Elfyn Llwyd
Main Page: Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru - Dwyfor Meirionnydd)Department Debates - View all Elfyn Llwyd's debates with the HM Treasury
(10 years ago)
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Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The hon. Gentleman might be worrying too much about something that is fairly straightforward. In fact, just outside Chester there is a pub that has one bar in Wales and one in England, and it seems to be doing rather well.
Mr Harper
I do not doubt that businesses can operate in that way. What I do not want to see is businesses that today are operating perfectly happily, attracting customers from both sides of the border, finding that the Government’s intervention will impose a complicated regime. We all know the refrain, “I’m from Whitehall and I’m here to help you”—I assume that “I’m from Cardiff Bay and I’m here to help you” is greeted with the same warm delight in Wales. If they happen to have land on both sides of what is currently not a border, as far as they are concerned, I do not want them suddenly to be faced with a complicated taxation regime that will require them to hire expensive accountants to deal with it.
My plea to the Minister is therefore this: recognising that we would have to deal with that land in different ways, can we ensure that whatever administrative system is put in place is as straightforward as possible, and not just for HMRC, but for my constituents and those in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) who might operate on both sides of the border?
Notwithstanding my concerns about some of the amendments that have been tabled, I generally welcome the devolution of these taxation powers to the Welsh Assembly, because I think that democratic institutions that spend money also ought to raise it.
Alun Cairns
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. As a strong champion of north Wales he, along with the Secretary of State, will always ensure that improvements to the A55 are considered at the highest level.
Mr Llwyd
I, too, stake a claim to represent north Wales. On a point of clarification, the present Foreign Secretary was in post in Wales in 1997, before devolution. Now there is a £15 billion block, but that is to deal with health, transport and myriad other things which the old Welsh Office—not the Wales Office—did not have to deal with.
David T. C. Davies
I have given way enough times. I look forward to my amendment receiving the support of Labour Members. It is about creating competition between health services and I do not think there is anything wrong with that. It is about delivering patient choice and, most importantly, it is about recreating a national health service. The Conservative and Unionist party will also be the party of the national health service—the truly national British health service—at the next election, and I look forward to the support of Labour Members.
Mr Llwyd
I wish to speak to my new clauses 1 and 10, which are in this group. I was discomfited by what the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) said, because, to be honest, he was running Wales down. Thousands and thousands of people who work in the NHS in Wales are doing their best at every single level, from the orthopaedic surgeons to those who clean the wards. There are problems, but there are problems in England as well. I was treated in Gobowen recently, not because I was given preferential treatment, but because the Bala practice happens to refer people to Gobowen for certain orthopaedic problems. I was dealt with promptly and well, and I have nothing but respect for those on that side of the border, as well as for those on our side of the border, which is the point on which the hon. Gentleman is lacking.
David T. C. Davies
I made it very clear in my speech that my criticisms are directed entirely at the leadership of the NHS in Wales and the National Assembly for Wales, not at the doctors and nurses who operate that service. I am happy to put that on record again. With all due respect, the right hon. Gentleman’s party has been very critical of the way in which the NHS has been run in Wales. I hope he is not going to fall into the trap—this is, frankly, the attitude of tyrants—of suggesting that any criticism of something is actually an attack on one’s nation. That is not the case at all and it is a dangerous criticism for him to make.
Mr Llwyd
I have not been uncritical; it is just that I was taken aback by the vehemence of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. I thought he was talking Wales down—that is my point. Everything is not perfect and I do not pretend it is—only a fool would say as much—but it is not half as bad as the hon. Gentleman alleges.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
In stressing the positives for Wales, will the right hon. Gentleman welcome the fact that there are 60 nurses per 10,000 patients in Wales and only 50 nurses per 10,000 patients in England?
