Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. Conservative Members have always understood the power and importance of enterprise, while Labour Members have never understood just how important it is to boosting our productivity and making sure that our economy keeps growing and creating jobs at a record rate.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State makes great play of the importance of long-term planning. We all understand its importance for business, so what would he say to the company near Chepstow that used to make wind turbines but is now facing closure because of the sudden change in policy by his Government? Is it not sad that this Government, which should be offering certainty to business, are not only changing policy willy-nilly, but leaving a really big question mark over the European Union that is making businesses very jumpy indeed?

[Sajid Javid]

No one wants to see any company close in Britain, and no one wants to see any of the job losses that would potentially come alongside that. What is most important when changes in the economy affect businesses is a growing economy so that businesses are growing at record rates. We have record high growth as a country among the G7, which is exactly the sort of environment we want so that other companies can continue to grow alongside.

The national living wage will put more money in customers’ pockets. This will deliver a real boost to businesses right across the country, as eight out of 10 people who will see their pay rise live outside London and the south-east of England. These measures will all support growing, dynamic businesses, as we work with them to tackle the economic challenge of our time.

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[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who gave us a more than adequate demonstration of what one might call the Corbynisation of the Labour party. It is an equal pleasure and a privilege to follow three fantastic maiden speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Victoria Borwick) reminded me that I must go back and flick through my copy of the “Alan Clark Diaries”, which I did enjoy. I was not present to hear the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies), but knowing him as I do, I am sure he lit up the House. I look forward to reading his maiden speech in Hansard. I had to go to visit a constituent who is a black cab driver attending a rally upstairs about Uber. Those people are small business people in their own right, and it is important that we take that into consideration. As has been said, the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) gave a fantastic maiden speech, and I know we will hear far more of her in the years to come.

For 20 years or so, I have run my own small business—I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Being responsible for other people’s livelihoods, going through bad times when one struggles to pay the mortgage and the bills, but also during the good times of real success when one can think, “Actually, that was down to me and my efforts as a self-employed businessman”—those experiences give one a perspective on life, on business life, on working life, on wages and on what it means for people to strive and take opportunities. That is why I welcome so many of the measures that the Chancellor has given us in the Budget, in stark contrast with Labour. In the lead-up to the election, we had what has been described as the heaviest suicide note in history—the Ed stone.

[Nia Griffith]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Chancellor has tried to imitate one of our policies by trying to raise the minimum wage? He mistakenly calls it a living wage, but it is not at that rate. However, he has not offered any incentives to employers to introduce it, as we were proposing.

[Paul Scully]

I will come back to the national living wage.

The platitudes on the Ed stone were in stark contrast to the measured policies in the Budget.

Hon. Members can talk about semantics and about whether it is the national minimum wage or the national living wage. What we have seen is a significant—

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[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

This was a shambolic, shameful, pitiful Budget, more interested in grabbing headlines, trying to get the Chancellor in the slot for a future place in No. 10 and trying to lay political traps. This was not a Budget for the future of Britain. My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) had it down to a T: this is a Budget to provide cover for the Chancellor to shrink the size of the state. That is all that this has been about.

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills talked about security, but security for who? There is certainly no security for the working poor of this country, those on zero-hours contracts or the people who provide care on the minimum wage who do not get paid for their travelling time or travelling costs, who have to provide their own uniforms and who quite often have to contribute towards any training they receive, if they are lucky enough to get any. In short, this was a Budget providing no security whatever for the poorest, the most vulnerable or the weakest in our society, but plenty of security for multimillionaires looking to pass on assets and for other people.

The Secretary of State also talked about this great plan that the Government have got. They had a great plan in 2010 that was supposed to pay down the deficit over five years. That great plan failed to do that because it stalled the economy for three and a half years—three and a half years to get back to the same level of growth we had in May 2010. So much for hard work rewarded. No matter what the Chancellor thinks, there are people who work very long hours who can only dream of limiting their hours to those in the working time directive and who can only dream of a decent wage and being able to come back to a home that they can afford to live in. Hard work rewarded? There has been a lot of hard work from those people and very little reward for what they do.

I want to take a quick canter through some of the measures in the Budget. Much has been made about the supposedly national living wage. What an absolute con! The living wage has been put at £7.85 or £9.15 in London. The aspiration over the term of this Parliament will be to reach £9 by 2020.

So talk about this being a living wage is simply not the case. The proposal for it to be set at £7.20 is already well short of the necessary £7.85. As has been said many times, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), setting the living wage takes into account tax credits and additional support. Actually, the real living wage should be recast at a higher figure now that so much of people’s tax credits has been wiped out. This aspiration for what amounts to a rebranded minimum wage is nonsense.

To pick up on an earlier exchange, many employers have, sadly, seen the national minimum wage as a reason to dumb down wages rather than to use it as a baseline. Here there is an issue with tax credits because some employers have indeed said, “Hang on, let the state subsidise our profits and we’ll pay the minimum wage.” Those self-same employers will not now say, “Well, we should not have done that even though we did, but we are now going to put the minimum wage up to a proper living wage level”. Of course not. They will keep people working on the same minimum wage and see that their workforce are worse off on account of the reduction in tax credits.

Yet again, this is all about pulling the rug from under the working poor. The Chancellor makes great play of how the Government want to help people in work. These are people in work; they are people who are doing their best and working very long hours, but they are having the rug pulled from under them.

We hear talk about tackling aggressive tax avoidance and evasion, yet this Government have made various attempts to deal with it. We have seen various attempts to introduce general anti-avoidance type provision, but none of them had teeth and none was really designed to address the situation. I remember from when I was a tax and finance adviser in a previous life that people were capable of coming up with schemes to get round legislation within minutes. The Government have known about this for a long time; this is not new. To be fair to the Government—I rarely try to be fair to this particular Government, but I will be on this occasion—from time immemorial, Governments have not seized the opportunity to provide for proper anti-avoidance measures that will have teeth and will work. There are simple ways of achieving that.

As we have heard, reductions in public spending are about trying to take us back to a small state. The proposal to increase personal allowances, much heralded at the Dispatch Box, sounds wonderful, but it is all jam tomorrow. It is a £400 increase in the personal allowance, which is nowhere near the level it should be and nowhere near the level necessary to provide a genuine living wage in the sense of a basic amount that people need to live on. People will continue to earn less than they need to survive—and will be taxed on it, thrown into the bargain. Raising the threshold for higher rate taxation and raising the personal allowances has provided double help for those on higher incomes, who will see less of their income taxed.

[Nia Griffith]

Does my hon. Friend suspect that the Chancellor has deliberately renamed this “the living wage” so that he can break the promise of taking everybody on the national minimum wage out of tax?

