Budget Resolutions

Robin Millar Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

I cannot really add to the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Dr Davies) and his praise for the impact of this Budget in north Wales, but I will give just one example before I turn to some of the contributions we have heard from the Opposition in today’s debate. The Wild Horse Brewing Company in Llandudno makes my favourite drink, the IPA, and it has already been talking about the impact of the small producer relief in the Budget. That is just one small thing, but it is an illustration of how the Budget has reached the parts that other Budgets have not reached before. Aberconwy is a place that has been hit first, hardest and longest by the pandemic, and we have seen the Chancellor’s typical awareness of and sensitivity to that in the support package we received and now in the Budget that he brought forward last week. I want to take this opportunity to thank him for that.

This is a debate, and I have listened carefully to what the Opposition have offered as an alternative to the Budget. Three ideas have come through. The hon. Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed) talked about radical devolution and about investment, and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and many others talked about growth. I wondered what these things would look like under a Labour Government and I realised that in Wales we know exactly what they look like. After two decades, radical devolution in Wales has resulted in the centralisation of powers to Cardiff. For example, just 9% of European structural funds are decided by the local authorities in Wales, compared with 36% in England. This Budget has demonstrated that the UK Government trust local authorities and it is for all parts of the UK.

On investment, although Wales has just 3% of the UK’s population, before devolution, it enjoyed over 5% of the UK’s inward investment. After two decades, that figure is now closer to 1%. Inward investment has collapsed under the care and attention of the Labour Government in Cardiff. On growth, I was interested to hear it mentioned several times. In Wales, at the start of the period of devolution, about 20,000 jobs a year were being created by inward investment. Now, the figure is closer to 5,000 a year. It has collapsed under the Labour Administration.

This Government have invested in research and development and have promised £2 billion extra in the Budget. I welcome the insight that has come with them saying, “Let’s not take things as they are. Let’s make them different. Let’s see how we need to do things such as the introduction of the taper relief faster, and let’s see how we need to do things differently, including investing in research and development.”

I want to use these last moments to talk about something I think we can all agree on. These are words of wisdom from a resident of the King’s Road in Llandudno, who said to me last summer as we talked over their garden wall:

“Someone will have to pay for this.”

I really welcomed the Chancellor’s words at the end of his Budget when he said that we were moving towards a small-state, low-tax economy and that we had to move away from being a society in which the Government were the first resort for every problem. That is what my conservatism is to me. I welcome that, and I welcome this Budget.