Guto Bebb
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Is it not the case that a Member of Parliament has a responsibility to speak up on behalf of their constituents, including people who work in the health service who, time after time, come to me with complaints? They do so quietly and behind the scenes, because they know their positions will be endangered. We have a responsibility to speak up for patients and NHS staff in Wales, who are very aware of the fact that the standard of service is not appropriate.
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.
Chris Ruane
While the right hon. Gentleman is handing out plaudits to the Labour party, will he congratulate it on actually bringing devolution about? It included in its 1997 manifesto that devolution would be put to the people of Wales.
Jonathan Edwards
Is not new clause 1 a credibility test for the Labour party? It has put in place a roadblock on income tax powers, in that their devolution cannot happen until Barnett reform. If it does not support the new clause this evening, that will clearly show that its stipulation is a roadblock to further devolution.
Mr Llwyd
Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend, and not only Plaid Cymru is saying that. In a recent article, Professor Richard Wyn Jones of the Wales governance centre at Cardiff university said that because of the difference of view between Labour colleagues in the National Assembly and those at Westminster, and between Scottish Labour and Scottish Labour Members at Westminster,
“Scottish Labour seem to have no compunction about throwing Wales, one of the poorest parts of the Union, under the bus to shore up their own position… For Wales it is, sadly, a very different story. Yet despite this, the Barnett formula—used to calculate funding for the Scottish and Welsh Governments—operates in a way that ensures per capita levels of public spending is far higher for Scotland than for Wales.”
He develops that theme, referring to the Holtham commission, and continues:
“But what of Welsh Labour? It is surely inconceivable that the Shadow Secretary of State…will have been unaware of the contents of Powers for a Purpose, and its pledge to retain Barnett while rejecting a needs-based replacement. Yet, thus far at least, he has remained resolutely silent in the face of this assault on the long-term interests of Wales.”
And so it goes on: it is a pretty harrowing read, but it underlines the fact that unaligned expert commentators believe that denial of the need to get on with reforming Barnett as soon as possible is undermining the democratic process in Wales and its future.
In our party, at least, we are quite clear. We believe that Wales should be fairly funded on the basis of need, and that the Barnett formula should be recalculated to ensure that Wales does not lose out, potentially on billions of pounds, over the coming decade. We have always maintained that position. However, the thrust of what the Bill offers is, on the whole, a good thing, with greater financial and fiscal powers, despite our disagreement about some of the restrictions and conditions that the Westminster Government have placed on the powers. We are disappointed that they have failed yet again to take the opportunity to address the serious injustice of the lack of fair funding, but the Bill is a means of getting on with the important job of improving the Welsh economy—boosting it and, I hope, creating many jobs in the process through careful investment in infrastructure—because we know that a lot needs to be done.
We know that the Conservative and Lib Dem Government will not commit to reform of the Barnett formula. They have always said that it works, despite the fact that many of their senior figures in Wales have acknowledged that it does not work, but needs reform. This Government can never be trusted to put Wales’s interests first.
Mr Harper
Just to be clear, it is not right that the Government have said they will never amend the Barnett formula. They have said that the work on dealing with the deficit has to be the priority, before the Barnett formula can be looked at. They do not have a closed mind on that—they have another priority, which is the right one of dealing with the deficit—as the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting.
Mr Llwyd
I appreciate the pressures on the Government caused by the large deficit—that is fairly obvious—but it is not as though the Barnett problem has suddenly come out of the ether. It is a case of jam tomorrow, is it not? We have argued our case for 30 or 35 years, but others who are politically unaligned have now said that we are right. It has been on the table for eight or nine years, with very little movement in any direction and no initiative whatever. However, I accept what the hon. Gentleman says about the deficit.
Nia Griffith
The right hon. Gentleman’s new clause deals with Barnett reform, but if it were reformed, what would the position be in Scotland? Is it in his mind that Barnett reform would increase funding for Wales and decrease it for Scotland?
Mr Llwyd
I am in the thankful position of not speaking for Scotland. I have an opinion, however, as I would not like to see our colleagues and friends in Scotland being done down. I pose the question of whether we need a proper root-and-branch approach to the problem—something that will properly deliver. Come September, there may be no need for Barnett reform in Scotland.
