Welsh Affairs

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Diolch yn fawr iawn. I give great thanks to my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi), for her excellent speech, and to my other neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), for introducing this great St David’s day debate. I also thank the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), partly because my father is from Aberystwyth in Ceredigion. That part of the family goes back, through my mam-gu, to Henry Richard. On my mother Betty’s side, the family has been in Swansea for five generations.

I will use this opportunity to mention Betty Boothroyd. Shortly after I was first elected to this place in 1997— I am the longest serving Member in the Chamber apart from you, Mr Deputy Speaker—Betty Boothroyd gave me her autobiography to give to my mother, and it was signed, “From one Betty to another. Keep your son in order!” My mother was very happy about that. As you will know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Betty Boothroyd was a great authority, a warm person and a fantastic tribute to this House.

We are all proud of Wales, of what Wales has done, and of the opportunities that we had in Wales, but I think we in here all accept that Wales has been particularly hard hit by years of austerity and now by the cost of living and inflationary crisis, with people who are, on average, poorer, older and sicker than the rest of the UK. The average earnings in Wales are something like 73% of the UK average, compared with Scotland, where they are 93% of the UK average. Because of that, we get a Barnett consequential of £1.20 for every £1 spent on services. Incidentally, Scotland gets £1.26, even though it is richer.

In recent years, and in the last 13 years in particular, austerity has hit public services, jobs and benefits disproportionately hard in Wales. I credit the work that has been done in various constituencies to help the poorest in need. We have seen the amazing emergence of food banks, and I regret the normalisation of food banks. Across the UK, one in four people are in food insecurity, and that is not where we should be. We need to think again about how we can move forward from this situation.

There were complaints from the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) about the health service. It is worth mentioning that the cost of treating someone who is malnourished through poverty is three times the cost of treating someone who is well nourished. In Wales, the health service is facing more people, and it is costing more to treat them, because of the level of austerity that has been inflicted. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) mentioned the need for a proper windfall tax to get the country back on track. It is important to remember that we need to get our fair share of investment in Wales.

I mentioned rail investment at Transport questions this morning. Unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, we are not getting our so-called Barnett population share of the High Speed 2 money. The estimated cost has gone up to something like £100 billion, which works out at £3,500 for every household in the UK—it is an amazingly high cost. HS2 is a north-south spinal route that will reduce the time it takes to get from London to Manchester from two hours and 10 minutes to one hour and 10 minutes, but it still takes three hours to get to Swansea. It will displace investment from south Wales in particular to Manchester and elsewhere. The Barnett consequential should be a £5 billion investment, but we are not getting that. This is on the back of us getting 1.5% of the UK rail enhancement investment over something like 20 years for 5% of the population and 11% of the rail lines. It is time the Government looked to give us some money so that we can modernise, electrify and increase productivity and the wealth and health of the nation.

As I pointed out this morning, Transport for Wales has generated £2.5 billion of shovel-ready schemes to be delivered over the next 15 years—they are ready to go. I hope the Secretary of State will support me in calling on the Department for Transport to work with Transport for Wales and co-fund shovel-ready projects, to move them forward sooner rather than later. We want to increase productivity, we want wages to go up, and we want to deliver net zero, and that is vital.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend is making important points about rail infrastructure. He will know that I have long campaigned for St Mellons Parkway to be built in the east of Cardiff, and we now have crucial funding from the levelling-up fund to create an essential link in the centre of Cardiff. I heard again and again from businesses that those rail links to Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool would help to grow their businesses and opportunities. For that, they need investment from the UK Government in those lines into Wales.

[Geraint Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I would go further: in south Wales specifically, one of the things we need to look at is the link between Swansea, Cardiff and Bristol. That is a regional economy of 3 million people, and obviously it is part of the Union because it goes outside of Wales, but we only get about one service an hour, compared with Manchester to Leeds, which gets something like eight services an hour. There is a lot of talk about the northern powerhouse, but we need linkages in Wales, and between south Wales and the west, to make that hub work. Rather than everything having to go out of London, we should have localised economic prosperity in that way.

