Welsh Affairs

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

That ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker, necessary as it is, shows how truncated what used to be the great St David’s day debate, which has been held in this House since 1944, has become. It has been reduced to an hour and a half with seven-minute limits at the tail end of a Thursday. Of course it is not St David’s day today. It is the feast day of St Colette of France, a well-known mediaeval saint and, among other things, the patron saint of pregnant women.

I want to talk not about pregnant women but about a serious matter that is becoming a scourge in Wales, in my constituency and across the United Kingdom. I refer to the absolutely inappropriately misnamed legal highs. I have no doubt that there are many Members who have some knowledge about the people who sell such substances to our constituents. In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), we have suffered the scourge of legal high shops, or head shops. There is one in Pontnewydd in Cwmbran and one in Newport.

Since the shops have opened, there has been an increase in the number of youngsters between the ages of 14 and 17 affected by these particular drugs, according to the accident and emergency department at the Royal Gwent hospital. Between 2012 and 2013, the Gwent drug interventions programme in Cwmbran tested 500 people in police custody for legal highs, 70% of whom came back positive. In an attempt to deal with those serious issues, the two shops were raided last October. Five people were arrested and 58 different substances were seized and sent for testing. The shops were temporarily closed, but they are now back, and another one has opened on Osbourne road in Pontypool, further up the valley in my constituency.

We can look at the websites of these dreadful places, as young people undoubtedly do. This is just one example. The owners of the shop ask the question, “What are legal highs?” and the site states that they

“are substances made from assorted herbs, herbal extracts and ‘research chemicals’. They produce the same, or similar effects, to drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, but are not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act. They are however, considered illegal under current medicines legislation to sell, supply or advertise for ‘human consumption’. To get round this sellers” –

that is, the owners of the shop themselves –

“refer to them as research chemicals, plant food, bath crystals or pond cleaner.”

The site concedes that the effects of these so-called legal highs are no different from the effects of those that are illegal.

One product called “Exodus Damnation”, which is currently advertised on the shop’s website, was the cause of a near fatal heart attack suffered by 17-year-old Matt Ford in Canterbury. In Pontypool in my constituency, 176 people signed a petition saying that the shop should not be opened. Their views were strongly expressed to the police and local authorities, all of whom could do absolutely nothing. It is simply not right that our councils, our police forces and our law enforcement agencies can do virtually nothing to stop such shops opening and poisoning hundreds and thousands of young Welsh people with these appalling so-called highs.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on an important subject. Does he also agree that the long-term health implications of the substances that some young people are taking should also make us extremely worried? We do not know what is in them and that could lead to serious problems in the future.

[Paul Murphy]

Indeed, we do not know that. People have been temporarily blinded by such substances and have had large lumps come out on their bodies, and it could be that in the long term they will suffer even greater illnesses.

One of these groups of shops, called Chill South Wales, has a Facebook page on which it promotes its products. The most recent post is an image of four children’s cartoon characters with a range of drugs paraphernalia. We have looked at the list of 394 Facebook friends; many of them are still at school and some are as young as 12. Those young people have no idea what they are taking and no way of knowing the possible dangers or the long-term health risks. These products are just as dangerous as illegal drugs, if not more so as people unwittingly think that they are safe because they are legal and are being sold on our high streets. That could not be further from the truth.

To be fair, I think the Government are doing what they can by using temporary class drug orders to ban substances as they come along, but it is a game of catch-up: as soon as one substance is banned, another appears in the marketplace. More than 250 substances have been banned, but more are appearing at a rate of one a week.

The Home Office review is to be welcomed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) for the opportunity to debate Welsh affairs today. I want to raise two issues relating to employment in my constituency.

However, let me begin by strongly agreeing with the excellent speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) on the problem of legal highs, particularly in Gwent. That issue very much came home to me on Sunday, when I was with my kids in a corner of a park in Newport and saw dozens and dozens of empty legal-high packets of all shapes, sizes and colours, with enticing graphics on the front. As in my right hon. Friend’s constituency, premises in Newport were closed down; I believe they were part of the same operation. As a result, I went to a briefing by the team in Gwent police who are dealing with this issue and working extremely hard on it with the local authorities. When the Home Secretary came into post, she promised swift action on legal highs. However, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, it is an extremely difficult issue involving hundreds of different substances and thousands of different sellers. The legislation is out of date and we are playing catch-up. We need to give local authorities and the police the tools to do the job, not least because people have absolutely no idea what they taking, and we are very much storing up health problems for the future.