Nia Griffith
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the Labour party’s announcement this week that we want to increase the funding for Wales, but not reform the Barnett formula as it affects Scotland?
Mr Llwyd
Asking me to say whether I think it is a good thing to increase funding for Wales is a rather strange question. If that ever happens, it will of course be a good thing, but rather than have piecemeal increases in funding, it would be better to have a lasting and proper formula that everybody could understand and that could stand the test of time—unlike the Barnett formula. Whenever I see the noble Lord Barnett—a wonderful character and a very nice man—he turns away. I hope it is not because it is me, but he always turns away, saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry; the formula was not meant to be in place now”. He acts as if he thinks I am going to jump on top of him! He realises the point himself, so we really need to get stuck in on this issue. I hope that when the Bill is passed, we can reach an all-party consensus by sitting down and seriously having a go at addressing the Barnett crisis. As I say, rather than have a piecemeal approach to the problem, I would prefer a long-standing approach to which everybody could sign up.
Chris Ruane
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way to me a third time. He talks about how Labour has treated Wales. In 1996, the Welsh block amounted to £6.7 billion; by the time Labour left government in 2010, it was £15 billion. Is that not an achievement?
Mr Llwyd
It was raised in line with inflation—[Interruption.] Let me finish. Other responsibilities came to Cardiff—virtually all the agriculture, the environment and various other things came in. [Interruption.] I would like to know the percentage, but I am not in a position to determine one way or another whether it amounted to a substantial increase. I do not think it was substantial: it was clearly above inflation, but other responsibilities had been devolved to Cardiff by that time.
Without trying your patience, Mr Crausby, I would like briefly to speak to Plaid Cymru’s new clause 10. The Silk commission’s recommendation 28—a brief one, you will be pleased to hear—states that the Welsh Government should set up a Welsh Treasury to manage the new powers contained within the report. The new clause extends that arrangement to the Bill. It is a simple but important new clause. In the spirit of our other amendments, it seeks to preserve the integrity of the cross-party Silk commission recommendations.
The commission recommended that if the Welsh Government are to be directly responsible for revenue raised in Wales, as will be the case with the advent of the Bill’s powers, they must develop their finance department into a Welsh Treasury. That is a common-sense approach. If the National Assembly for Wales decides to do this, in accordance with its will, so be it. It would avoid the need for inefficient and perhaps time-wasting tidying-up exercises, such as appear in the first part of the Bill. People in Wales have been referring to “the Welsh Government”—a change of name—so there should be no problem with calling the finance department “the Welsh Treasury”. It is common sense for that to happen. I hope that this simple new clause will be supported by both sides of the Committee.
Guto Bebb
I shall speak briefly to my amendments 12, 13 and 14, of which I am proud. I associate myself, too, not only with the amendment tabled by the Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), but with his speech. There was nothing in it that was an attack on Wales. He was simply highlighting a real concern of our constituents that needs to be addressed. I believe that the amendments provide the opportunity to deal with the fact that we need an NHS that serves the people of Wales.
Guto Bebb
The hon. Lady is mistaken. The NHS England website poses the question,
“Can I have a GP in Wales if I live in England?”
The answer is:
“Yes you can, but… Patient choice and the NHS Constitution do not apply to the NHS in Wales.”
In other words, patient choice does apply in England, but it does not apply in Wales.
It is important that this issue is debated, because the Government in Cardiff Bay state that the NHS in Wales is as good as the NHS in England. That is exactly the issue that our amendments highlight. They make it very clear that if patients from England elect to use services in Wales, there will be a corresponding change to the funding block, and if patients from Wales elect to use services in England, there will be a corresponding change to the block. If the confidence in the Welsh NHS that Opposition Members express in the media and on television is genuine, they would see no danger in the amendments. The amendments would simply allow patients from Wales who want to be treated in England and patients from England who want to be treated in Wales to have that choice. They are simply trying to ensure that we have an NHS that is national. Why is that so scary to the so-called party of the NHS? That question needs to be answered in this debate.
