Owen Smith
Main Page: Owen Smith (Labour - Pontypridd)Department Debates - View all Owen Smith's debates with the Wales Office
(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Glyn Davies
The right hon. Gentleman is a man for whom I have huge respect as a Member of this House. He is retiring, so may I wish him well in the future and say that he has made a wonderful contribution to this House?
This is an area on which I am a bit unsure. To my mind, the win we have tackles that problem. We have virtually eliminated the deficit and if that becomes the Barnett floor, funding can rise but cannot fall below it. That is an absolutely fantastic win, and I would be surprised if the Secretary of State did not go in to a little more detail about it in his speech.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
As ever, the hon. Gentleman is giving a thoughtful and heartfelt speech. I forgive him for suggesting that the deficit has been dealt with, as he put it; it was still £75 billion the last time I looked. However, does he think that Wales would definitely be better off or worse off if we were to have and exercise tax-raising powers? That is the great lacuna in the Tory proposals.
Glyn Davies
This is how the antipathy towards being responsible through income tax in Wales manifests itself in questions and comments from the Opposition. There should not necessarily be any difference. We will be responsible just as we are now; it is just that the people of Wales will have a responsibility to know what the Welsh Government are doing. If the Welsh Government want to raise more money, they can suggest it and they can become accountable for what they doing rather than just blaming Westminster for virtually everything that people do not like.
My final point is about the proposal to devolve power over energy projects of up to 350 MW to Wales. I accept the logic of the proposal and supported it during most of my eight years as an Assembly Member, but since 2005 the obscene determination of the Welsh Government to desecrate mid-Wales with hundreds of wind turbines and pylons has made it impossible for me to continue to support it. The behaviour of the Welsh Government, and particularly the First Minister, has been shocking and has demonstrated total contempt for the people of Montgomeryshire, whom I represent. It should be a real concern to every Welsh MP that because the people of Powys have refused to bow down before the Welsh Government’s bullying, the First Minister intends to remove planning powers from local planning authorities and to take them for the Government in an act of power centralisation, to ensure that the Welsh Government can push things through despite any local resistance. The Secretary of State may well want to comment on this anti-devolution tendency.
While we talk about devolution in this place, we have a Welsh Government who are bringing everything back to themselves simply so they can get their own way in the parts of Wales that do not do exactly what they—the Welsh Government—say. In England, we are seeing a drive to devolve powers to city regions and local councils, whereas in Wales we are seeing a centralisation of power in the hands of the Welsh Government.
St David chose Wales as his home. He was a very wise man. He created a hill that, together with thousands of other hills, makes Wales the wondrous landscape that it is today. I was born among those hills, I shall always live among them. We have a duty to protect Wales for our children so that they can enjoy it as much as we have and as we do today.
Owen Smith
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the styled cuts, as he put it, also resulted in a massive increase in in-work poverty, resulting in an extra £9 billion spending on social security under this Government?
Mr Jones
The decisions that we took were difficult and, clearly, people have felt pain. But people across the board have felt pain. It is interesting to hear the criticisms from the Labour party. What would have happened if that party had remained in power? Where would we be now? Under this Government 1.85 million new jobs have been created. That is 1.85 million people with the security of a pay packet every week and the dignity that employment brings.
Mr Jones
No, I will not give way. I will continue for a while.
Those new jobs would not have been created, had the hon. Gentleman’s party been in power.
In my constituency, Clwyd West, the improvement is tangible. The last Labour Market Statistics showed that over 12 months, the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance or not in work and claiming universal credit fell by 519 over 12 months—an annual decline of 34.5%. Those figures are mirrored right across Wales and right across the UK. In January, the International Labour Organisation measure of unemployment was 1.86 million people, down 486,000 on the previous year.
Mr Jones
No, I will not give way for the moment.
These are strong, substantial changes, which we should all welcome, even the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith), while acknowledging the task ahead. [Interruption.] He will have plenty of time to speak.
