Swansea Tidal Lagoon

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Simon Hart

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

I think I understand my hon. Friend’s comment. I should have said earlier that we are not unique in using tidal power. This technology has, in various forms, been tried and tested in other parts of the world, so there are not significant doubts about its workability. We should look elsewhere to ensure that the lessons learned from projects in other parts of the world are applied here.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hart]

I will. The chances of us finishing at 3.50 pm are getting slimmer by the moment, but we will do our best.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and on his opening remarks. This project is as significant as the previous investment in the offshore wind industry in the east of England, which included £60 million of pump-priming for port infrastructure and so on. This project is as significant, not only because it will have an immense impact on the region, but because it will make us a global leader. The hon. Gentleman is right that there are those looking to take it elsewhere if we do not get on with it.

[Simon Hart]

I will devote a section of my speech to concerns about the cost, which are raised in the media. I want to address those points, because at the moment we are looking at added value or some of the other elements that move this project from being simply a good idea to being an irresistible one. However, I will hopefully deal with the hon. Gentleman’s point properly in a moment.

Before I took those interventions, I was talking about the uncertainty about Hinkley Point. Until literally the last few days it was seen as the saving grace of UK energy production, but suddenly we discover that we are back in the land of the unknown. An important message for the Government is that an energy void needs to be filled, about which we know very little. I do not want to sound too melodramatic, but there will be a lights-off moment in about a decade’s time unless the Government—I would say this to any Government—take it seriously. They must act with haste, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) said, to ensure that no uncertainty creeps into the proposals.

It is also reasonable to say that everyone who supports the proposal understands that it is not a silver bullet. Our energy demands will be met by a range of different options, of which this happens to be one, but it is an important one. Tidal lagoons can provide—there is no doubt about the statistical back-up for this—8% to 10% of the UK’s total requirements. That is an extraordinarily tempting prospect. To quote, or possibly misquote, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, it is home-grown, reliable, affordable, sustainable and clean, and I am not aware of any other current proposed energy projects that can boast such descriptions.

The second thing that I want to cover is the added value, which has not been discussed in great detail in this House or in the wider media. It is important to point out that the Swansea bay tidal lagoon will employ nearly 2,000 people at its peak construction period. The programme over the whole of Wales—including Cardiff, Newport and Colwyn Bay—if it goes ahead, will consist of a £20 billion investment, which will need an average of 12,000 jobs for 12 years and result in more than 2,000 full-time positions. That does not even begin to touch on some of the supply chain, tourism and leisure benefits associated with the proposal.

BT Openreach

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Simon Hart

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

I am grateful, too, for that intervention. I have to say that I had not heard that expression until lunchtime today; I vaguely understood it when it was mentioned then, but now I completely understand it. Coming from a rugby nation, however, I think that the only thing I can do is pass the ball sharply to the left to the Minister, because ultimately decisions about that concept are for the UK Government, or at least that concept is an opportunity for the UK Government to deal with the problem that my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) and—I have to say—plenty of other hon. Members have raised.

I will illustrate the point about isolated rural communities. The Country Land and Business Association is just one of many organisations that have helpfully made contributions to this debate, and it estimates that about 100,000 businesses with a combined turnover of up to £60 billion are affected by the lack of broadband, including many farmers, who of course have no option these days but to submit many of their Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs-related obligations and VAT returns online. It is an irony that in certain parts of my constituency farmers have to go to McDonald’s to access the free wi-fi there, in order to fulfil their legal obligations. I cannot believe the Government are enthusiastic about that reality.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Will he note that when those farmers go to McDonald’s, which often gets a very bad press, they can be reassured by the fact that it has a very good supply chain, using British-sourced beef and produce?

[Simon Hart]

I am casting an eye in the direction of the Chair, who will very possibly rule me out of order; I am almost surprised that he did not rule the hon. Gentleman’s intervention out of order. However, I agree with every word he said—I say that before I am admonished.

