Welsh Affairs

Rob Roberts Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rob Roberts (Delyn) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock). I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who is well respected on both sides of the House, on securing this debate and opening it wonderfully. It is disappointing that her hair is not red, white and green just for today, but we do like it purple.

Yesterday morning, we went to New Palace Yard with Mr Speaker, some dignitaries and some fantastic children in full traditional attire to see the raising of the Welsh flag above Parliament. The children sang a beautiful song about Dewi Sant and presented Mr Speaker with some lovely daffodils, and those who knew the words sang the national anthem. Before taking pictures, my assistant said, “You don’t have a daffodil like everybody else.” My response was quite a cliché: “I don’t need one. I’ve got my Welsh pride with me in my heart every day, everywhere I go. I don’t need to wear a flower to show it to everybody else.” It was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but that is how I and so many people across the length and breadth of Wales really feel about our country.

The feeling of Welsh patriotism, strangely, is often a little bit more like a religion. Such is the depth of feeling of a Welsh person for their country, and everyone knows it. Even in these challenging sporting times for Wales, you will not hear a more stirring national anthem anywhere in the world than the one sung by 70,000 Welsh rugby fans blasting the roof off the Principality stadium. If you will indulge me, Mr Deputy Speaker, as St David’s day comes just once a year, it is the words of the rarely heard second verse that I find most enjoyable:

“Hen Gymru fynyddig, paradwys y bardd;

Pob dyffryn, pob clogwyn, i’m golwg sydd hardd,

Trwy deimlad gwladgarol, mor swynol yw si,

Ei nentydd, afonydd, i mi.”

For the benefit of those who do not know the verse, the translation is:

“Old land of the mountains, paradise of the poets,

Every valley, every cliff a beauty guards;

Through love of my country, enchanting voices will be

Her streams and rivers to me.”

That speaks volumes about the country and how it is regarded by the people.

A little while back, in preparation for this debate, I asked my constituents via social media to suggest what they would say themselves, or what they would like me to say, about life in Wales and how things are run. I will touch on a number of those themes now, only partly apologising for getting a bit more political during the remainder of my speech. As the hon. Member for Swansea East said in her opening speech, we are here to represent the views of our constituents.

Kathryn had a lot of points to bring up about life in Wales. She wanted to talk about travel, roads, the NHS, the disparities in local authority funding and the north-south divide. Dave asked about dentistry. Julie, a pharmacy worker, asked about the NHS and why there was no uniformity between systems and records. I shall say more about that later. Kyle asked about roads and public transport, Billy had more to say about the NHS, Paul asked about a new train station, and Len made a point about devolution generally, which I will save until the end of my speech. Quentin helpfully asked, “Why is it that male voice choirs always sound so good?”. That is a fair question, but it will remain one of life’s unexplained mysteries, true as it is.

The predominant issue that keeps coming up in the responses from my constituents, and in the many emails and letters that I receive each week asking for help, is health and social care. I was here, in this very spot, exactly a week ago to take part in a debate on the future of the NHS, initiated by the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne). Opposition Members lined up to take shots at the UK Government for their mismanagement of the NHS. One after another, they rose to their feet saying that Labour had a plan for the NHS. I was delighted to hear it. I intervened a couple of times to commend them for having a plan, and asked if they could please share it with their colleague the Welsh Labour Health Minister, who did not seem to have one at all.

In North Wales, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board was put back into special measures earlier this week and all the members of the management board were relieved of their positions, with an interim chair and board put in place until replacements are found. That was the action of the Welsh Health Minister: removing the board which seemed to be the only body even trying to hold the failing executives to account, while allowing the executives and senior management team who had presided over a decade of failure to carry on. For it has been, sadly, a decade of failure—at least. The health board had been in special measures for about eight years until a few weeks before the most recent Senedd election, when it was announced with great fanfare that it was no longer in special measures. The political opportunism was astonishing, as Welsh Labour once again made winning votes a higher priority than the health of the people of north Wales. Nothing had changed, and nothing has changed now. Back into special measures the health board goes, but that does not mean anything: it has been like that for ages, and still nothing changes, including the Welsh Health Minister.

If the level of disastrous oversight of health services in north Wales were seen in England, His Majesty’s loyal Opposition would be calling for the resignation of the Secretary of State and his entire ministerial team, but it’s okay, it’s just north Wales—just north Wales, where only 62% of NHS buildings are operationally safe to use. In England, one in 20 people on waiting lists have been waiting more than a year—5%—while in Wales the figure is one in four, or 25%.

