Afghan Resettlement Update

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

That is a fair set of questions from my hon. Friend, and I pay tribute to him for his work in this area previously. Part of this is trying to create the environment where local authorities want to come forward. There will be a part that talks about increased funding. It was £21,000 per family settled over three years prior to today. That increases by £7,000 today. We are going to do everything we can to incentivise families. We recognise that this is a national commitment, but in London we can only do so much. We need to tap into the national feelings that we felt about Afghanistan when the collapse happened, to welcome these people into our communities and to make them a strong part of the United Kingdom.

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

The Minister mentioned that half of this cohort are children. Members of the all-party parliamentary group for Afghan women and girls heard this morning from their headteacher about year 11 schoolgirls being moved tomorrow, six weeks before their GCSEs. They will not be found meaningful education arrangements for another 20 weeks. He must surely agree that integration must offer meaningful opportunities for Afghan women and girls, particularly in relation to education. That may be one of the reasons that families turn down accommodation. Will he also agree that the support provided by Wales’s youth organisation, Urdd, was pioneering in integrating Afghan families into Wales? Will he agree to work with the APPG, Urdd and Afghan women’s representatives in Wales to develop a toolkit to empower Afghan women and girls as they integrate here?

[Johnny Mercer]

Clearly I will work with any group as we try to recognise these responsibilities. A big part of it will be setting up casework teams in every hotel. I will be visiting all the hotels, and I invite Members to come with me as we try to meet this challenge. The hon. Member talked about moving on Afghan families with children who are at a particular time in the school year. One reason we are looking to have this completed at the end of the summer is that we know people will be starting in a new academic year. There is plenty of competition in priorities as to when we should or should not do this. There are lots of issues around Ramadan, Eid, medical treatment and schools, but we have to try to plough a furrow that balances all those competing priorities, while realising the strategic aim of getting these people out of hotels and into communities across the country.

Northern Ireland Protocol

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments and pay tribute to his service. I know that this is a topic that he rightly cares about.

I am happy to clarify. It is for us to make the determination whether the threshold has been met. It is right that there is a threshold. The ability to block new law is a serious mechanism and it should not be used for trivial reasons. It should be used for those new laws that have a significant and lasting impact on the everyday lives of people in Northern Ireland. That is the right trigger, and it is one that we are in control of deciding. It is equally appropriate that if we do that, the EU will have the right to take appropriate countermeasures. That is there in black and white. Obviously, those have to be proportionate. I do not think that anyone could disagree with that. This is a very powerful mechanism, and I am pleased that we were able to reach resolution on it, because, as I have said, it ensures that we have restored sovereignty to the people of Northern Ireland.

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

There is, of course, much to welcome in today’s statement, but I must press the Prime Minister on a specific point. In his statement, he casually mentioned the burdens on shipments between Holyhead and Dublin. He failed to mention that, pre-Brexit, about 30% of all trade through the port went on to Northern Ireland from Dublin. That trade is reorientating as we speak, in real time, aggravating the already devastating impact of Brexit on the port of Holyhead. Can the Prime Minister clarify whether this new agreement will guarantee seamless trade between Northern Ireland and Wales via Dublin? If not, will he recognise that green lanes will disadvantage Welsh ports?

[The Prime Minister]

This is about ensuring the free flow of goods within our United Kingdom; that is what the green lane is there to do. It was always going to be the case after we left the European Union that sending things to the European Union from the UK would be different. What this agreement is about is prioritising trade within the United Kingdom’s internal market, and the green lane that we have delivered through this framework does exactly that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[David T. C. Davies]

I have met the Crown Estate on a number of occasions to discuss the next bidding round for the sites out in the Celtic sea. Obviously we hope to develop the industry. I agree with the brunt of the hon. Lady’s question, which is about the importance of developing a floating offshore wind industry off the coast of Wales. I have been trying to ensure that the supply chain is as local as possible. That is why we have supported the conversations between developers and the Crown Estate; it is also why I have personally visited Pembrokeshire to ensure that the growth deal there supports the new infrastructure at the dock that can allow those projects to be floated out to sea. We are actually doing a great deal to support the floating offshore wind industry in Wales.

