Elfyn Llwyd
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Welsh Affairs
Elfyn Llwyd Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Welsh affairs.
It is almost five years since I was elected Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire. I wish to take this opportunity to say what a huge pleasure it has been for me to serve the constituency in which I have always lived. It is a great honour for me to open this debate today.
I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allowing a St David’s day debate, even if it is four days late. I hope our patron saint will forgive us for that. The normal business schedule of the House, which usually timetables such debates on Thursdays, means that we can hit the right date only once every seven years.
The general nature of this debate allows us to speak about a wide range of issues that impact Wales, and I am sure that Members will speak about many different things. I wish to begin by making a few introductory comments before turning briefly to the economic well-being of rural Wales. I shall end with some initial thoughts on the Command Paper, which was issued by the Secretary of State last week in response to the Silk commission recommendations.
In preparation for this debate, I have researched a little of the history of St David. It seems that he travelled widely before settling down in Pembrokeshire, which is one of the most beautiful parts of Britain. If he had been alive during the eight years that I represented mid and west Wales as an Assembly Member, he would have been one of my constituents, so I feel a special connection with him.
Glyn Davies
Indeed. St David did many wonderful and awe-inspiring things in his long life, including preaching with such passion and fervour at Llanddewi Brefi that the earth rose up around him to form a hill. The most amusing reflection on that stunning achievement was made by the late great Dr John Davies, who said that he could not
“conceive of a miracle more superfluous than the creation of a new hill at Llanddewi Brefi.”
That is a good reflection on Dr John Davies as well as on St David. But It was an impressive trick none the less.
Holding a Welsh affairs debate on or near St David’s day is not an old tradition of this House. I discovered that while I was reading through the speeches of those who had previously opened what is now the annual Welsh debate. I was hoping that one of my great political heroes, David Lloyd George, had opened a Welsh debate at some stage so that I could say I was following in the great man’s footsteps. However, the first Welsh debate was not held until 1944 by which time the great man had retired from the House. None the less, the first Welsh debate was opened by a Lloyd George—it was Dame Megan Lloyd George, the great man’s daughter, who represented Ynys Môn before the rise to power of Cledwyn Hughes and, indeed, that of the current excellent Member of Parliament for Ynys Môn.
That leads me to the second part of my speech, which is the economic temperature of mid-Wales, specifically of my constituency of Montgomeryshire. Reading Dame Megan Lloyd George's speech in 1944, it struck me how little has changed in 70 years. In 1944, Dame Megan spoke of a crisis in the dairy industry, a focus on south Wales at the expense of other parts of Wales, and an almost total absence of concern for mid-Wales. I could so easily have spoken about those same issues today.
One memorable line from Lady Megan’s speech caught my eye. Sometimes I am not sure whether some of our colleagues representing English constituencies fully understand how we Welsh function. Lady Megan understood that very well. She said:
“No Englishman can understand the Welsh. However much he may try, and however sympathetic he may feel, he cannot get inside the skin and bones of a Welshman unless he be born again.”—[Official Report, 17 October 1944; Vol. 403, c. 2237.]
I hope that that explains some of the ways in which we Welsh behave in this House.
In 1944, my constituency of Montgomeryshire was in serious long-term decline. The population had dropped from more than 50,000 to 36,000 and was falling like a stone. There were very few employment opportunities for ambitious young people, who were forced to leave the area in search of work. Regional policy had not been yet introduced to rural Wales. It was 20 years later that such policies were introduced by a Labour Government and they continued under successive Conservative Secretaries of State.
Montgomeryshire has now been transformed. Today it is a genuine success story, with thriving businesses and the lowest unemployment in Wales: only around 500 people are registered as unemployed. The population of Montgomeryshire is now 63,000 and rising. It is not just that new businesses have moved in, but that much of the area has been built up by local entrepreneurs. Coincidentally, I visited some entrepreneurs last Friday. Members may have seen the yellow Alun T. Jones lorries around Wales. I knew Alun when we were teenagers. He has grown to be the Eddie Stobart of Wales, employing very large numbers of people. I then went to the impressive mid-Wales airport, which was established by the late Bob Jones who was tragically killed in an air accident, and is now run by his wife Linda. It is entirely a private sector company. Again, I knew Bob when we were teenagers.