The health service in Wales performs worse in virtually every measurable area than the equivalent in England. Currently, only 51% of “red call” patients are responded to within eight minutes. That is the second longest ambulance wait time ever. Only 23% of amber calls, which include heart attacks and strokes, were responded to within 30 minutes. Where is the outrage? Where are the demands for a better service? Instead, we heard the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), say in a speech last year that the Welsh Government were providing a

“blueprint for what Labour can do across the UK”.

You couldn’t make it up, Mr Deputy Speaker.

However, as I said during last week’s debate, none of these statistics help. While we, as politicians in this place and in the media, spend all our time pointing fingers and trying to apportion blame, we never get to the actual issues. The NHS is failing in all parts of the United Kingdom, under three different ruling parties. This is not a political problem but a structural one, and the more time we spend finding someone to blame and making foolish points that shut down any prospect of sensible debate—such as, “You just want to privatise everything”—the lower is the chance of any positive change that will make a real difference in outcomes for people.

As I mentioned earlier, Julie asked about uniformity of records and systems. It is ridiculous that if I had an accident or a medical problem while on holiday in Cornwall or Inverness, the medical professionals there would not be able to access my records because they are on NHS Wales systems. That enforced division is so harmful to the cohesion of the UK and our sense of community. We have spent years on an issue that thankfully, or hopefully, the Prime Minister seems to have finally solved —an issue that annexed and divided one part of the UK from the rest—but in so many small ways, we segregate and divide ourselves from each other on an ever-increasing basis. It is such a shame.

This morning, I received an email from a local reporter saying that they were running a story on the lack of availability of housing in Flintshire, and asking whether I would like to comment. The sad fact is that over the past three years, 665 new homes have been built in the average constituency across the UK, while in Delyn the figure is just 276, or 40% of the average. We have a huge lack of social housing, with people waiting on the list for years in the hope of a property becoming available, and virtually none are being built. However, I cannot lay the blame at the door of Flintshire County Council, as Flintshire receives the 20th highest funding settlement among the 22 local authorities in Wales every year.

[Mark Tami]

Will the hon. Gentleman applaud Flintshire County Council for actually building council houses, which we need more of?

[Rob Roberts]

Absolutely. I completely agree with my constituency neighbour. As I said, I cannot blame Flintshire County Council for this at all. It does what it can with the meagre resources it receives from the Welsh Government. [Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), is shouting across the Chamber about the Treasury Bench, but this has nothing to do with the Treasury Bench. I am talking about the way in which the money is divided by the Welsh Government, and how it is allotted to the different authorities. As I said, Flintshire County Council comes 20th out of the 22 Welsh authorities every year.

[Mark Tami]

That clearly was not the case this year, was it, so will the hon. Gentleman put the record straight?

[Rob Roberts]

It was the case this year. On a per capita basis, Flintshire was 20th out of 22, as was recently stated by the council’s chief executive. There is no denying it whatsoever.

[Stephen Crabb]

My hon. Friend made an interesting point earlier about structural challenges in the NHS. He has now moved on to the subject of local authorities. Does he think that, for a nation of 3.3 million people, a total of 22 local authorities is too many?

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[Rob Roberts]

I think that arguably it is. We should also consider the number of elected representatives we have, and the wish to increase that even further. London—which is a good example—has a population of 10 million, and significantly fewer elected representatives and decision-making bodies. I do agree with my right hon. Friend: 22 is far too many, whereas, in bizarre contrast, one health board covering the huge geographical area and diversity of north Wales seems, sadly, not to be enough.

Flintshire is so poorly funded by the Welsh Government that in order for services to be maintained, council tax in my constituency has risen by about 30% in the past couple of years. Given that my constituency also has about 25% more over-65s and elderly people than the national average, this is a huge problem for a constituency some parts of which are already among the top 10% of the most deprived areas in Wales. Other local authorities are in the top five for funding every year, despite having dozens of millions of pounds in unallocated reserves. It will come as a surprise to no one in the north that four out of the top five local authorities for funding each year are in the south. If Flintshire were simply given the average funding—if the funds were just levelled out and distributed in a fairer way—that would put an additional £20 million a year into Flintshire, and my constituents would not need to see reduced services at an ever-increasing cost.