The point I am trying to make is that we need to alleviate poor health and low wealth through investment in infrastructure. We also need to invest in research and development, and in a green future. Something else that I raised this morning is that we are at a cliff edge in Wales, where we face the loss of 1,000 jobs in universities from 60 projects that are focused on generating green growth in the future. The structural funding from the EU is suddenly coming to an end, and the shared prosperity fund is delivered through local authorities, rather than being centrally divided among universities across the UK, as the structural funds have been in order to fire up new green projects.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon mentioned one of those projects, which is the cladding of homes to create their own power stations. There are also projects to dig up plastic waste from landfill and convert it into carbon nanotubes to be used in electric car batteries, medical instruments and mobile phones. There are projects to convert slag heaps from steelworks that represent billions of pounds of liabilities into billions of pounds of assets by a simple process using water, which converts them into iron ore, zinc and hydrogen. There are projects that take off-peak renewable energy that is currently not being used—the renewable energy that is not going into the grid at breakfast time and teatime—and convert it into hydrogen to be put into the gas grid, for instance, or into hydrogen transport.

All those cutting-edge projects are suddenly going to end unless we get bridge funding of £71 million for Welsh universities in particular, and £170 million for 166 projects across the UK. Again, that issue has been highlighted in the Financial Times. I hope the Chancellor will stop those projects from collapsing, because that R&D is vital for future green growth and exports, and that the Secretary of State will urge him to provide that bridge funding so that we can move forward.

There is a lot more we could be urging the Government to do, including a carbon border tax to ensure that if we do get the steel in Port Talbot and elsewhere to be produced through arc furnaces, so that it is less carbon intensive, carbon-intensive imports from China and elsewhere pay a tax, as will happen in the EU. Otherwise, we will end up in a situation where we are substituting clean south Walian steel with dirty Chinese steel. Following what is, in my view, the good news of the Windsor framework, which recognises and acknowledges the opportunities for Northern Ireland to link into the single market and trade with the United Kingdom, I also hope that trade from Wales to Northern Ireland and to Ireland will be facilitated through more rail infrastructure, so that we ensure our economy is vibrant and we do not simply see businesses moving from Wales to Northern Ireland.

I very much hope that we can get back on track. We are in an awful place. There has been a normalisation of food banks. They are meant to be one-off crisis points, but people are now increasingly dependent on food pantries and other facilities for an ongoing supply of food. We need to move away from that position by investing in transport and in our prosperity and productivity, and reach a situation where there is less strain on the health service and where we can be strong again. That requires investment across the piece, so that as a Union and a nation, we can be strong again for the future. Happy St David’s day.

--- Later in debate ---

[David T. C. Davies]

My right hon. Friend is tempting me here. Clearly, Wales should get its fair share of that—as Secretary of State for Wales, I am hardly going to disagree. On what that fair share is and how it is calculated, I do not have access to the exact detail yet, but he, as Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, and I will certainly be taking a very strong interest.

I will come back to universities, which I think were raised by the hon. Member for Aberavon. Before I do, the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) made a very good point about the state of the national health service in Wales. If we are honest about it, we have all heard and dealt with constituents who have grave concerns. The fact that Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board is back in special measures is proof positive that there is a problem and where there is a problem it needs to be acknowledged. Somebody in the Welsh Government needs to get on and deal with it. It was interesting that the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) in her summing up mentioned a lot of things, which I will come on to in a moment, but did not mention the national health service. Given that the Labour party says it has a plan for the national health service, it was surprising that she did not want to draw attention to her own party’s running of it in Wales, where it has been in charge for around 20 years.

The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) made a very good point about depopulation, which I think would be shared in many rural areas. If we can get broadband rolled out in the way we want to, I believe it would help. We have seen a change in the way society works over the past three or four years, partly as a result of covid. Many more people will be able to work from home and that may be positive. He said that he did not have all the answers— I certainly do not, either. I hope he would recognise that growth deals that are being put together by local authorities in all areas across Wales hold part of the problems. He will know that in his area, tourism and agriculture are strong. Growth deals are being set up specifically to deal with that and to offer people careers rather than jobs, precisely because that is a widely recognised problem across the political spectrum. We want young people to be able to stay in their own areas, rather than having to go to the big cities to work.

The hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) made a powerful and insightful speech. She has spoken out on misogyny in sport and rugby before, including around 12 months ago and, unfortunately, not enough action was taken. Everyone will have listened carefully to what she said. She has spoken out on women’s issues in other areas than just sport, and I suspect she has had quite a lot of abuse on social media in the past for some of her comments when standing up for women’s rights. I fear that many women who have spoken out will probably get abuse on social media from cowardly people who probably would not look them in the eyes and say to them what they say online.

