North Wales Economy

Elfyn Llwyd Excerpts

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane]

Nevertheless, I back my hon. Friend on that issue. The vision of an “energy island”—the term he created—that he wants for his constituency depends on Sheffield Forgemasters making those critical engineering components for the nuclear plant.

Under Labour, we have seen a massive investment in higher and further education. North Wales has a new university in Wrexham, Glyndwr university, which is acquiring top-class research facilities, such as the OpTIC—Opto-electronics Technology and Incubation Centre—research facility in my constituency. It is forging links with the private sector; it is doing everything that a 21st century university should do.

It is not only the HE sector that is important; FE in north Wales has made great gains. In my constituency, we have colleges in Denbigh and Rhyl and for the first time in their history there are colleges in Abergele and Llanrwst. They are community colleges, rooted in their local communities and responding to the needs of those communities for skills. Those colleges are delivering. Rhyl college is an award-winning institution. Llandrillo college has 25,000 students and is one of the best run colleges in the whole country.

However, the first act of the Con-Dem Government when they came in was to reduce the number of university places by 10,000, with more reductions likely in the autumn. How will the FE and HE sectors in north Wales, indeed in the whole of the UK, cope with cuts in funding of between 25% and 30%? How will we maintain the momentum in north Wales that I have described if those cuts are made? Will the Minister guarantee that the Government will make an analysis of the economic impact on local and national economies of those cuts before they are made? A cut of £1 in the FE or HE sectors may seem sensible, but it could lead to further cuts of £2, £3 or £4 if it means a reduction in training and research.

North Wales has a big agricultural industry. The Tories have promised an attack on red tape and bureaucracy. Before they make that attack, may I ask them to learn the lessons of history for the agricultural sector—the lessons of their last period in government? During that period, there was Alar in the apple industry, anthrax in the pig industry, botulism in the food processing industry, listeria in the dairy industry, salmonella in the poultry industry and E. coli in the meat industry, and who can forget that there was BSE in the beef industry? Many of those diseases came about because of a reduction in food and safety standards in specific industries. Will the Minister guarantee that there will be no assault on standards in the agricultural and food processing industries, which would damage the economy of north Wales?

I turn now to an issue that I hope is dear to the Minister’s heart—seaside towns. The second and third biggest towns in north Wales are Rhyl and Colwyn Bay, traditional seaside towns that have suffered the same plight as many British seaside towns during a long, 40-year, period. The cause of the poverty in towns such as Rhyl and Colwyn Bay is the conversion of hundreds of former hotels and guest houses into houses in multiple occupation. Slum landlords have become millionaires by making money out of misery. The Tories refused to introduce mandatory licensing of those premises. Labour introduced it in 2004 and north Wales councils are only now fully implementing it. I believe that the Con-Dems are reviewing the HMO licensing scheme. Will the Minister guarantee that HMO licensing legislation will not be watered down?

Colwyn Bay and Rhyl, along with Prestatyn and other north Wales coastal towns, have benefited from co-operation between the national central Government and the Labour-led Welsh Assembly Government. In the whole UK, the WAG are leading the way on seaside regeneration by adopting a strategic and thematic approach, not in just one seaside town but in five or six seaside towns along the north Wales coast, stretching from Prestatyn to Colwyn Bay. Welsh colleges, the local authorities, the Department for Work and Pensions, voluntary organisations, the private sector and the public sector are all playing their part in that regeneration. Will the Minister guarantee that he will positively engage with the WAG on seaside town and town centre regeneration?

It is not only seaside towns that need regenerating. When the Labour Government came to power in 1997, they told the national lottery to stop giving money to the Churchill family—£12 million for the Churchill diaries—and to the playing fields of Eton, which had received £5 million. They told the national lottery to vire such heritage money to towns that had architectural merit and deprivation, so towns in north Wales, such as Holywell, Rhyl, Denbigh, Llanrwst and, I think, Holyhead, have benefited because of those instructions.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

And Dolgellau.

[Chris Ruane]

Dolgellau is another one; I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention.

So we have done well. In my constituency, Denbigh received £10 million of funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund under Labour. Will the Minister guarantee that limited lottery funding will be vired towards the areas with most need?

