HMRC Office Closures

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rob Marris]

I do not, but again, I will say more in a couple of minutes.

At one end of the spectrum, the IOD says it broadly supports this type of change, and at the other end, the unions say they have grave misgivings. The president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation—hardly known as a supporter of the Labour party, the SNP or any political party—has said:

“Taxpayers and tax professionals alike will be anxious that a public body that is struggling to meet its public-facing service targets has announced that it is about to lose many staff and close its local offices.”

The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales—I do not know what the position is in Scotland—says that the timing of the changes

“could stretch HMRC to breaking point”,

and that the restructuring of HMRC could be disruptive and could distract its leadership.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the distribution of well-qualified civil servants around the country will alter fundamentally, and that it is simply not on to say to well-qualified civil servants in north Wales that they have to go to Liverpool, no tax offices being left in north Wales at all?

[Rob Marris]

I tend to agree with my hon. Friend. I cannot make any commitment from the Front Bench that a Labour Government would keep every tax office open, but to keep this issue in proportion, in 2010 we had about 393 tax offices collecting an average of well over £1 billion each. Any business that was bringing in that amount of money would be kept open.

Amendment of the Law

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to speak in this Budget debate and to follow all the previous speakers, who have passionately expressed their views. I want to pay particular tribute to my right hon. Friends the shadow Chancellor and the Leader of the Opposition, who spoke thoughtfully and in great depth, sharing their vision of how our country can and should be better, and describing how this Government have failed working families. That is the real debate of this Budget—the one the Conservatives do not want to have.

I suspect it is even the reason why the Prime Minister is refusing my right hon. Friend the courtesy of a one-to-one television debate. The Americans have been doing this since Nixon and Kennedy, and at the last election the Prime Minister said that his predecessor would show that he was “out of touch” if he did not agree to such a debate. This is not like the Bullingdon club photograph that the Prime Minister has done everything in his power to stop media outlets showing: he cannot airbrush out a television debate. He can hide and refuse to debate, but he cannot stop the real debate taking place in households, workplaces, communities and families the length and breadth of the country.

We well remember the debate about “broken Britain”, thoughtfully expressed in the research of the Centre for Social Justice, which the Conservative party often trumpeted. However, that now demonstrates itself in the nightmare of the anti-family, debt-inducing curse of zero-hours contracts. It is a debate we hear in community groups, charities, churches and other faith organisations.

As we debate this Budget, it is worth noting that the 2014 National Church and Social Action survey reports that food distribution tops the list of church community activities. It is above parent and toddler groups; above community festivals and fun days; it is even above school assemblies and religious education. As someone who worked for charities for 15 years before becoming a Member of this House, I do not just welcome voluntary endeavours, I consider them vital. However, the Government have shown where their priorities lie—and it is certainly not with people facing zero-hours contracts. A lady in my constituency whose church collects food regularly for the Oswestry food bank just over the border, put it memorably:

“We’re used to collecting, but it used to be for Romanian orphans, not for people in our country without enough to eat.”

That is not to say that everything the Government do is bad. There were some positives in the Budget and I want to mention two I particularly liked. I welcome the increase in personal allowances, and in the gift aid-like payment in the Small Charitable Donations Bill, not least because a number of Labour Members worked on that Bill Committee to increase the threshold. The details need to be worked out, but there are some real positives. However, the Government need to increase support for the self-employed. I am very much of the view that if we as a nation handle this right, the potential for private sector-led regeneration in rural and semi-rural communities is great.

Let me tell the House about the kind of enterprise in my area that I am talking about. Recently, Alice Murray, who lives in Overton in my constituency, visited me here in the Houses of Parliament. Alice is responsible for setting up the company Giggles and Games, and last year she won the prestigious “Entrepreneur of the Year” award at the Free2Network business awards. Alice had not worked outside the home during the 17 years she brought up her four children. By her own admission, she was too nervous to attend an open day at Glyndwr university in Wrexham five years ago. But she grew in confidence while studying. Having organised a major event as part of a college module in entrepreneurship, Alice, after graduating in 2012, established Giggles and Games - The Giant Game People, a company that has achieved great acclaim for its games for parties, weddings and corporates. Based in north Wales, it covers Shropshire and Cheshire, but its staff are more than willing to travel further afield. The Giant Games include Giant 5ft Buzzers, Giant Connect Four, Giant Chess, Giant Snakes and Ladders—3 metres by 3 metres—and, best of the lot, Giant Stocks. The company is innovative, different and appealing, and it employs people and brings money into our local economy. I appreciate that Giant Space Hoppers are not everyone’s thing, but the business is thriving because it is innovative.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making some very good points—and I am tempted to suggest some people who could be put in the stocks to which she refers. However, if such businesses are to be successful, they need universal superfast broadband that is accessible to all. Does she agree, and share my hope that the Government will take that issue up with even more vigour?

