Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

We have made it clear that we want to keep the triple lock to ensure that pensions continue to increase in line with inflation. We will be able to afford that by ensuring that we get growth in the economy, which is why we wanted to end the double taxation system of making those in work pay extra money through national insurance tax. We have also made it clear that we will make tax cuts only when we can afford them, because on the Conservative side of the House, we do not believe in making unfunded promises in order to buy votes.

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

More than one in four children in Wales lives in poverty. Devolution has the capacity to transform people’s lives, but the current First Minister is distracted by questions about his integrity, deleting messages and taking dodgy donations. After 25 years since the start of devolution, does the Secretary of State agree that Governments at both ends of the M4 need to recommit to integrity and transparency?

[David T. C. Davies]

I can absolutely assure the right hon. Lady that this Government, and the Conservative party, are completely committed to integrity—[Interruption.] Labour Members are laughing, but their own First Minister took £200,000 from a convicted criminal—one who had received £400,000 from a bank for which the First Minister is responsible—and told the covid committee that all the messages on his phone had been accidentally deleted by the IT department, but now we see a screenshot in which he urges people to delete their messages so that they cannot be subject to a freedom of information request. Labour Members have the audacity to sit there laughing when people ask questions about standards. I say that the right hon. Lady makes a very good point: let us collapse the coalition and stop supporting the Welsh Labour Government, and then we can get a decent Government with decent values running Wales.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

My party seeks to make a difference to the lives of the people of Wales, but the Secretary of State and I are in agreement for once when it comes to his judgments in relation to the First Minister. It screams hypocrisy, however, because the Tories in the Senedd voted against a Plaid Cymru motion to set a cap on political donations, and his party has still not returned a £10 million donation from a man who made racist and misogynistic remarks. In that spirit of open democracy, will he support a cap on donations to political parties?

[David T. C. Davies]

I will not sit here and start making policy on the hoof, but I say to the right hon. Lady—and I think she would agree—that I would not have taken hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations from somebody who had been convicted twice of environmental offences. If Labour Members are happy with that, it is a matter for them.