I then went to a water bottling plant, which is run by Paul Delves in Churchstoke, where another 70 are employed. He is another local lad who has done well, and I could list dozens more. Over the past five years, the level of confidence in Montgomeryshire business has grown hugely, built on the stability and sound economic policies of the Conservative Government. Of course there is more to do. We want to restore the economy to where we want it to be, but none of the businesses wants to risk a return to more public spending and more public debt.
Finally, I wish to mention the Command Paper, which was published by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State last week. It outlines a St David's day package of changes to the devolution settlement between the UK Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales. Its publication was a very significant constitutional event for Wales, and represented a major step forward in the process of Welsh devolution. It is too early for any of us to have made a full assessment of the detail of the package, which will have to await the Wales Bill in the next Parliament.
At this stage, there are just four issues I wish to mention. First, I greatly welcome what I consider to be the most important proposal in the Command Paper, which is the move to a reserved powers model of Welsh devolution. It is sensible that everything should be considered devolved, unless it is specifically reserved to Westminster. Soon after I was elected to the National Assembly for Wales in 1999, I realised that the reserved powers model was needed to give clarity and greater stability to the devolution settlement. There may well continue to be occasions when a Supreme Court is needed to establish a competence, but under a reserved powers model it would be far less likely. That is the most important change included in the St David's day package, and I hope that we can deliver it in the next Parliament.
The second important issue is the devolution of income tax powers, and here I fear I take a very different view from many other MPs, particularly those on the Labour Benches. I see the proposals as a complete package, which includes the responsibility of levying a significant proportion of income tax in Wales. I have spoken on that issue several times before in this House. I feel so strongly about it that I do not believe we should devolve one iota more power to the Welsh Government until income tax powers are devolved. I accept that any new Wales Bill will have in it a commitment to a referendum on the issue before it becomes a reality, but for the life of me I cannot understand why.
If returned as a Member of Parliament on 8 May, I shall table an amendment to any future Wales Bill to remove the need for a referendum, and I expect to be supported by Members of every party in this House except Labour, which is desperate to avoid any fiscal accountability to the people of Wales. The Welsh Government simply want to carry on claiming credit for what voters like and blaming Westminster for what the voters do not like, avoiding any tough decisions and preferring comfortable impotence to facing up to the tough decisions that Governments must take. How can it be thought right to refer to the Welsh Assembly as a Welsh Parliament, as we all want, while clinging to a position that means it is in reality not a great deal more than a spending body?
Another proposal I greatly welcome is the commitment to a Barnett floor. We know that Wales has been underfunded through public spending granted through the block grant for decades, but changes to public spending by the coalition Government mean that underfunding has fallen to a virtually insignificant level. The Secretary of State has pulled off a historic victory for Wales by securing agreement to retain the current level of comparative spending as a floor below which UK Government support to Wales via the block grant will not fall no matter what changes to public spending are made in future. It is a huge win for Wales, and every party in this House should welcome it.
When a devolution of income tax powers was first proposed, the First Minister of Wales said that should not happen until the lockstep was removed. It has been removed. Then there was the Barnett deficit, but that has been removed as well. Now it is something else, and then it will be something else again. The truth is that Welsh Labour hates the thought of being financially accountable to the people of Wales.
Glyn Davies
The right hon. Gentleman is a man for whom I have huge respect as a Member of this House. He is retiring, so may I wish him well in the future and say that he has made a wonderful contribution to this House?
This is an area on which I am a bit unsure. To my mind, the win we have tackles that problem. We have virtually eliminated the deficit and if that becomes the Barnett floor, funding can rise but cannot fall below it. That is an absolutely fantastic win, and I would be surprised if the Secretary of State did not go in to a little more detail about it in his speech.
Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)
I remind the House that this used to be called the St David’s day debate. This is not St David’s day, but the feast day of St Caron of Tregaron, a third century Cardiganshire saint. I hope that we can remember him during the course of the day. I do not know whether this will be my last speech in this Chamber, but it might be. It will certainly be my last speech in a Welsh day debate.
The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) mentioned the first time that the House met to consider Welsh affairs in this format in 1944. I cannot remember that, as old as I am, nor can I remember Lady Megan Lloyd George in the House, although I remember her. However, I remember my first contribution to a debate on Welsh affairs 27 years ago, from the Opposition Benches. Peter Walker was the Secretary of State and the late Alan Williams, whose life we have commemorated and celebrated this week, was the shadow Secretary of State. When I looked at the speeches that I and others made on that occasion, I could see that things have not changed all that much. We had a Conservative Government with Mrs Thatcher as the Prime Minister and the burning issue was the poll tax. Today, of course, we have the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) as Prime Minister and in the valleys of south Wales and elsewhere we have the bedroom tax as the poll tax mark 2, something that will undoubtedly be a major issue in the weeks and months ahead and in the general election.
