Welsh Affairs

David T C Davies Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Albert Owen]

I take that point, and the Secretary of State may now find that an attractive view from his window, but at one time he did not want it to go ahead. He would not have been able to see it from his window, nor would he have been able to meet many of the targets that we are making progress towards in a low-carbon economy. I have always thought that offshore wind has a great future, although I am a little less certain about onshore wind, because of the sheer size of some of the turbines.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Given that offshore wind normally needs a strike price of about £150 per megawatt-hour, is the hon. Gentleman as happy to argue that people should be willing to pay more for their electricity as he is to argue for those wind farms to be built?

[Albert Owen]

We need a mix. We need a base load and we need variable energy. If we do not have interconnectors and we are producing too much energy in the summer, when peak demand is less, we cannot switch off nuclear power stations and it is expensive to switch off gas. It is easier to switch off variable supplies such as renewables can provide, including wind. There is an initial cost, but those costs are coming down, and I believe that with economies of scale—as with the strike price for nuclear or for any other renewable—the price will decrease as the sector matures. In the long term, bills will be cheaper if we get a steady supply of low carbon energy.

Nuclear power is also part of the mix. I welcome the conversion of the Secretary of State to wind power and the conversion of the Liberal Democrats to nuclear power. I hope that that means that the three larger parties, two of which form the Government now and one of which I hope will form the next Government, will be consistent in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I agreed with many of the things the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) said, although I disagreed in certain important respects. I agree that of course it is possible to be proud to be Welsh, proud to be British and at the same time proud to be European, but when I say I am proud to be European, I mean I am proud to be part of the Europe that gave us the renaissance and the enlightenment values that have spread democracy over all the world and which people across the world look up to—[Interruption.] Yes, even if they do not seem to be following them in some parts of the world. What I am not proud of, however, is the European Union, because that is an entirely artificial construct which is completely undemocratic and, in the manner in which it goes about its business, is going against the values that Europe has given us over many hundreds of years. But I am, of course, proud to be Welsh and proud to be British.

Being proud to be Welsh does not mean having to give absolute support to the Welsh Assembly and to support giving it extra powers every couple of years, which is what seems to be happening at the moment. I sometimes wish I was as good at being able to predict the movement of the stock market as I am at being able to predict what is going to happen whenever somebody sets up a body to look at giving more powers to the Welsh Assembly. As I made clear in a Welsh Affairs Committee meeting, it was obvious from the start—before Mr Silk, who I admire personally, although I suspect I disagree with him politically on many things, traversed Wales, speaking at empty village halls the length and breadth of the nation—what was going to happen: at the end of the process, Mr Silk was simply going to recommend giving yet another tranche of powers to the Welsh Assembly, which is exactly what has happened.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does the hon. Gentleman see any benefit for the Welsh tourism industry if the Welsh Assembly or a Parliament in Wales had powers over VAT? Could it cut VAT to compete with independent nations such as Ireland or France, which were cited by the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen)? Is it not bizarre to complain about something and then not want the power to do anything about it?

[David T. C. Davies]

No, I think that, as people on different sides of the political fence recognise, great difficulties would be caused if, in an area where most people live along the border, one side cut VAT while the other kept it at the original level. That differential would create enormous economic problems. What I would be interested in doing is looking at the economic case for a cut in VAT for tourism across the whole of the United Kingdom, or at least across all those bits that wish to remain in the United Kingdom, and retain the benefits that come from that.

When we consider what the Assembly has actually managed to achieve, we should be very cautious about giving it further powers, particularly over policing, which is what is being discussed as a result of Silk 2. Let us consider the areas where the Welsh Assembly already has complete powers, such as inward investment. Inward investment has been a disaster over the years since the Assembly was set up. We went from being one of the most successful regions of the United Kingdom in attracting foreign inward investment to being the second lowest region. There are a number of reasons for that, many of which we heard when the Select Committee investigated this issue. We heard stories about people who were set up in so-called embassies in other parts of the world but could not even speak the language of the country they were supposed to be selling Wales to, and people who were not seen or heard of. We heard stories from Brussels that, while Scotland—to be fair—and Yorkshire and other regions of the United Kingdom had been very successful in raising their profile, nobody had ever heard of anyone from Wales. At the same time we have had problems with education, which is an important factor when companies decide where to locate. I believe there is also an issue with energy, which the hon. Member for Ynys Môn also mentioned and which I shall come back to shortly. Certainly, however, the record on inward investment has been a complete and utter disaster.