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

For Harlech Foodservice, a key business in my constituency, last week’s news that the UK Government were slashing their energy support for businesses was devastating. The company is already struggling under soaring energy bills and interest rate hikes in coronavirus business interruption loan scheme repayments. Can the Secretary of State clarify the position? Will any support be forthcoming on CBILS repayments, and will any savings made by the Treasury as a result of falling wholesale gas prices be ringfenced for targeted support for small and medium-sized enterprises and vulnerable households?

[David T. C. Davies]

I hope the right hon. Lady will recognise that over the last year the Government have done an enormous amount to support businesses through the energy price guarantee. They have made it clear that that support package cannot continue at the current level after April, when the next financial year begins, but they have said that they will also make clear, fairly shortly, what the new package will look like. Unfortunately, no Government anywhere in the western world will be in a position to completely underwrite and subsidise energy costs for all businesses for an indefinite period, so we have to confront some realities, but I hope the right hon. Lady will be supportive of the efforts that the Government have made to do more to develop energy security in the United Kingdom. Perhaps she should talk to some of her colleagues in the Scottish National party about their opposition to opening up further oil and gas projects in the North sea.

[Liz Saville Roberts]

I would have appreciated an answer about the coronavirus business interruption loan scheme as well.

We all know that extortionate energy costs are part of this Tory winter of discontent, which bookends 13 years of deliberate austerity. Key workers are striking and real incomes are in freefall. Following the last Budget, funding for Welsh public services will be worth £3 billion less over the next three years. Enough is enough, and cutting key workers’ salaries is not the right answer. Will the Secretary of State urge the Treasury to reverse this decline by establishing a truly fair funding system for Wales that recognises our nation’s needs, taking into account age, disability, and poverty levels?

[David T. C. Davies]

The right hon. Lady will surely be aware that the Welsh Government are receiving £1.20 per head for public services for every pound that is spent in England. That is why it is so difficult to understand why not only are the waiting lists longer in Wales but educational outcomes are lower, after more than 20 years of a Labour Government. Perhaps it is time that Plaid Cymru started to stand up for the people of Wales and hold the Welsh Labour Government to account, rather than propping them up in the Senedd.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dominic Raab]

I have to start by paying tribute to my right hon. Friend for the exceptional job that he did working on this issue in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. The increase in rape convictions—we are restless to go further—is in no small part due to his efforts. I believe that Operation Soteria is ready for a June national implementation, and Ministers in the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice are liaising with all the outstanding police forces to make sure they are signed up. Again, I thank him and pay tribute to him for the work he did.

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

Rhianon Bragg was ambushed and held at gun point for eight hours by former partner Gareth Wyn Jones after years of physical and verbal abuse. He was imprisoned in August 2019. Rhianon and I called for his parole hearing to be held in public, but the Parole Board insisted that the perpetrators’ rights override those of the victim. In the meantime, appallingly, it turns out that Ministry of Justice staff sent a dossier containing intimate details about her, including a clinical psychologist’s letter, to her abuser in prison over 10 months ago. Does the Secretary of State consider that there should be circumstances in which a victim can appeal a Parole Board decision to hold hearings in private? Does he agree that this breach of GDPR means that it is in the public interest for decisions about Jones’s release to be held in public?

[Dominic Raab]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising that very important and sensitive case with me. I cannot talk about the details, but I will write to her with the answers to the questions she has raised. All I would say more generally is that she will know that we had the first public parole hearing recently, which is part of the increase in transparency that I have introduced across the board, but in particular for parole hearings. We also have that extra check on the release of dangerous offenders, particularly murderers, rapists, terrorist offenders and child killers. I hope it will have her full support when we come forward with legislation to apply that ministerial veto.

