Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Mark Harper and Susan Elan Jones(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I think that our Disability Confident campaign has contributed to the fact that more than a quarter of a million extra disabled people have started work over the last year. I am also considering improvements that we can make to the Access to Work service, which plays an important role in helping people either to stay in work or to return to it.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
T9. The Secretary of State said that by the start of this year no one would wait more than 16 weeks for a personal independence payment assessment. Will he tell us whether that is the case—yes or no?
Wales Bill
Debate between Mark Harper and Susan Elan Jones(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes some very good points, and I acknowledged them in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North. I said that that was why I wanted the review to consider both the advantages and disadvantages. We need to consider them because the proposals I brought before the House to reduce and equalise the number of Members in this place clearly had an impact on the number of parliamentary Westminster seats in Wales, reducing the number from 40 to 30. We decided to decouple the number of constituency seats for this place from the number in the Welsh Assembly, but it seems to me that if we are going to consider the number of Members and if the trajectory of the number of Westminster Members is going down, we should at least consider how many constituency Members there should be in the Welsh Assembly. If that number moves downwards, as I think it probably ought to, consequences will clearly flow from that for the size of the regions and how we group them. We must also build in a process whereby we can change the number of seats as the population increases, decreases or moves to ensure that that equal representation continues.
Setting up the independent review enables all those issues to be considered properly. A report to the Secretary of State can then be produced and laid before both Houses of Parliament so that a proper decision can be taken. The Silk commission might well be able to consider all these issues in the further work it will undertake, and when I listen to the Minister’s response I might find that the amendment is effectively redundant. However, the issues are worthy of consideration.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
I am absolutely certain that the hon. Gentleman did not intend to raise any North Walean hackles, but he has. Regional representation is hugely important in Wales, because those of us who have always been pro-devolution have always argued that it is fundamental that the different parts of Wales are represented at a regional as well as at a constituency level. I would not want any possible scenario that would see those lists increasingly South Walean-dominated. That would not be right for the future of the devolution settlement.
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady makes a good point. I do not want to trespass into North Walean and South Walean rivalries, but I am well aware that, if for no other reason than the geography of Wales, the communication links between north Wales and south Wales are quite difficult, and journey times can be lengthy—as Members have pointed out to me. It is relevant to the health debate next week that there is a lot of east-west cross-border travel between England and Wales to access essential public services, partly for the reason that travelling north-south is not very easy. The hon. Lady makes some good points. My amendment was very balanced, looking at both the advantages and disadvantages of a larger list, so that a properly informed decision can be taken.