe need to be eradicated.

Another point made with great force and vigour by my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside was the need for investment in education and apprenticeships in north Wales and throughout the UK. The connections that have already been made between companies such as Toyota and Airbus and the local colleges, Coleg Cambria and Glyndwr university, are exemplars for the whole of the UK. We need to ensure that we maintain those connections.

The former Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), made an extremely positive contribution on two key points, first, on the vital cross-border links. I agree that too often in all parties our public dialogue on Wales concentrates on the border. We need to get past that. The next phases of devolution must be about greater partnership and integration, acknowledging the fact that companies do not recognise the border in the way in which public policy often does.

The right hon. Gentleman’s points about connecting the two enterprise zones through the Wrexham to Bidston line, making it a 15-minute journey, and about the benefits that can be derived from thinking more holistically about the whole of Deeside and north-west England as an economic powerhouse and zone were extremely well made, as was his contribution about English votes for English laws. I agree with him wholeheartedly that we must carefully guard against short-term political expediency for some parties getting in the way of the vital need for our constituents, in particular in north Wales, to have a say on services and decisions that affect them as much as they affect people in England.

Those points were well made by the right hon. Gentleman and were reflected in the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). He, too, highlighted the interconnection of our north Wales economy with that of the north-west. For example, on HS2, my right hon. Friend made it clear that in order to derive the full benefits for north Wales we need the Crewe interchange to be delivered and real investment in and understanding of the benefits. Crucially, he made a point about the recent rhetoric from the Chancellor about the northern powerhouse—welcome rhetoric and welcome emphasis on the north of England from a Tory Chancellor.

However, recent comments by Ministers in the Wales Office about creating a north Wales powerhouse are perhaps a bit muddleheaded. We need to think more along the lines of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn said, that north Wales is in many respects connected inextricably to the north-west and the north of England. When we talk about the northern powerhouse, as I suggest whoever succeeds in May must continue to do, we should be thinking about north Wales as an integral part of it; we should not talk simply about something within Wales, of north Wales versus the south.

My right hon. Friend also made some excellent practical suggestions about the need for better transport links between his constituency and north Wales generally and the airports that serve north Wales—not Cardiff Wales airport, but Liverpool and Manchester. Such points of connection are vital. Other practical suggestions included extending Flint train station in order to allow the new trains to continue stopping there.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn made a characteristically ebullient and passionate defence of his island, describing it as being at the heart of the whole of the British isles. I would not dare contradict him. He also challenged the Hansard reporters with his excellent pronunciation of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrn- drobwllllantysiliogogogoch—they can do it twice now, if they would, please. He, too, spoke about the three key challenges: energy, transport—rail and road—and tourism. The Horizon project on Anglesey is supported throughout the House and it will be an enormous benefit to Wales, with 6,000 to 8,000 jobs in construction, as he said, and a further 1,000 jobs to maintain it. Cross-party consensus in support of nuclear energy in Britain is vital, to the benefit of not only north Wales but the whole of the UK and our energy security in insecure times.

My hon. Friend made two unique points in his contribution, one about our ports, and Holyhead to Dublin becoming as important a connection as Dover to Calais. That is a vision to which we should all subscribe. Cross-party consensus on devolving power over ports to the Welsh Assembly Government is important. I anticipate and hope that his suggestion will be picked up. He was also the only one to mention mobile phone coverage, which is enormously important to modern business. Coverage remains far too patchy in Wales, and north Wales is one of the areas in which we must do more.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) made an excellent contribution. In particular I highlight his description of the benefits to Wales of our continued membership of the European Union. He mentioned Rhyl harbour, Rhyl promenade and the OpTIC research and incubation unit, which are only three examples of the £1.2 billion of investment in Wales as a result of our membership of the EU. He emphasised the risk to the great companies in north Wales—I have mentioned some, such as Toyota and Airbus. As my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside said, they would not leave overnight were we to leave the EU, but their continued investment in north Wales and in Britain would inevitably be in jeopardy. The risks to our constituents in north Wales in respect of their security and to the long-term prospects for the economic health of north Wales should be clear to all of us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd also highlighted the excellent work of the Welsh Government in recent years in the teeth of big cuts to their budget— £1.5 billion less and 30% of the capital budget removed. That is part of the picture under the UK Government: according to the National Audit Office, there has been a £15 billion reduction in infrastructure investment. However, despite such problems, as my hon. Friend said, £70 million has been invested in schools in Denbighshire. He could also have mentioned the £64 million invested by the Welsh Government and local government in schools in Flintshire or the £30 million invested in schools on Ynys Môn by the Welsh Government. Such schools are also a vital piece of economic infrastructure investment for our future—perhaps more vital than some of the road and rail projects that we have discussed. The schools projects are a testament to the continued dedication of the Welsh Labour Government to investing in the future of our children in Wales, in contrast to—a final party political point—how the Building Schools for the Future programme was cancelled in England.

I shall bring my remarks to a conclusion with a brief reminder that we have an election just 40-odd days away now; in case Members had not noticed, this Parliament is coming to an end. There is a vast amount of agreement that north Wales requires further investment. Whoever wins on 7 May, Welsh Members across the House should put their shoulders to the wheel. I am confident that if, as I hope and believe, we have a Labour Government, we will see proper partnership once more between Wales and Westminster—in contrast to the war on Wales over the past few years under this Tory Government—and a proper contribution to delivering economic success and prosperity for the people of north Wales.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Alun Cairns)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) on securing this debate. I echo the sympathies expressed by him and others towards those involved in the tragic accident in Europe yesterday.

This has been an excellent debate, which has demonstrated cross-party ambition, hope and optimism for north Wales and its people, public services and economic prosperity. By and large, as the shadow Minister mentioned, it has not been party political; I am pleased about that, because the issue is how to secure the right outcomes for north Wales.