Illegal Immigration

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support. He makes a good point. As I said earlier, the vast majority of European countries already reject almost 100% of claims from asylum seekers from Albania, for example. They are all signatories to the same conventions and treaties as us, so there is no reason why we should not be able to move to exactly the same rejection rate.

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

I express my heartfelt sympathies to the people of Solihull following this week’s terrible disaster.

We all know what today’s announcement is: a sop to the right-wing press. It continues the Prime Minister’s obsession with scapegoating asylum seekers. Fast-tracking applications and weakening modern slavery protections directly undermine Wales’s nation of sanctuary policy, which includes an explicit commitment to prevent people seeking sanctuary from becoming victims of modern slavery. What discussions has he had with the Welsh Government to guarantee that fast-tracking will not frustrate our ambition to be a proper nation of sanctuary?

[The Prime Minister]

We were the first country in the world, thanks to the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), to pass the Modern Slavery Act 2015, with a dedicated regime that does not exist in that form in basically any other European country. We require our businesses to enforce their supply chains and we have life sentences for people who traffic modern slaves. I am very proud of our record. That record will continue, but we need to ensure our system is not abused and exploited. That is what we will fix with our reforms.

COP27

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It was very disappointing to see Russia remove itself from the Black sea grain deal—I am pleased that there is now forward progress on that—because, as he knows, almost two thirds of the wheat that passes through the Black sea is destined for developing countries and emerging markets. It is vital that that food flows and we will do everything we can to put pressure on Russia to ensure that it continues to happen.

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

At COP27, the Prime Minister boasted about the UK’s investment in renewables, yet a recent report by the Welsh Affairs Committee warned that Wales’s renewable energy potential is

“threatened by a lack of UK Government leadership on improving grid connectivity”.

The Prime Minister mentioned a number of worthwhile, good projects in the pipeline in Wales, but, without that connectivity, many of them are under threat. Will he set out an accelerated timetable for improving grid capacity so that Wales can realise its full potential in energy generation and, in so doing, slash bills for communities throughout Wales?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Lady is right that we need to ensure that we invest in our grid to enable the transition. That is an absolutely fair point and I know it is something the National Grid is focused on. I would be happy to get more into it and discuss it with her in the future.

Papers Relating to the Home Secretary

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. There has been a real sense over many years now that the respect for standards in public life from the Government and the Conservative party has been deteriorating and has been undermining standards in our important institutions. The Prime Minister promised us that there would be something different. Instead, what we have is more of the same.

The Cabinet Office has already recognised that the Home Secretary broke sections 2.1 and 2.14 of the ministerial code. There are further serious concerns that she may have broken it a third time and also ignored legal advice that the Home Office was breaking the law. Yesterday morning, her successor and predecessor, now the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, said that he had had clear advice—legal and policy advice—about dangerous overcrowding at Manston, about being in breach of the law, and about the need to take emergency measures, which he then took. We have deep concerns about how the Government could have allowed this situation to develop in the first place, why they badly failed to crack down on the criminal gangs that have proliferated in the channel and why they allowed Home Office decision making to collapse, so that only half the number of decisions are being taken each year compared with six years ago and only 4% of last year’s small boat arrivals had their claims determined, so that there is now a huge backlog of cases that has led to overcrowding and the last-minute use of costly hotels in inappropriate locations.

However, there is also a serious question whether the Home Secretary has just made things worse by ignoring legal advice and allowing dangerous overcrowding, leading to even more last-minute inappropriate procurement and running up substantial legal liabilities when she should have an alternative plan to cut the backlog and cut hotel use instead.

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

Plaid Cymru supports this motion. The context here is the reappointment of the Home Secretary, and the appointment of a Minister without Portfolio despite bullying allegations against him—and all that after one Prime Minister was brought down by scandals and another due to ineptitude. Is it not the problem not just those specific individuals, but the fact that the very systems of accountability here in Westminster are fundamentally unfit for purpose, save for maintaining the thinnest pretence of competency from this Tory Government?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Lady makes an important point, because the standards in our public life and public institutions have depended on people respecting them and on people across public life believing in them and taking them immensely seriously. That is why it is so corrosive when, bit by bit, they are undermined, and why it is so damaging when a new Prime Minister who promised us he would be so different from his predecessors is simply reinforcing the same problems and the same damaging situation.

Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2022 Commons Chamber

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

On behalf of Plaid Cymru, I offer my sincerest sympathies and condolences to Her late Majesty the Queen’s children and her extended family as they come to terms with their grief. Queen Elizabeth II was a constant presence throughout all of our lives. She stood as a figure of stability in a world changing at a rapid and sometimes frightening pace. The loss of the continuity that Her late Majesty embodied is a source of sorrow and anxiety for people across the world.

Up to her final days she conducted her duties with an extraordinary dedication that has been an inspiration for so many of us. Her values of duty, service, reconciliation and forgiveness are held dear by the people of Wales. In Wales, we respect people who embody that sense of dedication to society and to public service; those who put their public duty first. Her late Majesty the Queen personified that duty for so many people for so many years.

Her late Majesty had a canny ability to put people at ease in the midst of Palace formality. Three years ago, I was fortunate to be appointed to the Privy Council. I remember being nervous and intimidated by the protocols and rules that govern interactions with the royal family. Your mind, as it would, tots up an infinite checklist of everything that could possibly go wrong. What struck me was something she said: “You may well be worrying that you’ll do something wrong, or in the wrong order. Don’t worry. Whatever could possibly go wrong, I’ve seen it all before. There’s nothing that you could do that would shock me now.” Even among all the pomp and ceremony, there was that characteristic warmth and courtesy to the Queen.

Her Majesty was a magnificent role model for older women across the world. Historically, of course, older women have disappeared from public life. The Queen was a constant visible figure throughout the 70 years of her reign. From historic buildings and charities to football, she always showed an interest in Wales. People of all walks of Welsh life have been touched by her keen interest in and constant support for Welsh organisations. She attended every official opening of the Senedd and showed due respect for Wales’s nationhood and our growing democracy.

The Queen was patron to organisations as diverse as the Royal Welsh Agricultural Society, the Football Association of Wales, the Cardiff Royal Infirmary and the Welsh Pony and Cob Society. Her love of horses, from thoroughbreds to native ponies, shone through. We can see it in those sparkling smiles. Everyone in public life knows that they have a public smile, but the photos with the horses show her real smile.

We now see one era drawing to a close and a new one at its very beginning. For now we will say, “Diolch yn fawr iawn.” “Thank you very much, your Majesty.” Cwsg mewn hedd. May she rest in peace. Bendith Duw ar y Brenin. God’s blessing on the King.

UK Energy Costs

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Commons Chamber

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

Diolch yn fawr, Ddirprwy Lefarydd. Hoffwn ddanfon dymuniadau gorau i’w Mawrhydu’r Frenhines. I, too, would like to send my best wishes to Her Majesty the Queen.

Today’s announcement shows beyond doubt whose side the new Prime Minister is on. She is prepared to force taxpayers to carry the burden of borrowing billions of pounds to subsidise the shareholders of energy companies that are profiting from Putin’s war. It is shocking that she cannot even tell us how much that burden will cost today. I urge her to think again. Make energy companies pay their fair share. The global energy norm of energy profit taxation is 70%. Norway stands at 78%. Why does the population of the UK have to suffer the combined yokes of higher taxes, worse public services and falling real wages while private profit is protected under her premiership?

We should use that money to return the energy price cap to the pre-April level of £1,277 a year and extend that cap to small businesses and charities. People are struggling now. Even at current prices, 180,000 households in Wales are forced to struggle even to afford items such as heating, food and toiletries. Bills of £2,500 are unaffordable for many, many people.