Education is now a story not just for the Welsh papers, but for the national papers. The PISA—programme for international student assessment—results were a disaster for those of us who have children in the state education system, as I do, and I went through it myself in Wales in the 1980s. The latest GCSE results for English came out today. I quickly looked at them on the BBC website and apparently they are much worse than expected, although the Welsh Assembly is once again quick to try to distance itself from the poor results.

I believe there is a particular problem, which was summed up by Lee Waters. He worked, I believe, for a number of Labour Ministers in the Welsh Assembly. He is a man of many qualities, but not voting Conservative is not one of them; it is a shame that he does not. He hit the nail on the head today in an article in The Times when he wrote about the fact that the Welsh Assembly was deliberately trying to do things differently in areas where it had the power just because it could—not because it could do a better job, but simply to try to show that it was not going to follow what England does.

Ministers might not like me saying this, but if we compare what has gone on in England with what has gone on in Wales, we can see that the English education reforms have simply built on the reforms that Tony Blair put in place but was unable to carry out. I read his memoirs with great interest, and I was struck by the way in which his health and education policies were reflected almost exactly in the policies that were in the Conservative manifesto. It is therefore quite bizarre that Labour subsequently attacked our policies so vigorously, given that the ideas came from Labour itself.

[Hywel Williams]

What does the hon. Gentleman make of this week’s press reports that Labour will, if it ever gets back into government, adopt the reforms that are being promoted for England by the Secretary of State for Education?

[David T. C. Davies]

I very much welcome that, of course. It is not particularly surprising, however, because reforms such as the introduction of academies, the use of the private sector and the better use of inspections were all being suggested by Tony Blair. He started to implement them under Andrew Adonis but, for one reason or another, was unable to complete them. It is not in the least bit surprising that Labour Members now recognise that we have built on their reforms, and extended and widened them a little. Why would they want to go back on them? The problem is that we have two Labour parties in the United Kingdom. In England, we have a sort of new Labour, which to some extent recognises the need to deal with business and the private sector, if only so that it can get taxes off them in order to spend them. In Wales, we have a kind of old Labour, red in tooth and claw, that still has not woken up to the fact that the 1970s finished about 40 years ago.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

I would be delighted to give way to a true representative of old Labour.

[Chris Evans]

What can I say to that? Does the hon. Gentleman not also believe that there are two Conservative parties, judging by the comments and actions of the leader of the Conservative party in the Welsh Assembly?

[David T. C. Davies]

There are certainly differences. I will speak for myself, and others may follow. I think I am right in offering my congratulations to the hon. Gentleman. Has he recently had a child? He is looking a bit worried—perhaps it was someone further along the Opposition Benches. [Interruption.] I am told that it was actually the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). My congratulations to him. He, too, will no doubt be experiencing the state education sector in Wales shortly.

My recommendation is that we look at what has gone wrong in that sector. There are not enough schools inspections, and far too much notice is given of those that are taking place. That practice has been done away with in England. I worked with the police for many years, as Members know. We could not have a situation in which a policy custody unit was told weeks in advance that it was going to be inspected; people just turned up and did it. That is how it should be with schools, and with hospitals. That is not what is happening in Wales, however.

I have been told by head teachers, and by schools improvement officers, that it is difficult for people to go in and assess how a teacher is doing in a classroom because the unions do not like it. Similarly, the unions do not like league tests, or testing of any other sort, and they are making it very difficult for people to go in and make the kind of changes that are required.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I spent 12 years working in the classroom, and I am still a paid-up member of a teaching trade union. My experience of the unions is that they were certainly not obstacles to the inspection regime. I want to probe the hon. Gentleman a little further on the question of education in Wales. What does he see as the main explanation for those PISA results, and for the failings in English literacy and mathematics in particular? Will he tell us what the main failings are that he has identified, rather than giving us the kind of jargon that he was articulating just now?