[Robert Flello]

Absolutely. That could well be one of the motives behind it: it is certainly not about giving a genuine living wage to people, and it is certainly not about ensuring that people who work 40, 50 or 60 hours a week just to make ends meet will actually be able to secure a decent living wage. As I say, £7.20 from next April is already short of the £7.85 needed to take tax credit changes into account.

Let us move on to some of the Chancellor’s real friends in all this and consider inheritance tax and the increase to a £1 million threshold. How many people will benefit? It will be a tiny number, and that has to be set against the millions of people who are, to quote the Secretary of State’s words, “hard work rewarded”. It is nonsense, and it shows where the Chancellor’s thoughts lie and who he is really concerned about.

The reduction in corporation tax is another issue. On the face of it, it might seem very good. We already have one of the most competitive rates of corporation tax, but what about the small businesses that are not corporations or not incorporated companies? What about those small businesses that, as sole traders or partnerships, are the lifeblood of our country? What of the small businesses that do not pay corporation tax, for which it is not an issue?

Another item on this long list of measures is the introduction of a supplementary tax on banking sector profit versus the bank levy. I suspect—and I fear that I am right—that more smoke and mirrors has been going on in respect of what the levy was levied on and what profits will be subject to the supplementary tax; I suspect that this will work in favour of the banks.

The increase in insurance premium tax is another measure that will hit those on the lowest incomes. The Minister shakes his head, but there are no two ways about it. People who are already stretching their budgets to try to afford their contents insurance, for instance, will then be hit by a massive increase in insurance premium tax, from 6% to 9.5%.

As for the proposals for the Chancellor’s good friends, those with non-domiciled status, they are welcome on the face of it, but how soon will it be before someone comes up with a great ruse to get around the “15 of the previous 20 years” residence rule? How soon will it be before someone says, “That is OK; I will go abroad for a year, and then restart my clock”? How soon will it be before someone takes advantage of some scheme or other? Why not be more assertive, and take much stronger action?

I am conscious that time is beating me again, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I want to draw attention to a few more points. There are to be more apprenticeships, but the question is the quality of those apprenticeships. The ending of student maintenance grants will hit the poorest yet again—in this instance, the poorest students. I have already made my point about the public sector pay increase.

Buried among these measures is the reduction in the backdating of housing benefit from six months for working-age claimants and three months for pensioners to a maximum of four weeks. It is not really about reducing benefit; it is about saying, “If you were not quick enough to spot the benefit that you were able to claim, or if the paperwork was not processed, or if you are a pensioner who struggles with paperwork, you will lose out.” That will save £10 million, which is outrageous.

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[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Did you say 10 minutes?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I said eight.

[Nia Griffith]

In that case, let me very briefly congratulate those who have made their maiden speeches today, before turning to the subject of the steel industry.

Let me begin by thanking the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise for being so helpful last week by voting to retain anti-dumping measures for wire rod. The steel industry is being flooded out by a massive increase in imports from China, and it is important for us to work with other EU countries on anti-dumping measures. I hope that the Government will take the same approach to measures in relation to steel reinforcing bar, grain oriented electrical steels, and cold rolled steels.

Let me now say something about the EU compensation package. As we know, the Government set the carbon floor price too high, thus causing considerable difficulties to the steel industry. They have now come up with a compensation package for energy-intensive industries, but it is still a long time until April 2016. Will the Government think again about whether the date could be brought forward, and will they make absolutely certain that the package will not be cut?

As well as the problem of the carbon floor price, the steel industry faces the challenge of the EU emissions trading scheme. I firmly believe in working with the EU to create a level playing field, and I believe in the need to reduce our carbon emissions, but the energy-intensive industries need special consideration. It is important that the Government work with them so we actually achieve those goals, rather than achieving what is called carbon leakage—manufacturers going elsewhere where they are allowed to get away with higher emissions levels. There is a lot of work to be done here.

Business and industry need absolute certainty as they plan ahead and invest, and I am disappointed at the infrastructure projects that have been scrapped. The cancellation and postponement of rail projects and other infrastructure projects is very serious both to our skills base and our manufacturing industry. I am pleased that electrification is still planned for the railway line to Swansea, although I would like to see it come a lot further west, but it has still not started. I urge the Government to make sure that goes ahead with full speed.

I would like the Government to make greater efforts to maximise the UK input into the supply chains for such infrastructure, too. It is possible within EU regulations to include in tendering criteria a recognition of the benefit to the local community. Other EU countries manage that very effectively, and we should do a lot more in this regard.

Roger Evans from Schaeffler in my constituency of Llanelli is working with the Swansea tidal lagoon to maximise the proportion of supplies for the construction of the lagoon that is sourced locally in Wales and the UK. He is to be applauded for his efforts and I hope the Government will take note and do likewise, and that they will also strike the right price for the tidal lagoon to make it economically viable.

Business and industry need absolute certainty. We saw the Government cut the feed-in tariffs unexpectedly sharply without consultation, resulting in manufacturers and installers—many of whom had spent a lot of money training up as solar panel installers—going out of business, and now the Government’s sudden cut to the wind turbine incentive is again threatening manufacturers. When such decisions are made, they should not be knee-jerk, politically motivated decisions; there should be proper consultation with the industry and sensible lead-in times for any changes. There will now be a massive knock-on effect on the manufacturers and installers of wind turbines.

On the financial changes in the Budget, I welcome the national minimum wage going up to £7.20 next April, but it is, after all, a national minimum wage and it is high time it did go up to that amount—and the Chancellor promised ages ago it would go up to £7. I am very concerned, however, that it does not apply to those under 25, and I am extremely concerned about the loss of tax credits. They are an important part of our current taxation system. As has been mentioned, a couple on the current minimum wage with two children gain £1,500 but lose £2,200 in tax credits. We must raise the wages first, before scaling down any tax credits. This hits those on the lowest incomes who are often dealing with problems of insecurity, juggling more than one job to make ends meet, and working antisocial hours.

We still need a crackdown on zero-hours contracts as well. It is not enough to do what the Government did, which was say “You shouldn’t be prevented from taking another job.” They must do a lot more to try to ensure people can have proper contracts. USDAW has done a lot of work in this regard by getting annualised contracts that allow flexibility for employers and employees, but guarantee an agreed number of hours, so offering some security and chance of planning ahead for workers.

The cuts to tax credits will have a massive knock-on effect on local economies. People on low incomes out of necessity use their money immediately, putting it back into the local economy. There are wards in my constituency where Government changes over the past five years have already led to a loss in income of an average of £800 to £1,000 per person per year. Add to that the new cuts to the tax credits and we will see even more money sucked out of local economies. That is bad news for local business and could lead to further job losses.

