Port Talbot Steelworks

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 30th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

I have spoken to Tata on that very issue. It has been clear that it would have to import steel to feed Trostre, and it is willing to do that. The timeline for the electric arc furnace is ambitious, but work is ongoing: the groundworks will start very shortly, the application for planning permission should go in in the autumn, and hopefully it will be turned round and dealt with by early next year. It will then take about two years to build the electric arc furnace.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State casually discards 2,800 jobs and is so uninterested in the ongoing effect on the rest of the economy in south Wales that he has not even made an assessment of what the economic impact will be on the south Wales valleys more generally. Can he clear up for us precisely how many other people’s jobs are likely to be affected? Is he aware that, in the last few months, we have had 500 jobs go at UK Windows and Doors in the Rhondda and 100 jobs go in the last 24 hours at Everest 2020 in the Rhondda? As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) says, it does not feel as if the Government have an industrial strategy. Nor does it feel as if they have an anti-poverty strategy. For that matter, they do not have a levelling-up strategy either, do they? Is it not time we had a new Secretary of State for Wales, so that we can get on and have a proper plan for the economy of south Wales?

[David T. C. Davies]

I am sorry to have to say this to the hon. Gentleman, but it is slightly insulting for him to suggest that the tone in which I have set out the answers suggests casual disregard or a lack of interest. I assure him that nothing whatsoever in the Wales Office at the moment is more important than securing the future of Port Talbot. I am sorry, but frankly, while this Government are putting up £500 million to ensure the future of steelmaking in south Wales and demonstrating an interest in making steel, some Opposition Members are more interested in making headlines.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. The UK Government have made sure that pubs and other small hospitality businesses receive a 75% discount on their business rates. In Wales, that policy has been absolutely slashed, meaning that pubs and small businesses pay thousands of pounds more under the Welsh Labour Government. That is an absolute disgrace.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

May I return the Secretary of State to the issue of the Rhondda tunnel? The Chancellor of the Exchequer doled out bits and pieces of money to the constituencies of various Members of Parliament on the Tory at-risk register, but he did not allocate any money to the Rhondda tunnel, despite the Secretary of State having told me personally in the Chamber that we should apply for money from the levelling-up fund. That is all gone, hasn’t it? So where should we now apply for money for the Rhondda tunnel?

[David T. C. Davies]

There have been three rounds of levelling-up funding. The hon. Gentleman should know that there are growth deals across the length and breadth of Wales, covering every single constituency; that there are special projects being backed in areas such as Newport; and that there is an investment zone and a freeport in Port Talbot. Constituencies the length and breadth of Wales have benefited from the many projects that this Government have put forward. I appreciate his concern for that project in his constituency, and I suggest that he might look at shared prosperity fund money in future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. I would support the Horizon programme, but if that is not possible for any reason, such as intransigence in the European Union, I will be making the case to UKRI that Welsh universities can produce some of the best research in this country and should be receiving a higher percentage of the money that is currently available.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

4. What recent discussions he has had with the Welsh Government on the proposed refocusing of investment zone policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 17th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

The successful levelling-up fund bid at the Pontcysyllte aqueduct and the canal world heritage centre will obviously maximise tourism in the area and provide significant long-term economic benefits to my hon. Friend’s constituency. However, it is just one small part of a much larger programme including the £121 million levelling-up fund, the £46 million community renewal fund and £2.5 billion extra money in a record block grant for the Welsh Labour Government, showing that this Government are committed to strengthening the Union, supporting Wales, and ensuring that jobs and prosperity flow to all parts of the United Kingdom.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

One of the problems that we have in the Rhondda is a large number of disused former coal tips, one of which, as the Minister knows, slid down into the river last year. It cost us £14 million to rectify that, and we have another five similar tips in the Rhondda. Can we please have some more money to ensure that we do not have another Aberfan disaster?