Secondly, I want to touch on the comments of the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I was genuinely disappointed to hear the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth described as an attack on Wales. It is important in a mature democracy that we are able to highlight areas where service levels in Wales are not as good as they should be, because we should aspire to have the best. Whether we are talking about the NHS or education, we have a duty to highlight places where Wales is underperforming. To try to kill off that debate by arguing that all Members who highlight concerns on behalf of their constituents are in some way attacking NHS staff is unacceptable.
I might be suggesting that there is a motive where none exists, but perhaps the defensiveness that was articulated by the right hon. Gentleman reflects the fact that patient choice in Wales disappeared as a result of the “One Wales” Government. According to the House of Commons Library, the “One Wales” Government “eliminated patient choice”. Those are not my words, but the words of the House of Commons Library. It states clearly:
“Patients registered with a GP in Wales do not have a statutory right to choose at which hospital they receive treatment.”
The “One Wales” Government moved from patient choice to patient voice. That was a good soundbite that appealed to people who like poems that rhyme. However, in the Betsi Cadwaladr trust, patient voice meant that if somebody made a complaint, they might get a response in six months. Patient choice, which is what these amendments propose, means that patients in north Wales who feel that they would be better served by electing to be treated at a hospital in England would have that choice.
Mr Llwyd
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that I do not have people crowding into my office to say that they were badly treated at the hospitals in Llandudno, Bodelwyddan or Wrexham or at Ysbyty Gwynedd, Bangor? People often come in to say, “If you’re in contact with those hospitals, will you please say that the care was excellent and that I have nothing but praise for them?” I do not recognise the problem that he perceives. I am not sure what I am saying about what he is saying, but I do not recognise the problems that he and the hon. Member for Monmouth have highlighted. I do not see those problems every day. If I did, perhaps I would join them.
Mr Jones
That, of course, is entirely a matter for the Welsh Government, but, in practice, that is what they are calling it at the moment.
I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) and for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) for their amendments 12, 13 and 14, and my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) for his amendments 17 and 18 and new clause 3. They raise important issues about the provision of cross-border health services in Wales and England, issues which are, of course, vitally important to anyone who lives close to the border—or even not so close, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams). Indeed, they are important to anyone who wants world-class health services to be delivered throughout the United Kingdom.
Health is one of the most important services—arguably, the most important service—to be delivered by any Government. We all know that people value the delivery of good health care more than almost every other public service. This is, after all, a service on which we are all likely to call at some stage in our lives. It is therefore essential for any Government to deliver health services which are effective and efficient, and which provide good value for money. In England, the Government will have increased spending on health by about £12.7 billion in cash terms over the lifetime of the current Parliament, delivering an NHS that continues to improve and the health care that people want and deserve. However, none of that would be possible without our front-line NHS teams: the doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals.
As we have heard from Members this evening, the sad fact is that the Labour Government in Cardiff are presiding over a health service in Wales which is declining. My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth gave some illustrations of that decline. In Wales, Labour has cut the health budget by 8%, despite having been given an extra £1.6 billion in the block grant. The result has been a decline in health services in Wales which is evident for all to see, with unacceptably long waiting times.
Mr Llwyd
The right hon. Gentleman is describing the process for the Barnett floor, which has been well known for several months. He says that some urgent work is being undertaken by government on this issue. Therefore, it would not be an imposition to expect a review to be forthcoming within six months of this Act coming into force.
