Levelling Up

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young]

What an amazing champion for the people of Stockton my hon. Friend is. In Stockton, we are delivering towns funding in Thornaby, future high streets funding in Stockton High Street and levelling-up funding in Yarm and Eaglescliffe, and today we have confirmed levelling-up funding in Billingham. There is no place in this country that is receiving such love and attention from this Government, and it is thanks to the hard work of my hon. Friend, as well as people such as the Tees Valley Mayor, Ben Houchen, and local councillors in Stockton such as Councillor Niall Innes, who I know was particularly keen on seeing this bid delivered. I shall be happy to work with my hon. Friend to ensure that the Golden Eagle Hotel is sorted out as soon as possible and to deliver on his priorities through the town deal.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

It would help the House to come to a judgment on the funding simplification plan and the funding simplification doctrine if we understood the complexity of the current system of assessments of need. Try as I might, and I have looked at the White Paper and various other documents, I cannot find a single concise explanation. Could the Minister write to me, and perhaps place a copy of his reply in the Library, to explain how the current system has got us to this position?

[Jacob Young]

I would be happy to do that, but we currently operate more than 70 different local growth funds across 17 different Departments. I think that demonstrates the complexity that local authorities and other stakeholders, community groups and so on must navigate to try to get cash for their area. That is why we are embarking on this funding simplification plan, and I am happy to work with him to ensure that it meets the needs of his constituents.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 25th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I have heard the Secretary of State say several times that the Conservatives are in favour of devolution, so should they not be required to seek consent from the Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland before they proceed?

[Chris Stephens]

My hon. Friend is correct that they should. I suspect they will not receive it from either the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Senedd, for many reasons. As he says, there is clearly an impact on devolution.

Devolution was approved overwhelmingly by the people of Scotland, and any erosion of it is strongly opposed by most, but not all, parties in that Parliament. I will let Members guess which party is least protective of Scotland’s interests. Scotland’s current legislative powers are guarded jealously, and there is strong demand for many—possibly all—reserved powers to be transferred to Scottish control. That is not surprising.

I and others will continue to explore the Bill’s deficiencies again today, pointing out its many contradictions.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the excellent speech of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns). I also thank the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) for suggesting that tone in this debate is important. I see that the Secretary of State is leaving at this moment in time, but I do not think anybody will miss the irony of his projecting himself as the sole moral arbiter for the whole United Kingdom. Even worse, he seeks to quell the just protests of honourable organisations and individuals who are trying to bring about decent change internationally.

In Scotland, we have a proud history of promoting social justice, human rights and respect for international law on the world stage. As the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) alluded to in his intervention, Scotland can provide a very good example. In 1981, the then Glasgow District Council decided to award Nelson Mandela the freedom of the city—the first city in the world to do so. Five years later, St George’s Place in Glasgow city centre was renamed Nelson Mandela Place. Why was that? It was because the South African consulate was in St George’s Place, and the council wanted to make sure that everybody knew who Nelson Mandela was by making sure his name was on the address of the South African consulate. When Nelson Mandela addressed Glasgow City Chambers in 1993, he said:

“While we were physically denied our freedom in the country of our birth, a city, 6,000 miles away, and as renowned as Glasgow, refused to accept the legitimacy of the apartheid system, and declared us to be free.”

Had this proposed legislation been in place during the 1980s, Glasgow would have likely been legally debarred from taking the actions that it did, or even from suggesting that it might take those actions, because the then Conservative Government did not support sanctions for South Africa. I remember as a young lad seeing country after country boycotting the Commonwealth games in Edinburgh in 1986 as a result of the then UK Government’s actions.

SNP Members will be supporting Labour’s reasoned amendment. However, it is missing one key part: the attacks on the devolved Administrations. Perversely, the democratically elected Parliament and Government of Scotland will be required under the Bill to give legislative assent to its enactment. We will be asked to provide the gag that silences our freedom of expression and that of the people we represent.

