David T C Davies
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David T C Davies Excerpts(9 years, 12 months ago)
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Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House expresses deep concern at the impact of the Government’s policies on Wales; notes the Government’s real-terms reduction of the Welsh budget by £1.5 billion; notes that Wales currently suffers from the lowest average rates of pay in Britain and has the highest proportion of individuals affected by cuts to social security including the bedroom tax; further notes that Wales suffers the highest energy bills in the UK and that these, along with low pay, have compounded the cost of living crisis in Wales; and calls on the Government to immediately scrap the bedroom tax, freeze energy bills and undertake measures to increase pay rates in Wales.
When devolution was created in 1997-98 by the last Labour Government, it was very much intended as a measure to make Wales more accountable, to give us a greater level of self-determination, and to see autonomy for the Welsh people and bespoke Welsh solutions for Welsh problems. The unspoken motivation behind that, especially in Wales where the miners strike was so fresh in our memories, was to protect the Welsh people from the prospects of a future Tory Government. Pit closures, steel closures, the legacy of de-industrialisation and people shunted on to incapacity benefit to languish there for so many years, were fresh in our minds, and they were absolutely behind the idea that we would, with devolution, have an additional bulwark against the destructive economic philosophy of the Tory party.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Is the hon. Gentleman admitting here in this Chamber that one of the reasons Labour supported devolution was not because it wanted to change the constitution, but because it thought that it could control the Welsh Assembly at all times?
Owen Smith
No. We had campaigned for devolution for 100 years, and it was absolutely about changing the accountability to the Welsh people, making all the obvious constitutional changes. However, for many of us on the left in Wales it was also about guaranteeing a Government who would to a greater extent reflect our values and defend Welsh people against the values of the hon. Gentleman’s party and this Government. Four and a half years on from the return of a Tory Government, we now have an opportunity to measure exactly what the impact of that Government has been and, six months from the next election, think hard about how effective those defences have been.
Stephen Crabb
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that it is about values. It is about our values as a Government who are not content to see 200,000 people in Wales who have never worked a day in their lives. That is why I celebrate the fact that there are 38,000 more people in work in Wales since the election and 47,000 fewer households where nobody works. What does that mean in real terms? It means more kids in Wales growing up seeing a mum or dad going out to work. Opposition Members, who go under the name of “Labour”, should be championing that.
David T. C. Davies
Is my right hon. Friend aware that this debate is not about the economy, but about the effect of Government policies on Wales. Does it surprise him that the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), who spoke very entertainingly—I look forward to coming back to it—for nearly 40 minutes did not once mention the national health service or the effect of Government policies on health?
Stephen Crabb
My hon. Friend makes an important intervention and we look forward to hearing more from him later in this important debate. It is about values, but over the last week, the mask has finally slipped—yet another example of Labour’s mask slipping. We saw it last week when a member of the Opposition Front-Bench team saw fit to ridicule someone’s home just because they had a white van parked outside it and were displaying the flag of St George. The Labour party can no longer with any credibility claim to be the workers party. It is the party of the liberal metropolitan elite, that sneers at hard-working people. Today Labour Members should be on their feet championing workers in their constituencies —[Interruption.]
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Once again, we have listened for about 40 minutes to the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) treat us to his tales of economic doom and gloom and woe. It must be getter harder and harder for him to maintain that in the light of the ever-better financial news. I had an interesting morning in the run-up to this debate: I decided to read through a few of his previous speeches. I went back to 2010, when he quoted an Oxford Economics report, saying that the coalition Government would be able to create only 4,000 private sector jobs. I wonder whether he remembers saying that. The reality is that so far, over the course of this Parliament, we have created 100,000 private sector jobs in Wales alone. In the same speech he talked about net increases in unemployment continuing until 2025. The reality, of course, is that unemployment is now at its lowest level since 2008.
In a subsequent speech on 11 November 2011, the hon. Gentleman spoke of a 4% contraction in GDP over the course of the Parliament. The reality is that so far over the course of this Parliament we have had a GDP of 7.8%, and I got that figure from the House of Commons Library earlier today. We have the fastest-growing economy in the developed world. I am so proud to be standing here supporting the Prime Minister and the excellent Secretary of State for Wales he has just appointed.
