Education and Adoption Bill

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Rydw i yn ddiolchgar i’r Dirprwy Lefarydd. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg) and the many other Members who have made excellent maiden speeches.

It is indubitably an honour, without precedent in my family, to address the House today. I am deeply humbled that the people of Dwyfor Meirionnydd have invested their faith in me as their representative. I will strive to be worthy of that trust.

I am very aware that I follow in the footsteps of many illustrious Members. The regions that form the constituency of Dwyfor Meirionnydd have sent exceptional Welshmen to London, in their midst Tom Ellis and David Lloyd George, and two giants of the Welsh national movement, Dafydd Elis Thomas and Dafydd Wigley.

My immediate predecessor, Elfyn Llwyd, was elected in 1992 and contributed greatly to Plaid Cymru’s parliamentary reputation for punching above our weight. From my first day here, it has been evident that Members and Officers of the House alike held him in the highest regard. Elfyn contributed extensively to improving legislation for victims of domestic violence and stalking. He was an advocate of the rights of veteran soldiers. He will be remembered as a foremost critic of the Iraq war, who called for the impeachment of Tony Blair. That role continued in his scrutiny of the Chilcot inquiry, which, disgracefully, we still await.

The pinnacle of the constituency is the greatest mountain of Wales and England, Yr Wyddfa. Hill forts and castles stand as bastions of our heritage, but first and foremost it is a landscape whose history is treasured in the names of farms and fields.

Welsh is often referred to as the oldest language of Britain. That is quite true, but we should be wary of the implications of romantic archaism and redundancy. Where I live, Welsh is not an optional extra; the majority of people speak and use the language in every aspect of their lives. Someone who speaks both Welsh and English inherits two cultures and two societies, and is the wealthier for it. Welsh is not my first language, but it is my home language.

Cheek by jowl with its natural beauty, Dwyfor Meirionnydd bears the scars of its industrial past. The slate and granite quarries, a number of which are still in production, were major employers. The narrow gauge railways that linked them to the coast now carry a freight of visitors. In the hands of dedicated amateurs, attractions such as the Ffestiniog railway provide valuable training opportunities for young people. Tourism is our major industry: from classic bucket-and-spade, blue-remembered beach holidays to high-adrenaline mountain-bike routes, surfing, zip-wires and underground trampolines.

Although a region must play to its strengths, we should be alert to the disturbing truth that, while official unemployment is relatively low at 1.7%, more than 50% of employed people earn less than the living wage. Well-paid employment prospects remain greatly dependent on the public sector. Regardless of whether that is sufficiently “aspirational”, in the popular vernacular of Westminster, the prediction of ongoing job losses as all publicly funded bodies see their budgets slashed will stifle economic growth across the constituency.

The region has been the home of major developments in energy production. Maentwrog and Ffestiniog power stations were the first of their kind in capacity and innovation. Trawsfynydd nuclear power station ceased production in 1991. The Snowdonia enterprise zone seeks to create employment to replace jobs as decommissioning winds down in the next few years. Recently, Llanbedr airfield was placed on a shortlist of six possible sites to be the home of Britain’s first domestic space hub. Landowners are alert to the income potential of renewable energy schemes, regardless of what we heard this morning, although the National Grid needs to be improved to permit additional generation. The same can be said of high-speed broadband, which is yet to reach a number of rural communities and farms.

Agriculture is, of course, the backbone of many of our communities, in the sense that it supports social activities and maintains year-round spending in the local economy. The upland family farms of Eryri are integral in maintaining the landscape’s fragile ecological balance. Of equal if not greater importance is the fact that the quality of the lamb and beef that they produce is excellent.

Education gives our young people a ticket to hope and a career, but the lack of decent salaries and affordable housing closes the door on their return. Work and the means to buy a home are essential. Rural hinterlands are at risk of becoming a low-income combination of conservation museum and adventure playground, to be serviced by the locals on the minimum wage and enjoyed by those who have made their money elsewhere.

I would like to say a few words about the Bill. For the past 22 years, I have been involved in education as a teacher, college director and local authority education leader. The House will, of course, be aware that in Wales, education is a devolved matter. As a result of Labour’s handling of teaching and learning since the advent of devolution, standards of education have gone from a respectable level to a situation where Wales has slid down the PISA rankings to the worst in the UK and 40th out of the 68 member countries.

Plaid Cymru is committed to public services for all. The reason we will oppose the Bill if there is a vote, even though education is a devolved matter, is that the growing privatisation by stealth of education in England through the increased number of academies has implications for the funding of Wales via the Barnett formula.

I am one of three Plaid Cymru Members, the first woman to represent my party in Westminster and the first woman to represent the communities of Dwyfor Meirionnydd. The Welsh national movement has its roots in my constituency. Plaid Cymru was established in the town of Pwllheli in 1925. The village of Capel Celyn in Meirionnydd was drowned by Liverpool Corporation 50 years ago. That sparked an awareness that our communities were expendable and that what we valued was of little significance to the great and the powerful. The flooding was inflammatory and caused a national awakening in Wales. We are here now, as we were then, with the best interests of Wales at the heart of all our endeavours.