The story of north Wales over the past five years has been quite remarkable. We all know that the UK has the fastest growing economy in the G7, and Wales is the fastest growing part of the United Kingdom. Since 2010—I hope that everyone will recognise this—gross value added growth for the UK has been 6.8%. In Wales, the figure is 8.4%, but it has been remarkably strong in north Wales, at 13.3%. That is a fantastic demonstration of the efforts of everyone in north Wales—the individuals, the private sector, the public sector and the entrepreneurs who are delivering growth have all achieved that quite remarkable figure of 13.3%.

[Chris Ruane]

Is the Minister including the Welsh Government in his list of people to congratulate?

[Alun Cairns]

Of course—I said the public sector. Everyone has played a part in delivering that 13.3% growth in north Wales. Of course, it needed a stable financial settlement and stable economic platform from which to build it. North Wales has prospered remarkably from those conditions.

The debate has focused on a range of issues, but without question there is absolute agreement among all Members on the interdependence of north Wales and the north of England in general and the north-west in particular. That is key to the area’s future prosperity. The hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside picked up on that idea at the outset and focused on the Mersey Dee Alliance. I pay tribute to that organisation; I have met its representatives in my role as Minister and have been hugely impressed with its case. I also pay tribute to the local authorities in north Wales, whichever party runs them; their relationship with the Wales Office is probably stronger than that of the local authorities in south Wales because of their co-ordinated activity and determination to forge a relationship with Whitehall.

Coleg Cambria has been mentioned, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) mentioned Glyndwr university. Those are both excellent examples of using the strength of the private sector in north-east Wales to deliver skills.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. Many of the people who are scaremongering now are the same people who wanted to join the euro all those years ago. It is this party that stands up for the British economy and stands up for businesses, exactly as the British Chambers of Commerce, the CBI and Airbus say in the quotes I have given.

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

13. [907780] In 1998, I was successful in persuading my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) to accept Denbighshire and Conwy into the bid for objective 1 European funding. In that time, Denbighshire has had a quarter of a billion pounds of private sector and public sector funding from Europe. If Britain pulls out of the EU, my constituency and my county will lose £100 million over the next seven years. What does the Minister feel about that?

[Alun Cairns]

May I remind the hon. Gentleman that European structural funds are aimed at the poorest parts of Europe? It is no mark of celebration to say that his constituency succeeded in winning that money. This Government have a long-term economic plan to turn the economy around for the longer term rather than depending on the grants and handouts for which he makes the case. He also needs to be reminded that that is our money coming back with conditions attached.

Employment in Wales

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Bore da! This important debate, with Wales’s finest in attendance, is ably led by Chris Ruane.

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

Thank you for that great introduction, Mr Hollobone. Bore da! Sut wyt ti y bore ’ma?

I will speak primarily about my constituency and north Wales, but I am sure that there will be interventions and speeches by Members from elsewhere in Wales—although not from any Government Members, because no Conservative or Liberal Democrat Back Benchers are present—[Interruption.] No, here they come. Better late than never.

I will focus on five areas: the quality of jobs in the UK and Wales; the impact of cuts on jobs and employment in Wales—not only the current cuts, but the proposed future ones highlighted by the Chancellor in his autumn statement; the rebalancing of a local economy highly dependent on the public sector; the possible impact if we pulled out of the European Union on job prospects in north Wales especially; and the impact of capital projects on jobs.

On the face of it, employment in north Wales seems healthy, but scratch below the surface and we see a different picture. Wages in the UK have decreased by £1,600 per annum over the past five years. There has been a shift from secure, long-term employment to short-term, zero-hours, part-time working.

Two years ago, the national press highlighted Denbighshire as having the highest level of zero-hours contracts in the UK, although the local authority disputed the figures. Nevertheless, the whole of the UK has suffered from the steep rise in the use of zero-hours contracts. The public sector has had a pay freeze at only 1%, which in real terms amounts to a cut, while the impact on ordinary workers of the casualised employment promoted by the Government is stark. Families cannot plan for their summer holidays, as they might usually do in January, because people do not know whether they will still be in employment in six months’ time.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that Office for National Statistics figures indicate that, in the past year alone in Wrexham, the median wage fell by 7.4%? That is the impact of the Government’s policies on individuals in my constituency.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention —the freeze or cut in the public sector has been bad for workers and families in my constituency as well. Parents cannot even plan to pick up their children the following day or week because of zero-hours contracts, which bring no stability or security. Families do not even want to go in for mortgages, because they are not sure about employment in a year’s time, so they are forced to stay in private rented accommodation.

The net impact on families is a hit on their well-being and mental health, which is so unnecessary. Nor is it only the private sector that is extending the use of zero-hours contracts; the public sector is increasingly being hollowed out by the outsourcing of functions that councils used to do in-house to the private sector, the past masters in the use of zero-hours contracts. At the same time, Tory MPs and the press vilify public sector workers for having “gold-plated pensions”, saying they are mollycoddled and cosseted.

The real situation could not be further from the truth. I speak for the 4,500 public sector workers who work for Denbighshire county council and the 4,500 who work for ysbyty Glan Clwyd—teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, care workers, all doing their best in difficult times. Workers in secure jobs are being forced to become self-employed and to take a hit on their hard-won rights on holiday pay, sick pay, redundancy, and maternity and paternity pay. The rise in the number of self-employed has not resulted in an army of Richard Bransons, Alan Sugars or Nicola Horlicks; it has resulted in workers being thrown from security into insecurity.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

I have listened to the hon. Gentleman with interest, but the way in which he just described self-employment is a disgrace to any politician in north Wales. In my constituency, which has the highest percentage of self-employed people in north Wales, such individuals are making a real difference, creating not only a job for themselves, but jobs in the wider economy. The hon. Gentleman should applaud them, not imply that self-employment is a dark option forced on them by the Government.