I was shocked a fortnight ago to hear the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions say that the way for families to get out of poverty is through education and getting higher paid jobs. Of course it is, but in the meantime they need help. They cannot get that education and move into higher paid jobs in two minutes; we are talking about very long-term goals. What we are seeing in this Budget is a cut to what was a grant and has now become a loan for going into higher education for those very families on the lowest incomes.

We are also worried that the Government are removing the cap on the £9,000 fees for what are probably going to be the most sought-after and prestigious universities. Again, they are creating disincentives for people from less well-off homes to achieve the best and go to the very best universities. These are extremely worrying features of the Budget. Obviously, people want their children to do well—

[Mr Speaker]

Ahem.

[Nia Griffith]

I am sorry, Mr Speaker, are you suggesting that I should finish? I thought I was allowed eight minutes.

[Mr Speaker]

Yes, eight minutes.

[Nia Griffith]

In conclusion, then—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is not a formal limit at this stage, but colleagues are being encouraged to stick to eight minutes to give everyone a decent chance of getting in. However, it is up to the hon. Lady at this point.

[Nia Griffith]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Very briefly, tax credits are extremely important for those who work part time, who have to juggle childcare responsibilities or who simply cannot find enough hours’ work, and I would have liked the Government to ask those with the broadest shoulders to bear a great deal more of the burden, perhaps by putting up the 45p tax rate to 50p for those earning more than £150,000 a year. Instead, I believe that there is to be legislation that will limit income tax rises for millionaires. It is completely the wrong priority that it is those with the least money, rather than those with the broadest shoulders, who will be bearing the greatest burden.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

We all want to see an end to big companies wriggling out of tax by offshoring profits, but what assessment has the Minister made of the impact on kitchen table digital industries, such as the sale of knitting patterns, of the way in which HMRC has implemented the new EU rules on VAT being collected in the country of sale, and what can he do about it?

[Mr Gauke]

Those are EU rules. It was the previous Government who signed up to the principle of changing the way in which the VAT system worked, and they were right to do so. This Government have taken two measures to try to mitigate the impact on some smaller businesses. None the less, without the support of other member states, we are still faced with a change in the rules.

Tax Avoidance (HSBC)

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The hon. Gentleman asks a good question. There are two approaches. The first involves introducing into our domestic law things like the general anti-abuse rule, which is more of a catch-all and tries to anticipate changes by accountancy firms and others who devise aggressive avoidance schemes. The second approach, which is not to be underestimated, involves the major international agreement on the automatic exchange of people’s tax information between jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the United Kingdom. That agreement has happened only because the Prime Minister put it at the top of the G8 agenda; no previous leader of the G8 had done so. That is why we will have the automatic exchange of information, which will be a revolution in tax transparency.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

What explanation can the Chancellor give in response to comments by the former tax inspector Richard Brooks that the Treasury and HMRC

“knew that there was a mass of evidence of tax evasion at the heart of HSBC”

in 2011, but that the Government

“simply washed their hands of it”?

[Mr Osborne]

As I have explained, HMRC received in April 2010 the disc that had all the information on individual bank accounts. It then set about investigating all those individuals and bringing those prosecutions. We have known—[Interruption.] The shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury says that we have known this for five years. We have known for five years that there was egregious tax evasion 10 years ago under the Labour Government. We have put the resources into pursuing that, collecting the money and passing the international agreements to ensure that it never happens again in our country.

Tax Avoidance

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Nobody likes paying tax, but we all want our services, such as the NHS, to be there when we need them. Above all, we want fairness. We have an expectation that we should all pay our taxes, wherever we are. We want the same standards to be applied to all. It is damaging for honest businesses to face competition from corporations that are not paying the tax that they owe. Horrifying revelations about HSBC have been made this week. Instead of its clients being encouraged to pay the tax that they owed, they were being issued with credit cards to enable them to spend the money without it being identified. That is utterly shameful behaviour on the part of the individuals and the banks, and how many more are there like them?

Cheating the Inland Revenue is never acceptable, but it is particularly galling when councillors up and down the country are agonising over how to manage their severely reduced budgets, and having to decide whether to cut help for special needs children or help for the elderly, for example. My own indignation at the offshoring of the public money being used to pay private finance initiative debts led me to introduce a private Member’s Bill on the issue. In it, I tried to clamp down on that activity so that our money would not go offshore through those contracts. Furthermore, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Anas Sarwar) said, the amount of money that is lost to developing countries through companies offshoring accounts and therefore not paying their tax in those countries is three times the global aid budget.

I am very concerned by the Government’s record to date. The amount of tax that is owed and has not been collected has risen from £31 billion to £34 billion in the past three years. The Government were told about HSBC back in 2010, but nearly five years later only one of the 1,100 people involved in the tax irregularities has been prosecuted. The Prime Minister promised that he would lead on transparency in tax havens, but to date not one overseas territory or Crown dependency has produced a publicly accessible central register. The Government’s Swiss tax deal has raised less than a third of what the Chancellor said it would raise. In the 2012 autumn statement, he said that it would raise £3.12 billion, but the latest HMRC figures show that it has raised only £873 million.

On the record, Labour has been praised in the Financial Times for our measures against tax avoidance. During the 13 years of the Labour Government, we produced 10 times the income that the four years of this coalition Government have produced. We have a good record on this, but we can never be complacent. That is why we are making it clear that we would do a lot more to tackle tax avoidance. We would make tax avoidance and tax evasion a priority.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

The Opposition motion does not mention the need adequately to resource HMRC. Could that be because, as George Monbiot said in 2010, HMRC was “hacked to bits” under the previous UK Labour Government?

[Nia Griffith]

We believe it is important to resource HMRC properly, and we would like to see it much better resourced than it is at present. We have seen cuts recently that appear to involve getting rid of very skilled people and putting much less skilled people in their place. We would certainly want to reverse that situation.

The Minister mentioned people being caught up in the general anti-abuse rule. However, we will not get anywhere if we do not have proper penalties to impose on such people. We would put proper penalties in place to ensure that any new ideas that people might dream up could be dealt with effectively. We also want to close the loopholes that allow hedge funds to try to avoid stamp duty, and those that let companies move profits out of the UK to avoid corporation tax.

Also, very importantly, we would scrap the Government’s shares for rights scheme. It amounts to immoral blackmail to ask workers to give up hard-won fundamental rights, and it is proving expensive because of the amount of HMRC inspectors’ time required to deal with the scheme. Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said of the shares for rights scheme that the

“government is trumpeting a new tax policy that looks like it will foster a whole new avoidance industry. Its own fiscal watchdog seems to suggest that the policy could cost a staggering £1 billion a year, and that a large portion of that could arise from ‘tax planning’”.