I was interested in the points that the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire made about accountability and fairness and about the need not to blame Westminster all the time for the ills that confront Wales. Let us remember that when we were debating Welsh matters 27 years ago, there was no Welsh Assembly. There was a Welsh Office and the Secretary of State was a Member of the British Cabinet. In 1987, the amount of money being taken away from Welsh local authorities was significant, and that has not changed either. Many local authorities in Wales are setting their budgets this week. Mine in Torfaen set its budget yesterday; the very able Councillor Anthony Hunt presented the budget to the local authority. He said that he had to see a reduction of £6 million this year from my local authority’s budget on top of £6 million last year and probably another £6 million next year. The Government have reduced the amount of money given to the Welsh Government, so £1.5 billion has been cut from the Welsh budget. Cuts are being pushed from one tier of government to another, so ultimately the local council has to implement the decisions that result from that. Those cuts have come indirectly from Whitehall to Cardiff, whereas 27 years ago it was a more direct route, but the effect is exactly the same. Local authorities today and then face enormous difficulties in dealing with them.
I want to turn the attention of the House to the nature of Welsh matters in this Parliament after the general election of 7 May. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire did well to go to the Backbench Business Committee and secure this important debate, but I regret that they had to. It is not as well attended as it would normally be, for obvious reasons; we face a general election in some weeks time. The Welsh day debate was set up in 1944 to ensure that there was a forum here in the House of Commons not just for Welsh MPs to discuss here in Westminster what matters in Wales, but for every Member who wished to do so take part.
Mr Llwyd
I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman says. He will recall that a couple of years ago he and I applied for such a debate and were eventually successful. The point that he makes is correct. Everyone should be able to participate in the debate, not just Welsh Members. It is important that that should be so.
Paul Murphy
As an aside, I add my tribute to my right hon. Friend. He is leaving, like me. We have been good friends for a long time, and we have attended these debates in the House over many years. It is important that we retain the Welsh day debate, the Welsh Grand Committee and the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, chaired very ably by my neighbour the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies). It is important that we retain the position of Secretary of State for Wales, to be held either by my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) or by the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), the current Secretary of State, after the election. I have nothing against the current Secretary of State—he is a fine man—but I hope that the positions are reversed, for obvious reasons.
If we do not ensure that the institutions affecting Wales are retained here in the United Kingdom Parliament, we will affect the way in which our country, by which I mean the United Kingdom, goes forward constitutionally in the decades ahead. We have already seen an enormous change in the political landscape, not simply because we have had devolution for 15 years or so in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The changes have been beneficial to the people of Wales and undoubtedly, as a consequence of the Command Paper, that will continue. However, we face even greater seismic change.
The Scottish referendum was won—ish—by we who opposed separation for Scotland, but in a sense it was a pyrrhic victory. I do not know what is going to happen—obviously, no one does—after 7 May, but an earthquake may well occur in Scotland if the Scottish National party gains the number of seats that pollsters and Lord Ashcroft have predicted only today. They suggest that almost every seat in Scotland will be represented by the SNP. I do not think that that will be the case—I certainly hope that it is not—but clearly a big change is happening. We have to reflect on all the changes and how they impact on this place.
I think that the Prime Minister made a fundamental mistake the day after the referendum by referring to the issue of English votes and English laws. I am not saying that there is not an issue; the so-called West Lothian question has been an issue for every year that I have been in this place. It has to be resolved, but in a consensual manner. The impression that was given in Scotland, and indeed beyond, the day after the result of the referendum was, “Okay, you voted to stay in the United Kingdom, and now we are going to take away the powers of Scottish Members of Parliament.” That was a grave error, not in terms of the constitutional question—we have to resolve that one way or the other—but presentationally. It meant that those of us who wanted the Union to continue, especially in Scotland, were put in a difficult position. We were told that, despite the so-called victory for those who wanted the Union, they would have to be denigrated as Members of this House.
