Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Hart and Mark Tami

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Wales (Simon Hart)]

We have provided £2.75 billion in direct support for businesses in Wales during covid. The job retention scheme has been extended until September, and we are introducing a new super deduction to cut companies’ tax bills by 25p for every £1 they invest in new equipment.

[Mark Tami]

A recent report by Grant Thornton stated that Brexit could cost Flintshire and Wrexham as much as £300 million a year. Manufacturing is vital to the future of north Wales, but numerous companies are telling me of the difficulties they are having exporting. Instead of saying that everything will be fine, when are this Government going to sort these problems out and get this moving?

[Simon Hart]

I draw the right hon. Gentleman’s attention to the additional £5.2 billion we have provided to the Welsh Government and the £2.75 billion to businesses in Wales, with £1.5 billion in bounce bank loans and £503 million in coronavirus business interruption loans. This is all about jobs and livelihoods in the part of Wales that he represents so vigorously, and he should welcome that, as he should welcome the £20 million announcement this morning for the south Wales industrial cluster. There is good news, and he cannot dwell on the past in order to make political capital.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Simon Hart and Mark Tami

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hart]

The Chancellor’s contributions to the companies that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, as well as to Celsa, which I mentioned in my answer, have been second to none. We have had a very good, robust and thorough exchange with all the businesses to which the hon. Gentleman referred. I could not agree with him more that part of the covid recovery programme is there to ensure not only that we get through the next few months but that there are sustainable futures for all those industries, particularly steel. I hope the hon. Gentleman recognises the fact that we were quick off the blocks to rescue Celsa—and 600 to 800 jobs—in that process right at the beginning of the pandemic. That shows beyond reasonable doubt that we are absolutely committed to a steelmaking footprint in Wales.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The Shotton steel plant produces some of the finest quality steel products in the world. The Prime Minister has said that UK steel producers will be

“at the front of the queue”—[Official Report, 24 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 1311.]

when it comes to future infrastructure projects, so will the Government now set targets on procurement? We need action rather than words—all we tend to get from this Government are warm words. Please, do not just blame Europe; can we have a proper answer?

Welsh Affairs

Debate between Simon Hart and Mark Tami

Thursday 27th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Wales (Simon Hart)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Welsh affairs.

Let me welcome everybody to this St David’s Day debate, where we have some veterans and some first-timers. I have to apologise in advance, because I need to leave to entertain some visitors from Wales in No.10 during the course of this debate, so if I slip away, there is a good reason for my doing so. [Interruption.] I apologise to Opposition Members who have not received their invitation quite yet.

This is a fantastic opportunity to champion Wales at a national level, and to highlight the potential and resilience of our constituencies. I wanted to start by discussing resilience, because there has been no greater example of it than the response to the recent flooding events in Wales and further afield. I have visited communities in Carmarthen and Pontypridd, and the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies,) has been around and about in the Monmouthshire area, where the Rivers Wye and Usk have caused such devastation. We have spoken to emergency services, agencies, MPs, AMs, local authorities and the Welsh Government on numerous occasions. It is encouraging to see that when things such as this really matter, there is a such a widespread degree of co-operation between those agencies.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

rose—

[Simon Hart]

I am not going to take every intervention, but, in the spirit of collaboration, I will give way on this occasion.

[Mark Tami]

The Secretary of State has told us where he has been, but does he know when the Prime Minister has been to Wales or whether he is intending to go there?

[Simon Hart]

I am surprisingly grateful for that intervention, because it allows me to say that the Under-Secretary will wave a letter from the head of his local authority that asked us specifically not to interfere and get under the feet of emergency services by going to these areas before the moment was right. I have spoken to a number of local authorities and they echoed that view, so rather than make this a political stunt, we let the experts get on with what they wanted and needed to get on and do.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Simon Hart and Mark Tami

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami]

There are constant attacks on the back office, or the middle—a term introduced today—as if these people sit around doing nothing. I do not know what they do, but that is the image that the Government are trying to put across, as if we can sweep all those people away and service will be unaffected.