I would like to focus my attention today primarily on north Wales, which is the part of Wales in which I have lived nearly all my life and which I know best. I was brought up in the village of Rhosllanerchrugog near Wrexham, a very unusual, strange, unique and wonderful village. At the time of my boyhood, most of the working men were employed in coal mines and in the steelworks. Since then, there have been huge changes. We all know that the coal industry has virtually gone and the steelworks in north Wales are much smaller than they used to be. But now, north Wales is the home of dynamic new industries.
The wings of every Airbus aircraft that flies anywhere in the world are made in Broughton, in north-east Wales. Close to Broughton is the Deeside industrial estate, part of which is now an enterprise zone. There, high-tech industries serve customers across the globe. Deeside is one of the most dynamic, forward-looking, thrusting industrial areas of the United Kingdom and we should all take huge pride in it. On the other side of the region of north Wales is the island of Anglesey, where we see the Wylfa nuclear power station, which will soon, I hope, be replaced by a new power station, Wylfa Newydd. That will be a gigantic project employing many thousands of people for many years during the construction phase, and many people for decades after the station is up and running. It will provide the opportunity for the creation of centres of excellence in skills, education and training and I am tremendously pleased that the island of Anglesey has welcomed the developers so warmly.
Wylfa is only one element of what I believe is a bright future for north Wales as an energy hub. Out to sea, we have the Gwynt y Mor, Rhyl Flats and North Hoyle offshore wind farms, one of the largest groupings of offshore wind farms anywhere in the world. Let me be frank: as many hon. Members know, I have never been a huge fan of wind power. I believe that it is unreliable, supplying only intermittent and unpredictable energy, and it is far too heavily subsidised. Furthermore, onshore wind, and to a certain extent offshore wind, blight—as my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire put it—the spectacular landscapes, both onshore and offshore, of north Wales.
Nuclear power, by contrast, provides predictable and reliable base-load generation, which is precisely what is needed. However, nuclear must be seen as part of an energy mix. Wind is currently part of that mix, but I was extremely pleased when the Prime Minister indicated only a few weeks ago that subsidies for onshore wind farms will be phased out under the next Conservative Government.
A new technology, and one that has been developed in Wales, is that of tidal lagoons. I remember taking evidence on tidal lagoons several years ago when I was a member of the Welsh Affairs Committee. I was immediately struck by what a tremendous opportunity they represented for Wales, given its huge tidal ranges. The technology has been slow in coming, but it appears that it will soon be here. The company Tidal Lagoon Power has not only made an application for development consent for a new lagoon in Swansea, but has ambitions to create a chain of lagoons stretching from Lancashire in the north, right around the coast of Wales, to Somerset in the south. Only a few weeks ago I chaired a meeting in Colwyn Bay to discuss proposals for a huge tidal lagoon there. It would have a potential generating capacity of 4 GW, which is equivalent to a very large nuclear power station.
Lagoons have the advantage of being green—they produce no carbon emissions—but they also have what wind power lacks: they are entirely reliable. Nothing on the planet is more reliable than the ebb and flow of the tide. As a result, each tidal lagoon would have the capacity to generate for 22 of every 24 hours. This is a new technology, and a British technology. Moreover, it could be centred in Wales. I believe that Wales could become a leader in what could rapidly become an important export industry.
Obviously there are environmental issues to consider, not least with regard to transmission infrastructure, which is having a catastrophic effect across Wales. My hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire mentioned the impact that transmission lines would have in Montgomeryshire. Equally, in my constituency of Clwyd West there is now a strong campaign aimed at requiring the transmission lines serving the new Clocaenog wind farm to be buried underground. Saving the planet should not mean at the same time trashing our landscapes and seascapes. I therefore strongly support the proposition that developers of wind farms, which are heavily subsidised, should be required to pay the cost of laying transmission cables underground.