Thirdly and finally, I will discuss the Openreach response to customer concerns. I know that this is a controversial area; that it is very easy for people such as MPs to come up with a long stream of examples that are probably the exception rather than the rule; and that we only ever hear of the things that go wrong, rather than the many occasions on which things go right. However, there is a pattern—it has improved, but there is none the less a pattern—among constituents of mine that suggests Openreach has some way to go to reassure its customers that it has sorted the problem of addressing customer concerns, and that it is their servant, rather than their master.

I will highlight two examples of customer concerns, and I hope that the House will indulge me while I read from my notes. The first example is of three customers on the same line who were waiting for work to be done, including work to replace a repeatedly broken line that needed to be buried underground. After waiting for more than 12 months, the customers were told in the spring that work could not be carried out until the autumn, because the farmer across whose land the line was to be buried would not allow Openreach to do so until the crop on that land had been removed. In fact, the farmer in question was actually one of the three customers affected, and that was simply not the case; the land was a grass field, and he was happy for the work to be carried out as soon as possible.

That example shows a little more than just a lack of communication, or some kind of mistake in the system; it appeared to my constituent, who was a customer of the company, that the company was almost deliberately trying to push him to one side. The fact that the work took so long and in the end required him to seek what I suppose is the ultimate sanction—of going to his MP—is an indication of the distance that we still have to go to restore customers’ confidence in the company.

My second and last example is of a customer waiting for work to be done who was told that it was necessary for the council to approve the use of traffic lights on a road in order for the work to be carried out, and that a request for their use had been submitted. Fortunately, the customer’s brother worked for the relevant department in the council and knew that, first, no such request had been submitted and, secondly, there was no such requirement for traffic lights. Once this was highlighted to BT, the work was carried out and no traffic lights were used.

Rural Crime

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Simon Hart

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your stewardship again, Mr Weir. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on securing the debate and on his wide-ranging contribution, stretching across the panoply of issues that cover rural crime. It is sometimes difficult to establish exactly what is rural crime, but I think the essence of it is that it is non-urban crime. There are some similarities between urban and rural crime—theft of oil, for example, often takes place in the heart of my urban communities, but it is a significant issue in rural areas—but there are some special areas of concern in rural communities. The hon. Gentleman covered a wide range of them, and I commend him for doing so.

Livestock rustling is a concerning and fascinating area. As I mentioned in my intervention, the fact that 60,000 sheep disappear is of great concern and has a significant effect on those who make their livelihood from the husbandry of livestock, but of equal concern is the question of where they are disappearing to. Where are they washing up within the food chain? How are they entering the food chain where there is no traceability whatsoever? That is a real issue. I hope that the Minister, in discussions with his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, will address how we clamp down on that further without imposing additional burdens on the farming community. We have to make sure that when animals present at abattoirs and meat processors, they can be identified and traced back to the farm and the landowner.

The hon. Gentleman drew attention to metal theft, another crime that affects urban areas but is of significant concern in sparsely populated rural areas. Many criminals, including perpetrators of quite serious organised crime, see rural areas as an easier target because they offer an opportunity to get away with criminality without the prying eyes of CCTV on every street corner.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned fly-tipping, a long-running issue that has costs and is associated with criminality. It is not an incidental occurrence involving hard-pressed people; the perpetrators are criminals who are trying to get away with not paying their dues towards landfill by simply dumping in the countryside. Ultimately, landowners and local authorities pick up the cost for collecting and disposing of such waste, so we must constantly push forward with measures to tackle the problem.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I am interested in the shadow Minister’s view on whether the increased use of technology in urban and suburban areas is driving the practice out. Has the technology got so good in urban and suburban areas that the problem is simply being spread over a wider rural area?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Increased tightening up in urban areas displaces criminal activity. Curiously, that brings me to another issue raised by the hon. Gentleman where there has been displacement of activity, namely fly-grazing. At a well attended debate in this Chamber about six months ago, hon. Members from England and Wales discussed the matter. When we talk about fly-grazing, we are not talking about the individual pony or horse that we occasionally see on an estate, tethered by a rope to a peg in the ground, where we worry about the animal welfare considerations and wonder why the animal is there. Neither are we talking about some within the Traveller community who have a culture of keeping the odd horse and parking it somewhere temporarily. There is serious criminality behind fly-grazing, as we know in Wales, which is why, as I am sure the Minister is aware, the Welsh Government recently worked with local authorities to change the law in Wales.

