Leaving the EU: Infrastructure in Wales

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Doughty]

I absolutely agree. Airbus is always an excellent example and is a crucial player in the Welsh economy, not only in the manufacturing of the wings and aircraft components, but in its defence and space business, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) but employs many people from my own constituency. Let us not forget that this is about not just the infrastructure funding that has come from outside, from European funds, but the infrastructure funding decisions that major companies make themselves and whether those will be put at risk when companies are not sure about the future.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

It is also about giving Welsh workers confidence. Taking up the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) about Ford, there is great anxiety in the plant about the future and security of their jobs. These are highly skilled and highly paid jobs. If workers do not know that they can be assured of long-term employment, they are not going to invest and spend, and we need that to keep the Welsh economy turning.

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend makes a crucial point. I am delighted that the top focus of the First Minister, Carwyn Jones, and the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure, Ken Skates, and others, has been on ensuring that the Welsh Government have continued to provide certainty where they can, whether that is to industry, infrastructure or building projects. Clearly, we need to keep investing—whether that is in schools and hospitals, as is happening in my constituency, in supporting businesses or in the work being done to support the steel industry—and that can help to provide confidence. However, without clarity on these very large sums of money and on the UK Government’s intentions in that regard, we can only go so far in terms of what Wales is able to do.

I hope that the Minister can give us clarity today. We need guarantees that funding will continue for Welsh infrastructure following any deal to leave the European Union. Wales voted to leave the EU—although not in my constituency—but it did not vote to see investment in Wales cut by a UK Government, and we need those assurances urgently.

Things may work out for us in the long term. Undoubtedly our country, Wales—and this country, Britain—have a history of coming together in difficult circumstances and of finding a way forward for our people when they are faced with difficult challenges. However, the plan may turn out to be reckless, with huge consequences for our economy, jobs and the unity of our country. The Prime Minister should have been here today to account for the plan. I am glad that the Minister is here, and I hope to hear answers to the questions that I and other colleagues raise today.

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[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

May I start by saying how inadequate I feel in following my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn)? I can assure him that on my face there was the great grin of delighted satisfaction that I always feel when I listen to him speak. There was certainly no grim look on my face; there was a broad grin.

The story of European funding in Wales is a little like the scene in “The Life of Brian” when someone asks “What have the Romans ever done for us?” The answer is nothing—apart from the aqueducts, the education, the clean water, the peace, the stability. What have the Europeans ever done for us? I must thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) for securing this debate. It has been long needed and it is right for our constituents to know what they are about to lose.

I went to the offices of Bridgend County Borough Council and asked what funding had been coming into my constituency. Since about 2000, we have received more than £40 million, which is pretty stunning in its own right, and that was only for education, infrastructure and development programmes. The funding is an absolutely vital resource for Bridgend County Borough Council and its strategic partners, enabling the delivery of major infrastructure developments. We have seen, for example, £3 million to develop three strategic employment sites, allowing small and medium-sized enterprises to develop and grow in Bridgend. Bridgend is slap bang in the middle between Cardiff and Swansea. People do not know what comes out of Bridgend, but the number of niche unique firms in the county borough of Bridgend that provide critical employment to highly qualified individuals is absolutely amazing.

Nearly £3 million from the European regional development fund has been invested in Bridgend town centre, which has been radically changed. It is a different, vibrant economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) mentioned the junction 36 development, which is critical for both Ogmore and Bridgend. The bottom half of the site is occupied by McArthurGlen, which is in the Ogmore constituency. At the top half of the site is my large Sainsbury’s store. In between them are three huge car parks for people who come from my hon. Friends’ constituencies to shop in the county borough of Bridgend. It pulls in people from the whole of the south Wales corridor and even from over the bridge. People come into Bridgend for shopping who would not have come if we had not had that development.

Between 2000 and 2013, we had £12 million ERDF funding to deliver work programmes, including further regeneration work in Bridgend town centre, a tourism development with a watersports centre of excellence in Porthcawl, and coastal path, cycle path and footpath developments across the county borough, which are good for tourism and also good for the health and wellbeing of the people of the county borough.

The rural development programme brought in £5.5 million for micro-enterprise hubs at several venues. For the period 2014 to 2020, we are looking for £12 million for further infrastructure schemes in Bridgend town centre and Porthcawl and to develop SME premises across the county borough. There are also £1 million-worth of Welsh Government-led projects funded by the ERDF to undertake rural development for private sector employers.