[Chris Ruane]

The hon. Gentleman totally misrepresents me. I am not talking about those small business people who want to go into business or about entrepreneurs, whom I applaud; I am talking about people who were in secure employment but were told, “We’re sacking you now—you can go and get a job in the private sector, which will take away all your rights.” They have been forced into self-employment. Those are the self-employed whom I am talking about. I pay tribute to the Federation of Small Businesses, especially the FSB in north Wales, and I will come on to the CBI in a moment.

The net effect of all that uncertainty, low pay and zero-hours contracts in my constituency is that, according to the citizens advice bureaux, the Vale of Clwyd has the highest level of insolvencies in the whole UK and the highest percentage of people seeking debt advice through the CAB. That is the legacy of five years of Tory rule.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has referred to parts of his constituency that are desperately poor; as he knows, parts of my constituency are also very poor. Does he agree that what has really made the difference in pushing down living standards for many people has been the extremely harsh and unfair so-called welfare reforms?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely. I agree with my hon. Friend entirely, and the point has been ably illustrated by my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). When a person has invested tens of thousands of pounds in installing disability access into their council house, where is the sense in forcing them out of it into private sector accommodation, which must then have disability access added? The previous place will not necessarily be used by a disabled person. It makes absolutely no sense.

We have reached the point where even the CBI is telling the Government that they have got it wrong and that workers need a decent wage and job security. John Cridland said in The Observer on Sunday:

“I am not sure this would have been natural territory for us five years ago.

I have been banging on for a year about higher earnings growth. I have been doing that in part because it is a sensible part of economic rebalancing to have sustainable consumption. It is important that low-paid workers are able to play their part as active consumers”.

He also talked about

“inequality having reached a point where it is not acceptable from a moral point of view and that, in a commercial sense, it’s bad for business.”

That is the head of the CBI. He did not think that five years ago, when Labour was in power; he thinks it now, at the end of five years of Tory rule. The loss of £1,600 from each worker’s pocket has had a negative impact on consumption, demand and profits. That comes from the top.

[Ian Lucas]

Another crucial impact has been from the Tory VAT increase, which takes money directly out of consumers’ pockets—[Interruption.] I am sorry that the Government Members are so upset by my saying that, but my constituents are upset about money out of their pockets going straight to the Treasury rather than our high streets.

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely. When Labour reduced VAT, that had a positive effect. All the economic indicators from 2008 to 2010 were going upwards; in June 2010, they started to go down. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) might laugh, but he does not know his economics.

John Cridland added:

“I am particularly interested in the escalator that takes people who are unemployed or low-paid on to better-paid work. Something has gone wrong with it. There are two or three missing steps in the middle.”

The missing steps to which he refers will not be provided by zero-hours contracts, the minimum wage with no prospect of progression and cutbacks in skills and training.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making an insightful, thoughtful and comprehensive speech. Does he agree that another theme related to this issue is instability? Several years ago, I read some of the writings of the Centre for Social Justice, an institution that many people see as tending to favour Conservative thinking, although not exclusively. I was interested that one thing the centre spoke about was how insecurity affects family life. Does he agree that when zero-hours contracts are not a matter of genuine choice and flexibility, they really contribute to insecurity? If we are serious about enhancing family life and stability we have to tackle that.

[Chris Ruane]

I agree entirely. The impact on mental health and well-being can only be detrimental.

Going back to the CBI, I pay tribute to John Cridland. He has made a brave intervention on this matter and I hope the Conservatives heed his wise words.

The next aspect I will look at is the impact of public sector cuts, especially cuts to local government. I have the statistics from the House of Commons Library. English local authorities have had cuts of up to 43%: Kingston upon Thames, Bournemouth, West Berkshire and Brighton and Hove have all had cuts of 43%. Those cuts to local government come from this Tory central Government.

[Guto Bebb]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Ruane]

No, the hon. Gentleman has had one bite of the cherry.

The cuts that English local authorities have experienced are more than decimation. The same research says that the Welsh Government have largely protected Welsh local authorities from those cuts over the past five years. According to that research, in my own county of Denbighshire there has been an increase in funding of 3% from the Labour Welsh Government. That protection has now ceased, however, as the Welsh Government feel the full impact of a £1.7 billion loss to their budget because of the Tories here in Westminster.

[Wayne David]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the situation is bad now, but if, God forbid, the Conservative party should win a majority at the next election, things will be a lot worse? We will be back to 1930s levels of public expenditure.

[Chris Ruane]

My hon. Friend predicts the next part of my speech.

[Guto Bebb]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Ruane]

No!

Welsh local authorities are implementing cuts that in my county will see the closure of the pest control department, the ending of help with school uniforms for low-income families and the loss of jobs for those who help children with psychological problems. I do not blame the local authorities—not the officers, and not even the Tory councillors. The finger of blame has to point at those at the top of this Conservative Government, who decided that, of all the departments in the UK, local government should have the biggest cuts. They planned for 27% but have implemented 43%.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a typically impassioned attack on the austerity policies of the Conservative party, and I agree with a lot of what he says. Will he explain why he and his colleagues voted for the Tory austerity charter only two weeks ago?

[Chris Ruane]

Cuts have to be made, but the tempo, pace and degree of cuts, and the ideology behind them, are the key issues. These are cuts for cuts’ sake, because the Conservative party believes in a low percentage expenditure of GDP on the public sector—an issue I will come to in a moment.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I am sorry, but does that not sound like trying to be a little bit pregnant?