[Simon Hart]

I certainly do not think that that is the Government’s position. It might be the position taken by some of the media, but I do not believe for one minute that the Government are attempting to underplay the importance of some of those jobs. I just think that sometimes, in the interpretation, we attach less value to the back office than we do to the front line. That seems to be an interpretation of the tone in which Members from both sides of the House sometimes speak. For those doing vital back-office intelligence jobs, or even those providing relatively mundane services to support front-line officers, that can have a very debilitating effect. I think that the packaging, tone and messaging of this kind of debate is an area where we owe the recipients rather more care than perhaps we have been able to provide so far.

A police officer said to me only this morning that the House is sometimes guilty of basing this argument purely on efficiency. The expression “We’re all in it together” sometimes triggers a groan from Opposition Members, but for many officers who are looking with a pretty uncertain eye at what the future might hold for them and their families, it would be more helpful if we were to say that what is happening is part of rectifying a wider economic issue than we have perhaps been able to stress so far. I also think that there has been a fixation—I try to be balanced about these things, but Opposition Members sometimes test the patience of all of us, and on this particular point a little too far—that somehow there is always a correlation between police numbers and police efficiency. Whatever survey or piece of evidence we tend to look at these days, there is an increasing amount of information, which should enable us to come to the view that the two things are not always connected. They are some of the time, but the idea that an efficient police force is a big police force is a myth that this debate has to some extent helped to dispel.

In public opinion terms, however, we have to go quite a lot further, because that idea leads, unfortunately, to a problem whereby the public have confidence in their police force only so long as it is a bigger police force which is expanding its numbers, whereas we should be reassuring voters and, in particular, vulnerable members of society that an efficient police force, which finds ways of carrying out its work better for less and involving fewer people does not mean that they will not be safe in their beds at night. We exploit the fixation with numbers irresponsibly if the person listening happens to be a pensioner wondering whether they are going to be burgled.

[Mark Tami]

Developing that point, can the hon. Gentleman tell me when he has seen a Tory party leaflet that states, “We want fewer police,” and puts across that argument? I have never seen one.

[Simon Hart]

What emerges from that intervention is that the hon. Gentleman reads Tory leaflets and I do not, and he can keep reading as far as I am concerned, but the fact is that evidence now goes so far as to show even opposite trends. We do not have to go into that now, because I suspect that it is slightly outwith the amendment, but I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman uses his time so wisely.

Having started from the position of being a little sceptical about how a police commissioner covering such a vast area of urban and rural Wales could be effective, I have slowly but enthusiastically come to the conclusion that they will have an incentive to take into account public mood, public aspiration and public desire in a way that the current arrangements do not, and that it is a good thing, because it will therefore automatically lead to police priorities being more sensitive to a community’s requirements. If that happens, public satisfaction with and confidence in the police will, I trust, improve, and if that happens so will value for money in real terms and the perceived value for money of police forces, which are undoubtedly having to do some things that neither we nor they wanted them to do.

Although significant concerns have been well and reasonably articulated in the House, they in no way override the benefits to my constituents of proceeding with elected commissioners next year. We all know that they will not work perfectly everywhere all the time—no proposal that any of us has seen will do that—but one thing is certain: they will bring the community closer to their police force than is the case at the moment, and that is all the more to their credit.

I believe firmly that if we have good chief constables, which by and large we do, and if we have good police commissioners, which I have no doubt we will—let us face it, they are going to earn twice as much as a Member of Parliament, which probably means that they will be twice as good, and there is no reason to believe that they will not be extremely efficient and conscious of the impartial role that they have to play—that will lead to a vast improvement on the existing situation, recreate public confidence and trust in the police force and deliver value for money. As our friends in the Treasury remind us, that is never far away from such debates, but sometimes we lose sight of the fact that we have an economic mountain to climb.

We do not need to go into all that now, but this is one small part of the climb, so I will happily support the Government in opposing Lords amendments 1 to 4, and I hope that other Members will do likewise.