Queen’s Speech

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wrigglesworth, with whom I agree on so many aspects of these matters. Yesterday, I was also delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, second the Motion; he is not in his place at the moment but I think that we all enjoyed his speech. I am particularly glad to see the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, in her place for the first time. We wish her well in her work in this Chamber.

At such a critical time in the Brexit negotiations, noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that I too will focus on some of the consequences of Brexit, particularly with regard to Wales. In doing so, I recall the central purpose of the European Union: to maintain peace on our continent.

This must be just about the strangest Queen’s Speech in the history of Parliament. The future of our relationship with our continent hangs in the balance; the future relationship between the four nations of these islands also depends on it. That may well have a knock-on effect on the future role of this House, if any. If this Queen’s Speech has any relevance, it is presumably as a draft election manifesto. Seriously, is it now the Queen’s role to participate in such a blatant party-political exercise?

This Queen’s Speech is nominally relevant to Wales too, although there is no single direct reference to Wales anywhere in it. In Wales, we have been driven by the incompetence of the Tory Brexit strategy to a position unseen for centuries, with people demonstrating in their thousands in Cardiff, Caernarfon and Merthyr Tydfil in favour of independence—not, I hasten to add, the type of independence advocated by UKIP, which seeks the UK’s detachment from Europe. People seek Wales’s independence because, in the wake of Brexit, it is only as an independent nation that we can become a member state of the European Union in our own right.

Brexit is driving Wales to look seriously at the independence option. We have seen the recent YouGov opinion poll indicating that more than 40% of those in Wales with an opinion on Welsh independence support it. They do so largely because they see the absolute devastation that will hit Wales if a no-deal Brexit goes through. It would undermine the dozens of international businesses that the old Welsh Development Agency successfully attracted to Wales as a base from which to sell, on a level playing field, to the European Union markets. I pay tribute to its former chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, who was with us a little earlier. He can take a lot of credit for the WDA’s success in this regard.

Such manufacturing companies now state openly that they will reconsider their investment programmes if the Government go ahead with their no-deal Brexit threat. We have hundreds of sheep farmers at their wits’ end as they face, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, a 48% tariff on their lamb exports to Europe, which will kill their industry stone dead and ruin rural Wales in the process. Little wonder that Wales has become indy-curious; if a hard Brexit goes ahead, it may well become indy-craving—a matter addressed a few moments ago by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

In that context, it is interesting to see the Welsh Labour Government’s recent announcement that they would support holding an independence referendum in Wales if independence-supporting parties won a majority of seats in the National Assembly at the next election. I hope, incidentally, that our friends in the Scottish Labour Party are taking note. So, voters in Wales know exactly what to do; Plaid Cymru’s inspiring leader, Adam Price, is rapidly gaining ground. This year, for the first time ever, Plaid Cymru overtook Labour in an election on an all-Wales level. No doubt we will hear the age-old scare-mongering: “How can you afford independence? Wales is too poor”. Oh my, here we go again, with the rich telling the poor that it is their own fault that they are in dire straits. Some things never change.

That is the very reason why we in Wales must take responsibility for our future into our own hands. It is in the absence of the tools to govern ourselves that we find ourselves perpetually in the economic doldrums. Decade after decade, Wales has lingered at the bottom of the UK prosperity league table, whether based on nations or on economic regions. In 2018, Wales had a GVA per capita of less than £20,000, compared with England’s at more than £28,000 per capita—40% higher —so we are told that we cannot afford to be independent. That is what Westminster told Ireland, decade after decade, throughout the 19th century at a time when, under British rule, a million Irish men and women died of famine. Ireland now has an income per head above that of the UK. Does anyone seriously pretend that Ireland would enjoy such prosperity if it were still under Westminster rule? Critically, Ireland has achieved its economic success because it is a member state of the European Union in its own right. Wales will secure the possibility of such economic success only by becoming a full member state of the EU in its own right. The British state has failed to secure economic parity across these islands. One can legitimately ask whether it has even tried.

I readily accept that it is not just Wales that has suffered from such economic disparity. The north-east of England also suffers and needs regional stimulus. So, I note with interest that the Queen’s Speech includes a commitment to the,

“Government’s ambitions for unleashing regional potential in England”—


pointedly avoiding taking any responsibility for doing anything at Westminster to help regional economic regeneration in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. In fact, along with Wales, Northern Ireland languishes at the bottom of the UK prosperity league table. It is little wonder that an increasing number of people there are asking themselves whether they might be better off in a united Ireland inside the European Union. The failure of successive Governments at Westminster to address the economic disparity within these islands could now be made even worse by this Government stupidly attaching themselves to a no-deal Brexit. If that happens, let there be no doubt: it will be the trigger for ending the United Kingdom in its present form. There were alternatives but it is now too late. In any case, I do not think that England is psychologically capable of making the necessary adjustments that could have facilitated an alternative way forward for Wales and Scotland.

I have been a Member of this House for eight years. I have tried to argue the case for Wales, as seen by Plaid Cymru, to the extent possible for a one-man band in an 800-seat Chamber. Others argue the Welsh case from their own perspectives here in this Chamber, as do 40 MPs in another place. But people in Wales increasingly believe that we have all failed. They are coming to the view that Westminster in its present configuration has not only failed to deliver, but is incapable of changing its approach to produce a significantly better outcome. That is why, rather than moaning for ever and a day about the failures of Westminster, people in Wales are waking up to the fact that we must look to ourselves for our salvation. It was ever thus, but the realisation of that fact is now the driver in Wales, as it is in Scotland, to find a new path to a new future which brings new hope. Hope is something that has been in preciously short supply in either Chamber in Westminster in recent times. I greatly regret that this Queen’s Speech does nothing to address, let alone redress, that reality.