Welsh Affairs

Christina Rees Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab)]

St David’s day, 1 March, is a national day of celebration in Wales. It is a day on which to celebrate Wales and being Welsh. We are a proud nation of culture, literature, song, art and sport. I congratulate the Wales women’s rugby team on recently beating Scotland and France at the Knoll ground in my constituency and on qualifying for the world cup. That is a great achievement. It would be remiss of me not to mention squash—the game, not the drink—because in a former life I was the national coach for Squash Wales. As a small nation, we have always punched above our weight and medalled on many occasions, including the European Championships, in many countries. That leads me to what I want to talk about today, which is the importance of staying in Europe.

In my constituency of Neath and across Wales, we enjoy great opportunities and great benefits as a result of EU membership. I pay tribute to Derek Vaughan, our Member of the European Parliament for Wales, who is vice-chair of the budgetary control committee in the European Parliament. He has fought for the benefits that Wales receives. He is a former leader of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council, and he has used his great experience and knowledge as a former leader of the Welsh Local Government Association to fight for Wales in Europe.

Wales is a net benefactor from the EU to the tune of £838 million a year. Moreover, the lower prices, higher job numbers and increased trade and investment that come from our membership of the EU are worth more than £3,000 a year to the average Welsh household. That is 10 times more than the £274 that each household pays in.

The EU is without doubt the biggest, richest market in the world, upon which, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, 191,332 jobs in Wales depend. The economic benefits are clear: for the 2014 to 2020 period, Wales will receive £4.9 billion from the common agricultural policy and structural funds. It is estimated that, over time, the UK could lose as much as 6.1% to 9.5% of our GDP following an exit from the EU. In my constituency, the EU has created 1,120 jobs, helped 6,680 people into work, granted access to further education for 3,490 people and helped 13,630 to gain qualifications. The help in my local authority area—that of Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council—that the EU has provided to enterprises has meant that 670 have been assisted and 420 have been created.

One of the best examples of EU funding benefiting my constituency is the newly relaunched Workways Plus scheme, which is led by the local council and has received £7.5 million in EU funding. It offers training and paid work experience opportunities to 4,000 long-term unemployed people to help get them back into work. The support targets disadvantaged people, helping them to take their first steps to re-engage with or enter the labour market; the scheme offers one-to-one mentoring, and support with job-seeking and interview skills. The programme targets individuals affected by work-limiting health conditions and disabilities, as well as those with care responsibilities and low or no skills. It is the perfect scheme to get people back into work, and it continues a similar EU-funded scheme that ran across south-west Wales between 2009 and 2014, which was an enormous success and showed the true benefits that EU funding can bring to our communities.

Not only are there jobs that have benefited from EU funding, but the effects of our membership have benefited the infrastructure in Neath. EU regeneration funds have been used expertly by Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council to regenerate many town centres across the constituency, and this, in turn, has revived the use of these town centres and has helped the local economy get back to strength after tough economic times. Crucially, EU investment and involvement would also help aid the UK steel industry, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) said. The UK Government should follow the example of the Welsh Government, who have taken full advantage of our membership of the EU to help fund many of their projects and schemes, such as Jobs Growth Wales, which have helped get the Welsh economy, and the jobs and skills market, back on track.

Business leaders have already warned that leaving the EU would amount to a step into an

“Abyss of uncertainty and risk.”

The path for a potential exit is unclear; it has been likened to getting off a bus and into a car, which sounds a dangerous prospect to me. My constituents cannot afford this uncertainty as the negotiations conclude and then a potential exit is negotiated. The economic reality for Wales and for my constituents in Neath is such that Brexit would be disastrous for our jobs and prosperity, not to mention for the benefits we all enjoy, such as workers’ rights, environmental protections, consumer safeguards and free movement.

The Conservative party has treated the issue of our membership of the EU as a political football for many, many years, and the Prime Minister has put so many jobs, businesses and projects in my constituency on the line just to appease his own Back Benchers. Rather than address the necessary reforms of the EU in a constructive manner from inside, we face the prospect of an exit, which will be a disaster for neath and for Wales as a whole.

I cannot speak about matters important to Wales without mentioning another critical issue—the ongoing farce that is the Wales Bill, which, as originally drafted, met with criticism from all sides, including the Welsh Affairs Committee of this House. To make matters worse, we learn, not in this House but from the media, that the Bill is now on pause, pending a major overhaul. As the First Minister said, we are back to where we started. How can the Conservative party justify putting Wales’s economic development and prosperity at risk with its mishandling of this Bill and of our relationship with the EU?