As a good global citizen, Scotland is committed to the highest ethical and moral standards in human rights, climate justice, workers’ rights and economic development. The Scottish Government will always fulfil their obligations under international law and agreements. The people of Scotland rightly expect that actions in Scotland should be taken with full consideration of moral and ethical duties to communities around the world, and we will not idly watch that good work being constrained.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s points. The Welsh Labour Government have policies on such matters as modern slavery and human rights. Public sector investment and procurement are devolved, yet the Bill’s impact assessment does not consider any specific Welch approaches. Does he agree that the Government should do that before taking any further steps?

[Chris Stephens]

Indeed. There was probably no discussion with the devolved Administrations on the Bill and the impact that it will have on the devolved institutions, so I agree with my hon. Friend. The UK Government claim that the Scottish Government pursue actions that undermine UK foreign policy, but that is simply not the case—it is not true. For many years, the Scottish Government have conducted international engagement which benefits the people of Scotland and aligns with present constitutional arrangements. Scottish Government Ministers are simply embodying the values-based principles of the Scottish electorate, as the Welsh would do with the Welsh electorate.

I listened to the Secretary of State arguing for the Bill, which gave an impression of what the death rattle of a dying Government sounds like. The Bill represents a desperate attempt by the UK Government to salvage something from the wreckage they have created across the fields of international trade, diplomatic relations and human rights. Let us look at those fields in turn.

Voter Identification

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The census shows that 40% of people in Wales do not have a passport, compared with 2.9% in Westminster. We will have no experience of voter ID in Wales until May 2024, so how on earth will the Minister assess any potential and entirely unintentional voter suppression in Wales, given that we might have a general election before then?

[Lee Rowley]

The research indicates that 98% of people across the United Kingdom have ID. Where there is a gap, I encourage those who are concerned to make sure that their electorate are aware of the coming change and to highlight the point of that change, which is to ensure the integrity of the ballot box for the long term.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Hywel Williams Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I am glad to speak as a Welsh MP after that. This Bill should be read in the light of the Public Accounts Committee report on “Local economic growth”, published today. On the levelling up fund, it states:

“principles for awarding funding were only finalised by Ministers after they knew who…would win and who would not as a result of those principles.”

That is, the decisions were taken and then the principles were established as to who would win. It also states:

“The Department also needs to demonstrate how the priorities of the devolved administrations will be addressed in the context of administering these local growth funds on a UK-wide basis.”

That is, the Government in Wales decide their own priorities, but somehow the administration of local growth funds is decided on a UK-wide basis. Many people in Wales feel that this Government have been steadily undermining devolution, and that is another example.

The Bill intrudes on devolved areas such as health, education and housing, bypassing our Senedd, which raises concerns regarding Wales. For instance, what discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Welsh Government regarding the levelling-up metrics? How will they be monitored to account for distinct Welsh economic and development structures? What methodology will the Government use to measure the success or failure of the metrics in Wales?

Wales has the highest levels of child poverty in the UK and high levels of disability, and we should not be disadvantaged by ill-thought-out evaluation procedures. The Westminster Government should take immediate action to address the structural causes of poverty in Wales, and I shall list just three. Research and development funding should be devolved. Per head, research and development expenditure in the east of England was £1,106 in 2019; in Wales, it was £252, which is a great difficulty for our local economy. We should be getting the £5 billion Barnett consequential owed from HS2 spending, which is provided for Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Welsh Government require greater borrowing powers to pursue proper economic development.

This Bill is just one part of the levelling-up agenda, and it cannot be divorced from the replacement of EU funding. Wales has done very poorly out of that. Not only is the funding far below what was promised, but there is no coherent strategy as to how it will be spent. We know that the funding formula for other funds, such as the shared prosperity fund, does not reflect the needs of Welsh communities. Indeed, Wales Fiscal Analysis has shown that funding for the SPF will shift money away from the west of Wales, which is poor, to the east of Wales, and will fail to address rural poverty. There is also a huge democratic deficit involved in the levelling-up approach.