[Chris Ruane]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has ever experienced that state in his time in Parliament. I am saying that the cuts proposed by my party—indeed, his party has had to make cuts in Gwynedd—are not ideological. They have been practical cuts. The Conservative party wants to introduce cuts for ideological reasons. It wants to cut back the state and sees the public sector and the state as bad. I do not perceive them in that way.

In the autumn statement, the Chancellor said that he wants to see the percentage spent by the state come down to 35% of GDP. His own creation, the Office for Budget Responsibility, said that, if he did that, public sector spending would be at its lowest since the 1930s, before the establishment of the national health service—we spend £115 billion on the NHS, yet the Chancellor wants to take us back to the 1930s. His vision for the UK economy and our society is “The Road to Wigan Pier” and “Love on the Dole”. It is not a vision I share, or one that the Labour party shares; I dare say Plaid Cymru does not share that vision either. It is a dark, bleak vision, offering no hope. The British public, especially in those areas that rely on public sector jobs, will reject the Chancellor’s vision.

Although one faced the effects of recession and the other the effects of war, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Government of the 1930s and the Labour Government of the 1940s knew that investment and capital projects were the key to recovery and growth. The Labour Welsh Government are heeding the lessons of history and have implemented a huge capital building programme in the Vale of Clwyd. They have invested £100 million in refurbishing ysbyty Glan Clwyd. In partnership with Denbighshire county council, they are investing £70 million in refurbishing and rebuilding schools.

I will graphically illustrate the difference in approach between the Welsh Government and this Government in just one town in my constituency—my home town of Rhyl. The Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and said that the town of Rhyl had been neglected by the Labour Welsh Government and the local authority. While he was speaking those words, he was closing down the Army recruitment centre in John street in Rhyl, which opened in 1914, and was closed in 2014 by the Tories; while he was speaking at the Dispatch Box, he was also closing down Rhyl county court and the tax office in Rhyl, and relocating the Crown post office from Rhyl.

Compare and contrast that with the investment that has come to my home town of Rhyl from the Welsh Government. There is a £10 million new harbour, a £22 million new community hospital, opening in 2017, and £28 million is being spent on replacing the old houses of multiple occupation with decent family accommodation. As we speak, £25 million is being spent on a new high school and £12 million on new flood defences in Rhyl. Now tell me who is neglecting Rhyl.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman needs to be careful about using examples that are tantamount to disingenuous. As far as Army recruitment centres are concerned, I know that he knows that the closures are nothing to do with resource, but to do with different recruitment procedures that are more effective in the 21st century. I would be grateful if he were careful about that.

[Chris Ruane]

The hon. Gentleman may have a point, as the Government have cut back the number of members of the armed forces dramatically; but I see a closure as a closure.

Last Thursday, I met Jane Hutt, the brilliant Welsh Finance Minister who is masterminding much of the investment that I have mentioned. We met at Rhyl high school, which as I said is undergoing a £25 million rebuild. The contractors, Willmott Dixon, said that 60% of the investment will be spent within a 30-mile radius of Rhyl. The jobs, training and growth from that investment will be multiplied many times over because of local procurement. The Labour Welsh Government are playing a vital role in ensuring that my constituency is able to withstand the ravages of Tory cuts.

In Vale of Clwyd and, indeed, in the neighbouring constituency Clwyd West—it is interesting that the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) is not here today—there is a huge percentage of public sector workers; 37% of the workers in those two constituencies work in the public sector. What will happen when we have these huge cuts? We know what has happened in the past. In the early 1980s, Shotton steelworks closed, and 7,000 jobs were lost in one day—the biggest lay-off in British industrial history—with no help or intervention from the Tories.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I am sorry to intervene on my hon. Friend when he is making that important point, but may I just correct him? Over 8,000 jobs were lost on that day, and the area still shows the effects of that devastating loss of jobs—still the largest single loss of jobs at a single plant on a single day in the UK.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, and I accept his correction.

The Government in the 1980s gave no support. There was no compassion and no thought. Areas were almost punished for being Labour. I have repeatedly asked Tory Ministers, from the Chancellor to the Secretary of State for Wales, what measures are in place to help the rebalancing between the public and private sectors in areas with large numbers of public sector workers. In one constituency, which is, I think, in Edinburgh, 78% of the workers are in the public sector, but there is no help from this cold-hearted Conservative Government.

Finally, I turn to Europe. Shotton was rescued by the rise of Airbus. The factory has 7,000 workers and 600 apprentices, and there are 70,000 jobs in the supply chain—it is one of the biggest factories in western Europe. This is a joint European venture, which includes Spain, Germany and France; it is a living example of how co-operation is better than confrontation. However, those jobs will go if we pull out of Europe, as Tory Back Benchers—I am sure there are a few out there now—want us to. There would be massive job losses at not just Airbus, but Toyota and other foreign inward investment businesses, which have said they will leave Britain if it pulls out of the EU.

In St Asaph, in my constituency, work is being done on the Extremely Large Telescope—a £2 billion project to put the biggest telescope the world has ever seen in the Atacama desert in Chile. The lenses alone will be £200 million. I hope they will be made in my constituency, but there is no chance that that will happen, with the high-tech, highly skilled jobs that the project would bring, if we pull out of the EU.

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend is correct about Airbus. Does he agree that such companies have choices? They do not have to invest in the UK. Airbus is an example of a good partnership, but, equally, the factories in Germany, France and Spain want the wing work we have in this country, and further investment in the Broughton plant would be in doubt if we were outside Europe.

[Chris Ruane]

Absolutely. The Conservative element of the Government thinks we can pull out of Europe, where we do about 40% of our trade, and stick two fingers up to it, and that everything will be the same afterwards—that that trade and co-operation will carry on. That will not be the case. Europe will punish us. It does not want us to pull out; it wants us to be included. We are 60 million people out of 6 billion—1% of the world’s population. If we pull away from Europe, our voice will be miniscule. We are part of the biggest trading bloc in the world’s history.