[Susan Elan Jones]

I agree with my hon. Friend that that is a hugely important issue. In my area there are many businesses waiting to be born that will never even reach gestation, simply because we do not give enough practical help to would-be entrepreneurs. The more than 5 million working people in our country who are self-employed face huge problems. Two thirds have no pension, and one in five cannot get a mortgage. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition spoke powerfully last autumn when he declared that the next Labour Government will ensure equal rights for the self-employed. That is a very important issue.

Finally, I want to use this Budget debate to seek clarity about a particular concern I have. There has been a great deal of interesting debate about the effectiveness of the new allowances for those who are married or in civil partnerships. That issue has been debated before in the House, and I am sure it will be in future. Both halves of the pantomime horse that seem to make up the coalition appear to have differing views on that issue. However, according to a written reply I received from the House of Commons Library, those who wish to claim the new transferable tax allowance for married couples and civil partners may only register for it over the internet. Given that 18% of adults in the UK cannot use the internet, the lack of options is quite surprising. Whatever our views on the efficacy and effectiveness of this allowance, it has no validity whatsoever if it is not available to those who cannot access the internet, many of whom are likely to be elderly and/or on lower incomes. Wherever we stand on this subject, there is a very real question for the Government to answer and I look forward to a response.

Fiscal Responsibility and Fairness

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend and his work on the Treasury Committee, and to staff at Wick tax office for their work to ensure compliance in our tax system. They have brought in many millions of pounds of revenue that would not otherwise have been collected. He is right to stress the importance of investment in infrastructure. Under this Government, we have the largest programme of investment in our railways since Victorian times, and in our road network since the 1970s. The plans I am setting out today would allow and enable borrowing for productive capital investment after the books are balanced, which will allow us to do more of that still. That is the right, fair plan for this country.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury may be aware of a popular television programme in this country called “Pointless”—it would be unkind of me to use the same description about him, so I will not. Can he say in one short sentence what exactly was the point of what he has said today, apart from pacifying some of his colleagues?

Bankers’ Bonuses and the Banking Industry

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Cathy Jamieson]

I do not think that anyone is suggesting that we want irresponsible lending. We want those businesses that are valuable, sustainable and want to grow—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has heard from them in his constituency, as I have in mine—to be able to access finance. That is the important point.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being incredibly generous in giving way to Conservative Members, and I would like to quote another Conservative, albeit not a Member of this House. Kay Swinburne, an MEP for Wales, had this to say on the subject of the court case in Europe that the Government decided to contest with our money:

“I can tell you there is not a single constituent I have met that actually thinks we were right to have taken that to the courts”.

She then suggested that bankers could be “a little more innovative” in getting around the cap. That is the real voice of the Conservative party, even if Conservative Members are not expressing it here today.

[Cathy Jamieson]

I was planning to say something about the cap later, but my hon. Friend has made her point with words that I would have difficulty bettering.

Let me return to banks paying lavish bonuses. The public are understandably still questioning why, with wage stagnation and the cost of living crisis that they are all facing, senior bankers have continued to reward themselves in that way. Let us look at the figures. Last year, bonuses at Barclays were up 10% to £2.4 billion and those at Lloyds were up 8% to £395 million. The Royal Bank of Scotland, 79% of which is owned by the taxpayer, announced a bonus pool of £577 million. Some may say that that is all well and good, because it is just senior bankers enjoying the hard-earned fruits of their labour, but that is more difficult to justify in the light of recent scandals and given that two of the UK’s four largest banks—Barclays and RBS—have experienced drastic falls in profits. Earlier this week, with impeccable timing, of course, HSBC announced its bonus pool for the year, awarding its chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, £7.6 million—I repeat, £7.6 million—and paying 330 of its top employees in excess of €1 million, despite the revelations of recent weeks and a 17% fall in profits.