I hope we will hear a commitment from the Minister to scrap the scheme. I also hope that the Government parties will take seriously our suggestions and include them in their manifestos, because we need to take a really good joint approach to these matters. I do not believe that the Government have carried on the work that we successfully set up. Their record is poor, and we need to see them putting in a great deal more effort to crack down on tax avoidance.

Autumn Statement

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I use the term with some poetic licence, it must be admitted.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Chancellor is quick to blame the eurozone. However, the UK now languishes as 22nd out of the 28 EU countries in terms of export growth. What specific measures will he take to improve it?

[Mr Osborne]

As I said in my statement, we face a major challenge when it comes to increasing our exports. As the Office for Budget Responsibility made clear, it has been a challenge for the British economy for the past 20 years. If anything, however, the decline in our exports has slowed down slightly in recent years, compared to what was happening under the last Government. Today I have committed myself to a £45 million fund, which will be available both to UK Trade & Investment and to the Foreign Office, to increase our trade links with the new emerging economies of the world, and to support first-time exporters in particular. Lord Livingston is doing a great job as Trade Minister, and I want to back him.

EU Budget (Surcharge)

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

As I say, I understand the frustration that many people feel about the way their money—hard-earned taxpayers’ money—is spent in Europe. That is why we are seeking a reform of Britain’s relationship with Europe and a reform of the way Europe works for all its citizens, and why we are seeking to put that to the British people in a referendum. With reference to my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), it is good to see the shadow Chancellor here, breaking off from the Balls family pastime of undermining the Leader of the Opposition.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Chancellor read out to us the Prime Minister’s response to the right hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) about the rebate, but can he explain why, in all that feigned anger, the Prime Minister did not explain about the rebate? Was it because the Chancellor had not shared that knowledge with the Prime Minister, or was it because the pair of them were in it together, ready to pull out a white rabbit last Friday?

Wales Bill

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy]

I do not think for one second that the model is a panacea for all the issues and problems that we face, but I think that it will give tools to the National Assembly and the Welsh Government that they currently may not have and make it easier for them to resolve various issues. I do not suggest for one second that the model means that we will have to end the important cross-border co-operation that exists, or that there will be no need for the Governments to discuss matters. Of course that will have to happen, because of points Members made earlier; large swathes of the population live on the border in Wales, in contrast to Scotland. I agree with the Minister that this model is not the complete answer but it is an answer. It is also an answer in the light of what both parties are thinking with regard to Scotland. Whatever happens in Scotland—like me, the Minister will argue for a no vote—it will undoubtedly change the political and constitutional landscape of our country and so Wales must be in a position to take part in that. Otherwise, we will be seen as an adjunct to a very large England, with Northern Ireland, with its own special issues, on one side.

Therefore, I agree with the new clause. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli will be able to make the points that I have not made and that have been discussed by Members.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The new clause calls on the Secretary of State to issue a report on the further legislative steps needed to move to a model of reserved powers for the National Assembly for Wales. It seeks to prepare the way for Wales to enjoy the reserved model of powers, so that legislation should set out the areas that are reserved for the UK Parliament, rather than trying to define all the areas that Wales can legislate on.

The current situation is that the model of devolution in operation for Wales is the conferred powers model. Following the referendum in March 2011, the National Assembly for Wales was empowered to make primary legislation in the 20 broad policy areas. Therefore, the areas where the National Assembly can legislate are conferred upon it and listed in the statute. However, Scotland and Northern Ireland enjoy the reserved powers model, which means that the legislation sets out the areas where the devolved legislature cannot legislate—areas that are reserved to the UK Parliament.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

At least three parties in the House support the reserved powers model, but can the hon. Lady explain what is meant by subsection (2) of the new clause? The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) made this point. It says:

“Part 2, except the referendum-related provisions and sections 19 and 20 shall not come into force until the report has been laid in accordance with subsection (1).”

What is that caveat? What is the hold up in moving towards a reserved powers model in the new clause?

[Nia Griffith]

That provision is to ensure that the report is actually laid. That is the point of it. It says, “Let us make sure that this is a genuine part of what happens during the passage of the Bill, rather than the issue being kicked into the long grass.” Otherwise, the danger is that the new clause, which asks for further progress on reserved powers, would just be kicked into the long grass. That would be the problem. It is integrally linked now with the progress of the Bill.

[Mr Williams]

Is there any link with the point made by the hon. Member for Arfon about the financial provisions of the Bill?

[Nia Griffith]

The whole point is that this is what we want to see. We are committed to a reserved powers model and that is what we would like to see progress on. It seems a missed opportunity not to have that in the Bill, so we want to put it in.

[Mr Williams]

I share the passion for the reserved powers model. The point the hon. Lady is making about the contrast with Scotland and Northern Ireland is an admirable one. My party leader has said that. So has Plaid Cymru and elements of her party, but why do we need subsection (2) of the new clause? I do not understand. Why can we not proceed with the reserved powers model anyway?

[Nia Griffith]

The important thing is that we are firmly committed to the reserved powers model and we wanted to find a way to put that in the Bill. We have put it in the new clause in this way because that is what we have been advised.

The Silk commission part 2 makes the recommendation that Wales would be better served by the reserved powers model, and it therefore seems to us that the Bill provides an ideal opportunity to pave the way for that change. Not to do so would be a missed opportunity, which is why we are proposing the new clause. The model is already there for Scotland and Northern Ireland.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition confirmed our commitment to a reserved powers model when he announced at Welsh Labour conference that Labour has a manifesto commitment for next year’s general election to introduce a

“new Government of Wales Act, with powers assumed as devolved to Wales, unless specifically reserved. Bringing Wales into line with Scotland—modernising and advancing the devolution settlement for generations to come.”

Labour is the party that brought devolution to Wales and Scotland. It remains the only party that is committed to and can deliver devolution in the UK and get the best deal for Wales. Therefore, let us look at why we believe that the reserved powers model would serve Wales better than the current model.

As the Welsh Government told the Silk commission:

“The reservation model is a technically superior method of devolving legislative competence on a devolved legislature. In our view, the conferral model is incapable of prescribing with any degree of certainty exactly what the Assembly can legislate about…The Welsh model therefore lacks…clarity and certainty, and much time is spent addressing potential arguments about whether provisions of a Bill relate to such undefined subject-matter.”

Indeed, the submission from the Hywel Dda institute of the Swansea university school of law also concluded that

“the reserved powers model is, in principle, superior in terms of accessibility, clarity, stability, sustainability, effectiveness and consistency with the principle of subsidiarity”.

[Mr Llwyd]

I am listening intently to the hon. Lady’s arguments about the benefits of a reserved powers model, and I fully agree with her. I was here when the original Wales Bill was drafted some years ago. Why was it not put in as it was for Scotland at that stage, rather than the conferred model?