[Simon Hart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Ruane]

No. I will finish on that note.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I turned up to the debate thinking that we would at least have a reasonable discussion of the facts, but what we actually heard was a pre-election rant from the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane). That is a real shame because, outside the Chamber, he is often thoughtful and constructive; in the Chamber, however, he becomes blatantly partisan and can see good only within the confines of the Labour party in Wales.

Listening to the hon. Gentleman reeling off the record of significant investment in his constituency, one wonders whether there really is a shortage of money in the Welsh Assembly. If there is, that is probably because the money has been spent in Vale of Clwyd. If nothing else, therefore, we will have to compliment him on his ability to lobby his political colleagues in Cardiff.

The title of the debate is “Employment in Wales”, and any politician who takes themselves seriously should at least acknowledge that the employment figures in Wales are most encouraging.

[Chris Ruane]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Guto Bebb]

No, I do not think I will—I shall retaliate in kind. The hon. Gentleman had his opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I came into the Chamber at half-past 9 naively hoping for 90 minutes of informed debate, rational argument and, to be honest, a bit of peace and quiet, so I was not really planning to speak, but the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), who opened the debate, has driven me into an uncharacteristic state of fury and indignation. I hope that people will forgive me if I try to paint a more positive picture of the Wales that I know rather than getting involved in the constant negative talking down of a success story, which seemed to be the main theme of the hon. Gentleman’s speech.

I was also expecting more than we got, which was a series of contradictions. We were told that the wicked coalition was responsible for starving Wales of money, yet in the same breath the hon. Gentleman listed a whole range of ways in which investment has been made available to Rhyl in his area, presumably as a consequence of not only Welsh Government intervention, but the underpinning strength of the UK economy.

[Chris Ruane]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hart]

Let me make it clear early on that I probably will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, unless I have a sudden attack of good will. That does not mean that I will not give way to anyone, but I will not be persuaded to do so just yet.

We also heard the contradiction of the hon. Gentleman condemning the coalition’s spending proposals in almost the same week that his party voted in favour of them. Is it any wonder that we question the economic literacy of his case when the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer—perhaps the hon. Gentleman will have some comments to make about this—told us not long ago that interest rates would go up when in fact they have done down, that inflation would go up when in fact it has gone down, that fuel prices would go up when in fact they have gone down, and that unemployment would go up when in fact it has gone down? Is it any wonder that when the hon. Gentleman starts pontificating about a gloomy prognosis for Wales, we take it with a pretty big pinch of salt?

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Sometimes we think that we can get away with saying things in the Chamber because we seem to think that we exist in a bubble and that people are not watching, or listening to and examining the words that we say, whereas in fact, of course, the opposite is the case. That leads me quite neatly to a point that I wanted to make: there is ideology at play here. The Conservative ideology is that we tackle poverty through the creation of jobs and opportunity, yet we heard this morning the Labour ideology that poverty should be tackled simply by swelling the welfare state. If the former is an ideology, I am pretty happy to go along with it, as the route out of poverty is obviously through the creation of jobs. A proper welfare state looks after people who need assistance, not those who simply choose to use it as a lifestyle choice. That is an important ideology, so if an accusation is being pointed at me, I will happily plead guilty to it.

I am offended every time I hear people describe certain jobs in my constituency as somehow unimportant and not proper jobs. I can tell hon. Members that no one feels more patronised than those working in my constituency, whether in agriculture, tourism or engineering, or in a multitude of small and medium-sized businesses, when they hear people from the Labour party describing their jobs as somehow unimportant, unrewarding or unreal. Those jobs are the absolute opposite of those things—they are important.

I remember only too well taking home my first pay packet when I had my first job, which would probably have been described as low-paid, irrelevant and unimportant by one or two Opposition Members. To me, it was the opposite of that. That was the most important moment of my life. The money for that job may not have been as much as I might have got elsewhere, the hours may not have been very special and the terms of my employment may not have been particularly good by today’s standards, but I did not half appreciate it and it put me on the road to a decent work ethic and a hard-working life. That was all because someone gave me the chance to do the job. No one talked down my job in those days, and I do not think that we should talk down people’s jobs today, either.

As we approach the election, it seems to me that Labour’s electoral fortunes depend on fear and failure. It seems that the more fear and failure there is, the more electoral opportunity there is for the Labour party. I find it quite offensive that we should go into an election with one party almost promoting fear and failure as a means to success at the ballot box, and I think that that will reflect badly on it come May.

I put down a challenge to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd, so I will take an intervention now if he wants to make one. He condemned pretty well everyone, it seemed, for this country’s economic direction, strategy and success, yet the voters’ attitude seems to suggest that there is precious little confidence in his own party leader in terms of the economic future of the country. Opinion polls clearly show more confidence in the Cameron leadership of the country, in terms of its economic direction, than the Miliband leadership. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to comment on the confidence that he has in his own leader in terms of economic competence and the future of the country.

[Chris Ruane]

The point that I want to make is about the hon. Gentleman’s argument that I was too negative about the economy. Given the rosy picture that he has painted, I think that he is too complacent about the economy. People outside the House do not believe him. The people out there who have suffered a £1,600 loss in their pockets do not believe him.

[Simon Hart]

I am glad that I took that intervention because the hon. Gentleman completely misrepresents my view. No Conservative Member and no colleague in Plaid Cymru or in the Liberal Democrat party—indeed, no politician, candidate or Government—has a monopoly on brilliant ideas, wisdom or compassion. It is crazy to suggest otherwise. I am well aware that there are significant difficulties in my own constituency, which is why I have organised five jobs fairs since I have been a Member. That is why I spend most of my working day trying to resolve such hardships and to point people in the right direction on future job prospects. That is why I deal every day, as we all do, with difficulties when things go wrong.