Finally, let me say a little about transport. The Welsh Government announced recently that it was scrapping the majority of its road building projects, most of which were cancelled because of the attempt to get people out of cars and into other modes of transport. As parliamentarians we spend a great deal of time in London, and we recognise that public transport is better than cars in many instances; but that is London, which contains nearly 10 million people in a small area. In north Wales, about 750,000 people are spread across a vast geography of coastal and mountainous terrain. There is no realistic prospect for people to abandon their cars and use public transport, even if it were good, but unfortunately the public transport facilities throughout north Wales are terrible. Trains and buses run sporadically. When they do run, they are rarely on time. Public transport is simply not feasible, so to hear that the people of north Wales are being told that they should switch to alternative modes of travel, that they should submit to the increasingly pervasive active travel solution that asks pensioners to walk up the steep hills of Delyn’s towns in the name of reducing emissions, is ludicrous.

The roads policy, as well as the Welsh Government’s ridiculous move to reduce the speed limit from 30 mph to 20 mph from September, is nothing short of an attack on car users, not caring that car use is crucial in north Wales. Along with things like the tourism tax and falling educational standards, it is just another way in which the Welsh Government are systematically destroying the country that many of us love so dearly.

One of my respondents on social media spoke about devolution, which does not work for us in north Wales. It is a failed 25-year experiment that has delivered absolutely nothing for the people of north Wales, and now the Welsh Government want to expand it even further, at the cost of another £100 million.

It is my abiding wish, which I am sure will never come to fruition, that the UK Government look at what is happening in north Wales, put aside their seeming political position of “devolve and forget” and do something to help us by bringing forward measures to test the will of the Welsh people once again on whether they want to continue with this failed experiment.

May 2024 will be the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the Senedd, and I live in hope that 2049 will be the 25th anniversary of its abolition.

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[Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), a good friend, for securing this debate and congratulate her on doing so. It has been a great week; the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) has spoken about the Wales in London events, which have been tremendous. Being at the Guildhall last night with so many people celebrating our Welshness was an honour and I really enjoyed it. It is funny that we are here.

My hon. Friend has spoken about the amazing work she has done with colleagues, and I have had the honour of being able to work with her as well. This gives me the opportunity to talk a little about a charity—this goes hand in hand with the work she has been doing—called The Sharing Table. It was set up a few years ago by Andrew Copson, an amazing man who has given his time to fundraise, with a lot of support from local people, and to make partnerships, particularly with Gower Gin; Andrew and Siân support the charity, as key partners. The Shared Table delivered more than 130 hampers of locally sourced meat and veg to people in Gower last Christmas—when this started it was just 13 hampers in 2019. I thank Hugh Phillips, the butcher, and Shepherds for making that possible, along with Carolyn Harris—sorry, I meant to say, “My hon. Friend”. I do that all the time, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you know, but I do apologise.

That charity has also put and is putting small kitchens into schools. We talk about food poverty, but it is important that young people and families learn how to cook and what different food tastes like when we face a health crisis and a cost of living crisis. It is important that children learn what different fruits and vegetables taste like and what to do with them. One of the latest kitchens that has opened is in the constituency of my hon. Friend, in Morriston. I hope that by working alongside Swansea Council the charity will put more kitchens into schools and work with young people and their parents so that they can cook a well-balanced family meal. That is key and that work is amazing.

The right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire mentioned the beautiful city of St Davids in his constituency. I spend many of my holidays there and I do not send him any emails to say that I am there. I was honoured to be there at Christmas to spend time with my family, and being in the cathedral for mass is a wonderful experience. If anybody gets the opportunity to do that at Christmas, it really is something special.

I do not wish to leave out the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), my very good friend. As he knows, Aberaeron, has a special place in my heart. My auntie and uncle live there and my godparents used to live there. I am not going to go through everybody and say how wonderful their constituency is, because I must say that the Gower constituency is the most beautiful place to live. I am very proud of everybody who lives there—my constituents, who continue to support me and give generously.

My constituents also speak highly of the potential of Swansea bay. I know that the Secretary of State has done a lot of work on what was to be the Swansea bay tidal lagoon, which we now hope will realise itself in the blue lagoon project. The potential of Wales and the green industrial revolution has been mentioned. I do look to him for support for the Labour-led Swansea Council and its leader Rob Stewart in terms of harnessing the tidal energy that we have in Swansea bay.