The change in the law in Wales was designed to deal with the massive incidence of fly-grazing, in which hundreds of animals were being parked on environmentally sensitive areas, or in which landowners would find that their fences were demolished and animals appeared on their land. In such cases, the local authority would have to go through all the bureaucracy involved in seizing the animals, many of which were in very bad condition, and absorb the cost of looking after them. If no owner came forward to claim ownership of the animals, the local authority would be obliged to auction them off at a knock-down price after giving them a full veterinary overhaul and making sure that they were all okay; only to find that, lo and behold—what a surprise—the owner, although never declaring themselves as such, would turn up and buy the lot of them, and a couple of weeks later they would appear in another farmer’s field or in another area of environmental sensitivity.

The Labour Welsh Government have changed the law in Wales, but one direct outcome of the change has been to displace that activity; it has moved elsewhere. Let us be frank about this: it is serious, organised, large-scale criminal activity. We are not talking about the odd individual; the police have identified family concerns involved in such activity. Instead of just going over the border, the problem is starting to wash up in English counties such as Hampshire. It seems to have been quite well planned. What conversations has the Minister had with ministerial colleagues in DEFRA on the matter? Is he minded to consider a change in the law to ensure that such criminal activity is not displaced across the border into England, and that local authorities have the tools to deal with the problem, should it wash up on their borders?

The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey raised the need for better collaboration to tackle serious and organised crime, and I agree entirely. Interestingly, there are good examples of predominantly urban police forces deploying their resources to assist predominantly rural areas. In my own area, South Wales police provides significant financial support, resources and expertise to deal with serious and organised crime in Dyfed-Powys, for example, which covers the largest rural area in Wales. We must ensure that police forces collaborate to deal with such issues.

The hon. Gentleman covered so many things in his speech that he did not have time to tackle one of the biggest areas of serious crime—illegitimate gangmaster activity. In a neighbouring constituency to the hon. Gentleman’s, within the past year a large group of Lithuanian workers were seized, found living in the most appalling portakabin-style accommodation. They were not being paid the minimum wage, deductions were being made from their pay left, right and centre, and they were being kept in the most appalling conditions by an illegal, illegitimate gangmaster. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority was a great innovation after the Morecambe bay tragedy. This shows that there the GLA is still needed, and I say to those present of all parties that it must still be adequately resourced so that it can be effective—lean, mean, efficient and nasty in dealing with illegitimate gangmasters. The people who suffer most from that aspect of what is predominantly rural crime are the legitimate operators—the food producers and farmers—who are undercut by those criminals. Gangmasters and trafficking are often linked to other serious crime such as drugs or money laundering, so they must be tackled.

The hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) has a great deal of experience as a former DEFRA Minister and a landowner. He mentioned the role of our new police and crime commissioners in influencing priorities on rural crime. There are good examples of best practice, and we must ensure that it is spread out to others so that they can choose whether to implement it in their own areas. We could argue that the old police authorities, if they had been so minded, always had the opportunity to deploy a rural focus on certain aspects of crime. Some PCCs have stood up and said publicly that they will focus on certain aspects of crime. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, we all need to play a part, and because of the nature of the challenges in rural areas, landowners, farmers, neighbourhood watch, farm watch and farm contractors must come together to tackle the problem.

