25 Years of Devolution in Wales

Debate between Nia Griffith and Rob Roberts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dame Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I really do not recognise a lot of what the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) has laid out. One great thing about devolution is that there has been far greater transparency and that enables him to make some of his analyses. Every region and council in England has things that have not always gone exactly as they should, and which could have been done better. That is obviously the case for Wales as well. People are not always going to get everything right first time. They are not always going to do everything the best way. However, the point is that they are democratically elected and closer to their communities, and they have the opportunity to improve and change things.

I want to put on record the remarkable progress that Wales has made over the last 25 years. Setting up the Senedd—or the Assembly as it was then—from scratch and gaining greater powers has been done in a remarkably short time. Considering that we were faced with the consequences of a world banking crisis seven years after it was set up it has not been an easy time.

In Wales, we have the opportunity to use powers imaginatively and to do things differently. Right from the start, we in the Labour party looked at who was going to represent us. We decided to go for a twinning process and put constituencies together so that we would have an even number of Labour women and men standing for election in winnable seats. Too often, women were confined to less winnable seats. That provided a strong degree of gender equality in the Assembly, which coloured debate. Why is it that Wales led on childcare provision? We have had a strong tradition of women speaking up in the Senedd. Why is it that Wales spends more on social care? Why does it provide better social care and a living wage for all in the care sector? That has been delivered by the Welsh Labour Government because we believe it is very important. Why have those issues been raised? It is because we have more women taking part. There has been a real shift in focus, and a real determination to do things differently within the powers we have. We do not have all the powers, but we use them imaginatively. For example, how did we ban fracking in Wales? We banned fracking through the planning laws, because that is where we have powers.

In Wales, we have taken up long-term issues such as preventive medicine, the results of which will not be seen for a very long time. We were the first to bring in a smoking ban. Smoking is at record lows in Wales. That is good, but it will be years before the long-term benefits to health outcomes are seen. We have concentrated on the foundation phase of education. Again, it may be a considerable time before we see the full benefit of that investment because we are starting with the youngest children. We have a very innovative curriculum.

What is important about devolution is the closeness of the Administration and the Ministers to the people they serve. Time and time again, whether it is business groups, trade unions or stakeholder groups, people in Wales feel that they can access the Welsh Government. They can have meetings with Ministers or officials. They are involved in consultations.

Take the recent consultation on business rates. People have talked about reform of business rates forever and a day across the UK, but the Welsh Government have got on and started consulting. No one thinks that finding a solution will be easy because there will always be winners and losers, but the important thing is having the consultation and the fact that people in Wales feel they have an opportunity to contribute. A good example occurred during covid, when Julie James, a Member of the Senedd who was then in charge of local government, had regular meetings with council leaders across Wales. Even Opposition party leaders recognised the value of that: nothing was a shock for those councils. Local authorities were under stress, having to deliver everything during covid: providing school meals during lockdown, ensuring social distancing in the workplace and preparing schools for reopening, to name but a few—not to mention the delivery of the test and trace programme, which cost so much less and was so much more effective in Wales because it was delivered by local authorities who knew their people well.

[Rob Roberts]

The hon. Lady used the words, “far greater transparency”. I mentioned the covid inquiry; from what she is saying, in Wales, everything was run quite well and all the Ministers made excellent decisions. Is it not therefore incomprehensible that Wales should not have its own bespoke covid inquiry to scrutinise whether those decisions were actually as good as she is making them out to be?

[Dame Nia Griffith]

I find that comment surprising from somebody who purports to want to save money. We can do what the hon. Gentleman suggests at one fell swoop, with one covid inquiry. It can have specific studies of what happened in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales; there is absolutely no reason why that should not be the case. The National Audit Office gave Wales a clean bill of health on the way it purchased personal protective equipment throughout covid, whereas we have seen some shocking figures on UK Government money that went astray, and some dreadful accusations of cronyism in who won various contracts; companies in my part of Wales missed out because their emails were never even opened by the Department of Health. I can cite one company that, despite being a trusted supplier to the Ministry of Defence, police forces and health service in Wales, did not even get a look in from the NHS in England.

Getting back to the point, the Minister in Wales talked to the leaders of local councils; they knew that councils were facing the stress of having to deliver measures under covid, so they made sure that councils knew what was coming down the line. That contrasted very sharply with what happened in England; leaders in the north of England found out that their whole areas were being put under covid restrictions literally a couple of hours before it was announced on local radio. That was an utter disgrace. The situation in Wales reflects what can be achieved in a more devolved situation, where people can have greater access. We cannot expect people to have that same sort of access in a UK Government situation, in which we would clearly be dealing with a much larger country. However, there could have been a great deal more co-operation on covid restrictions and with councils.