[David T. C. Davies]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, as I said earlier, this is a devolved matter. He will also be aware that more than £2.5 billion of extra money has been provided to the Welsh Labour Government. If there are dangerous coal tips in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, I urge him to talk to his colleagues in Welsh Labour, ask them to provide the money and get the problem resolved as quickly as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 14th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

First, let me wish my hon. Friend penblwydd hapus for tomorrow. It is the case, of course, that this virus does not respect boundaries, but the UK Government do. Although I fully accept that some people may have concerns about the slightly different approach the Welsh Government sometimes adopt in this matter, the UK Government respect devolution and the reality of Welsh government, and my role as a Minister is to work constructively with Welsh Government Ministers. At this moment, I do not wish to start playing politics and criticising them.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

What additional funding the Government have provided to communities in Wales affected by Storm Dennis.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 26th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

It is always a pleasure to meet my hon. Friend, who has done a fantastic job in lobbying for better east-west links in his own constituency, and I shall look forward with interest to hearing what he has to say. No doubt those in the Treasury and the Department for Transport will also take a keen in interest in the subject.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Wales took the brunt of the storm last week, and hundreds of people in my constituency lost absolutely everything, because they have had to make a choice between buying food and paying the insurance bill, and they are completely uninsured. Rhondda Cynon Taff Council alone—just one local authority—is going to have a bill of £30 million. What is the point of a United Kingdom if the United Kingdom will not stand by Wales financially when we really need it?

[David T. C. Davies]

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already said, he has had meetings with the First Minister. At the moment, there is no way of knowing exactly what the cost of those floods will be—I know that the chief executive of Monmouthshire was unable to tell me—except that it will run into millions of pounds. We have already moved to ensure that people who receive compensation will not see any impact on their benefits. We absolutely stand with Wales, but as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, it would be impossible for us to go marching into Wales to tell the Welsh Government what to do in what is a devolved area. We stand ready to support the Welsh Government in any way, but they need to come forward with a set of costs and explain exactly how that money will be spent.

Standing Orders (Public Business)

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

Surely it would be extremely simple to work out whether a Bill applied in England, Wales or Scotland, as we already have to do that. Whenever we pass legislation, we have to work out whether it will apply to the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament or not. A simple solution would be to ensure that if Welsh and Scottish MPs vote on it, it applies across the whole United Kingdom.

[Chris Bryant]

All right, I defy the hon. Gentleman to tell me whether clause 44 of the Housing and Planning Bill applies to England, England and Wales, Wales only, England, Wales and Scotland, or England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. He cannot—[Interruption.] I will give him some time.

Government Policies (Wales)

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

[David T. C. Davies]

rose—

[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.

[Chris Bryant]

It has gone up.

[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.

Wales Bill

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

Obviously, I am speaking as an individual Back Bencher; it was hard to get any agreement on certain of these issues from the Welsh Affairs Committee. Let me make it clear that I am not speaking for anyone in the Conservative party either—I am entirely on my own on this one, and probably always will be.

I would like to see one improvement that can be made to this Bill. If we consider the powers the Welsh Assembly has already been given, we can see that it has not done terribly well. We have had the sight of the Welsh Minister for Education and Skills apologising, on Boxing day, I believe it was, for the lamentable state of education. As someone who has been through the state school system there, and who has three children in that system, I feel that very strongly. Nor have we seen a good performance from our national health service. Large numbers of people in cross-border areas such as Monmouthshire are desperate to be treated by the coalition Government-run NHS in England. We have even had the spectacle of a Labour Member of Parliament being banned from going before the Health and Social Care Committee in the Welsh Assembly because she was likely to tell a few home truths that members of that Committee did not want to hear. There has thus been a failure even to carry out the proper scrutiny role.

What I would like to see from this Bill is the opportunity not to take powers away from the Welsh Assembly, but to recognise that where there are problems, individuals ought to be given the choice. Somebody in Wales who is ill and wishes to be treated in England should have the right to access the NHS in England, with the cost of treatment being deducted from the block grant. Similarly, if someone in England was happy to wait twice as long as they needed to and be treated in Wales, they could be treated in Wales, with the cost of their treatment being added to the block grant. That would be an excellent way for us to maintain the commitment to devolution while allowing everyone to enjoy the benefits of a national health service.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman thinks it would be much better to move to a federal system. My problem is that that denies the history of all the different parts of the United Kingdom: the whole of Ireland was a kingdom until the partition and so on; Scotland had a completely different legal system even when the Crowns were joined together; and Wales never had a separate legal situation. Asymmetric devolution is actually the most sensible way of progressing.