Chris Bryant
If we are going to talk about speeches that other Members have made, I remember the Prime Minister saying that the deficit would be cut completely by the end of this Parliament. I remember him saying that the debt would be falling. I remember him saying that net migration to this country would fall below 100,000. None of those things has come to pass, so let us talk about the Government’s failures.
Chris Bryant
The Prime Minister even said that no disabled people would be affected by the bedroom tax, but two thirds of those affected by it in Wales are disabled.
David T. C. Davies
If the hon. Gentleman would be kind enough to give way, I will talk about those things. First I will leave him to think about this headline: “UK unemployment rate falls to lowest level since 2008”. That is from The Guardian just a few weeks ago. But let us talk about the debt, because after all, we inherited a debt of around £800 billion.
David T. C. Davies
Yes, it has gone up. We also had a deficit of £160 billion, and we have not managed to do as much as we wanted to do with that. I would have liked to see us do more with it. But the reality is that there has been no coherence from Labour Members, because every time we have suggested ways to cut the deficit further, they have opposed them. They sit there trying to convince the world that they have a coherent economic policy, when they have condemned us for borrowing money while at the same time demanding that we borrow more. That is why people will not trust them with the economy.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) talked about immigration. Again, I would have liked to see us go further, but immigration from outside the European Union has been reduced significantly, and we cannot do anything about immigration from within the European Union—he should know, because he is the biggest Europhile in this place. We cannot do anything about freedom of movement, but we are going to offer a referendum on it.
David T. C. Davies
I will give way in a moment.
The motion mentions energy. The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) made a good point about the impact of carbon taxes on steel production and other manufacturing. What he did not want to say, of course, is that those policies were brought about by the previous Labour Government, who swallowed hook, line and sinker the environmentalist line that carbon dioxide is causing runaway global warming and began imposing billions and billions of pounds in carbon taxes on manufacturing and on home owners. That is one of the reasons why energy bills are so high for home owners and manufacturers. That is why I welcome the fact that the Government have said that they will start rolling them back. I would like to see them rolled back even further, to be honest, but that in no way undermines the enormous support I feel for the Government at the moment or the anger I feel towards those in the UK Independence party—although not those in this House at the moment—who put forward simplistic solutions to very complicated problems. That is why it is important that we have a moderate, centre-right party proposing sensible policies for the people of this country.
Interestingly, even though this debate is about the effect of Government policies in Wales, not once during his 40-minute speech did the hon. Member for Pontypridd mention the effect of Government health policies on Wales. They have had a pretty significant effect, because large numbers of patients in Wales are now trying to get out of the Labour-run Welsh NHS and get their treatment in England, where they will be looked after by the coalition-run NHS.
Mark Tami
The hon. Gentleman makes that statement as if there was just a Welsh health service and an English health service; it is a cross-border health service, and that is particularly true in constituencies such as mine. Indeed, the Countess of Chester hospital exists only on the basis that it covers Deeside and Chester, so the whole idea that people are somehow fleeing across the border is based on spurious figures and is totally wrong.
David T. C. Davies
I am not using figures that are totally wrong, because since 2012, in my own area, the Aneurin Bevan university health board has been doing everything possible to treat people in Wales and prevent people who were previously being treated in England from continuing to get treatment there. People are aware of moves such as the cancer drugs fund, which has allowed patients in England to enjoy the benefits of life-extending drugs such as Avastin. That is denied to patients in Wales by the Labour-run NHS. I met some of those patients outside No. 10 Downing street last week when they presented a petition to the Prime Minister about the problems being caused to them by the Labour-run Welsh NHS service. They have had to move—to sell up their houses or move into friends’ houses in England—to get access to the higher standards, lower waiting lists, fewer cuts and better ambulance service response times that are being delivered by this coalition Government.