[Nia Griffith]

I very much hope that the right hon. Gentleman will welcome the move forward that we are making in light of the referendum that showed that the people of Wales wanted to go that step further. I think it reflects the mood and the present situation in Wales.

I am very pleased to hear that the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) is offering his support, particularly as his hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) stressed his wholehearted support for a move towards the reserved powers model only a few weeks ago here in this Chamber. His thoughts were, of course, echoed on 16 June by the Deputy Prime Minister:

“So, what you will find in our manifesto is a commitment to implement Silk 2 in full.”

I hope today that we will see that support demonstrated in full by his party.

As for the Secretary of State for Wales, I think I will have a rather more difficult time persuading him to even contemplate moving to a reserved powers model for Wales. Indeed, he is on record as preferring the current settlement and I suppose even that is a big step forward for him from our days together on the Welsh Affairs Committee, when he wanted a referendum to make provision for turning the clock back and reversing the devolution settlement.

That brings me on to further evidence for wanting to move to a reserved powers model. As hon. Members will know, since the Welsh Assembly received its full law-making powers in May 2011, there have already been three referrals to the Supreme Court seeking clarification as to whether proposed legislation is within the competence of the Assembly. Two of those referrals have been made by the Attorney-General. The first of those was the Local Government Byelaws (Wales) Act 2012, which was passed by the Assembly in July 2012. The Supreme Court delivered a unanimous judgment in November 2012 that it was within the competence of the Assembly. That process both delays the legislation and comes with a cost.

In this case, the legal cost of the Treasury Solicitor’s Department for representing the Attorney-General in relation to the Bill was £59,000. The legal cost incurred by the Welsh Government was £30,000 and about £15,000 was spent on civil service time in the Wales Office. The First Minister’s spokesman called it a

“ridiculous situation that has arisen on what is a totally uncontroversial piece of legislation…The primary policy objective of the Bill is to simplify and rationalise how local authorities make byelaws to deal with nuisances in their areas…So why the UK government has decided to take this to the Supreme Court, at the last minute, is inexplicable.”

You really do have to ask yourself, Madam Deputy Speaker, why the Secretary of State even thought it necessary to ask the Attorney-General to refer it in the first place. It is difficult not to conclude that it had something to do with his general antipathy to any new steps in devolution.

The second referral by the Attorney-General was the Agricultural Sector (Wales) Bill, passed by the National Assembly for Wales in 2013, and we are still awaiting the outcome. That Bill seeks to retain in Wales an equivalent of the Agricultural Wages Board, which has been abolished by this Government in England. It therefore represents a difference in policy between the UK Government and the National Assembly for Wales.

Yet again, we saw it referred by the Attorney-General. You might almost suspect, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that was a referral made by the UK Government because they disagreed with the legislation and were unwilling for the Welsh Assembly to do things differently. But to most people, it just looks like wasting public money, fighting an expensive legal battle to try and stop the Labour Welsh Government retaining an equivalent board in Wales to protect Welsh farm workers—a move that has the support of the Farmers Union of Wales and people in Wales.

Furthermore, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), who has direct experience of these matters, said in a previous debate, when he was Secretary of State for Wales, disputes between the devolved Administrations and the United Kingdom Government were resolved at a governmental and political level and they should never get to the stage where they are resolved by the courts. He stressed that there is machinery within Government for resolving disputes between the devolved Administrations and their Parliaments and the UK Government.

--- Later in debate ---

Removal of restriction on standing for election for both constituency and electoral region

[Nia Griffith]

I beg to move amendment 13, page 1, line 9, leave out clause 2.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 14, in clause 28, page 30, line 19, at end insert “except section 2”.

Amendment 15, in page 30, line 37, at end insert—

‘(8) Part 1, section 2, comes into force when a Welsh Government Minister has laid a report before the National Assembly for Wales containing a statement to the effect that the Welsh Government, with regard to the electoral arrangements of the National Assembly for Wales, is content with fairness of those arrangements.’.

Government amendments 6 and 7.

[Nia Griffith]

Amendment 13 would remove a clause which would make it possible for people to stand both on the regional list and in the constituency. A bizarre argument is put forward in favour of dual candidacy—if dual candidacy is not allowed, the smaller parties in Wales may struggle to find sufficient candidates of any quality—but if such parties expect the electorate to take them seriously as parties that could help form a Government in Wales, they need to demonstrate that they can find enough additional candidates to field on each of the five regional lists.

Could this problem of finding candidates be something to do with which parties we are talking about and what they believe in? Could it be that young people in Wales are not rushing to put themselves forward as Conservative candidates because they know that the Conservative party in Westminster abolished the education maintenance allowance, while the Labour Welsh Government have retained it, or because the Conservative Government here did away with Labour’s future jobs fund, whereas the Labour Welsh Government have launched a similar programme, Jobs Growth Wales, focusing on the private sector? There is also the issue of university tuition fees.

Could it be that people are not coming forward as candidates for Plaid Cymru because they do not want an independent Wales, or because they do not want to support cutting tax for the better off, as Plaid Cymru’s economic adviser, Adam Price, has confirmed is its policy? People have realised that Plaid Cymru is not the progressive party it pretends to be, but a reactionary party.

Perhaps people do not want to put themselves forward as Lib Dem candidates as they are somewhat confused. One minute we hear that the Lib Dems are in favour of a reserved powers model, yet we struggled to see any of them in the Lobby with us, supporting our amendment. I am not sure where they are now.

People simply do not like to think that they have bothered to go out to vote, only to find that although their preferred candidate won, the candidate or candidates they rejected also got in. We all remember the Clwyd West scenario where the Labour candidate won the constituency—

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

What advice has the hon. Lady had from her colleagues in Scotland on this issue, given that they are now almost totally dependent on the list for their membership in the Scottish Parliament and have reviewed their whole attitude towards dual candidacy? It is a democratic good, according to Scottish Labour.

[Nia Griffith]

I am not casting aspersions on any individual list candidates. We have two excellent Labour list Assembly Members in west Wales—Rebecca Evans, who champions disability issues, and Joyce Watson, who champions human trafficking issues. They are doing an excellent job, because they are focusing on topics, not sitting like some great cuckoo on one constituency out of eight and making that their sole focus of attention, ignoring what is happening in important aspects of the other seven constituencies that they represent.

We have seen such abuse in Wales before. I am sure my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) will remind us again, as he has done many times, of the blatant abuse of the list system. He has quoted frequently from the leaked memorandum from Leanne Wood, the leader of Plaid Cymru, in which she gives explicit instructions to her party’s list Assembly Members to direct their time and resources, paid for by the taxpayer, to Plaid Cymru’s target seats.

