Strengthening the Union as it Relates to Wales (First sitting)

Debate between Nick Smith and Jo Stevens

Tuesday 18th January 2022 General Committees

[Jo Stevens]

Bore da, good morning and thanks very much Mr Davies. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today with all Welsh Members of the House. After four years, we finally have a Welsh Grand Committee debate.

Where to begin? Shall we start with the Minister for the Union––the Prime Minister, whose job it is in everything he says and does to strengthen the Union? He holds the most important office, one vital to the integrity of our politics, our government and our democracy. How shameful is it for the Union to have a Conservative Prime Minister mired in law breaking, deception and incompetence, leading a Government whose Ministers, at best, attempt to deflect from his inherent personal failings and, at worst, publicly and repeatedly endorse both them and him? Far from being strengthened by the Prime Minister and the Government, the Union is being degraded and weakened. For all his flag waving and plastic patriotism, no Prime Minister has done more to undermine the Union than this one. He has irretrievably damaged public trust and confidence in the UK Government and in UK politics. That is a bad enough legacy at any time, but during a health emergency it is unforgivable. As the Leader of the Opposition has quite rightly said, the Prime Minister is

“the worst possible Prime Minister at the worst possible time”—[Official Report, 15 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 1051.]

It is not just the Prime Minister who degrades and devalues our Union. Denigration and disinterest towards all our devolved nations runs through the core of the Conservative party. Only last week, the Leader of the House branded the leader of the Scottish Tories a “lightweight”, just for calling for the Prime Minister’s resignation in the wake of Downing Street’s law-breaking parties. The following day, when challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West, the Leader of the House could not even remember the name of the leader of the Welsh Conservatives. These are not just slip-ups; they lay bare the true attitude of the Conservative party to Wales and to the Union.

Labour believes that our Union is strengthened through valuing the importance of our common endeavour, fostering co-operation between the nations and Governments of the UK, and sharing wealth according to need. We are better together than any of us would be apart, and each of our nations can speak with a progressive voice.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

The Treasury has banked nearly £4 billion of surplus from the miners pension fund. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should change the arrangements so they are much fairer to miners and their widows in our coalfield communities?

[Jo Stevens]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point, and he is absolutely right. That is a perfect illustration of how the Government could act to do the right thing by our mine workers not just across Wales, but across the United Kingdom.

All our energies, at all levels of Government and across every nation of the UK, must be focused on recovering from the pandemic, but also on rebuilding our economy and addressing the climate emergency. That is why our Union of nations must be based on and strengthened by security, prosperity and respect.

I will deal first with security. Obviously, the first duty of any UK Government is the security of its citizens—that is, security for the United Kingdom, for Wales, and for every community, large and small, wherever we live. Instead of strengthening the Union, successive Conservative Governments have weakened the fabric of the UK and torn communities apart—nations, regions, cities and villages; north and south, and east and west. These policies are driven by the aim of creating division, controlling power and, despite what the Secretary of State says, undermining devolution.

There is no clearer example of the impact on our security than the rising numbers of victims of crime. The Government have decimated police staffing numbers, with cuts of more than 25,000 police force staff across the country, including 11,000 fewer police officers, 8,000 fewer police staff and 7,000 fewer police community support officers. The Welsh Government have stepped in and funded 500 PCSOs in Wales, and will fund a further 1,000 during this current Senedd term, but these political choices by the Conservative party have resulted in less safe communities and more crime in Wales.

Queen’s Speech: Implications for Wales

Debate between Nick Smith and Jo Stevens

Wednesday 19th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jo Stevens]

I absolutely agree. We need clarity on that now, just as we need clarity on so many other things that the Government are dealing with—or not dealing with—at the moment.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that another big gap in the Tory agenda is the issue of low pay in our valleys? Should they not really have brought in a real living wage of £10 an hour, which would make a big difference for our communities?

[Jo Stevens]

Absolutely. Our party’s manifesto promised a £10 minimum wage by 2020—a proper living wage, as opposed to the fake living wage introduced by the Government.

There was no confirmation in the Queen’s Speech of any investment to expand our capital city rail station at Cardiff Central and no confirmation that the Wylfa Newydd project will be delivered to ensure a sustainable economic legacy for Anglesey and the wider north Wales region. There was no devolution of air passenger duty and no transitional help for the WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—women of Wales, whose campaign here and in Wales has been led with such distinction by Welsh Labour MPs, including my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). There was also no announcement on scrapping child burial fees, which was another campaign led so passionately in the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East. The Government have even cut the number of Ministers in the Wales Office, which is a clear illustration of their lack of interest in Wales.

All we have been offered from the Queen’s Speech is an arrogant, hard and damaging Brexit and a repeal Bill—after reading it last week, I see why the word “great” has been dropped. It is a dangerous Bill that offers two power grabs by the Executive for the price of one: from Parliament and from the devolved Administrations. That continues the Conservative party’s strategy of many years of minimising scrutiny, challenge and oversight. This week we had the deliberate sabotage of our Select Committees and even the disgrace of the public being locked out of presenting online petitions to Parliament until at least September—an undemocratic and desperate act by a desperate Government.