So European funding has been instrumental in supporting projects to deliver skills, training and employment in my constituency and in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore. We have had £10 million to support young people at risk of disengaging from education and training. We have had money to support the long-term unemployed and economically inactive back into employment. Those are all key Government projects, yet that money may no longer be there. There has been £3 million for Inspire 2 Work, Bridges into Work 2 and Communities 4 Work. It is vital that the UK Government deliver on the guarantee provided by the Chancellor on 3 October at the Tory party conference. He said:

“The Treasury will offer a guarantee to bidders whose projects meet UK priorities and value for money criteria…that if they secure multi-year EU funding before we exit…we will guarantee those payments after Britain has left the EU.”

Great—but I want to know what happens after that. Can I guarantee that after we leave the European Union there will be, over a 20-year period, another £40 million coming into the Bridgend constituency? Bridgend voters voted to leave, but they did not vote for reduced infrastructure development, worse or fewer jobs, reduced education or employment skills, decreased development capacity or slow tourism growth. Certainly, there will be an impact on Welsh youngsters, who did not have their vote, and that will affect whether they consider coming back to Wales to work or look further afield. We need to keep young people’s skills in Wales, and keep a range of viable employment opportunities for them.

My constituency is between Cardiff University and Swansea University, and many university lecturers go from Bridgend to lecture at those universities. I cannot tell hon. Members how many people have expressed concern to me about the funding of science projects in Wales, and about dramatic changes to the health and wellbeing of the UK.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) spoke about Ford. Can the Minister finally give me an assurance that whatever deal was done for Nissan is coming to Ford? The last thing I need is for the Ford engineers in my constituency to decide that they cannot take a risk, and to move out to other jobs. I need that factory and the jobs to be viable. I need the assurance and I should like it today.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Flello. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) not only on securing the debate but on his comprehensive and thoughtful setting out of the issues. It is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon); and I am sure that all Members from south Wales would give testament to the fine shopping at McArthurGlen.

[Mrs Moon]

And Sainsbury’s.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Absolutely. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). Whenever my hon. Friend speaks we learn something new; I am sure we are all very grateful for that. As to the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies), I am slightly worried about the way he reads facial expressions. He may end up getting his enemies and friends the wrong way round in future.

I totally accept the result of last year’s referendum. The Torfaen local authority area had a 59.8% leave vote, and the Torfaen parliamentary constituency makes up the substantial part of that local authority. It is crucial that the result should be respected; but whether people voted remain or leave, they deserve—in Torfaen and across Wales—a Government determined to deliver economic prosperity and to have a clear, coherent negotiating strategy to that end. Before I entered the House I was, among other things, a barrister and a mediator. I know only too well that no one should reveal the fine detail of their negotiating strategy before they begin; but that is not what the Government are being asked to do. We have heard from the Prime Minister today, but what concerns me is that not once has she given a coherent vision of post-Brexit Britain. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth pointed out, we are left with a nightmare scenario of being an island, almost like a giant tax haven, off the end of the EU, instead of a place where inward investment and the floor of workers’ rights established by the EU will continue post-Brexit. We are also left with the impression that the Prime Minister is far more interested in the internal politics of the Conservative party than in the national interest.

Today’s debate is specifically about infrastructure. Wales has benefited tremendously from EU structural funding. When we talk about infrastructure, we must think about it in different senses. We have, of course, physical infrastructure, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth talked about. I have already mentioned the south Wales metro project, which is one of many on which I hope the Minister will give far firmer guarantees. However, there is also the question of digital infrastructure. I commend the Welsh Government for their aim of every household in Wales having access to superfast broadband, and the great progress that has been made. Clearly, there is more progress to be made. I suggest that digital infrastructure will be vital to Wales’s future. There has been an increase in flexible working and the number of people working from home, and a substantial number of people are self-employed throughout the United Kingdom now; all of them will be reliant on the broadband speed available to them at their business premises and at home. That infrastructure, too, must be funded. The Government must have a coherent vision so that, without the European structural funds coming down the line, such things can be realised.