I would like to touch on transport in north Wales. The railways are increasingly important in north Wales, and they are being used increasingly heavily, as is the case across the country. Journey times have improved tremendously. When I was first elected to his House some 10 years ago, the journey back to London from Colwyn Bay on a Sunday took some four and a half hours. As a result of efforts by both the previous Labour Government and this Conservative Government, that has been reduced dramatically—the same journey now takes almost exactly three hours. The fast train, which I hope to take tonight, takes approximately two and three quarter hours.
That is all commendable, and it is a tribute to the work done by Network Rail, but we must look to the future. We know that HS2 will be built and that it will go to Manchester. It is important that north Wales should benefit from it, which is why I believe that the new hub proposed for Crewe should be built and that there should be a fast connection right through to Holyhead. We must bear it in mind that north Wales is very much part of the north-western economic region; economically, the region has always looked to the great cities of the north-west, Liverpool and Manchester. I was therefore delighted when last year the Chancellor announced funding for the reopening of the Halton curve, which will put Liverpool and the expanding Liverpool John Lennon airport within easy travelling distance of north Wales.
In north-east Wales we should seek to maximise the economic benefit we can derive from the new enterprise zone at Deeside by encouraging synergy with the new enterprise zone at Wirral Waters in Birkenhead. There is a railway line linking Liverpool and north Wales, but the difficulty is that passengers have to change at Bidston from an electric train to a diesel one to take them through to Wrexham. I believe that a very good improvement, and one that could be achieved at relatively low cost, would be to electrify that line, certainly between Bidston and Shotton, where a new interchange is proposed. That would mean that the two great enterprise zones at Deeside and Wirral Waters would be within easy commuting distance of each other.
Tourism has always been the mainstay of the north Wales economy, but I believe that more could be done for it. One simple measure that is acquiring support from hon. Members from all parties is to give serious consideration to reducing the rate of value added tax on tourism businesses. That has been tried out in competitor countries, not least Ireland, and has been found to be entirely successful. It has been calculated that the immediate loss of revenue would be made up within four years. The big problem is that, in areas such as north Wales, most tourism businesses are run by small family undertakings that, in order to remain competitive one way or the other, try desperately to avoid being registered for VAT, the consequence of which is that they are deterred from expanding and improving their businesses because they cannot have the benefit of input VAT to set against the cost. Therefore, one measure which should appeal to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, and to which I hope he will give serious consideration in the impending Budget, is to reduce the rate of VAT for tourism businesses to 5%.
Finally, I want to touch on a matter that is worrying to everybody with a constituency in north Wales, namely health care. I know that the issue is a hot potato in this House and that Government Members are frequently criticised for criticising the Welsh Government’s delivery of health care. The fact is, however, that areas such as north Wales are almost entirely reliant on the north-west of England and the midlands for very specialist medical care. It has been a concern for many years that north Wales patients have to wait considerably longer than their English counterparts for elective surgery in English hospitals, simply because of the way in which the Welsh Assembly Government fund health care.
The situation is getting worse. Yesterday in Prime Minister’s Question Time the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) mentioned his constituent, Mr Irfon Williams, who has been obliged to move out of Wales to Ellesmere Port in order to access drugs that he would have got routinely had he been resident in England. He is not by any means a unique example. I have a number of constituents who, because they live in Wales, simply cannot access the medicines they need. They have to go through the most byzantine consenting procedures if they are to have specialist treatment. Frankly, the matter is causing huge distress in north Wales. The situation was compounded recently by the decision of the Betsi Cadwaladr university health board to downgrade maternity care in Glan Clwyd hospital, because it is finding it difficult to attract staff of the necessary calibre and quality.
I believe that that shows that there are structural difficulties with the health care system in Wales under the Welsh Government. It is suggested that the Welsh Government have been subject to cuts, but the fact is that the Barnett formula protects the health budget in Wales. The simple fact is that the Welsh Government, of their own volition, decided to cut the health budget, and the consequence is that patients in my and other north Wales constituencies are suffering.