The key to the success of seaside towns and other towns is the back to work initiative, including programmes such as the city strategy, the future jobs fund and fit for work. We have only two city strategies in Wales. One is for Rhyl—Gareth Matthews from what was then Working Links and I got it for the town in 2007—and the other is for the heads of the valleys area. I think the town of Rhyl has the best practice in the whole UK. Rhyl is leading the way. Its town-based, small area, co-operative, collegiate approach across the private, public and voluntary sectors resulted in an almost 20% drop in the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance in the Vale of Clwyd between January and May 2010. The number fell from 2,242 to 1,836. That is 406 people back to work in my constituency in the past five months, the best result in north Wales.

The future jobs fund played an important part in those results. The Rhyl city strategy hopes to put 340 young people back in work by September this year; 190 are already back in work. The strategy has achieved 100% of its targets to date. Young people have been given a wage, training and a reason to get up in the morning. Their confidence has been restored, their CVs enhanced and their job prospects maximised, but all that is under threat. One of the first acts of the Con-Dem coalition was to axe the future jobs fund.

[Mr Llwyd]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. I appreciate fully what he is saying about the back to work initiative. Is it not strange that the Government want to cut back on social welfare payments and, at the same time, on back to work initiatives? Where are we going in terms of social justice?

[Chris Ruane]

It is déjà vu all over again. It is back to the future—back to the 1980s, when whole communities were parked by the Conservative Government, who said, “Stay on the dole. Bring your kids up on the dole, and your grandkids as well.” We are only just beginning to unwind 18 years of misrule under the last Tory Government.

We have the facts and figures to prove that the policies we have pursued are working in north Wales. More than 2,000 people went back to work between January and May this year. Our policies are working. We want a continuation of the future jobs fund. The cuts were implemented without even an assessment of whether the programme was successful. Will the Minister guarantee that he will monitor youth employment in north Wales over the next 18 months and that if it starts to rise, he will press for the reintroduction of the future jobs fund? What assessment has he personally made of the effectiveness of the future jobs fund, which has put young people in his constituency back to work?

The previous Tory Administration were riven with factionalism over Europe. We all know what the Tory Prime Minister, John Major, called certain troublesome MPs, so I will not repeat it. Was internal conflict in the Tory party the reason why the Tories failed to engage positively with Europe during the 1980s and 1990s? When they were closing the pits and the steelworks and letting seaside towns rot, they did not even bid for objective 1 funding for Wales. In 1997, when the Labour Government came in, they applied for objective 1 funding, provided match funding and implemented the scheme. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain). At the behest of the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), Betty Williams, Gareth Thomas and me, he included Denbighshire and Conwy in the scheme. As a result of that brave decision, which was taken against civil servants’ advice, Denbighshire county council received £124 million in public and private objective 1 funding over a seven-year period. I presume that Conwy received the same.

We have made being in Europe a success for Wales. Labour provided the match funding. Will the Minister assure me and the people of north Wales that during the Con-Dem cutbacks, match funding and convergence funding—the follow-on funding for objective 1—will not be cut back and will be included in the Welsh block? It makes economic sense. For every £1 given by the UK Government, we can draw down £2 or £3 from Europe. North Wales cannot afford cutbacks on that scale.

Will the Minister inform the House why the Tories did not bid for objective 1 funding for parts of Wales earlier, when they closed Shotton steelworks and the pits? Ireland did so and turned its economy into the Celtic tiger. Could Wales have done so in the early ’90s? Will he guarantee that blind prejudice towards Europe will not interfere with negotiations on the next phase of EU funding—tail-off funding, which should come at the end of convergence funding?

Energy, particularly renewable energy, has been a success for Labour in north Wales. Sharp has located its biggest solar panel factory in Europe in Wrexham. The biggest solar panel in the UK is at the Technium OpTIC in my constituency. The Technium OpTIC has just pioneered photovoltaic paint and is working on fission power. We will have the largest array of offshore wind turbines in the world when the Gwynt y Môr wind farm is completed, despite the fact that the leader of the Conservative party has referred to north Wales turbines as “giant bird blenders”. Will the Minister guarantee to give up his personal opposition to the Gwynt y Môr wind farm and promote wind energy in Wales?

Non-renewable as well as renewable energy companies operate in Wales, including BHP Billiton, which is based in Northop, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn. We also have E.ON, which has a gas-powered power station in Connah’s Quay. North Wales has so much energy that we shall be exporting it.