Support for the Welsh Economy and Funding for the Devolved Institutions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to open this estimates day debate. We go from having debated one of the largest items of expenditure on the Government’s books in the previous debate to debating perhaps one of the smallest of the Whitehall estimates. I hope that today’s debate will provide a useful opportunity for a wide-ranging discussion about the current challenges facing all of our constituencies in Wales and the steps being taken by the UK Government and also in Wales by the Welsh Government to address them.

One of the things I have become more convinced about, the longer I am a Member of this place, is that we need to spend more time debating Welsh matters and not less. We have our annual St David’s day debate and we sporadically have the opportunity upstairs to have a Welsh Grand Committee, although that is perhaps a bit too knockabout for the taste of some Members, so using the estimates day route to secure a debate is useful and I am grateful to see other Welsh Members participating today. I am particularly grateful to those colleagues who supported the bid application.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Apart from the debates that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned, there is also the work of the Welsh Affairs Committee, of which I was a member for many years. I understand that the Committee published its report on the benefit system in March. Has he had any response from the Government to that report?

[Stephen Crabb]

The Government have responded to the report, and we will be publishing our response to the Government’s response shortly. I would encourage the hon. Member to keep a lookout for that.

Our report into benefits in Wales is one of three of the Committee’s reports that has been flagged on today’s Order Paper as being relevant to this debate. We could have flagged other reports, as the Committee has done a lot of work that is relevant to the broad discussion that we want to have this afternoon. We continue to be a very busy Committee, and we cover a lot of ground. I am grateful to colleagues for their regular attendance at the Committee and for their spirit and enthusiasm. I think we do some good work as the Welsh Affairs Committee.

I should also say how grateful we are to the Wales Office Ministers, who give us a lot of their time providing oral evidence. We are also grateful to Welsh Government Ministers—not just the First Minister but other Members of the Welsh Government—who have no obligation to appear before our Committee but who nevertheless choose to do so. That all helps to make the inquiries that the Committee undertakes particularly useful.

Turning to the specific estimate in front of us, I would encourage Members to look at the very helpful House of Commons Library note that has been produced, which explains in much more detail, and far more effectively than I could, how the estimate has been compiled. It also outlines the factors underlying some of the changes, compared with last year’s spending plans. Clearly, we are continuing to go through an extraordinary period, economically, in the life of our nation, and that is very much the backdrop to today’s debate. If this debate had happened 18 months or two years ago, we would have been debating the impact of the pandemic. We are now in a new phase, and the cost of living is the No. 1 issue facing many of our constituents, as the previous debate highlighted. Personally, I am extremely supportive of the measures taken by the UK Government to support families through the cost of living crisis. The measures that the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought forward were broadly in line with what many of us had been calling for. They represented a major intervention that has been broadly welcomed by many poverty-fighting charities and campaign groups.

There are points that we could debate. I think the preceding debate covered those adequately, but I add my voice to that of the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), who has just left his place, on the need to do something to address the five-week wait for universal credit claimants. I attended the breakfast in Westminster Hall that was referenced earlier this afternoon as a guest of the Trussell Trust. I sat next to someone who had found themselves in financial crisis and having to make a claim for universal credit. The thing that she struggled with, alongside her mental health battles, was the five-week wait and falling immediately into debt. I encourage members of the UK Government to look at that to see how we can improve the system.

Beyond addressing the immediate cost of living crisis, I am particularly motivated by a desire to look at longer-term ambitions for improving the economy in Wales. That is why I support the UK Government’s levelling-up ambitions and their desire to see all parts of the country rise on a tide to be more in line with one another in the contribution that they make to the UK economy and the share of wealth and prosperity that people in different parts of the country enjoy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), and I will refer in my speech to some of the comments he made. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made an interesting comment about the strategic aspect, perhaps suggesting that there should be less competition within the funding arrangements. I may address that as I move through my speech.

This is a timely debate, given the concerns about rising prices and the strength of the economy. We must recover and adjust to a post-pandemic era. We must also deal with the distortion of global markets by the invasion of one of the world’s largest grain producers by one of the world’s largest exporters of hydrocarbons. These are rough seas for anyone to navigate, and I am unequivocal that Wales is better for doing so as part of, and within, the UK. To use the example of tourism, in Wales we have just 2% of all visitors to the UK. Wales can clearly benefit from attaching itself firmly to the UK’s global offer, and from attracting more visitors to come and see what is unique, special and distinctive about Wales.

[Hywel Williams]

I would be delighted to agree with the hon. Gentleman that Wales should hitch itself to the UK effort, if that UK effort was any good at all for Wales. My impression, after many years of examining the UK’s efforts to promote Wales, is that it is hopeless. Does he agree?

[Robin Millar]

I certainly agree that we can do better. To be clear, I speak in this debate as a proud Welshman—Cymro balch, if I am allowed to say that in the Chamber—born, raised and schooled near Bangor. I have the honour of representing Aberconwy, which is by any measure one of the most beautiful parts of Wales, and indeed the United Kingdom. It should be no surprise that my constituency attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from throughout the UK and overseas. Llandudno, the queen of the Welsh resorts; the natural splendour of Eryri, Snowdonia national park; Conwy castle, one of several UNESCO world heritage sites that we enjoy in north Wales and are happy to host; and a thriving hospitality and culinary scene—these are just some of the attractions that make Aberconwy the visitor success that it is.