I am rapidly coming to the view that the Welsh Government are finding it almost impossible to run a decent health system in Wales. Before I sit down, I plead with them to look very carefully at the misery being inflicted on a lot of people in north Wales and to turn to the Department of Health in Westminster for advice. They should not be too proud to do so. Until they do so, I believe that health care in Wales will only continue to decline.
Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I congratulate the hon. Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), who were instrumental in bringing this debate to the Floor of the House, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting permission for it.
Ultimately, however, I believe that it is a great shame, as was said by the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), that the Government have not ensured there is always a St David’s day debate in the calendar. That is especially true this year, given the St David’s day announcement last week, to which I shall turn later. It is right and proper that the Government Command Paper should be debated on the Floor of the House, as it is that Welsh Members should get to debate Welsh matters on or as near as possible to St David’s day each year. It is to the Government’s great shame that such debates have not been secured. By making this plea, I once more hope that somebody somewhere will listen and we can revert to the ordinary processes that used to take place.
I shall talk about the Command Paper, the so-called St David’s day agreement, in greater detail in a moment. Suffice it to say at this stage that the proposals will still leave Welsh devolution far behind that in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The announcement on funding public services still leaves Wales considerably worse off, to the tune of about £1.2 billion per annum, compared with Scotland.
If I may, I will say a brief word about the discussions that led up to the Command Paper. It is almost an open secret that the main obstruction to any meaningful progress during the discussions was, unfortunately, the London Labour leadership, which it seems to me was often at loggerheads with its Cardiff Bay counterpart. In the end, it is the Westminster wing of the Labour party that has the final say over its colleagues in Cardiff, a point which the electorate will do well to heed on 7 May.
Owen Smith
I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his long and excellent service in this House. He sat alongside me in several of the meetings, so he knows that what he has just said is simply not consonant with the facts. Given that the Welsh Labour Government and I, on behalf of the Labour party, have spoken about going further than the current Government on the devolution of the Work programme and policing, what elements of the programme is he suggesting I have blocked?
Mr Llwyd
Let me finish. If the hon. Gentleman had read the evidence to the Silk commission, he would have seen that four of the forces in Wales were in favour of it, and only one police and crime commissioner—Mr Salmon—said that he was not. All the evidence was in favour and the Silk commission strongly suggested it, but the hon. Gentleman vetoed it.
Owen Smith
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again to let me put the record straight. I hesitate to suggest that he is in any way misinforming the House, but that is not my recollection of the conversations we were involved in. My recollection is that we had misgivings about the immediate devolution of criminal justice, but the fact that I announced a fortnight ago at the Welsh Labour conference that we would devolve aspects of policing to Wales—neighbourhood policing and an all-Wales policing plan—gives the lie to what he has just said.
Mr Llwyd
No, it does not. I saw the hon. Gentleman sitting next to the First Minister who, while we discussed policing, put his head in his hands when he understood that devolution had been vetoed. We discussed that then, and I made a point of referring to what I have just said in the hon. Gentleman’s presence. It is all very well for him to throw in a sprat later on—some minuscule part of policing—just to salve his conscience and get back on speaking terms with the First Minister, but that is not good enough for me, and it is not good enough for anybody else in the Chamber. I have made the point.
Owen Smith
For the third time, and for the avoidance of doubt, the right hon. Gentleman is not representing matters accurately in the House. I am clear that, and the leader of the Labour party announced at our party conference that, we would be devolving an all-Wales policing plan, including statutory power over neighbourhood policing and the structures of policing, to the Welsh Government. That is the fact, and he cannot gainsay it.
Mr Llwyd
Right. Well, I will not go further on that, but the Secretary of State is in the Chamber and he will no doubt make some comments in due course. He was party to those discussions so perhaps his recollection will be useful, to see whether he agrees with me or with the hon. Gentleman. In any event, I will move on.