There was a shocking disregard for the powers of the devolved Governments during covid. They were often not apprised of what was happening at Cobra meetings and found out about things very last minute. There could have been much better consultation, much better dialogue and actual interaction on how things could be done better. The same situation was repeated in the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020; instead of constructing a situation in which there would be proper consultation and discussion, the UK Government pushed through legislation that effectively ignores devolution and rides roughshod over the devolution settlement.

That has likewise happened in the distribution of levelling-up funding and the shared prosperity fund. It is quite extraordinary, because nobody logical would ever think of missing out the Welsh Government when deciding how to use the levelling-up fund and the shared prosperity fund. The Welsh Government have been central in the distribution of European funding, and they already have established partnerships with the local authorities. It is absolutely bizarre; there can only be a political motivation. Nobody in their right mind would think of missing out a layer of Government as important as the Welsh Government when managing those funds.

The other thing that the Welsh Government are prepared to do is step in. Again, that is one of the benefits of their being close to people, and being transparent. A Government can step in when they can see what is happening and what is not going right. In Ynys Môn, for example, the Welsh Government stepped in because the local council was failing. The Welsh Government have stepped in with Betsi Cadwaladr. The important thing is that they are being proactive and getting in there. Nobody pretends that everything is perfect; the important thing is that a Government be prepared to act and do something. They should not wait 20 years for somebody to produce a report on how terrible things are, particularly with hospitals. It is important to get in there now and work with the people there to improve things.

[Rob Roberts]

rose—

[Dame Nia Griffith]

I think the hon. Gentleman has said enough on that issue; I am going to have my say. Perhaps I will let him come in on another topic.

I will move on to the situation that we are in now. We are clearly facing a major climate crisis. What are the Welsh Government doing? We are moving forward. We are moving forward on renewables very quickly, and we have set up a company to help drive investment in renewables because we recognise the challenge. We also recognise that we have some of the heaviest and dirtiest industry in the UK, so we have an even greater challenge. Of course we in Wales will find it more difficult to reduce our carbon footprint than areas without those challenges will, but we are motoring ahead.

I want to draw the attention of the hon. Member for Delyn to the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in north Wales. The Welsh Government plan to encourage investment in it. Most importantly, the Welsh Government are trying hard to work with people in Wales; we are trying to consult them and take them with us. That is why we have had fewer strikes in Wales than in England. Railway workers have not gone on strike in Wales because they have already managed to agree something, whereas they have carried on with strike action in England. Likewise, we have had a more constructive approach to workers in the health service; we recognise that standards can be raised only through partnership with everybody involved. That is important.

We could score points forever, looking at what is good in one place and better in another. The fact is that England is a large place. Many rural parts of England have similar challenges and difficulties to Wales; in those places, it is difficult to attract specialist staff. Difficult decisions have to be made about how to provide ultra-specialist services when there is not the population to support the models we have in places such as London, where lots of specialist hospitals are very close together. There are huge challenges, not just in Wales, but in parts of rural England. The same can be said about rural transport.

Let us be clear about some of the things we have done in Wales. We were the first UK health service in Europe to put nurse staffing levels into law, making a real difference to patient outcomes, experiences and quality of care. We were the first country in the UK to introduce a single cancer pathway, making sure everyone gets the best possible care and treatment, and cancer survival rates in Wales are increasing. We were the first part of the UK to introduce special, non-invasive tests for babies before they are born, helping to reduce the risk of miscarriage, and we were the first UK health service to commit to ending new cases of HIV by 2030. As I have mentioned, Wales was the first to ban smoking in public places, and the first to change the law for presumed consent for organ donation. Of course, we championed prescriptions, which continue to remain free in Wales despite many economic pressures.

I could go on, but the important point is that co-operation and consultation matter. We have a new curriculum in Wales. It is imaginative and different. It is not so focused on a narrow set of examination results; it is a much broader education. It reflects a lot of what is going on in many other European countries. It will take time for us to see its results, but it has been developed with teachers, pupils, communities and, most importantly, business and industry, looking at the rounded skills that are so often needed in addition to straight examination results.

As we move forward into the next decade and the challenges that it will produce, the important thing is that people have an opportunity to make their views known at the polls—to elect the people they want to serve them in Wales and on their local councils. To roll back on devolution—to try to centralise things—will not serve people’s best interests.