I share the pride felt by so many of my constituents in this thriving sector, but I also share the concern of many that we are so dependent on tourism, and the concern that, for so many young people, the only chance of pursuing a high-skilled, well-paid career lies in moving away from their community. This pattern has been detrimental for many and to the future of many, and not least also to the viability of our precious Welsh culture and language—a language that I, like so many in all parts of the Chamber, wish to see flourish.

I had to move away from north Wales to develop my interests and career, initially as an engineer. In many ways, it is a typical north Wales story, but it cannot be right that our young people have to think in those terms—that to see themselves working, living and settling in north Wales, they must first move away; but then I notice, when I look at Wales’s economic figures, that weekly income over the last 20 years has essentially just about kept up with inflation. There has been no net increase. Why is that? It is a frustration, because Aberconwy is home not just to many of the UK’s finest visitor attractions, but to talent and ingenuity.

Just last winter, an analysis of Companies House returns identified Llandudno, the queen of resorts, as the entrepreneurial capital of the UK. More new companies were filed there than anywhere else. That has to count for something, and it certainly reflects the conversations I have with many young and ambitious people in Aberconwy. Each and every week when I am home in my constituency, I visit businesses and community groups, and I am always impressed by the entrepreneurialism, and the commitment to growing, creating and strengthening things. Whether we are talking about business, people, groups or even our communities, there is huge ability and interest in improving what we have.

As we have heard, talent is distributed throughout the United Kingdom, but opportunity is not. Creating opportunities in communities in every corner of Wales, and indeed the whole UK, is at the heart of this Government’s levelling-up agenda. That is why I welcome the record amounts of funding and investment coming to Wales from the UK Government. However, there are three frustrations that I would like to set out, and they speak to why levelling up could not be more urgent for communities throughout north Wales. It is a tragic fact that, after 24 years of devolution and a consistently Labour Welsh Administration in Cardiff, despite all the promises, all the opportunities for devolution and our vast economic potential, Wales has the lowest economic output of anywhere in the UK apart from north-east England, a region with its own unique challenges.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter), for whom I have the highest respect. We do not always agree on everything, but having served on the Welsh Affairs Committee with her and various other Members present here on both sides of the House, I echo her words in praising the staff who make the Welsh Affairs Committee run so well. We discussed this debate in the Committee and we all feel, whichever political party we represent, that this important event enables us to bring the affairs of Wales to the Floor of the House, which we all are keen to do.

My own upbringing was in the tourism industry—we have had much talk about it already in this debate—at the Lake Vyrnwy Hotel, which my father ran as a business. It is only a few miles south of my constituency of Clwyd South, which in itself has a wonderful tourism industry with the wonderful heritage, the canal, the steam railway, the beautiful countryside and so on. I will return to that theme later.

With all due respect to the hon. Member for Cynon Valley, I do not recognise her point about the spending review cutting money to Wales. Given the figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) gave—I will not go back over all those—it seems self-evident that the block grant to the Welsh Government is rising year by year by a generous amount. I do not see how we can dispute that fact. At £18.4 billion rising to £20 billion in the coming year or two, it is the most generous spending review settlement since devolution.

There has also been mention of the fact that the amount of money coming from Europe to Wales will be cut. With all due respect, that simply is not the case. The shared prosperity fund will equalise, if not increase the amount of money that would otherwise have come from the European Union. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made the point about the levelling-up fund not being fair. As an MP for north-east Wales, I would argue that the European funding was not fair, because it was concentrated on west Wales and south Wales. North Wales, mid Wales and north-east Wales had little representation in that. My argument is that all parts of Wales need support. My constituency and my neighbouring constituencies have deprivation as well—deprivation is not exclusive to south Wales or west Wales. Therefore, the new shared prosperity fund, and the other funding that is coming through in the levelling-up fund and the community renewal fund, are spreading the money and investment across Wales, which strikes me as being much fairer.

[Hywel Williams]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the drawing up of the NUTS—nomenclature of territorial units for statistics—maps that identified west Wales and the valleys as targets of European intervention was an objective process, based on clear metrics? Does he think that the metrics for the levelling-up fund are equal or superior to those that led to the drawing up of those maps?

[Simon Baynes]

Actually, I do think that the way it is being done now is fairer. I could never understand that schematic system, which was rigid in its thought process and implementation, and which meant that areas of deprivation, particularly in north Wales, were simply not going to get the level of funding. I am not saying that there was no European funding—there was some—but it was not anything like the largesse that went to west and south Wales. That simply cannot be right. The new system is much fairer in its thought process and application.

Another point that I feel strongly about is devolution, about which we have heard from several Opposition Members. To my mind, if the granting of money is devolved from the UK Government to local authorities, that is devolution. Why should it go to the Welsh Government, who already get a huge block grant and have plenty of scope within their remit of government to spend that money? It seems that they like devolution if it comes into their coffers, but they do not like it when it goes into the coffers of the local authorities.