Some people say that putting into the 2006 Act the clause that prevents an individual from standing for both the constituency and the list was a partisan move by the Labour Government, but we knew full well that it would also prevent our candidates from standing for both. We had at least four sitting constituency AMs who we knew were likely to be vulnerable to electoral change in the 2007 Assembly election and who could have hedged their bets by standing for both. That might have been very cosy for them, but as a matter of principle we knew how much the electorate hated it. On the doorsteps we heard people ask, “What difference will it make if we go out and vote?” It was extremely difficult to convince people after the Clwyd West scenario, because whoever the constituents voted for, all four parties were elected.

It was extremely important to us to stand by our principle, rather than making some sort of cosy situation for our AMs. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in some circumstances, depending on the specific arithmetic for the region, a candidate who could stand for both the constituency and the list could be pretty much guaranteed to be elected on one or other of them. That could breed a certain complacency, which would not serve the electorate well at all. We take issue with the accusation that this is a partisan point, because it is a point of principle. We strongly oppose clause 2, which seeks to turn the clocks back and allow dual candidacy. Our amendment therefore seeks to remove that clause from the Bill.

Our view is that the Assembly’s electoral arrangements should be decided in Wales, so we have also tabled an amendment proposing that an order should be laid in the Assembly by the Welsh Government before any change on dual candidacy can be implemented. I hope that Members will vote for our amendments.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

I, too, wish to speak in favour of amendment 13 and against clause 2 remaining in the Bill. The Secretary of State and other Members who have taken part in our proceedings on the Bill might recognise some of my comments from my single transferable vote speech on dual candidature, because I remain firmly opposed to that abuse of democracy. However, I will be brief, because my favourite premiership player, Frank Lampard, is captaining England at 5 o’clock, and I know that even Members from Welsh constituencies, with the possible exception of our Plaid Cymru friends, will want to cheer them on in their final game.

I repeat my basic argument, which I have expressed throughout the Bill’s proceedings, and the rationale for my ban on dual candidature in the 2006 Act: it cannot be right for losers to become winners through the back door, despite having been rejected by the voters. That is an abuse of democracy. People who stand for a single-Member seat and then lose can end up being elected anyway, in defiance of the electorate’s wishes, because at the same time they are in a list category, and that is an abuse of democracy. There is no real argument against losers becoming winners in that way.

There was a widespread abuse practised by 15 of the 20 list AMs prior to the 2006 ban. They used taxpayers’ money to open constituency offices in the very single-Member seats in which they were defeated. They then targeted those seats at the following election by cherry-picking local issues against the constituency AMs who had beaten them. Why are they so afraid of taking their choice to the people, and why are the Government so afraid of democracy? Why are they so afraid of losing constituency elections that they need the lifebelt of standing for the lists as well? That is what the leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood, for whom I have considerable admiration despite all that, is doing in Rhondda. In a leaked memorandum written in August 2003, she was refreshingly honest about promoting abuse of the dual candidature system by list Members using taxpayers’ money.

Wales Bill

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I do not follow that argument at all. If I may pick up the point that I was making to the hon. Member for Arfon, the point we were debating on bonds was about repaying the money. If Ministers are going to devolve borrowing power to Welsh Ministers, it must reflect the revenue that Welsh Ministers have some influence over; otherwise, it would amount to enabling Welsh Ministers to borrow money, effectively, against taxes raised by central Government, and there is no accountability there. We then get back to the problem that we started with: Ministers could borrow to spend, no doubt on projects that they would deem to be popular, but there would be no accountability because the money would be largely repaid not through the taxes that had been devolved to Welsh Ministers, but through taxes controlled by Treasury Ministers, and that would set up perverse incentives.

If the Welsh Government are to be given borrowing powers, they should reflect the revenue stream that those Ministers are in control of. If the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) is arguing for more borrowing powers, therefore, he would obviously want to devolve some more taxes to go along with them; otherwise, it is just Welsh Ministers writing cheques on UK taxpayers, which ultimately the Treasury has to stand behind.

As I was saying before I gave way to the hon. Gentleman, my understanding was that the increase in the capital borrowing limit was intended specifically to allow the Welsh Government, in advance of the devolution of an element of income tax, to proceed with improvements to the M4, which I remember from Second Reading would be welcomed by my hon. Friends the Members for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) and for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns). I am sure that although the hon. Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) is being very inscrutable, she would welcome such improvements. Oh no, she is shaking her head—she does not welcome improvements to the M4. That will be news to her constituents; I thought she did.

The Bill also contains a power that enables the UK Government to vary—have I provoked the hon. Lady? No, I have not. It enables the UK Government to vary the overall limit both upwards and downwards. A joint process is in place between the two Governments to ensure a level of convergence. That seems sensible. That limit will be set at a level that the UK Government consider appropriate, based on an assessment of economic and fiscal circumstances and the impact of inflation. Amendment 5 has been tabled by Plaid Cymru. Paragraph 91 of the note that the Government have produced states that among the things the two Governments will consider when looking at the borrowing limit will be the impact of inflation on the real value of the limit. Given that both Governments will be participating in this collaborative process, that should mean that the limit can be kept at a real-terms level. I hope the hon. Member for Arfon will welcome that.

The final area is the independent revenue stream over which the Government have control. I argued earlier that borrowing must be related to the level of income.

The Government’s note explains comprehensively how the current borrowing and capital borrowing powers, which are set out clearly in clauses 19 and 20, were arrived at. I think I have set out clearly why I would not support the amendments tabled by Plaid Cymru on the ability to issue bonds, and the ability to keep borrowing levels at real-terms levels is covered in the Government document. I am happy to support clauses 19 and 20 but not the amendments in the group.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

We very much welcome borrowing powers for the Welsh Government, as they will help them progress with investment in vital infrastructure projects and foster growth in the Welsh economy. Borrowing powers may also prove useful in enabling match funding to take advantage of European funds.

The Silk commission argued strongly that the Welsh Government should have

“the capacity to borrow for capital investment on a prudent basis subject to limits agreed with HM Treasury”.

These powers are all the more badly needed as the capital budget for Wales has been cut by one third by the current Government.

--- Later in debate ---

I remind Members that all their parties signed up to the Silk Commission’s recommendations via their representation on it. We in Plaid Cymru have sought, through our amendments, to maintain the integrity of the cross-party commission’s original findings and recommendations. The other parties have since either watered them down or placed restrictions on, or roadblocks in the way of, greater financial powers for Wales. I urge hon. Members, particularly Labour Members, to put Wales first and back up what the party in Wales says about Barnett reform.

[Nia Griffith]

The right hon. Gentleman’s new clause deals with Barnett reform, but if it were reformed, what would the position be in Scotland? Is it in his mind that Barnett reform would increase funding for Wales and decrease it for Scotland?