It would be remiss of me not to refer to the role that the Government have played in all this. As well as the failure of their schemes to galvanise lending, they have failed—this point was made my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish—to implement all the reforms recommended by the Independent Commission on Banking and the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards. They ignored Labour’s pleas for action to regulate benchmarks when the LIBOR scandal first came to light, and they have actively aided and abetted bankers’ efforts to safeguard their bonuses. As my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) pointed out, the Chancellor launched an ill-fated and misguided legal challenge to the EU bonus cap, which limits bonuses to 100% of fixed pay or 200% with shareholder approval, which still seems fairly generous.

Oral Answers to Questions

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

My hon. Friend has made an interesting point. UK Sport and national governing bodies capitalise on a wealth of diverse global expertise in order to get athletes on to the podium. Sport England also invests in organisations such as Sporting Equals to promote physical activity and diversity in all sport.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I know that I speak for a certain proportion of people in this country who were dreadful at sport at school and never improved thereafter. What will the Minister do to encourage people who have never had a positive experience of sport to take our necessary exercise by that means?

[Mrs Grant]

The hon. Lady has made a very interesting point. I would say that there is a sport out there for absolutely everyone. We need to listen to what people want, and give it to them.

Wales Bill

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Williams]

My hon. Friend says that with great sincerity, and I know him to be a sincere man. I just wish to place on the record the fact that the process of devolution has been an achievement of politicians of all parties—Liberals, Conservatives, and friends from the nationalists and from the Labour party—over the years. That process of consensus has to continue if the process of devolution marches on.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I would not wish the hon. Gentleman to continue without mentioning one of his predecessors, Lord Elystan-Morgan, who made an interesting point in his autobiography, saying that when he started his political career—many of us know that he did not spend his life in just one political party—he would not have dreamt that the process of self-government and devolution would have gone on to the extent that it has.

Wales Bill

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Llwyd]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. He may know that I was very critical of the Welsh Government for going down the track of closing smaller hospitals, leaving nothing in their wake and pretending that care in the community was available when it was not. I am not uncritical. We should voice concerns when they need to be voiced.

New clause 1 stands in my name and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Arfon (Hywel Williams) and for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards). If accepted, it would require the Government to review the options for reforming the Barnett formula in order to ensure that Wales is funded on the basis of need rather than population share, as is currently the case. Of course, it is out of the scope of this Bill to seek to change the Barnett formula and make sure that Wales is funded on the basis of need, but the issue of fair funding has become an integral part of the public and political discourse on the powers it offers and we seek to highlight its importance.

Although the need for fair funding—as reform of the Barnett formula has become known in Wales—was not set as part of the remit of the Commission on Devolution in Wales, the cynical among us might view that as a ploy by the Government to continue to ignore the ongoing loss to Wales of between £300 million and £400 million per annum, which is an incredibly large sum of money for such a small country.

Earlier, we debated the need for borrowing and the £500 million limit. We are actually undersold £400 million per annum already, and we do not seem to be too concerned about that or, at least, nobody has been in any great rush to address it. I venture to suggest that if that were put right, the £400 million could be very useful to the Welsh Government immediately.

The so-called formula was devised in the 1970s by Joel Barnett MP, who is now Lord Barnett in the other place. He was a Treasury Minister at the time, and he saw that a simple stop-gap means of funding Wales would be to do so on the basis of its share of population—about 5% of the UK total. However, since the 1970s, Wales’s GVA has fallen as a percentage of the UK’s, and Wales now has a higher number of disabled and older people as a percentage of the population than our friends in England. The formula was intended to be only temporary, before a longer-term and more equitable solution could be found. Politicians of all parties recognise that it is unjust and needs reform, except those in government—whoever is in government at the time.

As part of our One Wales coalition Government agreement in the last National Assembly, Plaid Cymru demanded that an independent commission be put together to examine the shortfall in the funding which Wales evidently misses out on each year through how the block grant is currently calculated. The Independent Commission on Funding and Finance for Wales, expertly chaired by the widely respected Gerald Holtham, entirely vindicated what we have said for upwards of 30 years—that Wales has been losing out. Indeed, the £300 million to £400 million figure has been endorsed by another Committee, the Constitutional Committee in the other place, which separately came to a similar conclusion.