So when everyone except a few of us is returned to this House of Commons from Wales, we will have to reflect seriously on the responsibility and role of Welsh Members of Parliament as Members of a United Kingdom Parliament. I am a British Member of the United Kingdom Parliament who happens to represent a Welsh constituency. Everything that I do can be done by any other Member, whether they represent Scotland, Northern Ireland or England. That in my view should be the case. We may be able to change the methods by which the House of Commons works in order to deal with the West Lothian question, but essentially we are all the same in this place.
I have done a bit of research on other countries, and I can find no country in Europe or beyond that makes a distinction between Members of the federal Parliaments and their national Parliaments in what they can or cannot do. Therefore, although many English Members are aggrieved, their grievance cannot go to the extent that it undermines the fundamental nature of the United Kingdom and this Parliament. It would be a grave mistake if we went down that particular line.
I have had the great privilege of doing the job of Secretary of State for Wales on two occasions under two Prime Ministers, and I believe that there is a job to be done by whoever holds that office, from whatever party. I am not speaking in a partisan way. In fact, those hon. Members who have known me for some years will realise that that is not my style. Often in the House most of us agree on most things—not always; that is the nature of politics, and nor should it be.
On this matter we should agree. If we did away with the territorial Secretaries of State, the link between the devolved countries and Westminster and Whitehall would disappear. The role of the Wales Secretary is to represent Wales in the Cabinet and to represent the Government in Wales. We would be foolish to do away with that vital link between two Governments and two Parliaments. I can quote dozens of occasions when journalists here in London who do not understand the nature of devolution said, “Let’s put them all together. Let’s do away with the Secretaries of State.” Indeed, many Members of this House believed in that, too, not understanding the very nature of the job. No one is going to take much notice of me, but I make a plea to whoever becomes the Government and the Prime Minister to retain the territorial Secretaries of State. If we do not, it will be another nail in the coffin of the Union, which is so important for all of us as Members of this British Parliament.
I have had the great privilege of representing my constituency for nearly three decades. I have represented the good people of the eastern valley of Gwent. I hope that whoever succeeds me will have the same duties, responsibilities, privileges and rights. I have been the Member for Torfaen, but also a Member of Parliament of this United Kingdom like any other Member. If we do not maintain that, not only the House but our Union will be in danger.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I congratulate the hon. Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), who were instrumental in bringing this debate to the Floor of the House, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting permission for it.
Ultimately, however, I believe that it is a great shame, as was said by the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), that the Government have not ensured there is always a St David’s day debate in the calendar. That is especially true this year, given the St David’s day announcement last week, to which I shall turn later. It is right and proper that the Government Command Paper should be debated on the Floor of the House, as it is that Welsh Members should get to debate Welsh matters on or as near as possible to St David’s day each year. It is to the Government’s great shame that such debates have not been secured. By making this plea, I once more hope that somebody somewhere will listen and we can revert to the ordinary processes that used to take place.
I shall talk about the Command Paper, the so-called St David’s day agreement, in greater detail in a moment. Suffice it to say at this stage that the proposals will still leave Welsh devolution far behind that in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The announcement on funding public services still leaves Wales considerably worse off, to the tune of about £1.2 billion per annum, compared with Scotland.
If I may, I will say a brief word about the discussions that led up to the Command Paper. It is almost an open secret that the main obstruction to any meaningful progress during the discussions was, unfortunately, the London Labour leadership, which it seems to me was often at loggerheads with its Cardiff Bay counterpart. In the end, it is the Westminster wing of the Labour party that has the final say over its colleagues in Cardiff, a point which the electorate will do well to heed on 7 May.
Owen Smith
I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his long and excellent service in this House. He sat alongside me in several of the meetings, so he knows that what he has just said is simply not consonant with the facts. Given that the Welsh Labour Government and I, on behalf of the Labour party, have spoken about going further than the current Government on the devolution of the Work programme and policing, what elements of the programme is he suggesting I have blocked?
Mr Llwyd
Let me finish. If the hon. Gentleman had read the evidence to the Silk commission, he would have seen that four of the forces in Wales were in favour of it, and only one police and crime commissioner—Mr Salmon—said that he was not. All the evidence was in favour and the Silk commission strongly suggested it, but the hon. Gentleman vetoed it.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again to let me put the record straight. I hesitate to suggest that he is in any way misinforming the House, but that is not my recollection of the conversations we were involved in. My recollection is that we had misgivings about the immediate devolution of criminal justice, but the fact that I announced a fortnight ago at the Welsh Labour conference that we would devolve aspects of policing to Wales—neighbourhood policing and an all-Wales policing plan—gives the lie to what he has just said.
