Welsh Affairs

Mark Williams Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I, too, thank the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) for spearheading our attempts to secure this debate. It has given hon. Members from across the country a welcome opportunity to debate a rich variety of issues.

I commend the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), who is no longer in his place, for his glowing tribute to David Lloyd George and Lady Megan Lloyd George. Lady Megan Lloyd George strayed a little in later life and became the Labour MP for Carmarthen. The hon. Gentleman failed to mention the word “Liberal”, but for 54 years, David Lloyd George was a Liberal in this House, as was Megan Lloyd George for 22 years. Perhaps none of us aspires to 54 years in the House, but Lloyd George managed it. He is a great hero of mine as well as of the hon. Gentleman’s.

I want to raise a range of issues. I do not have the geographical organisation of the hon. Member for Gower (Byron Davies), who gave us a tour de force around Wales. I will pick randomly on issues that affect my constituency, but which I believe are pertinent to other constituencies across the country.

I believe that the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) will relate to one issue that cropped up earlier today, because he has done a great deal of work on the mis-selling of interest rate swap products and led our campaign on the matter. I have done a little work on that as well, and I have tried to represent the interests of my farming community. I am concerned about a letter that I saw this morning from a bank to one of my constituents. I had no hesitation in referring my constituent—a farmer, who has worked hard and continues to do so, and who wants to develop his business—to the Financial Ombudsman Service to attempt to get some redress and independent adjudication. The bank wrote:

“If the FOS agrees with us, they will not have our permission”—

so says the bank—

“to consider your complaint and so will only be able to do so in very limited circumstances. If you do not refer your complaint to the FOS within six months, the FOS will not have our permission”.

That is the bank talking, not the independent adjudicator, the ombudsman. I will not go into the specifics of the case, but it is a concerning state of affairs when the banks regard the ombudsman in such a way, and when my constituent is treated with such contempt.

Transport has been a big theme of the debate. I want to raise the issue of physical connectivity. If the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) has been, to use her words, “banging on” about the Severn bridge tolls for a long time, I have been talking about the Aberystwyth to Shrewsbury railway for a long time. There have been great advances, and I pay tribute to the Assembly Government for instigating an hourly service and investing in a new signalling system. I very much welcome the fact that Welsh Ministers are likely to be the franchising authority for Wales and the borders by 2017. Negotiations are taking place between the Government in Wales and the Department for Transport. Concerns have, however, been expressed about the remapping of services in the franchise. The Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth Rail Passenger Association is very concerned about consideration being given to splitting the current Cambrian coast and Aberystwyth to Birmingham service, meaning that all trains will terminate in Shrewsbury, rather than going all the way through to the west midlands. I understand the logic of a neat franchise boundary, but that will have an impact on constituents.

We have spent a long time promoting the tourism sector in west Wales and building links between Aberystwyth and west Wales and Birmingham International airport. During the previous Parliament, the Welsh Affairs Committee looked at the direct route through to the airport. It is now a great success, with 50% more trains through to Aberystwyth and a 40% increase in the number of passengers using the service. I hope that the Wales Office will, if it has not already done so, become engaged in those discussions, and at the very least voice the concerns that some of us have about the need for direct services from the midlands to west Wales.

[Guto Bebb]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Williams]

I will give way briefly, because I am conscious of the time.

[Guto Bebb]

Aberystwyth University is important to the economy of mid-Wales. Such connectivity is important to the university in attracting students from Wales and from outside Wales.

[Mr Williams]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. I know he has a potential interest in Aberystwyth University, and I commend it unreservedly to the Bebb family. Whether they come by road or on the train, the issue is important in developing the university.

I commend to the House early-day motion 1073 on the proposed closure and franchising of Crown post offices. The Under-Secretary of State for Wales will be interested in the one in his constituency of Vale of Glamorgan. Both Governments rightly talk about the vibrancy of the high street, and few of us would doubt the economic benefits that Post Office Ltd brings to our communities, so there is an inconsistency in franchising post offices, such as mine in Aberystwyth, out of the high street and into some backwater or into the back corner of a retailer.

There is also the effect on staff. The hard-working staff in Aberystwyth Crown post office were given the choice of redundancy, redeployment to the nearest Crown post office—in our case, that is the one in Port Talbot—or possibly transferring to employment by the retailer concerned, with wages and work conditions that were far from conducive to such a move. I urge Ministers in the Wales Office to look at those issues and to intervene with Ministers from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to encourage them to protect such valued businesses on the high street in our communities.

Not only post offices but banks have been leaving the high street. There have been bank closures in rural areas. In my constituency, banks in Aberaeron, Llandysul, New Quay and Tregaron have left the community. One reason why banks leave is that, as they say, so much bank business is now undertaken via internet banking.

I make no apology for talking again about broadband provision and mobile coverage in my constituency. The Under-Secretary of State was very kind to me, or I think he was, when he told me during last week’s Welsh questions that I was persistent. I am persistent, but I am increasingly frustrated, as are many of my constituents. We still have significant problems in rural parts of Wales; this applies not only in rural parts, but I am standing up for a rural area. We fall into the bottom 10% of seats represented in the House for average download speeds and superfast availability. Since Christmas, my constituency office has already had 100 concerned constituents from different parts of Ceredigion coming to us. We sit 639th out of 650 constituencies across the UK for broadband provision, which is bad. There has been some progress and there have been some advances, but, quite frankly, not enough for areas such as ours.

If broadband provision is bad, I must say that the Government’s mobile infrastructure project is far worse. Arqiva, their agents, has identified 24 sites across the Ceredigion constituency for new masts to alleviate the problem of “not spots” and lack of mobile reception. It spoke to landowners, the county council and community councils. It all sounded so impressive at the start:

“A publicly funded project to provide mobile phone coverage by all four Mobile Network Operators in areas that have none at present.”

The scheme ends at the end of this month. We were promised 24 masts; three masts will be achieved, one of which was already there. That mast was built by the excellent Ger-y-Gors community project, under the leadership of Duncan Taylor of Pontrhydfendigaid. One of them was a £60,000 makeover of a mast and just one other mast was built. Nationwide across the United Kingdom, 600 masts were identified, but by the end of March only about 50 will have been built.

This issue is not just about domestic households. We have talked a lot about building our economy and the advances that have been made. Surely the most basic infrastructure in areas such as mine is broadband and basic mobile coverage. My constituency is as vibrant, innovative, creative and entrepreneurial as anywhere else, but it is being denied the most basic infrastructure. That must be addressed by both the UK and the Welsh Governments. If funds have been available to the Assembly Government, they need to publicise them more and make them more available, and there need to be additional resources for rural areas such as mine.

Finally—I will not go beyond the 46 seconds I have left—it came as no great surprise to me that Ceredigion was listed in The Sunday Times as the most pro-European Union constituency in Britain, according to YouGov. That has a huge amount to do with our excellent universities and the collaborative work they are doing with those on the continent. It has a huge amount to do with the fact that we have qualified for and used money from convergence funding over the last few years. That is for good reason, because there are significant pockets of deprivation in the constituency. It also has a lot to do with farmers, who are concerned about the blank sheet of paper being offered to them by the out campaigns and UKIP. I look forward to a massive yes vote in Ceredigion on 23 June, even if I still have some concerns about the date.