Plaid Cymru has been campaigning for reform of the Barnett formula and to secure fair funding for Wales on the basis of need for more than three decades. In all my time in the House, which spans more than two decades, we have returned to this continuing injustice time and again. If I may reminisce for a second or two, I remember asking successive Labour Secretaries of State for Wales why they would not reform the Barnett formula. I do not seek to embarrass my good friend the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy)—he had to stick to his brief at the time—but there is now an acknowledgment that we are underfunded, and that therefore needs to be put right. As in any other part of the UK, we need to ensure fair funding in Wales, which is something that no democrat would deny.

Imagine my surprise when it emerged that the Labour party had put a caveat on devolving income tax powers for Wales, by stating that it would not hold a referendum until fair funding had been secured. The fact that it wilfully ignored the problem and even denied that there was one during 13 years in power in Westminster must be the symptom of a grave case of collective amnesia. The cynical among us would call that expedient, to say the least, while others might be tempted to see it as a roadblock in the path of greater devolution for Wales, put in place by the anti-devolution tendency that appears to be in the ascendancy among Labour Members from Wales at Westminster.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

How does the right hon. Gentleman marry his last comment with our very strongly stated support for reserved powers, an innovation about which I am very pleased?

[Mr Llwyd]

I am pleased that the Labour party agreed to the reserved powers model, but I am a little concerned and I will develop my argument about the difference of opinion on when the Barnett formula should be addressed. The hon. Lady’s colleagues in Wales have one view, and her colleagues at Westminster have another. As I have said, the caveat may be a roadblock to further devolution. In fact, according to Labour party policy as it now stands, it will be a roadblock to further devolution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nia Griffith]

Absolutely—not necessarily from the hon. Gentleman, but from other hon. Members there has been a blatant and clear attack. I would be the first to make a fuss—indeed, I do—if somebody cannot get a specific treatment, and we all know that in every area, whether in England or Wales, certain specialties may be difficult to cover in certain periods. We all know that we need to fight for certain things for certain constituents. As was mentioned, however, there is no clear winner or loser; there is no clear leader or laggard in the four UK nations in terms of health provision, as shown in a longitudinal study by the Nuffield Trust over a long period.

[Susan Elan Jones]

It is all very well various Conservative Members saying, “We are not making an attack on the NHS”, but the leader of their party went to their Welsh conference and—I have just checked this because it is almost beyond belief that he used this phrase—described Offa’s Dyke as

“the line between life and death”.

I am sorry, but that is offensive. Conservative Members continually play the game, but they are Cameron’s little dogs, nothing else, and they are not prepared to speak up for Wales.

[Nia Griffith]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, many of my constituents, who would be the first to criticise if something were wrong with the national health service, were shocked by those comments and deeply outraged at the insult to the many hard-working staff. I am glad that Conservative Members in the Committee have recognised the hard work done by many of our doctors and nurses in Wales, but there has clearly been an unmitigated and quite unnecessary attack. As has been pointed out, if he looked at some of the statistics, the hon. Member for Monmouth would find that waiting times for certain cancer treatments are shorter in his patch than over the border in the Wye valley. It is absurd to state that everybody is hopping across to England. Likewise, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean has tabled one of the amendments, but Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust treats only 82% of its cancer patients within the 62-day limit, whereas in Wales the figure is 91%. Every Welsh trust is outperforming the Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust.

When considering these figures it is easy to pick one number or specialty and to forget that for the vast majority of people in Wales treatment has improved rapidly over the past few years. It is certainly very different to how it was in the 1980s and ’90s, when people waited an extremely long time. The key point to remember is that England too has had a dreadful year for A and E.

Wales Bill

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes some very good points, and I acknowledged them in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North. I said that that was why I wanted the review to consider both the advantages and disadvantages. We need to consider them because the proposals I brought before the House to reduce and equalise the number of Members in this place clearly had an impact on the number of parliamentary Westminster seats in Wales, reducing the number from 40 to 30. We decided to decouple the number of constituency seats for this place from the number in the Welsh Assembly, but it seems to me that if we are going to consider the number of Members and if the trajectory of the number of Westminster Members is going down, we should at least consider how many constituency Members there should be in the Welsh Assembly. If that number moves downwards, as I think it probably ought to, consequences will clearly flow from that for the size of the regions and how we group them. We must also build in a process whereby we can change the number of seats as the population increases, decreases or moves to ensure that that equal representation continues.