It is wrong to suggest that we live in a bubble of complacency and that the future is gloomy. The distinction that I am trying to make is that there are plenty of success stories in Wales of which we should be proud. Plenty of indicators suggest that we are pointing in the right direction. I absolutely accept that we are halfway along the road to success. Nobody is suggesting that we have got there and nobody is suggesting that it will not be a hard crawl from here to our destination. What we are suggesting is that to alter the course now would damage the prospects of not only people who are working their way back into employment, but those who already have a secure job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making an extremely important and valid point. Some of the data and statistics highlighted by Opposition Members were somewhat selective, and we need to take the totality of Government changes into account; doing so highlights the progress that has been made.

It is also important to remember the context in which this debate is taking place. We need to remember that when Labour came to power in 1997, Wales was not the poorest part of the United Kingdom. Since then, sadly, there has been a complete shift in culture. That is simply illustrated: in a population of 3 million, there are 200,000 people in Wales who have never worked. The Government needed to act. We were simply not prepared to allow the previous trends to continue, whereby, sadly, the economy of Wales was being compared to those of Romania and Bulgaria; whereby parts of Wales were blighted with worklessness; and whereby a third of the working-age populations of some communities were claiming out-of-work benefits.

We have taken key steps to deal with that legacy of worklessness and a welfare system that encouraged dependency. As a Government, we have put in place a long-term economic plan to deal with the situation that we inherited—in 2010, Wales was, sadly, the poorest part of the UK. That fact will always come back to haunt Opposition Members. They talk about wealth, prosperity and growth, but they left Wales as the poorest part of the UK, despite receiving in 1997 an economy that meant Wales was not the poorest part of the UK.

We developed a plan to stabilise the country’s economy, to deal with years of financial mismanagement under the last Labour Government and to get the people of Wales and Britain back to work. That long-term economic plan is paying dividends. It surprises me that during the last hour or so I have listened to Opposition Members playing down the progress of the labour market in their constituencies.

For example, in the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd’s constituency, unemployment more than doubled between 2005 and 2010; there was a rise of 105% under the last Administration. Since 2010, unemployment in Vale of Clwyd has dropped by a third. Surely he welcomes that as a positive outcome.

[Chris Ruane]

What about since 1997?

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Gentleman points back to 1997, but I can speak only about the time since 2010, when this Administration came to power. However, I remind him of what I said before: in 1997, Wales was not the poorest part of the UK but, sadly, by 2010 it was. That happened under both a Labour UK Government and a Labour Welsh Assembly Government. Thirteen years of Labour Administrations in Wales between 1997 and 2010 left Wales as the poorest part of the UK.

On a positive note, I hope that the hon. Gentleman welcomes the fall in unemployment in his constituency since this Administration came to power. The picture is similar for youth unemployment in the Vale of Clywd; it went up by 82% under Labour, but since 2010 it has come down by a third. Why does he not recognise the positive steps that the Government have taken in that regard, and why is he not congratulating the businesses in his constituency that are creating these jobs and employment opportunities for his constituents?

It was a privilege to visit Clogau Gold in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency just a short time ago. It is expanding, exporting, and creating wealth and employment locally in the Vale of Clywd. I regret how the hon. Gentleman is talking down his own area; that is hardly creating the mood to attract investment and to encourage companies such as Clogau Gold to continue to spend money on investing, exporting and creating yet more wealth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

I am grateful, Mr Hollobone, for the opportunity to speak again.

I will respond to a few points that Conservative Members made. Virtually every Conservative speaker today spoke only about cuts, but the balanced approach to rebalancing the economy means talking about cuts and growth. From 2008, all the indicators up to 2010 were going in a positive direction; when this Government got in, they all went in a negative direction. The cuts are ideological, because the Conservatives believe in cuts. They want a small state; they do not recognise the value of the public sector.

The hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) again used divisive language about public sector pensions and private sector pensions, saying that private sector pensions were minimal. Who was it that promoted and encouraged the mis-selling of pensions to the private sector? It was the Conservative Government of the ’80s and ’90s. Why not raise the private sector pensions up to the level of public sector pensions? Why does the law of the lowest common denominator have to apply?

The Minister mentioned the number of people in Wales who have never worked. We had jobs—quality jobs—in Wales, in the steelworks and the mines, but what happened? Those workers were laid off and put on the dole. Then, when the dole queues started to rise, the Conservative Government in the 1980s and 1990s got worried. They altered the figures for calculating statistics 30 times, and they encouraged those proud miners to get off the dole and go on to incapacity benefit, in order to park up those workers—and, indeed, whole communities —for decades to come. After someone spends six months on the dole or incapacity benefit, something changes inside them; they lose their confidence. That is what happened in those communities. No help was put in place for those proud miners; they were just cut adrift, as political punishment for what they had done.

The Minister talks about the success of job creation in Wales under his Government. He mentioned Jobs Growth Wales briefly towards the end of his speech, but let me remind him that Jobs Growth Wales is responsible for an extra 400 young people in my constituency being employed. Also, there is European funding in my constituency, which I secured for my county of Denbighshire and the county of Conwy in 2000. We have had a quarter of a billion pounds worth of investment in my constituency, and the same in Conwy as well, as a result of that European funding. But what will happen to the remainder of that funding if the Government have their way and pull out of the EU? These are big issues for the electorate to face in the months to come and on 7 May, and I hope that they look carefully at our record and that of this Conservative Government. If they do, they will realise which box to put their x in.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I thank all Members who took part in this important debate on Wales. If they are not staying for the next important debate, I ask them to leave Westminster Hall quickly and quietly, because it is time to get all aboard for a train services debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 21st January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

I can categorically reject that. The UK Government are making significant investment in north Wales, at the Halton curve, and in south Wales, in the electrification of the main line right through to Swansea and in the valley lines and Vale of Glamorgan line services. I am proud of our record of electrifying railways in Wales. The previous Administration left us as one of the three nations across Europe without any electrified rail; Wales, sadly, was left with Albania and Moldova, and this Government are changing that.