Mr Llwyd
No, it does not. I saw the hon. Gentleman sitting next to the First Minister who, while we discussed policing, put his head in his hands when he understood that devolution had been vetoed. We discussed that then, and I made a point of referring to what I have just said in the hon. Gentleman’s presence. It is all very well for him to throw in a sprat later on—some minuscule part of policing—just to salve his conscience and get back on speaking terms with the First Minister, but that is not good enough for me, and it is not good enough for anybody else in the Chamber. I have made the point.
Owen Smith
For the third time, and for the avoidance of doubt, the right hon. Gentleman is not representing matters accurately in the House. I am clear that, and the leader of the Labour party announced at our party conference that, we would be devolving an all-Wales policing plan, including statutory power over neighbourhood policing and the structures of policing, to the Welsh Government. That is the fact, and he cannot gainsay it.
Mr Llwyd
Right. Well, I will not go further on that, but the Secretary of State is in the Chamber and he will no doubt make some comments in due course. He was party to those discussions so perhaps his recollection will be useful, to see whether he agrees with me or with the hon. Gentleman. In any event, I will move on.
The Command Paper is not an agreement in the full sense. Obviously, we have all been discussing for some months what should or should not be included in it, and there is a promise to legislate after the election. The proposals would still leave Welsh devolution far behind that in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and despite what the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire said, the announcement of the Barnett floor leaves Wales worse off compared with Scotland. We are unable to celebrate proposals that amount to a row-back on a compromise that already existed in the Silk commission.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
I am grateful for the incredibly constructive and principle-led way that the right hon. Gentleman engaged in our discussions in the run-up to the St David’s day announcement. He says that the package is not as advanced or radical as he interprets the Scottish package to be, but does he genuinely believe that the people of Wales, given the centre of gravity of Welsh public opinion, want a devolution settlement that is the same as Scotland’s?
Mr Llwyd
I would argue yes, because we need to get away from this pattern of asymmetrical devolution, which is complicated, time-consuming and ends up in references to the Supreme Court and so on. I know the reserved powers model will assist there. Yes, I do believe that. The major problem—I say this quite sincerely—is that we are not hitting on a fair funding formula for the future. The right hon. Gentleman knows that we discussed that issue in Committee and that the Barnett floor is of assistance. He also knows, as I have said before, that it is not the be-all and end-all or the ultimate answer to fair funding for Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Alun Cairns)
When talking about a funding settlement, does the right hon. Gentleman acknowledge that Wales’s current settlement falls within the Holtham recommendation at £116 for every £100 spent in England? His recommendation was a figure between £114 and £117.
Mr Llwyd
My point is that the way the Barnett formula operates in Wales is still unfair in comparison with the amount paid out in Scotland—I am sure my friends in the Scottish National party would hit me over the head if they were here, but I will take advantage of the fact that they are not. It is a difference of £1.2 billion per annum, which is a lot of money. I remind Members that the current process on further powers for Wales began about four years ago. The issue of funding was then outside its remit, which I believe was a mistake, whether deliberate or not. Fair funding for Wales has gone for the time being, and it continues to be a major issue that the commission could have settled or commissioned work on for the future.
We entered these discussions in good faith and attempted to be constructive, as the Secretary of State said. I am not jumping up and down and screaming about the result—there are good things in the Command Paper, which I will refer to in a moment. However, we have missed an opportunity to have all the tools further to develop the economy of Wales, and to give the Welsh people further accountability for and control over the way they run their lives, and over the way money is spent for the economic good of Wales.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I would like to take the opportunity to wish the right hon. Gentleman all the best for when he leaves this House and to thank him for his service to it. Is not the logic of the position he outlined on Barnett that, since the unfairness exists between Wales and Scotland, his recommendation would be to take money from the Scottish settlement and redistribute it to Wales, rather than take it from the English settlement to achieve the same thing?
Mr Llwyd
No, it is not. The argument I am making is that we should look for a fair funding formula that will stand the test of time, so that we do not have to keep coming back and forth discussing this issue all the time. I do not want to take money from any other constituent part of the UK. It is certainly not my remit to do that, and I would not even argue for it. We have missed an opportunity to address this issue.