Mr Jones
Well, I can only reiterate the point which I thought the right hon. Gentleman had accepted: that our priority is to address the deficit we inherited from the Labour party at the last election. Nevertheless, the next review is expected to take place in advance of a spending review in 2015 and it is likely to be around the time when this new clause suggests the report should be published. These arrangements ensure that we have a shared understanding of funding levels in Wales, and a process is in place to consider options should further convergence be forecast to resume. It therefore provides a firm basis for proceeding with the new financial powers in the Wales Bill, and I hope that the Plaid Cymru Members will therefore not press new clause 1 to a vote. I also ask hon. Members to support clauses 21 and 22 standing part of the Bill and to support amendment 29.
The Temporary Chairman (Mr David Crausby)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 8—Crown Estate in Wales: Revenue—
‘Revenue raised by the Crown Estate in Wales shall be paid into the Welsh Consolidated Fund.’.
New clause 9—Crown Estate Commissioner with special responsibility for Wales—
‘(1) In Schedule 1 to the Crown Estate Act 1961 (Constitution etc of Crown Estate Commissioners), paragraph 1 is amended as follows.
(2) After sub-paragraph (3) insert—
“(3A) One of the Commissioners shall be appointed as the Crown Estate Commissioner with special responsibility for Wales, who must be a person who knows about conditions in Wales as they relate to the functions of the Commissioners.”.
(3) After sub-paragraph (4) insert—
“(4A) The Crown Estate Commissioner with special responsibility for Wales shall be appointed on the recommendation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who shall consult the Welsh Ministers before making that recommendation.”.’.
Mr Llwyd
Everyone will be pleased to hear that I shall be fairly brief. [Interruption.] I sense the disappointment. I am sorry to let the Chamber down at this late hour.
New clause 7 is about the transfer of ownership and control of the Crown estates in Wales, new clause 8 is about the consequent transfer of revenue and new clause 9 is about appointing a Crown Estate commissioner with special responsibility for Wales. As has been said in various debates by various colleagues, we have set about preserving the integrity of the Silk recommendations, so in speaking to these new clauses, which stand in my name and those of my two honourable colleagues, my hon. Friends the Members for Arfon (Hywel Williams) and for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), I shall first deal with new clause 9.
New clause 9 is the recommendation of the cross-party commission on devolution, which was chaired by Paul Silk. The recommendation is less than we wanted, but it recognises what was agreed as part of a compromise. That is why it is disappointing to see it left out of the Bill by the Government. The new clause deals with the appointment of a Crown Estate commissioner with special responsibility for Wales.
The Crown Estate has a diverse range of holdings throughout Wales. As well as agricultural land and mineral rights, these include the sea bed out to the 12-mile nautical limit, within which it is responsible for issuing, for example, permits and leases for wind energy creation. However, the Crown Estate is not accountable to the people of Wales, and all profits from its holdings, both onshore and offshore, are passed to the UK Government. These are likely to grow substantially in the future, mainly due to the demand for renewable energy. We in Plaid Cymru believe that ownership and control over the Crown Estate in Wales should be transferred to the Welsh Government. That is the issue we are probing through new clauses 7 and 8.
The Crown Estate in Wales is likely to be increasingly important, especially in the context of its role, as I said, in developing renewable energy. Devolving the Crown Estate is essential in order for Wales to have a say in how energy projects are planned and to see financial gain from the natural riches that are harvested by them, whether that is renewable or other forms of energy.
We welcomed the announcement roughly a year and a half ago by the United Kingdom Government establishing the coastal communities fund, which will increase investment in Wales based on a share of Crown Estate revenues above the existing Barnett formula allocation, but we need to make progress and build on this.
The Silk commission recommendation of a Crown Estate commissioner with special responsibility for Wales was reached as a compromise. We believe that the recommendation should be adopted as soon as possible and the Bill seems to us to be the vehicle for so doing. The London Treasury is the Crown Estate’s sponsor Department, with the Economic Secretary as its sponsoring Minister. The Crown Estate is led and directed by its board of eight commissioners. The board includes a member who represents Scotland, but no other part of the United Kingdom is specifically represented. The Scottish Government are consulted on the appointment of the member representing Scotland.