I will have a bit of a rant now, Mr Deputy Speaker. A year ago today, I spoke up in this House about the Welsh Rugby Union. The right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire told us how he had heard an amazing advocate for women’s football, and football, in Wales last night. There are many, many people who are amazing advocates for rugby in Wales, and I am one of them. I believe passionately that being Welsh also means having a sense of identity. For me, many, many moons ago, that meant being able to represent my country by playing rugby for Wales. I find it really hard to believe that we are too scared—the hon. Member for Ceredigion also made reference to rugby—because we are having a bit of a tough time in Wales. It makes me sad that we cannot big up the talent that we have. I want to big up our talent. We have an amazing captain of our men’s team in Ken Owens. He is an amazing man, one of the bravest. All the team are brave, because the situation in which they find themselves is really difficult for all of them and for their families, but they are not looking for pity. What they want is to make rugby better. I did not stand up in this House a year ago to say, “Isn’t it terrible what’s going on? Isn’t rugby awful in Wales?” It is our job in this place to call out poor practice and poor governance when they impact on how we feel about our sport, which is rugby in Wales.

Since I spoke up about the culture of misogyny and sexism a year ago, much has happened. I know that the former Secretary of State met the women’s team. He told me that, by the time he had left the Chamber, he had been invited by the Welsh Rugby Union to pay a visit to the Vale to meet the women’s team. I was really disappointed—not with him, I was glad he went—that, having spoken out, nothing much really happened. It took some very brave women and an amazing journalistic team in “BBC Wales Investigates” to pull together evidence of the poor behaviour in the Welsh Rugby Union. In my inbox, I have more than 30 emails to reply to. They are from women and families—and men—who have written to tell me about their experiences with the Welsh Rugby Union. That is a lot of people who want to tell me about their experiences, but there are also quite a few people who do not want to tell of their experiences to anybody, because they fear the backlash. Charlotte Wathan, who spoke out in the BBC Wales programme, is scared that she will never get a job now. She may have made herself unemployable. She needs to work, but she has spoken out. She has not done that because she wants to be on a 30-minute programme on BBC Wales, and have the focus of everything on her.

Another woman who spoke out was anonymous. An actor spoke her words. Why was that? Why did Amanda Blanc, the chief executive of Aviva, step down from the executive board? To be honest, why were those questions not asked? So far what we have seen is the departure of the chief executive of the WRU, which is probably right. But it is not just about one person. This is a cultural system that is impacting not just on women in sport—in this case rugby—but on the men. That is because the culture has also impacted on the wellbeing of our men’s team as well. It is a culture and it is everywhere.

I am glad that a taskforce has been set up by Sport Resolutions, funded by the WRU, to address these issues. I ask the Secretary of State to support me—I have told him how many people want to speak out—and to look for reassurances from Sport Resolutions. Will he state today that the anonymity of the people who need to speak to Sport Resolutions and to the taskforce that it is setting up will be kept at all costs? Otherwise, we will never get to the bottom of it, which makes the taskforce absolutely futile.

I never thought that after nearly six years in this place, I would be standing in the Chamber ranting about rugby, but it means so much to me and it makes our country proud. Somebody said, “All this talking down of rugby in Wales is not going to encourage young people to play sport,” but that is nonsense. Playing sport—whatever sport it is—getting out there and being part of a team is the best thing that anyone can do. It is brilliant.

I am not saying that Wales is a terrible place or that rugby is a terrible sport; it is not. In my heart, I want it to be better—the best it can be. I want Warren Gatland to go to that World cup, with Ken Owens running out as the captain, and do the best he can to show how brilliant it is to be Welsh, so that we can feel proud of those boys and girls on the pitch. The women’s Six Nations is coming up, and the girls had quite a good season last year, so it is an exciting time to be in rugby.

Jonathan Davies, or Jiffy as we fondly know him, spoke out on “Scrum V” just after the programme had aired on BBC Wales. He said that this is a moment in time—a turning point—and that if the Welsh Rugby Union and rugby in Wales do not get their act together now, they never will. As parliamentarians, we have to put pressure on the Welsh Rugby Union to make the right decisions and to be transparent.