David T. C. Davies
It is actually not the hon. Gentleman’s health service. There is a health service in England and there is a separate health service in Scotland, in Wales and in Northern Ireland, as a result of devolution. He should be aware of that because his party destroyed the truly national UK health service and brought in regional health services. Of course there are hospitals that serve people in Wales on the English side and hospitals on the English side that serve people coming the other way, and that is a good thing. However, many people’s access is now being prevented, and they certainly do not have the automatic right of access that they would enjoy in England.
Owen Smith
I am grateful, because we have to correct these facts. He knows that the volume of people coming from England to Wales has increased over the past few years, whereas the volume of people going from Wales to England has decreased. He also knows that on cancer, for example, the health board he mentions, Aneurin Bevan, performs better than the one over the border, so quite why people would cross the border for worse care, I do not know.
David T. C. Davies
The hon. Gentleman will know that most people on the English side of the border who have been treated in Wales have no choice about that. They are registered with GPs connected with the Aneurin Bevan health board, so they have absolutely no choice in the matter. Many of them have formed action groups of English patients who are treated in Wales and do not want to be because they know they will get a better standard of health care in England. One of those is called Action For Our Health; if the hon. Gentleman has a smartphone, he can look it up. He ought to know about these facts. He talks about cancer. The figures for urgent cases are pretty similar, within a percentage point of each other, but he did not mention diagnostic times, which are significantly worse in Wales than in England, or the cancer drugs fund. It is a pity that he did not want to talk about the NHS in his 40-minute speech.
The hon. Gentleman did not want to talk about education, either. One of the few advantages of the Welsh Assembly is that it has allowed us to make simple comparisons. We can now see the difference between what a Conservative-led coalition Government can offer and what can be delivered by a Labour Government. We know that Wales now has the worst educational rankings in the whole of the United Kingdom after 16 years of Labour domination.
The Labour Government have a terrible record on the economy—that is pretty well known—but they also have a shameful record on public services. I am looking forward to the next general election, so that we can remind people that tax-and-spend Labour cannot be trusted with the economy and cannot be trusted with public services, either. As somebody who used to drive a van—I am glad to say that it was a blue one as well—we will never, ever sneer at hard-working people who want to go out and better themselves, work hard, and pay taxes. We are the true party of working people. At that election, I look forward to fighting alongside the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Wales to make sure that next time round we have a truly Conservative Government who can deliver even better policies for the people of Wales.
Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), who is a very valued member of the Welsh Affairs Committee. When I chaired the Committee, he always thanked me for the impartial way in which I did so. In contrast, I say to the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) in a comradely way, although he may not understand the word, that I look forward to the time when he makes a statement in this House that is impartial and balanced and reflects the unique role of a Chair of a Select Committee.
Dr Francis
No, I will not.
I am not afraid to speak on devolved matters, because they are pertinent to issues we are discussing today. I wish to talk about higher education. In doing so, I declare an interest as honorary chair of the college of arts and humanities in Swansea university. I warmly commend my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) for the way in which he outlined the very difficult circumstances all the people of Wales are suffering as a consequence of the austerity programme. The excellent report by Sheffield Hallam university outlines the severe difficulties that many vulnerable, precarious communities such as Glyncorrwg, Cymmer and Gwynfi in my constituency are now facing, not only as a result of welfare cuts—something the report deals with—but local government cuts being brought forward as a result of UK Government policies.
Despite those difficulties, we have a surviving and prospering steel industry. I am sad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) is not in his place, because I want to pay him a compliment. The steel industry is prospering in Wales because of the way in which we have developed a partnership. That partnership was pioneered in the immediate post-devolution period by my right hon. Friend when he was Secretary of State for Wales and I was privileged to be his special adviser. He devised a system of partnership between the UK Government and the Welsh Government. People worried about the time when there would be different political parties in power, but we believed genuinely that that partnership would survive different political parties being in power in Cardiff Bay and Westminster. We live in hope that the idea of partnership will be revived and developed.