Setting up the independent review enables all those issues to be considered properly. A report to the Secretary of State can then be produced and laid before both Houses of Parliament so that a proper decision can be taken. The Silk commission might well be able to consider all these issues in the further work it will undertake, and when I listen to the Minister’s response I might find that the amendment is effectively redundant. However, the issues are worthy of consideration.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

I am absolutely certain that the hon. Gentleman did not intend to raise any North Walean hackles, but he has. Regional representation is hugely important in Wales, because those of us who have always been pro-devolution have always argued that it is fundamental that the different parts of Wales are represented at a regional as well as at a constituency level. I would not want any possible scenario that would see those lists increasingly South Walean-dominated. That would not be right for the future of the devolution settlement.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady makes a good point. I do not want to trespass into North Walean and South Walean rivalries, but I am well aware that, if for no other reason than the geography of Wales, the communication links between north Wales and south Wales are quite difficult, and journey times can be lengthy—as Members have pointed out to me. It is relevant to the health debate next week that there is a lot of east-west cross-border travel between England and Wales to access essential public services, partly for the reason that travelling north-south is not very easy. The hon. Lady makes some good points. My amendment was very balanced, looking at both the advantages and disadvantages of a larger list, so that a properly informed decision can be taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Owen Smith]

The Assembly can do that, but that issue strikes me as rather tangential to the one that we are debating, which is the nature of the electoral arrangements that this House lays down for the Assembly, which the Secretary of State is seeking to change.

I will return to the guts of the matter, which is the evidence of the need for the change. I think that the evidence supports our view that no such change is required. I return to the evidence provided in the impact assessment by the Government. Although they concede that a majority of respondents to the consultation—a “small majority”, admittedly—were

“in favour of retaining the ban”,

they state that

“the Government does not think that a strong enough case for this was made in the consultation responses.”

[Interruption.] The Under-Secretary of State for Wales suggests that those were Labour responses. He really ought to take his consultation seriously. If the Government want their policy to be supported by the public, they ought to reflect the evidence, rather than dismiss it out of hand when it happens to be counter to their narrow, partisan interests.

[Susan Elan Jones]

I am intrigued and surprised that none of the three Plaid Cymru Members have stood up to defend their leader. In the interest of their silence, may I suggest a possible tweet for at least one of them: “We cannot answer what the shadow Secretary of State is saying, so we are silent and looking sheepish #nationalistsconfused”?

[Owen Smith]

I look forward to reading it on Twitter later this afternoon. To return to the evidence, the Government concede that this measure is solely designed to benefit the smaller parties in Wales—the Conservatives, the Liberals and Plaid Cymru—and that a majority of people responding to their consultation did not agree with their proposals to change it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Murphy]

It can be argued that people vote differentially, as they do for the Assembly, and indeed for the House of Commons, but I see no evidence in my constituency that they vote differentially for the top-up Members and the constituency Members of the Assembly; they vote Labour—end of story. The same is true in seats that are not held by Labour, for example next door in Monmouthshire. I think that people do not understand the system. I am not arguing against the notion of proportionality, although I do not like it; I am arguing against this particular system.

Equally, with regard to clause stand part, people neither like nor understand the idea that candidates can stand and be defeated but then get in. It is a simple system that they just do not like. We used it when we were in power, of course, but that does not make it right. Ultimately, that is why people understand that the system is flawed and needs to be put right. I think that candidates should have to make up their minds and decide either to stand for the constituency and work hard at it, as everybody in the House of Commons does, or to stand for some other type of proportional system.

In my view there is a case for increasing the number of Assembly Members. The fact that there are new legislative powers in Cardiff means that the Assembly cannot go on with just 60 Members. It simply is not big enough. It is not a popular argument, but the place needs more Members if it is to work. However, I do not think that they should be elected using this system. My view, inevitably, as someone who believes in the first-past-the-post system, is that there should be two Assembly Members for each of the 40 constituencies in Wales. That could be modified with some sort of proportionality, of course, whether the alternative vote or some other system.