I want to talk about the economy in Newport. In recent times, we have heard much from the Government and their Welsh team about how things are improving in Wales, with the recovery under way and things getting easier. Of course, I welcome falls in unemployment in my constituency, although youth unemployment remains unacceptably high, but beneath those figures there is a different story. It is still the case that about 300,000 Welsh workers earned below the living wage in 2012. I would like to say a very big “Well done and congratulations” to Newport council for its decision last week to implement the living wage.

In Wales, we have seen the largest increase in the UK in the number of people who want to work more hours but cannot find them due to the Tories’ failed economic policies. Some 65,000 people are deemed to be under-employed in Wales. Only this morning, a young girl came into my office in Newport and talked about how hard it was for her family because her father’s hours had been reduced from 40 to 14. That is the reality for many people in my constituency.

In recent weeks, there has been bad news for employment in our city of Newport. First, there were the job losses at the Avana bakery—the Secretary of State has been involved with this—in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). The bakery announced that it would possibly lose up to 650 jobs following the loss of a contract with Marks and Spencer. Secondly, we learned that there is a threat to public sector jobs at the Ministry of Justice shared services centre in Celtic Springs. Then, only this week, we heard the very hard news that 123 jobs are under threat at the Orb steel works, which has a long history of steelmaking in my constituency and is a subsidiary of Tata Steel. At the MOJ and Orb works, there are things that the Government could do to step in, and that is the focus of my remarks.

This week’s announcement that Tata Steel will be restructuring the work force at the Orb steelworks may lead to the loss of 83 direct jobs and 40 contractors’ jobs. That is really hard news for those workers—and their families—who have worked extremely flexibly over the past few years. These are skilled jobs that we can ill afford to lose from Wales. It is an extremely challenging time for the steel industry in Wales, and this announcement underlines that. Demand for steel is down, imports from outside Europe are up and steel manufacturers are being hit by higher energy costs. The price of electricity for steelmakers in the UK is about 38% higher than in France and 56% higher than in Germany. Those are massive differences and they are hitting our industries. UK producers also pay levies and taxes such as the carbon floor price and the renewables obligation, but German and French steelmakers—not to mention those outside Europe—are largely protected from those. The accumulative impact is that we are putting UK steelmakers at a competitive disadvantage, with customers seeing UK energy costs as a particular problem.

I know that the Government have accepted the arguments that high energy prices impact on UK manufacturers and that the most energy-intensive industries should be protected from rising green taxes. However, what has been done so far is not enough to mitigate those costs or reverse the manufacturers’ fortunes. In the Budget, the Government need to take more action on high energy costs, the carbon price floor and renewables obligations, which are hitting us really hard, particularly in Wales, at a time when demand for steel is down.

[Albert Owen]

My hon. Friend is making a very important point. The carbon price floor, which disadvantages this country, was brought in unilaterally in the past couple of years. We cannot blame Europe for that; it is down to this British Government.

[Jessica Morden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I very much agree with him. I know that time is running out, but we need Wales Office Ministers urgently to press the Treasury on that matter in advance of the Budget.

The Government are also potentially to offshore Government jobs from the MOJ shared services centre in Newport. I am very reliant on the public sector in my constituency. People in the public sector have had their wages frozen and there has been a sustained attack on their numbers. In fact, in the recent Centre for City report, Newport came bottom for employment growth in the private sector.

Was it only in January that the Prime Minister said that we must become the “reshoring nation”? You would not think so, because only weeks later his Ministers are embarking on a path that could lead the MOJ shared services centre into a contract that will allow offshoring. The Newport office employs about 1,000 staff in back-office functions. The Cabinet Office and the MOJ want to privatise those jobs, and so far nothing has been said by Ministers to alleviate fears. In fact, the Justice Secretary told me:

“To be a competitive and viable business…needs to be in line with other companies of this kind, which often see non-customer facing transactional roles being sourced offshore. The creation and operation model…reflects government guidelines with off shoring being a feature of many successful public sector contracts.”

If the Prime Minister is so keen on private companies reshoring jobs, why is his Government so keen on offshoring Government jobs? The situation is ludicrous. Will Welsh Ministers tell the Cabinet Office and the Justice Secretary that, especially in the light of other job losses in Newport, these are good public sector jobs that we really need to keep in Newport?

To end on a positive note, the Welsh Government’s deal with Pinewood Studios to bring a new film studio to Newport is very welcome and a good boost to us locally, as is the Welsh Government’s setting up of the reNewport taskforce, which has recently come up with lots of innovative ideas for improving things in Newport. It has been warmly welcomed and has harnessed much local enthusiasm.

Last but not least, I welcome the announcement about the NATO summit in September. We are looking forward to that and I am also looking forward to working very closely with Wales Office Ministers to maximise its impact on the community and employers of Newport.