The UK Government’s application of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 to devolved areas has excluded the Welsh Government from decision making, which again is a very severe blow to the Government of Wales. Indeed, we all hold, as I have said, that the UK Government are busily undermining Welsh democracy, and I am afraid this Bill will continue that process.

Building Safety

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We do accept that principle, and we will do everything that we can to round up the wrong ‘uns. I do recognise, none the less, that we are dealing with some individuals who have behaved unscrupulously in the past and who will do everything to evade their responsibilities, which is why we need tax as a backstop.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

There are many Welsh victims of this particular scandal, including in my own Arfon constituency and elsewhere in Wales, as I am sure the Secretary of State will be hearing about. I am very much in favour of holding the industry to account, but I have to tell him that long experience of trying to hold the cavity wall insulation industry to account, albeit as a Back Bencher, has not been encouraging, so I wish all power to his elbow on that matter. I was glad to hear him say that he will be working with the Governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Can his officials look at the issue of companies that work from England and are subject to its strictures, but that also work in Wales, as that might be a complicating factor?

[Michael Gove]

We absolutely will. I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the approach that he outlines. Indeed, we want to work with the Labour-Plaid Cymru Administration in Wales in order to get to the right result.

Unsafe Cladding: Protecting Tenants and Leaseholders

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) [V]]

I welcome this debate today. It is one small response to the enormous suffering of the people who died in the Grenfell disaster and those who lost loved ones, and also all those who have faced such unbearable burdens thereafter.

I agree with the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) that all affected homes should be made safe, the victims of this scandal should not be made to pay, and the main players are clearly avoiding their responsibilities. However, it seems that she and, indeed, the Leader of the Opposition are unaware that the only Labour Government in the UK—the Welsh Labour Government—launched their consultation on a new building regime only two weeks ago, having sat immovably on this issue for over three years. For as well as being a desperate, scandalous and unbearable burden for people trapped in their flats in England, the cladding scandal, from Atlantic Wharf in Cardiff to Victoria Dock in Caernarfon, affects the whole of Wales. People who bought their homes in good faith are being left with unsaleable properties, or face astronomical and unaffordable bills to make their homes safe, with no choice but to live in homes that could be fatally dangerous. For those who have to move because of work or family commitments, even that terrible choice is not open to them. In making his call for the UK Government to “get a grip”, I hope that the Leader of the Opposition will pass his remarks on to his very good friends down the M4.

We also heard today that the Leader of the Opposition is calling for a national cladding taskforce. I am not sure which nation he is referring to—perhaps neither is he— but this looks to many people in Wales either like shameless grandstanding ahead of our general election or just a schoolboy misunderstanding of the nature of devolution. I am sure that he joins everyone else in calling on developers to shoulder their responsibilities, and I hope that he will press for Wales to get its fair share of any funding to make homes safe. Alas, I fear that neither the Tory Government in Westminster nor the hapless Labour Government in Cardiff are at all up to the job.

Arcadia and Debenhams: Business Support and Job Retention

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I wish my hon. Friend every success in that bid—the announcement will be forthcoming. It is important that we have small business Saturday coming up this Saturday, and we must make sure independent stores thrive. However, the brands he talks about that are going do drag footfall towards those smaller businesses, which is why we need to look at the high street as a whole.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC) [V]]

Debenhams is a cornerstone employer in Bangor city centre. Its closure will be a severe blow to the staff who have worked there loyally for many years, and even more so now, I am afraid, because North Wales Mersey Dee Business Council reports that, across the region, 17% of businesses in retail and hospitality have already made redundancies. Thinking creatively, what consideration has the Minister given to material Government support specifically for repurposing large retail spaces into smaller, short-term, start-up units?

[Paul Scully]

We always work with local authorities to see what initiatives can come up. We work closely with them because it is typically the local authorities, local enterprise partnerships and other business groupings in each local area that know their local economy, and we are always happy to look at any initiatives.