[David T. C. Davies]

I do not think that I was using jargon; I was spelling it out in fairly simple English. But okay, I will give the hon. Gentleman a list of things. First, I am told that it is difficult for head teachers to go in and assess teachers. They are allowed to do it only a couple of times a year, and they cannot simply walk into a classroom. I have been told that by two senior educationists in Wales, working in totally separate schools, over the past few weeks. Either they are wrong or the hon. Gentleman is wrong.

I have also been told that schools get a great deal of notice before an inspection takes place, and I think that is wrong. Inspectors ought to be able to go in without any notice whatsoever and find out what is going wrong. I know for a fact that when I was in the Welsh Assembly the unions and everyone else seemed to be totally against testing, but testing is a good thing. If my children are failing in tests, I want to know about it and to get involved. There is also a problem with sickness, whereby too many teachers are taking too many sick days in schools in Wales and that is not being properly investigated afterwards by the personnel departments. It is also far too difficult to get rid of bad teachers who are not up to the job. That situation can occur in any walk of life, but in most others someone who is not up to a job will be got rid of by someone higher up. That does not seem to happen in teaching. I do not think all that is jargon; those are fairly simple matters.

May I make one last point on this, which is the most important one of all? In England, there is a recognition that parents have a right to have some say over their children’s education, and they can exercise that most drastically by taking their children out of the state system and putting them into some kind of an academy. As a parent, I welcome that, because it is my taxpayer’s money that is being spent and I ought to have a say. If the school is not up to the job, I ought to have the right to take my child out and put them somewhere else. I do not have that right in Wales, and that is taking away an incentive for teachers to improve.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, which is interesting in terms of the direction that the questions are coming from. Does he share my concern that the hands of the Liberal Democrats, and even those of Plaid Cymru, are not necessarily clean in this area, because they will have been part of the coalition during some of the formative years, when some of the education policies were put in place?

[David T. C. Davies]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right. The Labour party has generally been the lead party in the Assembly since it was set up, but at other times Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats have been involved.

[Mr Mark Williams]

I respect the sincerity with which the hon. Gentleman makes those remarks, but I spent 12 years in the classroom and no head teacher was ever prevented from inspecting any lessons I undertook. Does he think that he could add to his list the issue of resources? Our Government have addressed that in part through the pupil premium, and Liberals in Wales, along with Labour colleagues, have pursued a similar policy there. That has been a good measure. Resources are important, but so, too, is maintaining properly motivated and confident staff. One challenge to this Government in Westminster is to retain that well-motivated staff, because the jury is out so far on that.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am grateful to my friend—I am not sure whether he is an hon. Friend, a colleague or what under this coalition, but he is that—for the compliment. I agree that both those matters are important. On resources, the Government have rightly made cuts to all sorts of departments, except to foreign aid; I could launch into another speech on that, but will not do so. Generally speaking, the Government have had to make cuts—we have done so rightly—to try to balance the books, but we have not cut money to the Welsh Assembly. The amount of money that it has had overall has increased slightly, although people there will try to argue that when inflation is factored in it is not quite as much as it once was. So that is certainly not an issue that can be laid at the door of either of us in this coalition Government. Of course I completely agree that it is important that staff are motivated, and I would regret it if anything were ever done to stop that happening, but there is a difference between de-motivating people and allowing them to get away with things.

May I just move on to health, Madam Deputy Speaker, because it is the other big area of which the Welsh Assembly has control?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman may certainly move on to health and to his other subjects, but I am sure he must be considering the fact that he has spoken for some time and that many other Members wish to speak. I do not suggest that he stops immediately, but he might like possibly to accelerate his next few points.

[David T. C. Davies]

I would certainly not want to deprive the House of the wisdom of hearing from anyone else from the Principality, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I wonder whether there is some way you could indicate to me for how much longer you think I should detain the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman will get the feeling of the House as he progresses. Another few minutes would be fine.