I want to move on to the subject of higher education without losing the theme of partnership and the respect agenda. Higher education is of course a devolved matter, but decisions taken here in Westminster have a great bearing on macro-economic issues relating to visas, the need for synergy between England and Wales, and research funding. I am pleased to say that, come next September, my old university will be located in my constituency of Aberavon. Members may not know this, but a second Swansea university campus is being built in Aberavon. Perhaps Swansea university ought to be renamed Aberavon university. The major success of this development, which we should be trumpeting, is based on the partnership between the Welsh Government —I commend in particular the role of the First Minister, Carwyn Jones—and the university. I am not sure whether the Secretary of State has visited the campus—his predecessor did—but he should do so in order to see the role of the UK Government and Europe. The European Investment Bank said that this was the best project of its kind it has ever funded in terms of the interface between business and higher education. That is a remarkable compliment to the interface between my local authority—Neath Port Talbot county borough council, led by my friend Councillor Alun Thomas—and the university.
Perhaps most importantly, despite all the difficulties, that development is a Welsh Government achievement. Sir Terry Matthews, a Welsh businessman on the world stage, is now the chair of the Swansea-based city region. He is a Swansea university graduate, a man of considerable experience—
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
After the earlier fireworks from Government Members, I welcome the measured tone adopted by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies)—one I hope to continue in my contribution.
I welcome this debate because anyone who tuned in to previous Welsh debates might think we were obsessed by constitutional affairs. There seems to be a belief on both sides of the House that constitutional commissions are on the lips of every voter in our country, but that could not be further from the truth. When we talk about Government policy towards Wales, we must look to the future rather than look back.
The world is smaller than it has ever been, and globalisation has brought challenges that would never have been comprehended or conceived of a generation ago. When the children in Islwyn leave school, they will no longer compete only with their contemporaries from Cardiff, London or Manchester, but with those living in Puni, Bangalore and Peking. Equally, the emerging green technologies will lead to those children going into jobs that we cannot currently conceive of. For Government, this presents a challenge: either we embrace globalisation or we turn our backs and hold back the tide. In real terms, it means that we either continue to waste our time tying ourselves up in constitutional knots, which unfortunately we have done for the last 15 years, or we train our people and equip them with the skills to compete in the global economy.
Let us be straight: despite what many people would have us believe, Wales is not some backwater in which people are on the breadline, queuing up in soup kitchens. This view of Wales, and particularly of the valleys I represent, is a distorted picture that is no way helpful to our self-image or self-confidence.
On the site of the last mine to close in Islwyn—Oakdale—stands General Dynamics, a top 100 contractor company, with nearly £20 billion in sales annually. To those who want to paint the Labour party as anti-business, let me point out that it was the last Labour Government and the stable economic conditions that led General Dynamics to choose Wales as its base. It has recently been awarded the contract for the Scout SV vehicle, securing a further 500 jobs. In July this year, I was pleased to open the new Edge centre, which allows it to share its expertise with small and medium-sized businesses—not just in Wales but across the country. It also has partnerships with universities, which means it can access the unique skills and expertise to be found in those universities.
Just down the road, in Newbridge, is Axiom, a large manufacturer whose profits have grown, and which is opening new markets across the world. In an economy still reliant on the public sector, Just Love Food, a nut-free, allergy-free cake manufacturer also based in Oakfield, has contracts with supermarket chains such as Tesco and Sainsbury. Of course, Islwyn is home, too, to the Crumlin Pot Noodle mine and to Brace’s Bakery, known throughout the country not only for its bread, but for its Welsh cakes. I would make a shameless plug to anybody: if they want to relocate or start a business, Islywn is an excellent place to do it. That should be the message from Wales.
David T. C. Davies
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for outlining this wonderful economic news. Did he consult his boss, the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, before he began, as his colleague seems to be earning the epithet of the Eeyore of Welsh politics for the doom and gloom he expounds all the time?
Chris Evans
I must commend the hon. Gentleman for his command of English. That was one of the best insults I have heard in the Chamber. I always liked Eeyore; he was my favourite character in the Winnie the Pooh stories.
Success can only pay dividends for so long. In the past four years, unfortunately, we have heard Ministers consistently talk down the Welsh economy—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) laughs, but when the NHS is talked down, what is being talked down is not what Members perceive. They are not talking down the Welsh Government, but the consultants, the doctors, the cleaners, the nurses and the other people who work in the NHS. Every one of those is seen as the NHS, so what message does it send out when those people are being talked down?