The Command Paper is not an agreement in the full sense. Obviously, we have all been discussing for some months what should or should not be included in it, and there is a promise to legislate after the election. The proposals would still leave Welsh devolution far behind that in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and despite what the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire said, the announcement of the Barnett floor leaves Wales worse off compared with Scotland. We are unable to celebrate proposals that amount to a row-back on a compromise that already existed in the Silk commission.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to wind up this important debate on behalf of the Opposition. I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing it.
We have heard many excellent and diverse speeches, to which I pay tribute. The right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones) spoke without a trace of irony of his desire for a reduction in the level of VAT applying to Welsh tourism businesses—failing, of course, to mention that he was a member of the Government who raised the level of VAT applying to tourism and, indeed, to everyone in Wales. However, he spoke extremely well about Wales, with great passion and conviction.
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), who spoke mainly about the tourism and farming industries in his part of Wales. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), the Chair of the Select Committee, who spoke with his customary verve and chutzpah, and, with his customary diligence, managed to reprise the “flat earth” speech which is so dear to me and which we have heard so many times in this place. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) spoke eloquently and passionately about the realities of the world of work in Wales, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) spoke about the problems of heavy industry and remediation of the open-cast works in her constituency and others in south Wales. I hope that when we, as a Labour Government, succeed the present Government, we will pursue that issue with great vigour.
Let me also pay tribute to the Members who are retiring from the House. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) is always—well, perhaps a little less so today—a courteous and wholly accurate contributor. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] I shall explain what I meant by that later. In fact, the right hon. Gentleman is always courteous in contributing to the life of the House. He will be missed when he retires from this place, but I am sure that he will continue to serve Wales extremely well, and I count him as a friend despite our slight contretemps today.
The speech made today by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) was heard with the usual deference and respect, owing to the experience and sagacity that he has brought to his role. He has been a noble and excellent servant of his community, his party and the House during his long time here. He has twice been Secretary of State for Wales, and he has been a great friend to Wales and to me. I know that everyone in the House will join me in paying great tribute to him.
Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn, my right hon. Friend drew attention to what an important event this is. It is, in effect, the St David’s day debate, although it is not actually taking place on St David’s day as it has in the past. The debate is important because it puts Wales in the spotlight, at the heart of our national conversation in our national United Kingdom Parliament. It is important because we are of course a minority nation of just 3 million people among 60 million, and there is always a danger that, as a minority part of the UK state, our voices are drowned out in the babel of voices from other parts of the UK, in particular of course the lion’s share of people who live in and come from England. This Parliament is in institutional terms the greatest expression of this United Kingdom. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen spoke for me and many on the Opposition Benches, and indeed for many on the other side of the House, when he expressed his concerns about the way in which the voice of Wales has been diminished and is at risk of being diminished to an even greater extent as we move forward. The Government have, I fear, played fast and loose with some of the constitutional arrangements in this country, and have engaged in attacks on parts of this country, notably Wales, as a proxy for attacking Labour, and have failed to appreciate the lasting damage they are doing, and will continue to do if they persist with these attacks, on the social and economic union of Great Britain, the most effective and successful social, political and economic union ever created in the world. That is a theme I intend to return to later.
First, I shall do two simple things: I want to reflect on how the last five years of this Tory-Liberal coalition have impacted on Wales—on our people, our prosperity and our public finances; and I want to reflect on how the relationship between Wales and the rest of the UK has evolved under it, both in terms of the business of government and the attitudes of the Welsh people to the governance of our country.