We have all lived and breathed Brexit for the past 15 months, and today I will focus some of my remarks on what influence women, and Welsh women in particular, have had and will have on the path to Brexit. I do not know about other hon. Members here, but I thought that the EU referendum campaign was the worst I have ever been involved in, for a number of reasons. It was not just the nastiness and vitriol spewed out by some—I emphasise “some”—campaigners, using the excuse that it was a discussion about immigration. It was not just because my friend and our colleague Jo Cox was assassinated by a right-wing fascist the week before the referendum. It was not just the insurmountable task of trying to undo 40 years of negative press and stories about the EU and what membership meant, and it was not just because we had to listen to and watch the then leader of UKIP spout bile every single day of the campaign.

I felt alienated by that campaign because the voices I heard time after time were men’s; I rarely heard women’s voices, despite our best efforts to be heard. I wrote a piece in our national newspaper in Wales before the referendum urging women to get involved, to get their voices heard and to talk about the issues that concerned all of us. I particularly wanted young women’s voices to be heard. A University of Loughborough analysis of the referendum campaign showed that men received an astonishing 91% of EU referendum coverage in newspapers and 84% of the coverage in broadcast media.

The voting patterns by gender in the referendum were also interesting. In all age categories up to age 64, women voted to remain in higher percentages than men. In the 18-24 age group, 80% of women voters voted to remain, compared with 61% of men. The majority of women were not heard during the campaign and the majority did not get the result they wanted in the referendum either. However, it was a woman, Gina Miller, who took on the Government after the result. She suffered horrendous abuse and character assassination in the process, but it was her determination and bravery in the face of all of that that led to the Prime Minister being dragged back to Parliament to obtain specific permission to trigger article 50.

What about the withdrawal negotiations, now that they have started? I know the Minister will say this, so I will pre-empt him by saying that I know we have a female Prime Minister. However, her ministerial negotiating team is entirely male: the Brexit Secretary and the Secretaries of State for International Trade and for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Their teams at the Departments for Exiting the European Union and for International Trade, and the Foreign Office are also all entirely male—there is not a single female Minister from the House of Commons in those teams. That negotiating team is working on behalf of 65 million people, more than half of whom are women.

We have a lot to lose through Brexit. Wales is a net beneficiary of EU membership and has been in receipt of EU structural funds for a number of years. The availability of the European social fund has supported a range of programmes in Wales that have focused on not only tackling the causes of poverty, but investing in skills and young people. Many of those programmes have focused on addressing the barriers that continue to hold women back and contribute to ongoing economic inequality. Chwarae Teg’s Agile Nation 2 project is one of them. Others include Agile Nation 1, funded as part of the previous round of structural funds, and the Welsh Government’s Parents, Childcare and Employment programme—PaCE—which provides targeted support to help women gain employment.

On its own, the Agile Nation 2 project is worth £12 million and is funded by the European social fund and the Welsh Government. The project works with women and with small and medium-sized enterprises in priority sectors in Wales to address the causes of the gender pay gap. Those projects not only deliver services that support women; many also provide employment for women. The third sector workforce in Wales is predominantly female, and 66% of the public sector workforce in Wales is female.

European funding has been used to deliver projects directly focused on equalities and, probably more importantly, cross-cutting themes of equality and tackling poverty. So far there has been no guarantee from the Government that funds repatriated to the UK will be made available to Wales to continue work similar to that which has been possible through funding streams such as the European social fund.

Membership of the EU has had a very positive impact on equalities legislation in both the UK and Wales. It is vital that we receive guarantees that the rights and protections from EU-derived equalities legislation in the UK will be maintained post Brexit. The current EU framework of legislation has acted as an absolute equality protection here in the UK. For example, it has prevented the scrapping of parts of the Equality Act 2010 as part of the Government’s one-in, two-out deregulation red tape challenge.

Membership of the EU has ensured not only that legislation is passed that explicitly deals with the causes of inequality, but that the impact of all Government policies on equality is considered, in relation to preventing discrimination and advancing equality. We have kept equality impact assessments in Wales, but the UK Government have scrapped them. As a result, the cumulative impact on women of seven years of austerity policies, such as welfare reform and tax changes, under the coalition Government, the previous Conservative Government and the current Conservative Government has not been accurately assessed by Government Departments, and policy is not being developed with a focus on equality. It has been the Labour party and groups such as the Women’s Budget Group that have illustrated the damaging effect of the past seven years on women in Wales and the UK.

Brexit will lead to a further lack of focus on preventing discrimination and advancing equality, and the full impact of Government decisions on women will continue to be ignored by this Government. The Women and Equalities Committee report, “Ensuring strong equalities legislation after the EU exit”, published in the previous Parliament, made a number of good recommendations. I hope that the Minister has read them and might discuss them with his colleagues. They included bringing forward an amendment to the Equality Act 2010

“to empower Parliament and the courts to declare whether legislation is compatible with UK principles of equality”,

including a clause in the repeal Bill that

“explicitly commits to maintaining the current levels of equality protection when EU law is transposed into UK law”

and developing a cross-Government equality strategy.

I am really concerned about access to equalities data and research and European networks post Brexit. Similar concerns were raised by those who submitted evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee for its inquiry. Wales and the UK must have access to European civil society and equalities networks, and funds must be ring-fenced to allow current equalities research to continue undisrupted. That evidence base is crucial to shaping domestic policy and demonstrating the UK’s progress in meeting international obligations such as the sustainable development goals.