[David T. C. Davies]

That is a reasonable intervention from the hon. Gentleman. I respond simply by saying that a federal approach is not a perfect solution, but it is probably the least worst solution, and it is better than waking up in 20 years and finding that we have fully fledged independence. Wales has had a slightly separate legal system; I believe that Henry VIII allowed Wales a measure of independence, except for Monmouthshire, which was brought into the Oxford assizes—we do not need to go into that now.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between David T C Davies and Chris Bryant

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, that is true because of the structure we have in this country. Sometimes Members talk of checks and balances, which is really an import from the American system where the constitution was expressly written so as to have checks and balances. Incidentally, one of those checks and balances in the American system was that each state should have two Senators regardless of the number of people living in it. For instance, Rhode Island is tiny compared with California, which is larger economically, politically and in every other sense than a large number of countries in the world, but the two states only get two Senators in the Senate. In the British system, we do not have quite the same checks and balances—particularly if the House of Lords is dominated by a coalition in which two parties manage effectively to have control of both Houses, of the Executive and of the legislature.

I do praise some of the things that the Government have done since they took office, such as setting up the Backbench Business Committee. I hope that the whole of business could be handed over to a business committee, because I think that the role of the legislature needs to be reinforced so that the Executive is held better to account.

Various arguments have been advanced for cutting the number of MPs from 650 to 600, one of which makes international comparisons. I have heard the Deputy Prime Minister use that argument several times but it is completely fallacious. It is wrong to compare the British Parliament with the Spanish Parliament, for example, because the vast majority of Spain’s Ministers do not sit in the Spanish Parliament. The Executive are not created out of the Parliament. Similarly, in other countries—the United States being the most obvious example—the Executive do not spring from the legislature, so there are not 95 people who automatically have a second job as a Minister or a Parliamentary Private Secretary. That comparison is therefore inappropriate.

If we are to make any kind of comparison, we must bear in mind differences in the level of devolution or federalisation from one country to another. Comparing the United Kingdom with Germany, for example, is inappropriate because the Länder has far more significant powers than any local authority in England and more powers than the Welsh Assembly.

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

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the checks is for the Government to allow ample time for all clauses in a Bill to be discussed? They have clearly done that on this occasion, but we will not get to relevant Welsh issues because he has spent the past half hour speaking.

[Chris Bryant]

Bearing in mind what the hon. Gentleman used to say when he was in opposition, I should have thought that he would support the scrutiny of legislation—and one has to talk to scrutinise legislation. No, we have not had enough time to scrutinise the Bill because there are four clauses and some schedules on which we have not had any debate at all. In addition, the Government have tabled 100 pages of amendments that we are going to debate on Monday, which means that we will not be able to debate issues such as the one that he is interested in—cutting the number of Ministers. I shall not take any lectures from him on how long one should speak in the House or on how much scrutiny there should be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

No. I think that that is a slightly facetious point, but we should have a day to debate a clause that will reduce the number of Members of Parliament from 650 to 600, and rejig the boundaries in a way completely different from anything in the past, without any public consultation, without the proposal appearing in any public manifesto, and without any consultation across the parties. None the less, the hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely fair point: some clauses do not need a whole day’s debate.

[David T. C. Davies]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, although I do not want to extend the debate for too long. He must know perfectly well that two manifestos said that the number of MPs would be reduced and that the reduction now proposed is a much smaller one, which should be something that he could support.

[Chris Bryant]

No. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present at the beginning of my comments—he was doubtless opposing the Government’s measures on S4C—but as I now apparently have to rehearse the argument for him, I can tell him that I was making the point that the number has been arrived at for entirely partisan reasons. It is not the number that was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, nor the one that was in the Conservative manifesto.

[David T. C. Davies]

It is higher.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, it is higher than both those figures, because it manages to reach a level that hits the number of Labour seats but not the number of Liberal Democrat seats. That is why the number has been chosen, and that is why I oppose it.