Ultimately, what matters is that people relate to their elected representatives, whether Members of Parliament, councillors or Members of the European Parliament. The hon. Member for Cardiff North is right about the daft system for electing MEPs—we brought it in, by the way, and ought to be ashamed of it—which means that no one knows who their local MEP is, but that is another issue. I am trying to emphasise the link between an elected Member and his or her constituency, whether two Members for the constituency or one, because people understand that. As soon as people fail to understand how their representatives are elected, the system is most certainly flawed.

[Susan Elan Jones]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Chope, and to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) and other Members in this important debate. My mind is going back to the early hours of 2 May 1997, when a new day had dawned. There were not too many of us who had noticed that new day, because I am not talking about Labour gaining Monmouth, or Enfield, Southgate or Hove; I am talking about Surrey Heath, where the local party wanted a keen and—as was then the case—relatively young Labour candidate to fly the flag. It found one—me.

A new day really had dawned, because we had gained 11,511 votes, which was 21% of the vote. Never had that been achieved before, I thought. I felt an immense sense of victory. The campaign had had a few strange moments. There was the time I told people how important it was to have a new and reforming Labour Government who would bring in devolution. People looked at me and said, “Your campaign doesn’t belong in Surrey.” There was the time I told people that a new Labour Government would ban handguns, and they showed me their membership cards for Bisley gun club. Then there was the time I said that the Labour Government would introduce a national minimum wage. They used a few expletives and explained that they certainly did not intend to pay it to their employees.

It was not the greatest of campaigns. More to the point, after I had realised that I had won 21% of the vote, I realised that I had lost 79%. Let us, though, imagine the scenario if things had been different. Let us imagine that there had been a regional list on which I could have stood, and lo and behold, on that great heyday of the Labour party, much to the annoyance of the 79% of people who had not voted for me, suddenly, miraculously, I reappeared as No. 1 on the list in Surrey. I could have been the Member for Bisley or the Member for Chobham. The right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) would no doubt have been quaking in his boots at the concept of this Welsh misfit down in the suburbs. That shows how ridiculous dual candidacy is.

[David T. C. Davies]

The hon. Lady is making a good point, which is basically that PR is not a good electoral system, and I agree. However, it was her and her colleagues who agreed to a PR system for the Welsh Assembly so that they could get the thing through with the support of the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru, who would not have supported it if it was first past the post. They created this system and they are going to have to live with it. They cannot start wanting changes just because it does not suit them 10 or 15 years later.

[Susan Elan Jones]

If the hon. Gentleman looked back at the history, he would find that many people in the Labour party, including me, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and many others, supported that pluralistic system, and I still do. People talk about this in terms of partisan analysis, but we have to remember that we too, as a party, have list Members in Mid Wales and West Wales.

I am pleased that people in constituencies who feel that every time they go out to vote in a Westminster election or a constituency election for the Assembly, their candidate is not going to get in, can now feel that, yes, their vote is going to matter. I appreciate that there has to be a balance in terms of constituency representation in a region, but this remains important. We could have put, say, the candidates who stood and lost in the Pembrokeshire seats on a list. There is no partisan advantage for us, but there is a basic issue of fairness. This cannot be a two-way bet.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend may recall that the decision that many agreed to was taken on the grounds not of getting wider support but of its being good democracy. We have a system, as we still do, that cheats all but the two main parties. That is extraordinary. We had two elections where the Conservative party in Wales received 20% of the vote but had not a single MP in this House—a democratic outrage. The idea was that the Assembly was going to be set up not to have permanent one-party rule but to give all the other parties a fair chance of being represented.

[Susan Elan Jones]

That is right. It is important that on such constitutional issues we have this sort of open debate and are open to ideas, as my party certainly has been. It is possible to be progressive and pluralistic but to recognise that it would be nonsense to go back to the whole issue of dual candidacy in the Assembly. I am firmly of the view that someone should either stand for a constituency seat or be on the Assembly list. There is a very strong case—my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) made it—for open lists. These are the sorts of things we should be looking at.

Yesterday evening, I came across a leaflet. It was nothing to do with politics; it was to do with recycling. I spotted on it a comment that I thought was so good that I wrote it down. It is not exactly clause 2 of this Bill, but it could be. It said:

“Within as little as 6 weeks, the empty can you put into your recycling bin could be back on the shelf as a new can of cola or a new tin of beans.”