I was glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned the section 59 reforms on the seizure, confiscation and destruction of vehicles, because it saves me from having to do so. The reform is a welcome innovation, because it hits those involved in such crime, hard and rapidly. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) made an intervention, which I will return to in a moment, following on from her recent excellent debate.

I would welcome the Minister’s response on whether he is minded to consider extending the fly-grazing enabling powers to local authorities in England. That would be a huge step forward. Why not do it? It would not impose costs on local authorities in England, but would save them money. At the moment there are huge costs to them for looking after the animals and getting them veterinary treatment, and for the enormous bureaucracy and delay before an owner suddenly pops up to take them off their hands at a knock-down price.

I wonder whether the Minister has recently met DEFRA Ministers to discuss the numbers of police and PCSOs in rural areas. Has he had any representations from those Ministers about the possible effect of those numbers on matters that have been referred to this afternoon, such as hare coursing, wildlife crime, the massive increase in fuel theft from rural homes as well as businesses, livestock rustling, fly-grazing, and organised crime in relation to heavy plant, farm equipment and agricultural machinery? If he has not met Ministers, does he plan to do so soon?

There is a contentious issue that we need to deal with. We have mentioned that police and crime commissioners have flexibility and public accountability in determining priorities for their areas. Setting aside for a moment the controversy about whether badger culling should be part of an overall TB eradication strategy, a fascinating aspect of recent discussions is the fact that there have been significant policing costs, but we are left to guess what they are. However, that involves a direct input; there is a displaced cost—a cost-benefit issue.

What is the effect on other aspects of policing of being forced to put significant amounts of restricted policing money from a finite resource into the policing of badger culls? The Minister shakes his head; I shall continue with the point. Those other policing issues include fly-grazing, hare coursing, the theft of oil from farm businesses, and poaching. At the moment, our best estimate, based on statements—or semi-statements—in the public domain by chief constables or police and crime commissioners is that the cost over nine weeks in Somerset was £740,000, and it was just short of £2 million over the extended duration in Gloucestershire.

[Simon Hart]

In mentioning that he was not talking about whether there should be a badger cull, the shadow Minister made his point obliquely; but does he agree that the entire cost of policing the badger culls was for policing illegal harassment and activity by animal rights organisations? Should not that be the focus of our attention, and does not it support the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) that if anything contributes to rural disillusionment it is the fact that rural people stand back and watch those things unfolding, while very little happens to deal with them? Perhaps there is now a good opportunity to deal with illegal harassment by animal rights activists, rather than to make an oblique point about the cull.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

My point about the cull is far from oblique, because I am focusing on the costs. Today is not the time to rehearse again the debate about whether the tool of culling is integral to the eradication of bovine TB. The costs issue is paramount: there is a real cost-benefit analysis to be done. If the figures that I have given, such as the £2 million spent in Gloucester, are correct, that will raise an issue. I hope that the Minister will tell us whether the figure is correct or in the right ballpark—perhaps he will say it is nothing like it and is way above the right figure. I agree that intimidation, bullying and harassment cannot be tolerated, but I hope that it is accepted that there is a role for legitimate protest in any sphere. There are regularly people protesting outside Parliament.

No one should condone illegitimate threats or intimidation from whatever angle they come, but my point is that if £2 million was spent in Gloucester, and if we are to continue the cull this summer in the reasonable expectation that those costs will continue, we cannot deny that that will mean a displacement of police activity, short of the Minister telling us he has found another £2 million to defray the costs. He may say so, and that would be fine—but let us hear it. At the moment we have no clarity about costs. I agree with all the points that have been made about stretched resources in rural areas, and if they are stretched even further in Gloucester and Somerset we should be honest with the public about the impact.