[Rob Roberts]

The hon. Lady is making a wonderful speech. She is right that the range of subjects that we discuss in the Chamber is often a surprise to the general public, and rugby in Wales is a particularly hot topic. Does she agree, in the spirit of what she has said, that the people who are trying to brush this issue under the carpet need to understand that, in such cases, sunlight is often the best disinfectant?

[Tonia Antoniazzi]

It is not often that I agree with the hon. Member, but sunlight, transparency and asking those questions are the best things.

I find it hard to believe that there have been such a number of grievances and non-disclosure agreements at the Welsh Rugby Union. Let us make no bones about it: all organisations will have grievances and non-disclosure agreements, but it is important that someone sitting on an executive board should be told how many there are and what their nature is, otherwise they might go to a Senedd Select Committee and not be able to tell it how many grievances and non-disclosure agreements there are. I find that difficult, because the data should be held by human resources and available to at least the executive committee. What does it tell us when there are no minutes of meetings and the minutes are not routinely published or available? It tells us that there is no sunlight, which we need to have.

When I am told that what has happened at the WRU is bigger than at Yorkshire cricket, and that is confirmed by others who know what is going on, I hope that we will all—I am not precious about it—stand up and ask those questions if we have the opportunity to meet the WRU. We need a root and branch review of rugby in Wales and what it means for everybody in all those clubs across Wales, from a small child starting off in tag rugby to those in our elite male and female games, as well as the mums and dads watching on the sidelines and washing the kit. I have met with my clubs since this has all come out and, interestingly, they have been quite engaging. We all need to ask our rugby clubs—although this is not just about rugby—how they engage with women and girls. They do not have to have a women’s team, because it is not all about playing. It is about being part of a club, being a rugby wife, rugby mum or rugby sister—a fan of the sport. If we can get clubs to audit the skills of the women and girls involved in them, that will encourage them to get more women sitting on their committees. Having more women give up their time to do that is how we will get more parity and equality of representation at the top of the WRU.

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[David T. C. Davies]

I am aware of probably three schemes ongoing at the moment within the rail network enhancements pipeline project, which I hope will be brought to fruition shortly, but I support as much spending as possible on the railways in Wales.

I might be being discourteous to the shadow Secretary of State, because I promised to speak for about seven minutes. Let me quickly say, because it was of interest to the hon. Member for Swansea West, that on university research funding, I committed to go around all the eight universities in Wales as quickly as I could. I am currently doing that, and I think I am on about No. 5. I have been looking at what they have to offer in terms of research, to see the best of it and to bring everyone to an event in London to meet UK Research and Innovation so that we can get more UKRI funding into Wales. That is something that I am happy to update him about shortly.

The hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) made a wonderful speech. He almost seemed to be apologetic about representing a non-Welsh constituency, but most of us in this Chamber are proud Unionists and we welcome hon. Members from all parts of the Union. He spoke about the fantastic character Archibald Hood, who is described in the book “From Rosewell to the Rhondda”. Clearly Mr Hood, 150 years ago, was making the most of the opportunities we have to move around the Union. Let me say tapadh leat, which I think is Scottish Gaelic for thank you, to the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Member for Cardiff Central rightly acknowledged the huge bravery of the Ukrainian people, 6,000 of whom are in Wales. In Chepstow last week, I met Ukrainian constituents, as the hon. Lady has done—they are now our constituents. We say, “Croeso mawr i bob un ohonyn nhw.” They are all incredibly welcome in Wales. We hope that they have an opportunity to go back to their country at some point, but we are delighted that they are here at the moment.

The hon. Member made a point about the cost of living crisis. I will take a leaf out of my own book and say that we absolutely acknowledge it: there is a cost of living crisis. That is why we have been prioritising our help for pensioners by making sure that pensions, benefits and the minimum wage go up in line with inflation. We have been making payments of £900 to those who are on benefits, £300 to pensioners and £150 to those who are on disability benefits. We are spending £18 billion this winter to ensure that around half of people’s energy bills are being paid. What we certainly will not do is ban meal deals, because that would hit people in the pocket.

[Rob Roberts]

The shadow Secretary of State said that Welsh Labour is putting more money in the pockets of Welsh people. Labour has a penchant for fantasy economics. Does the Secretary of State agree that before devolution the average wage in Wales was exactly the same as the average wage in Scotland, but now—25 years later—it is 20% lower?