Education, Skills and Training

Glyn Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the considered tone of the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), whose speeches I always greatly enjoy.

Every year since I was elected in 2010, I have been overwhelmed by the pageantry associated with the Queen’s Speech, particularly the horses and the evocative sights and sounds that accompany the occasion. For a variety of reasons, however, I have never been able to speak in the Queen’s Speech debate, so I am pleased to do so today.

I welcome the legislative programme, especially the focus on life chances, which has featured so much in today’s debate. The focus on the life chances of the most disadvantaged is widely welcomed across the House. In some ways, it is becoming a competition to see which party can be the most progressive, which is a terrific way to proceed. I particularly welcome the proposed Bill on prison reform. Clearly, time in prison is designed to punish, but just as important is rehabilitation, as we are acknowledging more today than ever before, so that Bill will be hugely important.

The theme of today’s debate is education, skills and training, but because those policy areas are devolved in my constituency, they are not matters on which I want to contribute directly. It is logical, however, that I speak about the Wales Bill, which will cover education in Wales. The House might have observed the growing tradition of having a Wales Bill in every Queen’s Speech—pretty much every Queen’s Speech has had a Wales Bill since I have been here. We do not know what will be in the Wales Bill, but we have a fair idea, because the last Parliament considered a draft Wales Bill in great detail. We can hazard a pretty good guess, therefore, about what will be in this one.

We expect to see the Bill fairly soon—the rumour is that it will be finished before the summer—and that its aim will be to deliver a stronger, more stable and financially accountable devolved settlement in Wales. The journey towards the institution of government in Wales began many decades ago, but the first major step was the 1997 referendum on whether to establish it. I did not support the idea of a Welsh Assembly in 1997—I campaigned against it—mainly because I thought we were being sold a pup: an unstable and illogical institution that, as it stood, was doomed to failure. But Wales voted yes by the narrowest of margins.

I was driving home from the count in the early hours of the morning on 19 September 1997 and I did what Conservatives tend to do; I came to terms with the new situation—something that some of us might find ourselves doing on 24 June. It was decided that there would be a Welsh Assembly elected by the additional member proportional representation system, which virtually guaranteed a Labour or Labour-led Administration. I committed to the Assembly and became a Member. I was a Member for eight years and probably would still be, had it not been for how the PR system works. I sometimes look on serving as an MP as compensation for losing my position in the Welsh Assembly.

I look forward to participating in the debate on the Wales Bill, and I know there will be many differing opinions, including within my own party. Fundamentally, my position on what change is necessary is that we need devolution of responsibility for income tax. That is the main reason why I want to speak in today’s debate. I believe it to be crucial to a stable Welsh Government.

When I first began raising this viewpoint, perhaps two or three years ago, I recall gaining very little support for it and I felt quite isolated, but that is not the case today. My view is informed by my experience as a Conservative spokesman for finance in the National Assembly for Wales. Every year we went through what we referred to as a “budget process”. It was not really that, however; it was a spending plan. A budget needs consideration on both sides of the ledger—how to raise money and how to spend it. That is where I want the devolutionary process to move so that we can reach that position.

One proposal in the Wales Bill will be to rename the National Assembly as a Parliament—“the Welsh Parliament”. I agree with that and I am supportive of it, but it cannot be called a genuine Parliament if it does not have responsibility for raising part of the money it pays in spending. We have just had a Welsh general election, in which parties other than the Conservative party were basing their campaigns on attacking the Conservative Government at Westminster for not providing enough money for what they wanted to do. That is fine, but it is not what a Welsh general election should be based on. Both sides of the ledger need to be available.

My personal view—quite a strong opinion that I have expressed before—is that unless the Wales Bill includes granting the Assembly the responsibility for levying income tax, and a significant amount of it proportionally, the Bill will deserve to fail. Without financial accountability for the Welsh Government, not one iota more of power should be transferred to the Welsh Parliament. That is absolutely my view.

There will be other red lines when the Wales Bill comes before us. I hope that all parties will come together—this will be necessary—to consider positively how to take the Bill forward. We know that significant changes will be made to the draft Bill, and that the number of powers reserved to Westminster will be far fewer than we were expecting on the basis of the draft Bill. The necessity tests that were in the draft Bill and caused a great deal of concern, particularly on the part of the Welsh Government, are now gone. There are two changes, but there will be other disputed areas where we will need good will to come up with an answer.

The establishment of a Welsh jurisdiction is one area. Over the last three or four years, a body of Welsh law has been developed. Do we need a separate Welsh jurisdiction to deal with it? I think not, but all parties will have to come together to decide how to take that forward in the Bill. What of policing? Should it, along with other emergency services, be devolved? There will be a big dispute about that, so we will have to come together to think about how to deal with it. The same applies to broadcasting. Many people think broadcasting should be devolved, but equally, many people do not.

Delivering a new Wales Bill will not be easy. It is going to be a big challenge for a new Secretary of State for Wales. It is going to need Members of all parties to look positively about how to reach a new agreed position. This will mean working positively here in Westminster and indeed in Cardiff Bay if we are to deliver the stable government in Wales that we all want.