International Investment Summit

Kanishka Narayan Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kanishka Narayan (Vale of Glamorgan) (Lab)]

Diolch yn fawr iawn—I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the privilege of making my maiden speech in this House. I follow a long list of maiden speeches and so I perhaps offer no novelty, but I will take the opportunity of offering familiarity.

I come to this debate on the international investment summit having spent the last decade on the frontline of investment, backing the inventors of artificial intelligence data and wider software businesses across this country and the United States. I therefore know the cause with depth and personal experience, and in particular I know that no working-age person in this country has seen a start-up go to the FTSE top 10. In the United States, eight out of 10 have experienced that. In the last decade of innovation, Britons in this country and in the Vale of Glamorgan have been denied the opportunity of shaping their destiny. Decline no more, because I know from speaking to investors, including those at the summit, that they believe what I know with this Labour Government: change is on the way and has begun.

My role has been to put the Vale of Glamorgan front and centre in that wave of change, but I start by also recognising the dual impact that change in this House always has. For every maiden contribution, there is a contribution that has been, and in my case I wish to recognise that of my predecessor, the right hon. Alun Cairns, Conservative MP for the Vale of Glamorgan for 14 years. In those 14 years Alun served our constituency with sincerity. In fact, he was so sincere that I remember knocking on doors in Cadoxton in Barry with the best constituency Labour party in the country, only to have my hopes dashed by a lovely elderly lady who said, “I am going to be voting for Alun, the best Labour MP this town has ever had.” We all carry an inflated sense of our personal vote in this House, beyond our political allegiances, but in that moment I have to say that I felt and saw one. I congratulate Alun on his service and wish him the best with the inevitable duality of change that we share, but I also commit to him some continuity in the service that he and his predecessor, the Labour MP John Smith, offered the constituents of the Vale of Glamorgan—and continuity also because the cause of Barry’s development, which I know Alun initiated, will echo for years to come as my top priority too.

I offer continuity because in fact the Vale of Glamorgan stands out for its continuity. There is continuity as the world centre of education. It was in Llantwit Major and St Illtud’s church that the UK’s first college was sited, not only home to St Illtud, but also host to St David in the early sixth century. In was in Cowbridge in 1795 that one of the first Gorsedd of the Bards was hosted by Iolo Morganwg, since then a font of appreciation for the Welsh language, Welsh literature and Welsh poetry.

There is continuity not just in education but in energy, with Barry being the world’s powerhouse and the largest coal exporting port in this country, and indeed the largest in the world in 1913, and with Aberthaw not just one of the most advanced power plants of its time, but now the host of my and my constituents’ future dreams of a centre of excellence in green energy.

Alongside energy and education, there is continuity in the world’s pinnacle of natural beauty—a title I will only share, perhaps, with my hon. Friend the Member for Bangor Aberconwy (Claire Hughes), with our shared Welsh background. My hon. Friends from Dorset and Devon might have the Jurassic coast, but I confess that in the heritage coast of the Vale of Glamorgan we have every bit of the beauty and the history, and perhaps, for being a better kept secret, a brighter future too.

Finally, there is continuity not just across education, energy and the beauty that we have, but in the heart and humour of the people of the Vale of Glamorgan. Barry is the town that hosts “Gavin and Stacey”, and in particular the heart and humour of Uncle Bryn, my favourite character, who when driving down the M4 blasting out James Blunt songs has been a personal inspiration to me each time I leave this esteemed Chamber for the even more esteemed comfort of Barrybados.

I have seen the heart of the community spirit across the Vale of Glamorgan in Big Bocs Bwyd, which is an initiative across schools that started in Barry and now goes beyond it, ensuring that no child goes hungry when they are learning. There is the real struggle and the fight that I see each week in the Vale Domestic Abuse Services in my constituency, fighting the onslaught of violence against women that we have seen not just in the vale but across this country, and there is the powerful heart of the voice choirs of Barry, Llantwit Major, and Cowbridge, which were able to combine the pure heart of “Calon Lân” with the deep optimism of “The Greatest Showman” in one night.

I come here with news of the heart and humour of the Vale of Glamorgan, but also to report its honest challenges. We have the honest challenge of Barry, where, when delivering medicines as a volunteer, I learned that the pharmacist was issuing multiples of painkillers per patient, compared with the same pharmacist in Cardiff. We have the honest challenge of our beautiful farmlands, where third and fourth- generation farming families are fighting a great but difficult fight against the combined challenges of weather, disease and uncertainty. We have the honest challenge of the veterans of the Vale of Glamorgan, who are not seeking the world, but simply seeking a bit of public service for the exceptional national service they gave us.

Money does not buy most things in life. It does not solve most of our problems, but its absence and the deprivation entrenched over the last decade are at the root of many of them. In particular, that has chipped away at the dignity of my community. That is why I come here with the twin ambitions of greater prosperity and a deeper bond of dignity in the Vale of Glamorgan and across the UK. I do so not as a political slogan or out of political theory, but out of a history of personal gratitude, because it was 22 years ago that the Vale of Glamorgan and south Wales, including Cardiff, offered a newly arrived set of parents the opportunity of a minimum wage and a night shift to subsidise the sleep of their young boys. In the absence of any holidays, it was Barry island that first gave those two young boys the opportunity of relief, and perhaps even some delight, over the weekend.

It was south Wales, where I grew up with my brother in a situation of particular economic stress, where I felt, through the deepest privileges of education, that I could go on to advise the Prime Minister and the civil service, to advise FTSE boards across the City, to invest in tomorrow’s inventors and ultimately to stand before the House as Wales’s first Member of Parliament from an ethnic minority background. When I stand for my twin ambitions of prosperity and dignity for the vale, I will do so out of that personal history of gratitude. For as long as I serve as the vale’s voice here in Westminster, I will fight each day for the people in my community.