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

Will the Minister congratulate the Welsh Government on providing funding for infrastructure investment in Rhyl? They have provided £28 million for new housing in Rhyl; £22 million for a new community hospital; £10 million for a new harbour; £25 million for a new Rhyl high school; and £12 million for flood defences. Will he also condemn the coalition Government, who have closed down Rhyl county court, Rhyl Army recruitment centre and Rhyl tax office, with the Crown post office possibly being relocated out of Rhyl?

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Gentleman is somewhat selective in the data he shares. I am proud of the infrastructure investment record of this Government; he failed to mention the north Wales prison and the Halton curve, as well as the investment across the whole of Wales, not only in the north.

Wales Bill

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

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

The Minister has mentioned the registration of young voters in Scotland. What was done there to get the registration rates so high was great. Is he aware that the registration rate for 18-year-olds in England and Wales is as low as 55%, so if this provision goes ahead, we will really have to work hard to get the registration rate up?

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. The Bill contains measures to encourage the Assembly to engage with younger people and encourage them to register, should it wish to extend the franchise in the referendum on income tax varying powers.

[Chris Ruane]

Has the Minister heard of an organisation called Bite the Ballot? It can go into sixth forms and register 100% of the students at a cost of only 25p per registration. Does he think that the Assembly—and, indeed, the UK Government—should be working closely with organisations such as Bite the Ballot to get the registration rate up?

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I am not familiar with that organisation, so it would not be right for me to endorse its activities at this stage. Clearly, however, any activity that encourages people who are eligible to vote to do so is broadly positive, and I would encourage the Welsh Government, the Assembly and the UK Administration to engage with a range of organisations and bodies to support that aim further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nia Griffith]

I have made it clear what our policies are.

With the advent of individual voter registration and the worry that many people, including many young voters, will fail to register under the new rules, which was a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), lowering the voting—

[Chris Ruane]

A good way of ensuring that there is 100% registration of young people, instead of the current registration rate of 55%, would be if, at the same time as they are issued with a national insurance number at the age of fifteen and three quarters, they were automatically registered to vote.

[Nia Griffith]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Lowering the voting age to 16 could provide an impetus for registration campaigns in schools, as all young people are in compulsory education until 16. Such campaigns would be another opportunity to encourage young people to register to vote before their 16th birthday, and most would have at least one opportunity to use their vote before leaving home for university or job opportunities elsewhere.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

I welcome the Government’s proposals to give 16 to 18-year-olds a vote in a referendum on income tax raising powers. I would also like those young people to have a general right to vote in all elections —general elections, Assembly elections, local elections and other referendums.

I share the concern of the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), however, as the move needs to be accompanied by civic education. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) has a degree in economics, but even the great Member himself does not quite understand everything about the subject.

[Geraint Davies]

On a point of information, I do.

[Chris Ruane]

That is as may be.

It is incumbent on us and the National Assembly for Wales to make sure that, if young people aged 16, 17 or 18 are to have the right to vote in the referendum, they have the relevant education, background and knowledge.

[Mr Llwyd]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s argument. Surely part of our function is to ensure that we have an informed debate, and assisting people as they come to a conclusion about how to vote is part of our function as well, is it not?

[Chris Ruane]

I agree entirely, but that should not be left to a short campaign two or three weeks before a referendum; it should be as of right.

I was a teacher for 15 years, admittedly in a primary school rather than a secondary one. We should try to teach these issues at a level that young people will understand. By the age of 18, someone has the right to have a mortgage. We need to make sure that young people are educated, in ways they understand, about mortgage rates, interest rates and student loans.

[Stephen Crabb]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is in no way belittling primary school children, but I should say that I have faced some of my most challenging questions when visiting primary schools, not least about the Chartist movement when I visited a Newport primary school.

[Chris Ruane]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I used to delegate the collection of the orange squash money to the brightest child in the class, whose money-counting skills were greater than mine.

We need to educate young people, especially about student loans and VAT, so that when they put their X in the box, they are making an informed decision. They need to know the crucial difference between progressive and regressive taxes.

[Mr Mark Williams]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I used to teach primary school children. He will be aware of the sense of injustice that primary school children and older children will feel. The biggest injustice does not relate to not being educated on these matters, but to being denied a vote in one election and then allowed a vote in another. Yes, we welcome what the Government have done—I pay tribute to Lord Tyler and Lord Thomas of Gresford in the other place who pushed the issue forward—but is not the biggest injustice the inconsistency between different elections?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Ruane]

I agree entirely. I would prefer it if young people were able to vote in all elections. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) said that he was wary of Tories bringing gifts, but I welcome this gift from them to 16 and 17-year-olds, especially as such gifts do not usually come from their party.

The move represents a foot in the door for opening up voting rights to 16 to 18-year-olds in other elections. The small precedent of voting in one referendum has been set. A path has been paved ready, I hope, for when Labour gets in in May, and we can point to this as a precedent and say, “If it’s been done for a referendum, it can be done for all other votes.”

We need to look particularly carefully at the registration of 16 to 18-year-olds, as that will have to start quite early on. Using the precedent that 18-year-olds can be registered to vote at the age of 16, perhaps these young people should be registered at the age of 14. As I said earlier, a golden opportunity comes when a young person’s national insurance number is issued at the age of 15 and three quarters. I have raised this point in parliamentary questions. Currently a young person can be registered at 16. Could not that be taken back three months to 15 and three quarters, when their national insurance number is issued? With the introduction of individual electoral registration, a person’s national insurance number is required when they fill in the registration form. Why not arrange to have that form filled in on the day when the elector gets their national insurance number? That would make eminent sense, and it would also get over the fact that only 55% of 18-year-olds are registered, as I said earlier, and only 44% of them vote. Only 25% of young people take part in the democratic process.

