Oral Answers to Questions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hart]

My right hon. Friend is right; I met the Crown Estate last week and had exactly that conversation. I have to say that it was an exciting, interesting, innovative conversation about all the possibilities that he mentions, which exist across the whole UK but particularly in the Celtic sea. I repeat what I said earlier: the emphasis and impetus come from investors, members of the public and port authorities, not from nationalists who just wish to look at everything through the prism of their own power base.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The Secretary of State has just said that there is no public interest or appetite at all, and that not one person is saying that devolving the Crown Estate is a good idea. By this morning, 10,000 people had already signed a petition asserting Wales’s right to reap the benefits of our own national resources.

The ScotWind auction raised almost £700 million for Scotland’s public finances. To reassure the Secretary of State, this is not a new tax. In the heat of the cost of living crisis, Scottish renewable natural resources generate revenue for the benefit of the Scottish people, providing a better welfare service than in Wales. Is it not clear that devolving the Crown Estate in Scotland has improved the Government’s ability to respond to the cost of living crisis, and so it would in Wales?

[Simon Hart]

Shock, horror—the hon. Gentleman raises that petition. Of course, it represents a tiny, tiny, tiny proportion of the population of Wales, even assuming that everybody who signed it is resident in Wales.

I chose my words carefully earlier. The people I want to listen to most intently are the people who will do the work and benefit from the work: port authorities, councils, employees, the public and investors. Every single person I have spoken to about the issue concludes that devolving the Crown Estate is nothing more than a distraction that would actually damage the prospects of its being the success story it deserves to be.

[Hywel Williams]

“Parity with Scotland” is possibly not the catchiest of slogans, but here it is just a matter of fairness. Will the Secretary of State now commit, in this Parliament, to the devolution of the Crown Estate to Wales?

[Simon Hart]

No.