Homelessness

Hywel Williams Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I do indeed. The Government published statistics yesterday that, in a sense, show the very scale of the point my hon. Friend rightly makes. When I stood on the other side of the Chamber as Labour’s last Housing Minister in 2009, 120,000 more social rented homes were let in that year than last year. That is an indicator of how short social housing is and how chronic the crisis that we face is.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

I am going to make some progress now because so many hon. Members on both sides want to speak.

Our homelessness crisis now, as it was in the 1990s, is the direct result of decisions taken by Conservative Ministers over the previous decade. There have been 13 separate cuts to housing benefit, including the hated bedroom tax, and the breaking of the link between the level of housing benefit and rents for private renters. Some £1 billion a year has been cut from local homelessness services. There are almost 9,000 fewer homeless hostel beds now, at a time when they have never been needed more. We see £2,200 extra a year for average private rents, with no action from the Government to protect private renters either from eviction or from huge rent hikes.

Only 6,287 new social rented homes were built in this country last year. That is the second lowest year since the second world war, with the lowest being two years before that. If anyone doubts the significance of the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), in Labour’s last year in government, we built nearly 40,000 new social rented homes. If the Conservatives had only kept building those homes at the same rate as Labour did, we would now have in this country an extra 200,000 social rented homes, which is more than enough for every household homeless and in temporary accommodation; more than enough for every person sleeping rough on the streets; and more than enough for every individual in every homeless hostel across the country.

After 10 years, the hard truth is that homelessness is high and rising, and what the Government are doing is not working. Based on the Government’s own statistics, at the current rate of progress, Ministers will not end rough sleeping in this country before 2082. On current progress, they will not even bring the level of rough sleeping back to the level it was in 2010 for nearly 40 years. Meanwhile, the number of households that are homeless and the number of children who are homeless continue to rise.

Budget Resolutions

Hywel Williams Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has already pointed out that the environment rated no mention at all from the Chancellor. I would add that, as ever, Wales remains an afterthought, and it was hardly mentioned in the Budget. Our planned transformative and green infrastructure projects—rail electrification, opening old lines, and tidal power generation—have all been swept away, while the entire Welsh Government roads budget has been blown on a 12-mile stretch of motorway through the precious Gwent levels. The word “austerity” may have been scratched out of the Prime Minister’s dictionary, but the people of Wales will be feeling its impact for years to come, and over everything looms the cloud of Brexit.

The figures are hugely worrying. In 2016, gross value added per head in Wales was 72.7% of the UK figure—in fact, the lowest figure in the UK—and between 2014 and 2017 the proportion of people on relative low income was highest in Wales, at 20%, while the lowest figure was in the south-east of England, at 12%. Above all, the fact that over a third of our children in Wales are living in poverty is a continuing national disgrace. The gross disposable household income per head in Wales was £15,835 in 2016, which was 81.5% of the UK average. Between 1999 and 2016, Wales had the third lowest percentage increase in gross disposable household income per head of all the UK countries and regions—in other words, we are falling behind.

Universal credit is only partly in force in Wales, at 11% of potential claimants. I note, however, that it has not been rolled out in the most intensely Welsh-speaking areas, such as my own. In fact, the wonderful universal credit system just cannot cope with treating our two languages equally. According to Community Housing Cymru, tenants on the new system now owe more than £2 million in unpaid rents, even though a quarter of those now in arrears were managing to keep up with their rents before they were transferred to universal credit. Changes to personal allowances have already been discussed. The Welsh economy is badly skewed towards the low-wage sector, so the Chancellor’s kindly treatment of higher rate tax payers will have a more limited effect on incomes in Wales, and will potentially have a huge effect on the Welsh Government’s new tax-raising powers. Given the gross national and regional disparities and inequalities in Wales and the UK there is much uncertainty ahead, and we can expect little from this Budget and this Government.