[Mr Llwyd]

I am in the thankful position of not speaking for Scotland. I have an opinion, however, as I would not like to see our colleagues and friends in Scotland being done down. I pose the question of whether we need a proper root-and-branch approach to the problem—something that will properly deliver. Come September, there may be no need for Barnett reform in Scotland.

[Nia Griffith]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the Labour party’s announcement this week that we want to increase the funding for Wales, but not reform the Barnett formula as it affects Scotland?

[Mr Llwyd]

Asking me to say whether I think it is a good thing to increase funding for Wales is a rather strange question. If that ever happens, it will of course be a good thing, but rather than have piecemeal increases in funding, it would be better to have a lasting and proper formula that everybody could understand and that could stand the test of time—unlike the Barnett formula. Whenever I see the noble Lord Barnett—a wonderful character and a very nice man—he turns away. I hope it is not because it is me, but he always turns away, saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry; the formula was not meant to be in place now”. He acts as if he thinks I am going to jump on top of him! He realises the point himself, so we really need to get stuck in on this issue. I hope that when the Bill is passed, we can reach an all-party consensus by sitting down and seriously having a go at addressing the Barnett crisis. As I say, rather than have a piecemeal approach to the problem, I would prefer a long-standing approach to which everybody could sign up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nia Griffith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Guto Bebb]

I will give way so that I can understand why the Welsh Labour party takes the view that patients should not have a choice that is freely available to patients in England.

[Nia Griffith]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that patients in England need a referral from a GP? The way in which the funding is being reformed in England will make things difficult, because some GPs will have to make desperate choices about whose treatment they will fund.

[Guto Bebb]

The hon. Lady is mistaken. The NHS England website poses the question,

“Can I have a GP in Wales if I live in England?”

The answer is:

“Yes you can, but… Patient choice and the NHS Constitution do not apply to the NHS in Wales.”

In other words, patient choice does apply in England, but it does not apply in Wales.

It is important that this issue is debated, because the Government in Cardiff Bay state that the NHS in Wales is as good as the NHS in England. That is exactly the issue that our amendments highlight. They make it very clear that if patients from England elect to use services in Wales, there will be a corresponding change to the funding block, and if patients from Wales elect to use services in England, there will be a corresponding change to the block. If the confidence in the Welsh NHS that Opposition Members express in the media and on television is genuine, they would see no danger in the amendments. The amendments would simply allow patients from Wales who want to be treated in England and patients from England who want to be treated in Wales to have that choice. They are simply trying to ensure that we have an NHS that is national. Why is that so scary to the so-called party of the NHS? That question needs to be answered in this debate.

Secondly, I want to touch on the comments of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I was genuinely disappointed to hear the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth described as an attack on Wales. It is important in a mature democracy that we are able to highlight areas where service levels in Wales are not as good as they should be, because we should aspire to have the best. Whether we are talking about the NHS or education, we have a duty to highlight places where Wales is underperforming. To try to kill off that debate by arguing that all Members who highlight concerns on behalf of their constituents are in some way attacking NHS staff is unacceptable.

I might be suggesting that there is a motive where none exists, but perhaps the defensiveness that was articulated by the right hon. Gentleman reflects the fact that patient choice in Wales disappeared as a result of the “One Wales” Government. According to the House of Commons Library, the “One Wales” Government “eliminated patient choice”. Those are not my words, but the words of the House of Commons Library. It states clearly:

“Patients registered with a GP in Wales do not have a statutory right to choose at which hospital they receive treatment.”

The “One Wales” Government moved from patient choice to patient voice. That was a good soundbite that appealed to people who like poems that rhyme. However, in the Betsi Cadwaladr trust, patient voice meant that if somebody made a complaint, they might get a response in six months. Patient choice, which is what these amendments propose, means that patients in north Wales who feel that they would be better served by electing to be treated at a hospital in England would have that choice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guto Bebb]

I accept that point.

I will conclude my remarks because I wanted to be brief and my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth has highlighted the main issues. The key issue is that our amendments in no way threaten the Welsh NHS if it is a beacon of success, as is claimed by the Opposition parties. If the good practice that I see on a regular basis in the health service in north Wales is replicated across Wales, the amendments should not strike fear into anybody.

I come back to the individual I saw on Saturday morning while I was out canvassing. As the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd will be aware, a significant portion of my constituents have retired to north Wales to live. They often have family members in the north-west of England. Is it not unfortunate that somebody who is facing a significant operation cannot choose to be treated at a hospital near their family? Medical records show clearly that being in close proximity to one’s family, having the support of one’s family and having a daily visit are often the difference between a quick recovery and a long, drawn-out recovery. However, that choice is not available to patients in Wales simply because they live in Wales.

The amendments are a vote of confidence in a national health service. All parties who claim to support the national health service should support them.

[Nia Griffith]

The amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) and for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) claim that a disproportionate number of Welsh patients use NHS services in England. That is totally groundless. In fact, the number of English patients going to Welsh hospitals has increased by 10% since 2010, while the proportion of Welsh patients using English A and E services has fallen in recent years.

[Guto Bebb]

The point that the hon. Lady has just made is clearly wrong. I just made it very clear that patients in Wales are not able to choose to use hospitals in England, so it is no surprise that the numbers being treated in England have fallen.

[Nia Griffith]

I am coming on to that. I am talking about patients who live in England and come to have treatment in Wales. The implication is that everybody wants to flee from Wales and nobody wants to go there. That is not true.

The issue of choice is key. We all have constituents who go for specialist treatments in England. We all know of emergency cases that have been taken to special care baby units and to hospitals as far away as London. There are obviously issues of funding. Funding does change hands. Amendment 13 suggests that that should be done through the block fund, but it is done from health board to health board.

The hon. Member for Aberconwy ignores the reforms that are being suggested in England, which will mean that instead of a GP making a referral to the hospital that they consider will provide the best treatment for their patient, they will have to consider the GP surgery’s budget and might not be able to afford the treatment. There are hospital consultants in England who are terrified that their services will not be brought in by certain GP practices because of the immense pressure of trying to provide a huge range of services with a limited budget. That is terrifying. Soon someone will not be able to compare like with like, and there will not be a similar situation in England and Wales—it will be very different. I am afraid that the idea of patient choice will vanish in England. It is nice to think it is there and that it will exist in future, but it simply will not be there.

I have heard of many instances of patients who had a certain degree of choice and were able to go to a slightly different hospital than the one first suggested when they made the case and asked for that change. Frankly, I think this amendment has provided the opportunity for an attack on the Welsh health service.

[Guto Bebb]

Not again!

