Welsh Affairs
Debate between Jo Stevens and Nigel Evans(8 months, 3 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jo Stevens
The right hon. Lady has made several contributions, so I will carry on, if she does not mind. We are committed to reinforcing the status of the Senedd, strengthening intergovernmental working and pushing power out of Westminster and into the hands of our communities.
Wales is brimming with potential. Yesterday, pupils from my constituency from St Philip Evans Catholic Primary School in Llanedeyrn came to Parliament, and I met them and their teachers at the end of their day here. They were fascinated by what they had seen and they gave me quite an enthusiastic grilling, with excellent questions, but they, like all children from across Wales, including those who visit Parliament’s wonderful education centre—I thank all the staff there for the tremendous job that they do—are our future. We all have a responsibility to make sure that they have a good future, full of the opportunities that they deserve.
I am ambitious for a future fuelled by the talent and innovation I have seen up and down Wales. I am proud of our roots in industry. Industry has been our history, and it can be our future, too, but the chaos and failure of the Government risk squandering that future. My hon. Friends have rightly mentioned steel several times today. Steelmaking is the lifeblood of communities across Wales, the backbone of our local economies and the foundation of our manufacturing capability, and that is why the deep cuts to jobs mooted at Port Talbot are a kick in the teeth.
Instead of having a proper industrial strategy like Labour, Conservative Ministers have compounded the risk to likelihoods, forking out £500 million in taxpayers’ money to see up to 3,000 people made redundant and forfeiting our ability to make virgin steel. The Secretary of State for Business and Trade—not known for diplomacy, I might add—said that Wales should consider it a win, and the Welsh Secretary said that it is mission accomplished on saving Welsh steelmaking. I am afraid that that attitude shows casual indifference to the thousands of people across Wales who have so much at stake here, and it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of our Welsh economy and a total disregard for the need to preserve the UK sovereign steelmaking capability.
However Conservative Ministers try to spin it, the loss of sovereign steelmaking is a fundamental threat to our UK economy and security—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) can chunter as much as he wants. However Tory Ministers try to spin it, that is the truth.
The floating offshore wind in the Celtic sea that we have heard about this afternoon and the new nuclear power plant at Wylfa that the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) has been begging for year after year, and which Labour Members want to see, will need significant quantities of steel. Where is it going to come from? In an increasingly uncertain world, the Government are surrendering our sovereign capability to build the Royal Navy ships we need to keep our shores safe and our shipbuilding industry strong.
The Secretary of State has said on numerous occasions that no one will be left behind. He talks about his role as chair of the transition board—a monument to his party’s failure to secure the future of sovereign steelmaking in Wales. I want to put a marker down here and now. If these job losses go ahead, I will be holding him to account every single step of the way.
I have seen this happen before. I grew up just take a few miles from Shotton steelworks, which in 1980, under a Tory Government, became scarred by its closure. The resulting loss of 6,500 jobs remains the biggest industrial redundancy on a single day in western Europe. It totally decimated the area. Nearly everyone at my school had family who worked in the steelworks or in the supply chain. The impact of those mass redundancies in our area was felt for years: all those skills and the potential of my generation wasted—the rug pulled from under our feet. I am deeply concerned that we will see that again, but this time in Port Talbot and right across our steel communities.
It is not just steel. On nuclear at Wylfa and on Newport Wafer Fab—the jewel in the crown of our high-tech south Wales cluster—the Government drag their feet while workers and their families nervously wait, jobs and investment go and opportunity withers.
Labour has a different view of how things could be, and we have set out our plan. A UK Labour Government will invest £2.5 billion in the UK steel industry by the end of their first term—that is on top of the Government’s earmarked £500 million. We will increase domestic demand for steel by more than doubling onshore wind capacity, tripling solar power and quadrupling offshore wind. We will get Britain building again.
A general election is coming. It is an opportunity for voters to make their voices heard. My pitch to them after 14 years of Conservative Government is this: if people feel it is no longer true that when they work hard they get on, if people are bored and frustrated with watching a chaotic, failed Government more focused on holding their party together than on governing, and if people feel like it is time for a change, they should look to Labour. We can build the economy of the future, create good-quality jobs, drive down energy bills and provide energy security, and we in Wales will play a critical role in powering the whole UK through a decade of national renewal, rekindling Wales’s proud industrial roots with the industries of the future.