That has consequences for young people as individuals and for the whole of society. Let me give a practical example. One of the first steps the coalition Government took was to increase student loans from £3,000 a year to £9,000 a year, so, for an average student, the total rose from £9,000 to £27,000. Would they have taken such measures against pensioners, whose registration rates are 96% and whose voting rates are 86%? The fact that young people are not registered and voting means that political parties—all political parties—will bear that in mind when they are drawing up their policies. It is important that we have maximum registration from the outset for 16-year-olds who will have the right to vote.

[Mr Llwyd]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Does he agree that when we come to discuss things economic with young people who may not be highly qualified, it is best to avoid phrases like “post-neo-classical endogenous growth theory”?

[Geraint Davies]

That was what I learned in school.

[Chris Ruane]

My hon. Friend is taking issue with the right hon. Gentleman. There is a place for such terminology in some debates, but perhaps not those with 16-year-olds.

The issue of civics should go beyond finance and how we organise our economy. The finances of a country can impinge on wider issues such as racism, sexism and consumerism. There are threats from parties out there that are against the fabric of our British society. They want to promote the issue of race. It is fine if they want to discuss that, but it has to be done with intelligence, not bigotry.

The introduction of voting rights for young people at the age of 16 for the income tax raising powers referendum is a good idea. We should be very wary of what the Electoral Commission has done—or has not done—in the past if we are to make sure that these young people are registered. The Electoral Commission should be contacting electoral registration officers in the 22 authorities in Wales to make sure that they know how to register these young people. It should be regularly monitoring best practice from around the UK—indeed, around the world—and relaying that information to the Welsh Government in Cardiff to make sure that best practice is pursued in Wales for the purposes of registration for the referendum.

Best practice in registering young people exists in Northern Ireland. The EROs in Northern Ireland are proactive in going out to schools to register young people. We should be doing that, but the Electoral Commission has refused to replicate in the rest of the UK what is now done in Northern Ireland.

The Electoral Commission has failed to ensure that electoral registration officers obey the law. Statutorily, they must knock on the door of non-responders. If a 16-year-old was not registered to vote for the referendum, for example, the local ERO would have to go round, knock on the door and register that 16-year-old. Even though that requirement has been set out in law for many years, there has not been a single prosecution of an ERO who has broken the law. One ERO in Devon has broken the law by not conducting a door-to-door canvass for five years on the trot, but the Electoral Commission has done nothing about it.

We should make sure that the Electoral Commission warns EROs in Wales about that. We do have best practice in Wales. My own electoral registration officer, Gareth Evans, is one of best performing EROs in the whole country, but not all officers are as good as him, and we need to make sure that they all perform at the standards of the best so that young people are registered.

The Electoral Commission has failed miserably to use the most effective and efficient third-party organisations, such as Bite the Ballot, to get young people on to the electoral register. Bite the Ballot can register young people for as little as 25p per registration, but when one compares the cost of the Electoral Commission’s advertising campaign with the number of registration forms downloaded from the internet, it spent £80 per registration in 2005. The commission should therefore work with EROs in Wales, as well as with Bite the Ballot, to encourage them to ensure that 16-year-olds are registered from the outset.

This is a great opportunity, and I congratulate both elements of the coalition, especially the Conservatives. It is not in their nature to extend the vote. They are rightly fearful of young people, which is perhaps why they are not talking much about the lack of registration at national level. Registration rates in some wards in student areas of big university cities such as Manchester and Liverpool are as low as 20% following the move over to IER. I congratulate everyone, including my Front-Bench colleagues, and I hope that we will learn from this opportunity and go on to extend to 16 to 18-year-olds the right to vote in all elections.

[Alun Cairns]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) for the positive way in which he has ended this debate. He contributed to it by highlighting the need for young people to be educated about the process, and the need for us to engage with the activities of electoral registration officers, which were mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) and for Ceredigion (Mr Williams).

The Lords amendments are intended to be positive. They will extend the powers of the Assembly. They provide greater powers than those in the original Bill, and this is the first time that we have had the opportunity to discuss them. At some stages of the debate, I felt that although all parties are in favour of those powers, they were being welcomed almost through gritted teeth. I am therefore grateful to the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd for finishing on a positive note.

Some hon. Members said that they have campaigned for votes at 16 for a very long time, but if there was such support, the extension of the vote could have been done during the 13 years of the previous Labour Administration. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) pointed out that he tabled amendments at the time and they were certainly not accepted by Labour. However, I want to be positive.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

I echo the sentiments of the hon. Lady, who is a strong supporter of this important project. The quality of that company’s management, vision and business plan was precisely why I wanted the project to be included in the national infrastructure plan. It is also why I have been working hard with colleagues in the Treasury and the Department of Energy and Climate Change to get this potentially strategic project included in our long-term infrastructure plans.

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

In 2009 I managed to convince my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) to allow Denbighshire and Conwy into the objective 1 bid. Since then, those two counties have received about £500 million of EU funding. Will the Secretary of State congratulate the EU on that funding and recognise the danger to Wales of our pulling out of the EU?

[Stephen Crabb]

The biggest danger to Wales, including north Wales, would be to abandon our clear long-term economic plan, which I know Labour Members are calling for. When I spent two days in north Wales on a business tour last week, I visited many Labour Members’ constituencies and saw just how dynamic the private sector is. Businesses in that sector are leading the economic recovery, so they are the ones that we should be saluting.