It may have escaped your notice, Mr Deputy Speaker, and it certainly escaped the notice of many people in Wales, that the Prime Minister has been reflecting on the very same theme in this last St David’s week of this Parliament. Perhaps because he was admonished by the Secretary of State, along with his other Cabinet colleagues, for speaking ill of Wales—told to mind his language when talking about the Land of our Fathers—the Prime Minister has been love-bombing Wales in the last week. He came to Cardiff at the weekend to speak at the Tory party conference, singing Sam Warburton’s praises and resisting, I am glad to say, even a glimmer of gloating at the fact that we lost to the English. Then he hosted the St David’s day reception on Monday, which I was unable to attend. I think I am right in saying that it is the first St David’s day reception—the first for a long while—that the Conservative Prime Minister has held at No. 10. [Hon. Members: “More than one!”] If I am wrong, I happily withdraw that. It is certainly the first one to which I and other Labour Members have been invited, shall we say? So it was a pleasant surprise to receive the stiff card, but I am afraid I was unable to attend. Obviously Conservatives have previously been invited, but we were not.
Throughout this period of love-bombing the Prime Minister has been looking back at the relationship between his Government and Wales. Some of it has been pure fantasy. In one speech he was musing about the prospects of Tory candidates winning seats in the valleys, ousting sitting and prospective Labour Members and wishing our candidates a cheery “da iawn” on coming second. The Prime Minister, I am told, even had to have lessons in pronunciation—
Owen Smith
The Secretary of State shakes his head, but, as he ought to know, the speech was released to the media accidentally with the “da iawn” included in it and some suggestions as to how the Prime Minister ought to pronounce that, but if he thinks there is any prospect of Tories in the valleys ousting our Members I have another bit of Welsh for him: “Yn dy freuddwydion,” which means “In your dreams.”
Alun Cairns
May I suggest that, having made such an attempt at Welsh, perhaps the hon. Gentleman needs some lessons in pronunciation?
Owen Smith
I would accept that, as a native English speaker and a failed Welsh learner. I am still trying, although I have not reached the same standards as some, but I think that was a fair attempt at “In your dreams.”
Other examples from the Prime Minister have been pure comedy gold—not weak gags like that. We have had some excellent examples from the Prime Minister. He channelled his Welshness in trying to come up with a nickname for the Secretary of State. There is a great tradition of nicknames in Wales—Dai the Milk, Evans the Coal, and we even had Jones the Jag at one point in this place—but so impressed was the Prime Minister at the way in which the Secretary of State has warmed to devolution, indeed undertaken a damascene conversion, I am told that he referred to him as being known now in Tory circles as “Stevolution”. It has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it? I am not sure that it is the ring of truth, however. I am not entirely persuaded that he is now so devo-friendly that he could be known as “Stevolution” in Tory circles.
What certainly does not have the ring of truth are some of the other claims that the Prime Minister has been making on behalf of the Tories. He claimed this week that it was the Tories who brought Pinewood studios to Wales, despite the fact that the UK Government had nothing to do with it—
Owen Smith
Well, I am terribly sorry, but I have read the Prime Minister’s speech, and that is precisely what he said, despite the fact that that was nothing to do with the UK Government. It was delivered entirely by the Welsh Government while this Government were slashing arts funding.
The Prime Minister also claimed that the Tories were responsible for Hitachi rebuilding Wylfa power station, despite the fact that it was of course the last Labour Government who signed the contract for that new generation power station. He even claimed credit for Airbus making wings for the A380 in Wales, despite the fact that the company has been making aircraft at Broughton since the second world war. The most shameless in this series of porkies was the suggestion that the Tories had secured the funding for S4C, when in truth they had cut it by a third.
Stephen Crabb
The shadow Secretary of State was doing really well up to this point, but he has now let himself down. The important point that the Prime Minister was making when he referred to all those positive things that are happening in the Welsh economy was not that politicians are taking the credit; he was giving the credit to business. That is the crucial difference between our party and the hon. Gentleman’s party: we praise business; Labour attacks it.
Owen Smith
I would fully accept that, were it consonant with the facts. The Prime Minister actually said in his conference speech, after listing all those achievements:
“We need to tell everyone who did all this…it’s us.”
