Additional Covid-19 Restrictions: Fair Economic Support

Simon Baynes Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

Since March, the UK Government have provided unprecedented support to Wales, including £4.4 billion in financial support to the Welsh Government and the protection of 400,000 jobs through the furlough scheme. In my constituency of Clwyd South, many people, businesses and organisations have asked me to thank the Chancellor for providing such widespread and well targeted support.

At the heart of the debate today is the issue of responsibility for economic support when areas of the UK face additional restrictions. Implicit within it is the understanding by all parties that lockdown does have an impact on businesses and jobs, even with the most generous package of support. We were therefore surprised to learn last weekend via a leaked letter that the Welsh Government were intending to lock down all of Wales for two and a half weeks from Friday, given that significant parts of the country have low infection rates.

Many people across Wales feel that the Welsh Government approach should, like the Westminster Government’s, be targeted at the areas of high infection and that the tier system should also be introduced in Wales. The national lockdown in Wales is therefore unnecessarily damaging businesses and jobs, as was implicitly agreed by the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). It is harming businesses in areas of low infection, which then puts a huge extra burden on the provision of economic support from the Government.

It is difficult to understand how the Welsh Government have arrived at their decision, but part of the answer lies in their reluctance to co-operate with the UK Government on covid-19 discussions and the fact that they deliberately ignored the reality explained to them by the UK Government: that the new package of financial support could not be delivered until the beginning of November. It is also due to the fact that they have been very slow to publish coronavirus infection rates district by district; such figures were available from Public Health Wales only yesterday, well after the lockdown decision had been made. The other reason is a lack of scrutiny and accountability within the Senedd, where the national lockdown was not even debated before it was announced—a sharp contrast to this House, where the level of scrutiny of ministerial decisions is rightly much higher, as this debate and many others demonstrate.

In conclusion, fair economic support is vital, but it is also closely related to making the right decisions about lockdown given that the broad shoulders of the UK Treasury’s resources are not limitless and that we need to target financial support, just as we need to target restrictions on those areas with the highest rates of infection.