Sewel Convention

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

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

Diolch yn fawr, Llefarydd. It is an honour to be the first to speak for Wales in the debate this evening. I welcome the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington), back to his seat, from which he has been absent for much of the debate.

It is impossible to overstate the seismic implications of Brexit for Wales. At the heart of this debate is how the British state will function post Brexit and what the British state considers to be normal. We can no longer assume that the rightful trajectory of power coming closer to the people will continue in the way it has done since 1997. What we are facing is a shock tactic, a vortex of centralisation, a self-affirmation of self-interest in sovereignty by and for Westminster.

What will this mean in practice? We have been talking about 24 powers, haven’t we? Well, in Wales there has been some mission creep, with two more—state aid and food geographical indications—to make it 26 powers. That means something in practice for Wales. It will mean the denial of state aid for threatened industries, such as steel, by a Government who believe in an unfettered free market. It will mean an agricultural policy no longer designed to protect farming and the rural economy, and all that means for Wales in terms of the environment, our language and our culture. It will mean slash and burn procurement policies hardwired to ignore social and community benefits of public expenditure. It will mean enabling once again the selling-off of Wales’s fish stocks to the highest bidder, something our Government should have been able to prevent and will now not be able to do.

Developing common frameworks for the UK as a whole should require mature co-operation between the national Governments of the UK, and should not be a case of one country asset-stripping powers from the others to impose a once-size-fits-all England-first framework across all the UK’s countries. Yet at the very same time, Westminster will only be bound by political promises while the devolved Governments face legal constraints—Westminster acting again as judge and jury.

The disregard for Welsh democracy is endemic. Despite Labour’s half-baked attempt at improving the power grab clause, the people of Wales would be forgiven for thinking the Opposition and the Tory Government were colluding to deny Wales its voice. To rub salt into an already aggravated wound, the Labour party needlessly pressed ahead with 11 consecutive votes, some of which were duplicates that it knew full well would lose, all the while eating into time for the devolution debate. Not only did the Labour party facilitate the farce of a debate that took place last Tuesday, with the exception of one hon. Gentleman it abstained. I note the presence of just one Labour Member from Wales this evening. Labour abstained on amendments that took powers away from our National Assembly for Wales.

It speaks volumes for the lack of respect on the part of the British Government that they are ploughing ahead with the Bill before the Supreme Court reaches a verdict on the Scottish continuity Bill. As we know, as part of the deal between the Unionist parties, the Labour Welsh Government agreed to withdraw the Welsh continuity Bill and its referral to court. In what can only be described as a convoluted turn of events, I understand that the Labour Welsh Government have requested to re-participate in the Scottish continuity Bill Supreme Court case, but this time, as obedient good Unionists, in defence of the UK Government’s position.

When my party argued in favour of remain in 2016, we did so because we believed—and believe—that small nations like Wales are served better sitting alongside the other successful small nations of Europe as equals. We argued that the inbuilt inequality of the UK would make Wales expendable political collateral to the overriding interests of England. And we were right. While Tory and Labour Unionists—40 MPs, remember, out of 650; look at the maths for how the inequality is written in—work hand in glove, I am confident that Brexit will be a landmark in the journey Wales takes to our own conclusion. Only our own, radical solutions will prove the answer to our needs. Westminster and its parties will always treat Wales like an adjunct, an afterthought, an inconvenience. All that does is make the case for Welsh political independence.