This clearly is not true.
A bigger truth is that the Tories have done precious little to help the economy of Wales, but they have done plenty to hinder it. The people of Wales know that. When they hear the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister claiming credit for creating jobs in Wales, they know that 90,000 contracts or jobs in Wales, not 35,000 individuals, but that might also be right—[Interruption.] No, I said “jobs” yesterday. The Secretary of State should read the Hansard. They know that too many of those jobs are Tory-style mini-jobs involving zero-hours contracts, zero security, low wages and low productivity. They also know that a quarter of Welsh workers earn less than the living wage. Wales has the lowest disposable incomes in the UK.
The people of Wales know that these facts give the lie to the notion that there is a Tory-led recovery, as does the fact that we are £68 billion short on tax receipts and spending £25 billion extra on social security. The price of this failure in Wales under the Tories is a tenfold increase in the volume of people using food banks and £1,700 less in the pockets of Welsh families.
In stark contrast, the Welsh Labour Government have shown that they can get Wales working again. Jobs Growth Wales, designed and built in Cardiff, has got 17,000 young people back to work, showing that local solutions with bespoke ideas can deliver jobs in Wales. So it is inexplicable that the Tory party—the “party of real devolution”, as I am told it now calls itself—is still refusing to devolve the Work programme to Wales, as Labour will when we win in May. Inexplicable, too—to many in Wales—is why fair funding for Wales is being promised only if Wales agrees to raise taxes.
Last week, the Welsh Secretary made some important announcements about his Government’s intentions to take forward the recommendations of the cross-party Silk Commission if—heaven forefend—they are back in government next time. The Opposition agree with many of those extra measures. Putting the Welsh settlement on to the same statutory footing and making the Welsh legislature a permanent part of the UK constitution are proposals that we can agree on. We also agree with proposals to give powers to Wales over elections and energy, and additional powers over ports and marine matters. Indeed, we said all those things first. But we will go further. We will give Wales powers over policing, which is why I was disappointed at the mischaracterisation of Labour’s position by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd. I am sure the Secretary of State will recall our position during those talks, which was, “Reserved and then announced at the party conference for Labour in Wales.”
Lastly, fair funding for Wales was one of the most important aspects of the talks. It is disingenuous of the Secretary of State now to talk about delivering fair funding, given that his Government have cut £1.5 billion from the funding for Wales and he knows that their plans to cut funding to the rest of the UK back to the levels of the 1930s will have a deeply damaging effect on Wales. Cutting spending back to the level it was when the NHS was just a glint in Nye Bevan’s eye would be devastating for Wales. So we agree with the Secretary of State that there should be a funding floor in Wales, but we want to see the detail and to know precisely where they will set that floor. Only then will the people of Wales trust this Tory Government—
Alun Cairns
What detail is the hon. Gentleman prepared to put forward on Labour’s funding floor proposal? The shadow Chancellor said in Cardiff today that Labour would be presenting no detail this side of the election.
Owen Smith
We will stand on our record of having trebled the funding for Wales during our period in office. While the Under-Secretary has been in office, the spending for Wales has been cut by £1.5 billion. So we will stand proudly on our record and we can rest assured that the people of Wales will understand that we will deliver for Wales.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We do need to bring the Secretary of State on, because we still need two minutes at the end.
Owen Smith
Lots of Members in this House today have invoked history in this important debate, and I will do that one more time. The Prime Minister, in his amusing recent speech, said:
“The Welsh dragon is roaring again—and it’s not red, it’s blue.”
I suggest that, historically speaking, we ought to invoke another great Welshman, the first leader of the Labour party and former Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare, Keir Hardie, the anniversary of whose death we celebrate this year. He said that Wales is represented by “Y Ddraig Goch a’r Faner Goch”—the red dragon on the red flag of Labour. That was true in 1915 and it will be true again, I trust, on 8 May 2015.