The hon. Lady knows that I have no locus in the WRU. After the allegations were made, I reached out to the WRU and asked for a meeting to discuss them. I met Nigel Walker briefly, who I find an impressive individual, but it was informal and I do not feel that we got down to address those issues. My office has been in touch with the WRU and I would be pleased to meet a little more formally and go through some of them. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that those people with complaints need them to be treated with anonymity and respect. I fear it may not just be rugby; many organisations probably have to deal with some of the issues that recently have been confronted.

The hon. Lady for Swansea West—[Interruption.] Do forgive me, I have not celebrated dydd gŵyl Dewi yet today. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) was somewhat critical of Labour’s plan for HS2, which was put together around 2008-09 and was continued by the subsequent Conservative and coalition Governments. As I understand it, the reason that the Labour Government gave—

[Geraint Davies]

With all due respect, I was not critical of it as such. I said that we should get our fair share of the investment—the £5 billion. Will he support that? He is the Welsh Secretary—he should.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am not sure how the hon. Gentleman calculates that figure—we have discussed that before.

[Geraint Davies]

Five per cent. of £100 billion.

[David T. C. Davies]

I think that the current cost would be rather less than £100 billion for HS2. Also, it is being built over many years. If we took the £50 billion figure over 10 years, that is £5 billion a year. Five per cent. of that would be considerably less than the huge increase in funding already given to the Welsh Government by the UK Government—£2.5 billion of record-breaking funding.

[Geraint Davies]

rose—

[David T. C. Davies]

I will give way, but let me make one last point. It is an England-Wales project because Wales will benefit, particularly north Wales, from the faster connections via Crewe. That was always made clear, and I am not aware that the Labour Government said anything different.

[Geraint Davies]

Would the Secretary of State support the shovel-ready schemes already developed by Transport for Wales, which are worth £2.5 billion to be invested over 15 years—half the amount we should get? I raised that with the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), this morning, who said that his officials would work with Transport for Wales. Would he support joint funding so that we can get that going rather than resisting all investment in Wales?

[David T. C. Davies]

I am aware of probably three schemes ongoing at the moment within the rail network enhancements pipeline project, which I hope will be brought to fruition shortly, but I support as much spending as possible on the railways in Wales.

I might be being discourteous to the shadow Secretary of State, because I promised to speak for about seven minutes. Let me quickly say, because it was of interest to the hon. Member for Swansea West, that on university research funding, I committed to go around all the eight universities in Wales as quickly as I could. I am currently doing that, and I think I am on about No. 5. I have been looking at what they have to offer in terms of research, to see the best of it and to bring everyone to an event in London to meet UK Research and Innovation so that we can get more UKRI funding into Wales. That is something that I am happy to update him about shortly.

The hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) made a wonderful speech. He almost seemed to be apologetic about representing a non-Welsh constituency, but most of us in this Chamber are proud Unionists and we welcome hon. Members from all parts of the Union. He spoke about the fantastic character Archibald Hood, who is described in the book “From Rosewell to the Rhondda”. Clearly Mr Hood, 150 years ago, was making the most of the opportunities we have to move around the Union. Let me say tapadh leat, which I think is Scottish Gaelic for thank you, to the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Member for Cardiff Central rightly acknowledged the huge bravery of the Ukrainian people, 6,000 of whom are in Wales. In Chepstow last week, I met Ukrainian constituents, as the hon. Lady has done—they are now our constituents. We say, “Croeso mawr i bob un ohonyn nhw.” They are all incredibly welcome in Wales. We hope that they have an opportunity to go back to their country at some point, but we are delighted that they are here at the moment.

The hon. Member made a point about the cost of living crisis. I will take a leaf out of my own book and say that we absolutely acknowledge it: there is a cost of living crisis. That is why we have been prioritising our help for pensioners by making sure that pensions, benefits and the minimum wage go up in line with inflation. We have been making payments of £900 to those who are on benefits, £300 to pensioners and £150 to those who are on disability benefits. We are spending £18 billion this winter to ensure that around half of people’s energy bills are being paid. What we certainly will not do is ban meal deals, because that would hit people in the pocket.