Although Wales accounts for a relatively small percentage of the value of the Crown Estate’s portfolio, amounting to roughly £8.6 million, we believe that that will increase substantially in the future and that it should be within the control of the Government and the Assembly of Wales. Dr Richard Cowell of Cardiff university suggested in his evidence to the Silk commission that
“bringing ownership of the Crown Estate in Wales to the Welsh Government might enable a better quality of debate about the kind of off-shore renewable energy development pathway that is appropriate for Wales, and open up discussion on how the royalties from resource exploitation should be best invested.”
We believe the Wales Bill, given its financial and taxation remit, should include the same provision as is made for Scotland in the Scotland Act 2012, which provides for a Crown commissioner with special responsibility. Not only should Wales be equal with Scotland in this regard, but all the main parties have agreed to it as part of the recommendation of the Silk commission. Recommendation 17 of the second Silk report states that
“there should be a Welsh Crown Estate Commissioner”
and that
“a Crown Estate office should be established in Wales”.
Jonathan Evans
The right hon. Gentleman is putting forward an interesting proposition. May I test the point that he made that the revenue would increase significantly? I hear what he says and I understand the point about the development of renewable energy, but can he share with us any study or analysis that has been done, or is that just an observation?
Mr Llwyd
To be frank, it is probably an observation, but one can look at what would have been the Severn barrage; what is going on in Swansea at the moment; various other projects off Ynys Môn, such as wave power; and the way in which the Crown Estate is seeking vastly to increase its mooring fees, for example at Abersoch in my constituency, doubling, trebling and quadrupling the annual fee for mooring a boat, of which there are several hundred in that bay. Fees for mineral exploitation are also being increased and there are common land rights from which it is entitled to receive revenues, which are increasing. Taking all that in the round, and if there is to be further exploitation of natural resources offshore, and indeed onshore—whether that will happen, I know not, but it probably will—I can only conclude that there will be a substantial increase in revenue in the years to come. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman hard figures, but I surmise and I believe that the case is made that there will be a substantial increase in the future.
The new clauses are probing amendments, but I will be very interested to listen carefully to the Minister’s response.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the final part of day two of the Bill Committee on the Floor of the House this evening, Mr Crausby, and I thank the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) for the way in which he presented the new clauses and the spirit in which he spoke to them. He is always constructive and informed on these matters.
In tabling the new clauses, the right hon. and hon. Members from Plaid Cymru seek to establish a mechanism by which the Crown Estate in Wales can be devolved. New clause 7 sets out a mechanism to devolve the Crown Estate in Wales to the Assembly; new clause 8 requires revenue from the Crown Estate in Wales to be paid into the Welsh Consolidated Fund; and new clause 9 specifies that one of the Crown Estate commissioners shall have “special responsibility for Wales” and
“shall be appointed on the recommendation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer”,
who must consult Welsh Ministers before making a recommendation.
As hon. Members will be aware, the Silk commission made several recommendations in its part II report relating to the Crown Estate in Wales. It recommended that a Welsh Crown Estate commissioner be appointed in consultation with the Welsh Government, that a Crown Estate office be established in Wales, that the existing memorandum between the Crown Estate and the Welsh Government should be published and regularly updated, and that more emphasis should be given by the Crown Estate to the Welsh supply chain.
The Silk commission did not recommend transferring ownership of the Crown Estate to the Welsh Government. Typically, Plaid Cymru seek to go further than the commission recommended, and in doing so are pre-empting proper consideration of the commission’s recommendations. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have repeatedly made it clear that the Government do not regard the Bill as an appropriate vehicle for implementing Silk II recommendations. It will come as no surprise to Opposition Members that we also do not regard it as a vehicle for going further than Silk recommended.
Silk recommendations that require primary legislation should be matters for political parties to consider in preparing their election manifestos. Those that do not are being actively considered by the Government. I therefore urge the right hon. Gentleman not to press new clause 7, 8 and 9.