[Nia Griffith]

Absolutely—not necessarily from the hon. Gentleman, but from other hon. Members there has been a blatant and clear attack. I would be the first to make a fuss—indeed, I do—if somebody cannot get a specific treatment, and we all know that in every area, whether in England or Wales, certain specialties may be difficult to cover in certain periods. We all know that we need to fight for certain things for certain constituents. As was mentioned, however, there is no clear winner or loser; there is no clear leader or laggard in the four UK nations in terms of health provision, as shown in a longitudinal study by the Nuffield Trust over a long period.

[Susan Elan Jones]

It is all very well various Conservative Members saying, “We are not making an attack on the NHS”, but the leader of their party went to their Welsh conference and—I have just checked this because it is almost beyond belief that he used this phrase—described Offa’s Dyke as

“the line between life and death”.

I am sorry, but that is offensive. Conservative Members continually play the game, but they are Cameron’s little dogs, nothing else, and they are not prepared to speak up for Wales.

[Nia Griffith]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, many of my constituents, who would be the first to criticise if something were wrong with the national health service, were shocked by those comments and deeply outraged at the insult to the many hard-working staff. I am glad that Conservative Members in the Committee have recognised the hard work done by many of our doctors and nurses in Wales, but there has clearly been an unmitigated and quite unnecessary attack. As has been pointed out, if he looked at some of the statistics, the hon. Member for Monmouth would find that waiting times for certain cancer treatments are shorter in his patch than over the border in the Wye valley. It is absurd to state that everybody is hopping across to England. Likewise, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean has tabled one of the amendments, but Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust treats only 82% of its cancer patients within the 62-day limit, whereas in Wales the figure is 91%. Every Welsh trust is outperforming the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust.

When considering these figures it is easy to pick one number or specialty and to forget that for the vast majority of people in Wales treatment has improved rapidly over the past few years. It is certainly very different to how it was in the 1980s and ’90s, when people waited an extremely long time. The key point to remember is that England too has had a dreadful year for A and E.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady is attacking the NHS!

[Nia Griffith]

I am saying that in England it has been the worst year for decades for A and E, with almost 1 million people waiting more than four hours. It has been much harder to get to see a GP in England since the Government scrapped Labour’s 48-hour appointment guarantee. [Interruption.] I am stating the fact that some things have not gone well in the NHS in England, and I am pointing out the criticisms, including shortages of nurses. In Wales we have 60 nurses per 10,000 people; England has only 50, and shortages in certain departments have been causing particular problems. In Wales, delayed transfers of care and discharges are at an all-time low, whereas in England the number of hospital bed days lost to delayed discharges is at an all-time high. One might ask whether that has something to do with the cuts to local government expenditure that have been experienced in England under this Government.

All in all, the amendment on transferring block funding so that people can shift from England to Wales is, first, not very practical. Secondly, there are already opportunities for people to go across the border where that is the most appropriate treatment. Thirdly, the reform of the system in England will make it extremely difficult for GPs to provide even basic treatment for many of their patients, given the budgets they will be dealing with.

There have already been a number of exchanges on fair funding between the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) and me, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Labour party made it clear this week that we recognise that although the Barnett formula has served the UK well, there is a specific set of issues relating to Wales. As a result, an incoming UK Labour Government would address the issue for Wales without it impacting on Scotland. The right hon. Gentleman refers to not having a piecemeal approach, but I suggest that his amendment is just that and that a more comprehensive look at the issue would be more appropriate.

[Mr Harper]

I will try to be relatively brief although I will say one or two things that I had not intended to say because I have been provoked by the previous contribution. First, the double standards are breathtaking. My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) gave a perfectly reasonable speech and made it very clear that he was not attacking doctors and nurses but speaking about senior NHS professionals, yet he was accused of attacking doctors and nurses. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) then proceeded to criticise standards of health care in England, yet somehow that is okay because she is just pointing out facts. Absolute nonsense. If we see things wrong in our constituencies it is our duty as elected Members to point them out. My hon. Friend was simply pointing out to the Committee problems in his constituency that had been raised by constituents. [Interruption.] I am not surprised that Labour Members do not want to hear this. The NHS is not performing well in Wales, and I will set out why my constituents in England are concerned about that.

I am happy with the confirmation from the hon. Member for Llanelli that if her party is elected to government it will sort out the Barnett formula for Wales and give it more money without that affecting funding for Scotland. As an English Member, it is quite clear to me which way the bill will be coming, so I will be pleased to tell my English constituents that another reason for not voting for the Labour party is that they will be facing a large bill to give more of their taxes to be spent by the Welsh Assembly Government, as well as the money they give to Scotland. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that campaigning opportunity.

Amendments 12, 13 and 14 have been tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth—my constituency neighbour—and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). I listened carefully to their arguments and I am happy to support the amendments as I think the principles they outline are sensible. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy spoke about the Welsh Assembly Government’s policy of voice not choice. That would be fine if, when patients said something with their voice, somebody actually listened to them. The problem is that nobody listens, which is a real issue for my constituents.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the industry and the Government agree, as I believe do all parties in this House, that self-regulation is the way forward. That was at the heart of the Leveson principles. As I said, the royal charter has been granted and the press have responded by setting up a self-regulator, and it is now for them to decide how they wish to take that further.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

3. What steps he plans to take to reduce simulated gambling on social media sites.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)]

The Government are aware of concerns about gambling-like activities on social media. The Gambling Commission has published a review of existing evidence and is working with all relevant bodies to analyse data and assess any relevant risk.

[Nia Griffith]

Will the Minister tell the House how she will ensure that no promotion of online gambling is targeted at young people using simulated gambling sites? Clearly, those people are already very vulnerable, and the temptation for real gambling to be advertised to those young people is immense. How will she ensure that that does not happen?

[Mrs Grant]

Of course, the remote gambling Bill that will be presented later this year will do an awful lot to deal with any abuse coming from online gambling. The risks of social gaming fall into two categories: consumer exploitation and problem gambling. The Gambling Commission is looking at both, and I am happy to speak to it and to take advice on the specific issue that the hon. Lady has brought to my attention.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Osborne]

The Labour Government left us the highest budget deficit in the peacetime history of this country. The numbers to which my hon. Friend refers assume that there are no savings in welfare. I have made it clear that I think we should consider savings in welfare. Of course, other parties, such as the Labour party, have put forward proposals to increase tax.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Given the great success of the Labour Welsh Government’s Jobs Growth Wales scheme, which is on target to help 16,000 young people into sustainable jobs, mostly in the private sector, will the Chancellor now commit to a similar UK-wide scheme funded by a repeat of Labour’s tax on bankers bonuses?

[Mr Osborne]

This week, the help to work scheme came into force, which is helping long-term unemployed people, providing them with more support and ensuring that those who need to sign on daily do so, and that those who need work experience and who need to be in work can take community jobs. We are reforming welfare, and that is part of the approach that we are taking to create jobs in this country by ensuring that work always pays.