Owen Smith
Main Page: Owen Smith (Labour - Pontypridd)Department Debates - View all Owen Smith's debates with the Wales Office
(13 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Jones
There is no doubt that we are going through difficult economic times, as the hon. Gentleman knows. Unfortunately, third sector organisations are affected by that. I believe that the £200 million that will be available through the big society bank will be of immense benefit to third sector organisations in Wales.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
The Welsh people are a shrewd lot, and they have quickly seen through the big society scam. Since £1.8 billion was cut from the Welsh Assembly budget, leaving councils with a shortfall of many millions of pounds, charities such as People First, which works with people with learning disabilities in the Rhondda Cynon Taff area, have been on the verge of closure. That is throwing more people on to the record unemployment numbers in Wales. As Dawn Price of People First put it to me:
“How can we take part in a Big Society when our funding is being so cruelly cut?”
Mr Jones
I realise that some Opposition Members have huge difficulty with the proposition that people should be allowed to organise their own lives in the way that best suits them, rather than such matters being delivered top-down by big Government. However, there are signs that it is slowly dawning on the Leader of the Opposition at least that the big society may be rather a good idea. When he launched Labour’s policy review recently, in which I think the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) played a part, he said:
“We have got to take that term ‘big society’ back off David Cameron”.