Budget Resolutions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It is a pleasure to follow my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie). Unfortunately, we do not quite see eye to eye on everything, but it was a pleasure to hear her speak.

For Wales there are three particular yawning funding gaps in this Budget. I will only refer to those three, although I could say a great deal more. First, the arrangements for replacing EU structural funds are—to be very kind—a bit unclear. That is a worry for marginalised communities, rural communities, small and medium-sized enterprises, and the third sector. What we do know, however, is that the replacement funds will fall well short of the £375 million that we were receiving every year. In fact, the figure that has been suggested is £120 million, not £375 million. To me, that sounds like not levelling up, but pushing down.

The EU funding has in the past supported skills development, business development, decarbonisation and much else. Skills development, of course, is a particular issue this afternoon. The Education Secretary referred to it, as did many of his colleagues. Those three apparently prime targets for this Government are unfortunately going to be neglected now that the funding will be reduced, not increased. To be clear, Wales won those funds from the EU because of our relative poverty. Our poverty puts us in the same category, unfortunately, as parts of post-1989 eastern Europe. That is where we stand economically. I am afraid that that grinding poverty remains. It has scarcely been relieved, yet this Government are cutting the relief that has been available to us—so much for their golden promises about life after Brexit.

My second point is about HS2. The spending review did not reclassify HS2 as an England-only scheme. Quite apart from the well-made arguments of English MPs against HS2 on environmental and other grounds, I have to point out that HS2 literally comes nowhere near Wales, yet, unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, we are paying for it. Were we not paying for it and instead getting a Barnett consequential, we would have received about £5 billion, which would have gone some way to redressing the chronic underinvestment in our rail infrastructure.

I have said before in the House that Wales has 11% of the rail network, yet we receive 1% of the investment in that infrastructure—a point that really needs to be addressed. Even if we only received our Barnett consequential of infrastructure investment, it would be 5% rather than 1%. As it is, HS2 is expected to have a negative impact of about £150 million a year on the Welsh economy, even though we are paying for it. This will hit the south and the south-west of Wales particularly hard, while the projected benefits—in particular to the north-east of Wales—compared to the huge spending on HS2 are, to use one of the Prime Minister’s favourite words, piffling.

Let me turn to my third point. Members may have forgotten the legacy of the Welsh coal industry—an industry that powered so much development that benefited others elsewhere and provided some individuals with almost incalculable wealth, which was spent conspicuously on personal follies such as grandiose fantasy castles. Now the coal has long gone, disappearing on railway wagons down to the east or off on ships to all parts of the world. But other legacies remain: the wrecked health, the poverty and, conspicuously, the coal tips.

There are 2,456 coal tips in Wales, which tower over former mining communities. Most are quite stable—at present, at least—but 327 are classified as high risk, and one of those actually slipped earlier this year near Tylorstown, where my own grandfather was a collier in the ’20s. Others may slip, particularly bearing in mind the increased rainfall that is inevitable with climate change. The coal may have gone and the wealth may have gone, but responsibility for the tips is now devolved—we are picking up the mess—and we will try to make them safe. However, the failure to back a long-term solution for Wales’s coal tips could create an additional financial burden on the Welsh Government, and the Welsh budget, of about £60 million per year.

Those three points convince me that the contrast between the Government’s soaring rhetoric about their plans and the reality that we are facing is breathtaking. This is not a Budget that my party can welcome or support.