That is why we think that the Government have got it wrong on this one.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

It is very good to serve under your stewardship, Mr Chope.

This has been an interesting debate. After listening intently to lots of good argument by Members on both sides of the Committee, I have still failed to hear a convincing argument for once again reversing a fundamental part of the current devolution settlement, but there have been many convincing and compelling arguments for why we should stay exactly as we are. That is why, having heard the debate, I intend to support my Front-Bench colleagues.

There has not been a convincing argument to reverse the ban. As has been pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and others, there was only one manifesto commitment in the last set of manifestos, and that was the Labour party’s. It was based on the experience we had of the first outcomes of Assembly elections, where 17 out of those 20 candidates were defeated and then popped up again. Lord Richards, the Richards commission and others reported that among the electorate, not among politicians, there was a gut feeling that that was not right.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Catherine McKinnell]

The Bill is inadequate as it entirely fails to recognise the cost of living crisis facing many households, including families and married couples, throughout the country, and does nothing to address the problems that people are facing. The review proposed by amendment 3 would be an important first step in looking at how the Government can allocate the available resources to help more people than a few carefully selected types of married couples whom they have deemed should benefit.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the problems of the married couples tax allowance as proposed by the Government is the situation of what might traditionally have been called the deserted spouse, often the wife who was left? What would happen in that situation? That is a very real issue to be answered.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I say once again that we must have shorter interventions? I know that many Members wish to speak. We have been going for a long time and have not even got to the Back Benches yet.

North Wales Economy

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I could probably speak on this subject for about an hour—obviously my remarks will have to be rather shorter than that—especially as I have in my constituency the one world heritage site in north Wales, the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, but we will not boast about such things.

I would like to concentrate briefly on two things that specifically relate to my constituency, but that have close bearings to the north Wales economy. The first is the tragic closure—the final shift was yesterday—of First Milk in Marchwiel. There were 231 job losses at that plant. Many of the staff who spoke on the matter were extremely gracious in view of the circumstances; they thanked Wrexham county borough council, Careers Wales, the Department for Work and Pensions and other bodies that tried to help them get jobs.

However, my contention is that the original redundancies at the plant should never have happened in the first place. What we saw was a cursory lesson for those who seem to welcome supermarkets as a universal good. I know that the Minister and I, coincidentally, lived in the same London borough at one stage. He may remember that in parts of London there would be large anti-supermarket campaigns whenever a new supermarket was proposed. I am not suggesting that sort of approach, but sometimes in north Wales, I think we go a little too far the other way. With First Milk, we saw the board of Asda ditching an excellent supplier and causing those redundancies. I also think that a lesson can be learnt from that about the existing TUPE arrangements. There is a case to say that even if the plant had to go in the final analysis, the jobs should not have. I leave those thoughts at that.

More positively, I want to discuss Kronospan. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) spoke fantastically at the beginning of the debate about real economic success stories in north Wales. Kronospan is one of those; it is in Chirk and opened in 1970. Its creation came after most of the coal mining tradition in that area had finished. Kronospan is a wood panelling plant and is one of the top 10 manufacturing companies in Wales. It is the largest manufacturer of wood panelling products and laminate flooring in the world and the entire production of wood-based panel products is controlled from Kronospan’s site in my constituency. It employs just under 600 people, 90% of whom live in a 10-mile radius of the site itself.

Kronospan is massively important. It has a thriving apprenticeship programme supported by the Welsh Government, teaching young people real-life employment skills. It works exceptionally well with the local community and works closely with Chirk town council, with which it has a liaison committee. Their joint work has led to fewer lorries and more logs carried by train, among their many other successes.

However, it is not just a good story, and this is where I want the Minister’s help. Kronospan and I are concerned by various incentives in the Government’s renewables obligations and the new Energy Act 2013 to purchase wood for energy generation. I assure him that this is not an anti-biomass move, but we are concerned about some unintended consequences of the Act. We are asking not for special treatment but for a level playing field. We do not want to lose our Welsh Kronospan to another country. I ask the Minister whether he will meet me and representatives from Kronospan to discuss the matter, which is most important to the economy in my constituency and in north Wales.