The Minister and the Secretary of State for Wales can play a crucial part in what happens, but they must be the voices of Wales in the Government, standing up for funding. They cannot become, in the years to come, the Government’s voice in Wales. The referendum has of course gone, and we have to concentrate on how Wales is to have a substantial number of highly skilled jobs, such as those in Bridgend that we heard about, and others mentioned by my hon. Friends. That is the vision of Wales that we must deliver, and I hope that the Government will put aside their internal divisions to take it seriously.

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[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Gentleman is well aware that the north Wales growth deal, in partnership with the Mersey Dee Alliance and so on, is dependent on a bottom-up approach. The answer to his question is that if the scheme and a deal are in place in good time to make an application for EU funding, it might be possible, but it depends on the timing. We are not a Government who say, “We know best in Westminster.” We are certainly not a Government who think Cardiff knows best. The city deals are based on growth from the bottom up. They are successful, and I hope they are proving their worth. It is a new way of working, and hon. Members should take it on board.

On investment in infrastructure and the co-operation between the Welsh Government and Westminster, the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) highlighted an important point about investment in our digital infrastructure. We should at least willing be to concede that more than 11% of the entire funding at the UK level for broadband connectivity was allocated to Wales. I openly congratulate the Welsh Government on match-funding that investment with European funding. We know that great strides have been made on broadband connectivity in Wales, but more should be done. That is why I was absolutely delighted to be involved in a conference in Cardiff last week—it was attended by the Welsh Government Minister—on how we could further improve broadband connectivity and, more important, ensure that we have adequate mobile communications in Wales. We also need to look at how we ensure that those areas of Wales that will perhaps not be reached by broadband connectivity will be able to access broadband via 4G and, in the future, 5G services.

Money is part of that issue, and there is a need for investment, but there is also a need to look again at planning issues, which are the responsibility of the Welsh Government. A very positive outcome of the meeting was that the Welsh Minister highlighted that the Welsh Government would have a meeting this week with stakeholders in Wales to look at whether the planning infrastructure needs to be changed to make it easier to provide mobile infrastructure.

The key point is that there have been changes to the planning infrastructure in England to allow taller masts without the need for planning permission, but the approach taken by the Scottish Government has been very different, and that is perfectly fine. As we have devolved Administrations within the UK, there is nothing wrong with having a response in Wales that looks at Welsh needs, a response in England to the situation in England and a response in Scotland to the Scottish situation. The key point I stress is that co-operation on the issue between Westminster and the Welsh Government is of vital importance for communities in all parts of Wales and for the economic prosperity of Wales.

[Mrs Moon]

I totally agree with what the Minister is saying about different views from different parts of the devolved Administrations in Wales, but funding for car manufacturers in the UK is a central Government decision and has nothing to do with the Welsh Assembly. Can I have the assurance that, whatever agreement was made with Nissan, there will be a comparable agreement for Ford and that assurances can be given that Brexit will not impact on the capacity of the Ford plant in Bridgend?

[Guto Bebb]

I assure the hon. Lady that on the third page of my notes of questions to respond to is the question on Ford in Bridgend. It is not just about Ford in Bridgend; we also have Toyota in north Wales, which is a crucial part of the north-east Welsh economy. I can only repeat what was said to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure in Wales, Ken Skates, in a meeting that I attended with Lord Price, the Minister of State for International Trade: nothing that was offered to Nissan is not on the table for Ford and Toyota.

I want to correct the hon. Lady, because some of the possible support for Ford and Toyota is a matter for the Welsh Government. Economic development is to a large extent a devolved matter. I fully accept the argument that, although the support might be coming from the Welsh Government, the reassurance has to be at the UK Government-level. I am delighted to say that we were able to say categorically that the deal offered to Nissan is on the table for Ford and Toyota when we were sitting in the office of the Welsh Government Economy Minister. Such businesses are crucial for the hon. Lady’s constituency in the same way that they are for north-east Wales, and we would not want to lose them under any future trading arrangements that we have with the European Union. Those commitments have been made and relayed to the Welsh Government.

Responding to the question that the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth asked about engagement, there is nothing better than taking the trade Minister to see the Welsh Government economy Minister and giving those reassurances in person within a week of the decision being made about Nissan. That decision was welcomed by Opposition Members and by Government Members, because it was a vote of confidence in the workforce of the Nissan plant. That vote of confidence should be given for Ford and Toyota, too.