[Simon Hart]

I take the shadow Minister’s point, but does he concede that there would be no cost to legitimate, lawful, peaceful protest? The only cost is for dealing with illegal elements. Legitimate protest comes at zero cost.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Absolutely—theoretically the hon. Gentleman is right. In practice, we have seen the reality; immense policing costs are absorbed so that the culls can happen. That is my point—not debating the culls but asking the Minister directly what the costs were, and what they will be. It is right for the electorate in the affected areas to know that. The Government said that police and crime commissioners would bring transparency, and with such transparency the electorate could debate the priorities in their area. Alternatively, it would be possible to go cap in hand to the Minister to say, “Give us some more money, because this has taken a fair bit out of our area.”

A positive and constructive part of the debate has concerned collaboration. I welcome the establishment of the national rural crime network, which has brought together many partners across the UK, including at the last count 18 police and crime commissioners—with more, I understand, to come. That has happened with the assistance of, among others, the Rural Services Network—to which we should pay tribute—with the purpose of increasing collaboration and sharing best practice on rural crime, in the face of continuing acknowledged budgetary pressures.

Collaborative work on rural crime is also being done in Wales, and that includes the rural crime mapping scheme which my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South mentioned today and discussed at length in a previous debate. It is an excellent initiative, in which rural crime is electronically mapped and is highly visible to all partners, making it possible to identify and share information about what is happening and what to watch out for. I applaud my hon. Friend for raising awareness of that.

I was recently in Suffolk where a dedicated team of special constables has been established, focusing on particular aspects of crime on farms and in rural communities. There is some flexibility to determine local priorities and collaboration. Established schemes such as country watch, farm watch, horse watch and so on, go from success to success—so there is good practice. These are difficult times for policing, because of stretched budgets, but collaboration is one way forward. I would welcome the Minister’s response to my queries—particularly about his collaboration with DEFRA Ministers.

Badger Cull

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Simon Hart

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The Minister has it.

[Simon Hart]

I have a huge amount of respect for the shadow Minister, as he knows. It is all very well for him to point at the Minister and say that he has it, but we cannot just look through a lengthy report in one morning or during a debate and reach a solid conclusion.

Defence Spending (Wales)

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Simon Hart

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart]

Absolutely, Mr Gray. I apologise for coming—unnecessarily, as it turns out—to the defence of my colleague.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hart]

No, I want to make a wee bit of progress. Fun though these exchanges are, they will come to an end in the very near future.

The facts are these. As I said earlier, one of the depressing features of the Welsh Grand Committee—I will be reprimanded again in a minute—is the extraordinary denial about the past 13 years; it is as if they never existed. The truth is that Metrix simply could not deliver what we hoped on time or on price. If there is a difference between the previous and the current Governments, it is that the current Government are not prepared to go down the road of signing off, willy-nilly, contracts that we can justify neither financially nor in the context of defence.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I genuinely thank the hon. Gentleman for his clarity and honesty, because we are seeing a complete volte-face from the Conservative party’s position before the election, when there was cross-party sign-up and support for the Metrix bid and the MOD’s analysis of it. The hon. Gentleman has now made it clear that the bid did not stack up—not in terms of the MOD’s priorities, but in terms of spending, and that is a tragedy. We now know that if we argued for the Metrix bid for St Athan, we would not have the Conservative party’s support.

[Simon Hart]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman—I think he is right honourable—for his contribution.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I would like to be, but I am not right honourable yet.

[Simon Hart]

It is only a matter of time. Despite that, I do not agree with a word that the hon. Gentleman said. The Government faced some extremely difficult choices—hon. Members have heard that expression before—in the context of not only defence spending, but every other form of inward investment in Wales. The evidence speaks for itself, and the Minister will no doubt put us right. We should also not allow ourselves to be tempted into believing that this is somehow the end of the road for St Athan, because it has been made perfectly clear that it is not. However, we will hear more about that, and I do not want to steal the Minister’s thunder.

I said that this would be a brief contribution, although it has been slightly longer than I had intended. However, as an ex-serviceman on the very fringes of the military, I think it is simply nonsense to believe that decisions can be taken on the basis purely of local need or local economic considerations, rather than the nation’s overall defence needs in the overall context of the UK economy.