The commission recommended a package of powers, which was agreed as a compromise by all four parties in Wales. As I have said, we in Plaid Cymru wanted to see more powers devolved, but we agreed on the commission’s recommendations as a compromise package providing a way forward. As we remember, the Government initially sought to water down the recommendations through their publication of the Wales Bill by adding a lockstep to income tax powers and omitting to devolve short-haul air passenger duty. To the credit of my Plaid Cymru colleagues—and, I would add, of various other Back-Bench Members of all parties—the Government were forced to change tack and ensure that many of the blocks and caveats that limited the powers on offer were ultimately removed from the Bill. Unfortunately, APD is still omitted from the Command Paper, despite its appearance in the original package.
We warned all along that the powers on offer to Wales from the Government would probably be superseded by the events of the Scottish independence referendum. We were proved right. As the campaign was hotting up and the Government were falling over themselves to offer greater powers to Scotland, it immediately became apparent that Wales would be left behind. It was, I am afraid, the Westminster parties that promised devo-max and home rule in something of a blind panic when they thought they might lose the referendum, yet they have subsequently failed truly to deliver what they promised. The people of Scotland will doubtless reflect on that in May—indeed, they already are, if the opinion polls are to be believed.
I note with interest what is happening with the Government’s plans to create a so-called northern powerhouse in England. Significant fiscal powers are set to be devolved to Manchester—dubbed Devo Manc. In that light, the third-rate devolution being offered to Wales is more of a “devo manky”, in a stale and worthless sense, rather than a dynamic and lasting solution to the hunger for greater powers that exists in Wales.
We remain sceptical of the need for a referendum on the technical matter of devolving such a small share of income tax powers. The principle of fiscal devolution has been conceded with the devolution of the minor taxes. We maintain that any referendum should be on a much wider remit of powers or for a much greater share of income tax. Ideally, the parties will include powers for devolution in their manifestos and the next Government will proceed to devolve on that basis.
Some of the things included in the Command Paper are most welcome, particularly control over fracking, devolving port development, increasing power over energy production and the significant step of implementing a reserved powers model. There are several other useful aspects, too, so it would be silly of me to suggest that this was not a useful step forward. Overall, however, it falls short of the powers that I believe could help us to strengthen our communities in Wales. It goes nowhere near getting the funding settlement that I have said Wales is owed after decades of disadvantage.
I am dismayed at the fact that policing is not devolved, given what the Silk commission said about it and the overwhelmingly strong evidence in favour of doing so. Furthermore, Wales is, I think, the only country in the world with its own legislature but without its own judicial system. Putting that right is long overdue. As the Government and the country wrestle with the question of EVEL—English votes for English laws—it brings that issue into still higher and more urgent profile.
It is a matter of common sense, too. I am returning to practising law, and there is a corpus of Welsh laws already: Welsh criminal law, Welsh family law, Welsh environmental law, constitutional and administrative law. The time has come to look at putting together a judicial system for Wales. I am heartened that barristers of all political opinions and none who practise in Cardiff—there are a couple of hundred of them—have come together to form an organisation to campaign on this issue. I am heartened that they see the need for it. It could deliver economic benefits to Wales, as much as anything else. I do not quite understand why the Silk commission said the Welsh Government should speak with the UK Government in eight years’ time to see whether they can do something then. More than two of those years have already gone, and I would argue that the time is now, rather than sitting down over a cup of tea in another six years’ time.
On the Barnett floor—yes, it is a floor and I understand how it works—the Holtham Commission noted in its report:
“politicians (and voters) may well take the view that maintaining relative funding at current levels is inadequate given Wales’s relative needs.”
The commission conceded that a floor under Barnett would lock in underfunding of £400 million a year, but saw its introduction as a short-term measure only to stop the underfunding getting worse at a time when funding was increasing, and therefore convergence was an immediate concern. I know things have changed and that £400 million is no longer anywhere near a correct figure. It is probably nearer £125 million or £135 million at the moment, because of cuts in expenditure and so on. My point is that a floor does not guarantee that the underfunding will not increase in future years if the relative needs of Wales increase. If, for example, the relative funding needs of Wales increased by 2%, the underfunding would increase up to £700 million a year and the floor would provide no protection. The weak negotiating position of the Labour Welsh Government has been exacerbated by their lack of ambition in setting out clearly their demands for fair funding in Wales.