Anything short of £1,277 as a cap will fail to meet the scale of the crisis that we face. It will require the Prime Minister’s Government—this is important—to introduce additional packages of support for vulnerable households, including doubling the £650 cost of living payment and revising the eligibility criteria to include those on disability benefits who are currently excluded from support. That will cost us more in future if we do not deal with what is genuinely facing us. Instead of pursuing fantasy economics of rampant deregulation and tax cuts for the rich, the Prime Minister must also prioritise a reduction in energy demand and investment in low-carbon sources. That is the only way to bring down energy bills in the medium and long term.

Let me be clear and simple. It is time to unchain Wales’s renewable and low-carbon energy potential by vastly improving our grid capacity; bringing forward small modular reactors at Trawsfynydd in my constituency, Wylfa and other places; empowering the Welsh Government to deliver large-scale, transformative infrastructure projects, such as tidal lagoons; devolving management of the Crown Estate to Wales; and enabling community energy schemes to realise their full potential by selling their power directly to local customers. For us in Wales, it is clear that, in the long term, to fix this crisis for good, we must place our energy system and its huge potential in the hands of the people of Wales, for the benefit of the people of Wales.

Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Liz Saville Roberts Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2022 Commons Chamber

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

Diolch yn fawr, Madam Dirprwy Lefarydd.

The Prime Minister’s bluster and banter and his stock-in-trade mockery ended today, and they were little more than a pointy finger rhetorical raspberry, not just to us but to everyone who ever made the mistake of holding him to his word and believing what he told them. He is a law-breaking Prime Minister who cannot be permitted to remain in office, even as a caretaker. His dishonesty and abuse of power have together only served to erode trust in politics and our institutions. The House will not be surprised to hear that my party does not have confidence in this Prime Minister or his Government.

To come back to the question of eroding trust, this is why I introduced a private Member’s Bill that will make it an offence for politicians knowingly to lie. They will be given every opportunity to correct the record, but they will be held to account in law so that they use words—our stock in trade—genuinely and honestly to the best of their ability. I have also written to the Conservative leadership candidates inviting them to support the Bill, because they have made truth and honesty core tenets of their campaigns as they attempt to separate themselves from the outgoing Prime Minister, whom they all of course supported. The Bill seeks to ensure that those who deliberately lie are held to account, but also to send a signal that lying and dishonesty in a modern democracy are a blight that must be eradicated.

My party’s lack of confidence goes beyond this Government, besmirched as they are by Westminster scandal. It is driven by the wider deep-rooted problems of the Union. We distrust the Union and lack confidence in the Union. The UK is foundering in deep stagnation from years of Tory austerity and a hard Tory Brexit that is hobbling our economy. It is no wonder that Poland is set to become richer than Britain in 12 years’ time on current growth rates. It will not be ordinary working families who feel the benefit of the tiny growth that is predicted. The TUC estimates that the UK will see the worst wage squeeze of all the G7 economies, with real average wages falling by £1,750 between 2022 and 2023.

In Wales, we seek the macroeconomic tools but continue to be denied the bare necessities to fix Westminster’s chronic tolerance of geographical inequalities. When we look at the place of Wales within the UK, we can see that things are very bad. Since 1998, relative productivity in Wales has hovered between 80% and 85% of the UK level. Once London’s disproportionate weight is accounted for, the figure is still only 90%. Wales has been given the tools to juggle poverty, not to condemn poverty to history. How can we have confidence in a Government and system that perpetuate such gross inequalities? The current UK Government talk of levelling up, but instead of presenting a comprehensive plan for redistributing wealth, they have forced councils to fight over dwindling pots of money.

Today, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that this Government’s levelling up agenda does not work for Wales. It says that their ideological insistence on excluding the Welsh Government from decision making has led to worse outcomes for Wales. Despite this, the Conservative leader in Wales recently called for no further powers to be devolved and said that consequential funding for HS2 should—wait for it—be controlled by the UK rather than the Welsh Government. This is a staggering insult to our democracy. In conclusion, we have no confidence in the current Government and we have no confidence in any Westminster Government.