[David T. C. Davies]

I will try to be brief. I do not even need to say too much about health, because much of it has been said by Labour Members who have been affected. Suffice it to say, a member of my own family has been very badly affected by the second-rate service that we are getting in Wales. In England, people requiring cataract treatment can expect to be seen in 18 weeks. In Wales, it is 36 weeks, so people have to wait for twice as long. The Welsh Assembly are failing to meet even their own poor targets. When I last checked, some 300 people had been waiting more than 36 weeks for cataract treatment, which could easily lead to people going blind. That is an absolute disgrace.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman needs to make the distinction. Surely he means not the Welsh Assembly but the Government. If there are health or other issues in the UK, it is the responsibility not of the Parliament but of the Government of the particular Parliament or Assembly.

[David T. C. Davies]

That is certainly true, and a variety of parties have been in government and should take responsibility, but the Conservative party is not one of them. The Conservative Government in London have overall responsibility for the economy, which affects Wales, and have done a superb job in cutting the deficit, dealing with the way in which benefits were being handed out to one and all, and getting people back into work. That is something of which we can be enormously proud.

We need to look at issues such as the Severn bridge, which was debated yesterday. I thank the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) for making such important points on which there could be cross-party agreement in Wales. Something needs to be done about the tolls, and it needs to happen as soon as the concession ends.

Finally, to go back to the points made by the hon. Member for Ynys Môn, we all agree that manufacturing and developing our manufacturing industry are important, but I disagree that that can be done by an overuse of renewable energy, which actually leads to higher overall energy costs. One of the things that manufacturers need now is low energy costs. America, for example, which has halved its energy prices, is seeing manufacturers coming back from places such as the far east. I hope the Government will think carefully about swallowing any more of the green propaganda, which has led to a demise in manufacturing in Wales and elsewhere.

Overall, we have a great deal of which we can be proud. The Labour leader has said that he wishes to learn lessons from Wales. The lesson is that if a person votes Labour in Wales, they will get longer waiting lists, their children will not get as good an education and they can forget about inward investment. If that is the lesson that he wants to shout out to everyone in the run-up to the election, I wish him every success.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Cairns]

I accept part of that, but I would also look to areas that have a similar legacy but are not the poorest parts of the United Kingdom. Those are the very same points that, it was argued, would be corrected by Adminstrations that would take decisions much closer to the people. I speak as a pro-devolutionist—I am not against the institution, I am against the governance, the way in which the institution has worked and how policy has been set.

[David T. C. Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that parts of the United Kingdom, such as Northern Ireland, are poorer than Wales, but achieve better outcomes in areas such as education? It must be partly, if not wholly, the responsibility of the Government of the Welsh Assembly that things are so bad there.

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is right, because a culture developed in which everything was judged by the amount of money that was put into it, rather than the outcomes that were derived from the investment.

When we talk about reputation, we need to accept that the way in which Wales is currently reported is not positive. I am very saddened by that, but it is largely because the column inches in the press tend to focus on health and education. They are essential to attracting inward investment, because middle and senior management would have to use the national health service and send their children to the schools. That must be added to the way in which Wales is perceived and the challenge that we have in attracting investment thereafter.

Let us focus on education, because without doubt a nation’s future is built on the quality of its education. In the past few years alone, there has been a determination to develop different qualifications, sometimes for the sake of being different, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) mentioned earlier. When there was a drive to introduce greater rigour in GCSE outcomes, in Wales we saw political intervention. In England, politics was kept out of it completely, and the policy direction was set for greater rigour and stronger assessments of standards. In Wales, there was a determination to change that.

What worries me most, as the father of a 10-year-old, is that qualifications in Wales could be seen to be secondary to their counterparts in England. I really hope that, for those who gained GCSE qualifications last year, employers will accept Welsh qualifications as being of the same standard as those in England. However, there was an upgrade in more than 1,000 cases, and that may make employers and higher education institutions question them. For example, the Welsh baccalaureate is not accepted by some universities, and that is sad. That reputational damage is now being perpetuated by the outcomes of what the programme for international student assessment judged to be tragically lower standards. As we seek to attract investment to turn the economy around, the quality of public services is essential.