So where does all this leave the people of Wales? I say way behind. Wales is a nation—something I have never ceased to believe in all my years in this place, having the privilege of representing the people of Meirionydd Nant Conwy and, latterly, Dwyfor Meirionydd. Wales is a nation and it deserves to be treated as an equal. Both I and my Plaid Cymru colleagues demand adequate funding for our country. We should be pushing for greater powers for Wales to stand on its own two feet, and for the economy to be developed in a sympathetic, sensible and sustainable way, and we are dismayed that this has happened.
As I look back over all the years I have had in this House, I remember with great pride working towards securing advances in devolution—first, in the devolution big bang at the end of the 1990s—and in securing the advances in powers for the National Assembly since then. I spoke at an awards ceremony in Cardiff city hall a couple of months ago. I opined then, and I continue to hold that opinion, that 99.9% of Members of Parliament are hard-working decent people who are here to make a difference. I am proud to say that over the years I have made friends in all political parties. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy). He was an excellent Secretary of State for Wales and for Northern Ireland and a man one could always do business with. It was a pleasure to do so.
I am standing down at the election. I hope Liz Saville-Roberts will be returned as my successor. She is of the highest calibre. She will be a hard-working Member of Parliament: a thoroughly decent, honest and hard-working Member to add to the substantial number we have already. I thank the electors of Dwyfor Meirionnydd and Meirionydd Nant Conwy for the honour of representing them over the past 23 years. I will finish by saying that if I could wind back the clock, I would do it all again.
Paul Flynn
Among the improvements we have seen is that there are now Hansard reporters who are proficient in Welsh. We do not have problems now.
I want to talk about the neglect of our history. As a member of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, I am bored stiff with Magna Carta. It was significant because it gave some kind of democracy to about 25 barons and their families and took a bit of power away from the King, but to compare it to cyfraith Hywel Dda is nonsense. After Magna Carta, the English were living in the dark ages compared with 10th-century Wales under cyfraith Hywel Dda.
Paul Flynn
Before I return to that, I want, in relation to Welsh education, to say a word of thanks and tribute to Wyn Roberts. If anyone was responsible for the education in a second language in Wales it was him. I remember him saying in the corridor outside the Chamber, “Rhaid i ni fod yn gadarn! Rhaid i ni wneud safiad!” He was absolutely right. It was very courageous of him, as a Conservative, to have Welsh taught in the constituency of the hon. Member for Monmouth and various other parts of Wales, but it now exists and will continue to do so as a treasure for all the children of Wales, and we can hear it on their lips. If we go back to the time of the Romans in Caerleon, they spoke two languages: intra muros, they spoke Latin; and ultra muros, they spoke in Welsh. We do not hear a lot of children speaking Latin these days, but Welsh is still on the lips of children, which shows something about the vigour and endurance of the language.
Cyfraith Hywel Dda was arranged not by a gang of barons, but by people from each cwmwd or tiny area. Seven people were brought together to pool their wisdom, and what they did was extraordinary. We could have discussed this during the earlier debate on women’s rights.
No country in the whole of Europe was anywhere near as advanced as Wales on women’s rights. There were rights, which were very rare, for divorce. If the marriage had gone on for seven years, the wife was entitled to half the property: she had the sheep, and the husband had the pigs. She also had other rights. If the husband was unfaithful, he had to pay. Punishments throughout Europe at the time involved chopping off various bits of people—heads and arms, and everything else—but Wales was very advanced in that punishments mostly took the form of compensation. To give hon. Members some idea of the compensation, the price of a cat was a penny before its eyes opened, tuppence after its eyes opened and 4p after it had caught a mouse. A husband who was unfaithful to his wife had to pay 5 shillings, and if he did it a second time he had to pay £1, or the equivalent of losing 20 cats—that would dampen the ardour of any would-be adulterer.
Women had better rights than had existed in many countries for 1,000 years. England had 220 laws involving capital punishment in the 18th century, including for chopping down a tree or raiding a rabbit warren, but in 10th-century Wales hardly anything resulted in capital punishment. Regarding itinerants, there was an extraordinary law that if somebody who was poor and starving was refused food at three villages, they were entitled to steal without punishment—eat your heart out, Shelter and Crisis—which was an admission that the problems of the poor were not necessarily their fault.
We know that Cyfraith Hywel Dda was arranged in Hen Dy Gwyn ar Daf, but unfortunately we do not know when. It was a serious venture, because they stocked up with six weeks-worth of bread beforehand. As we are now celebrating the laws of Magna Carta—a significant event, but minor in terms of women’s rights and the progress of society—we need to give a lot of thought to the triumph of Cyfraith Hywel Dda.