Steel Industry

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Like other hon. Members, this morning I met steelworkers from my constituency and officials from Community union. No Member who meets any constituent affected by this situation can be in any doubt about its gravity or the scale of the crisis. As speaker after speaker will say here today, this is a critical time for steel; we feel that our industry is on the edge.

Quite rightly, in the numerous debates and urgent questions we have had over the past few weeks, the focus has been on the devastating impact on Redcar, Dalzell, Clydebridge and Scunthorpe. In my constituency, we want to convey our solidarity with the steelworkers and their families, communities and trade unions in what is an unbearably difficult time. Steelworkers in my constituency are feeling it too. Nine weeks ago, Tata announced that it was mothballing the hot strip mill in Llanwern, the cold mill and one of the pickle lines, and on the remaining pickle line the tonnage would be reduced. The effect of the mothballing is that 175 contractor roles will end this week, and 100 Tata Steel employees will be redeployed to Port Talbot and other south-east Wales sites.

This is the third time that the hot strip mill has been mothballed in six years, but the crucial difference this time is that we do not know when it will open again. Llanwern is now Tata’s flex plant, with the mills coming on and off line depending on market conditions, leaving local workers, especially contractors, feeling the pain. The dynamics of the market are plain to see.

The Secretary of State for Wales talked about the global challenges, but we need the Government to act where they can. The shadow Secretary of State referred to the tsunami of Chinese steel imports. For Llanwern, action on energy costs is crucial; it is particularly affected by those costs because it takes energy straight from the grid. Llanwern has also been affected by action taken in the United States in defence of its steel market. We have talked also about the action in Italy. We need to talk too about what we can do to protect our own industry in our constituencies.

Nearly two weeks on from the steel summit, what action have we had on energy costs and on major construction projects? Electrification will run through my constituency, and we hope that UK steel will be involved. I say to the Government: please act now; please do not wait. In debates like these, we always talk about the sacrifices that steelworkers have had to make over their terms and conditions during difficult times for their companies. They need the Government to act now, to be pro-active and to have an industrial strategy to help steel in the future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing the House’s attention to that issue. The summit is important and I congratulate Blaenavon and wish the community well. I remember UNESCO awarding world heritage status to Blaenavon. The Welsh Government did a good job promoting the area, and the UK Government have a part to play in developing that further.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Further to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), tourists arriving in Wales this weekend for the rugby world cup will face paying the highest toll in the UK on the Severn bridges—something that Welsh commuters and businesses face every day when they travel over those bridges. Will the Minister commit to make it a personal priority to press for a significant reduction in the toll once the concession ends, beyond the VAT reduction, and fight hard for that in government?

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Lady regularly raises that issue, and the Government appreciate its importance. We have already committed to reducing VAT when the concession ends, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has gone even further because small businesses with light vans will pay the same price as cars, reducing the rate from more than £13 to closer to £5. The end of the concession provides us with an opportunity to do more, and that debate and discussion is ongoing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. His success in Gower was one of the most remarkable across the United Kingdom. His presence here is testament to the economic success of the Conservative Government. To his credit, he has played a significant part in lobbying the Government on major infrastructure projects that will benefit his constituency, such as electrification of the Great Western main line all the way to Swansea.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Cutting the Severn bridge toll should be an integral part of any plan for the Welsh economy, because we have the highest tolls in the UK, and they hit bridge users in south Wales particularly hard. Yes, VAT will come off the toll in 2018, but that is not nearly enough. Can the Minister confirm that he will be lobbying the Secretary of State for Transport extremely hard so that we get a much fairer deal for Severn bridge users?

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Lady has raised that matter on several occasions. I am sure that she was pleased to hear the Chancellor announce that VAT will no longer apply, but she is right that we need to go further. We are abolishing category 2 so that white vans and pink minibuses will pay the same price as a light vehicle, unlike the way it was left by the Labour party.

Welsh Affairs

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), I want to talk about jobs. In part, I want to do so because yesterday at Wales questions the Secretary of State said that Opposition Members were

“peddling a gross caricature of the Welsh economy”—[Official Report, 4 March 2015; Vol. 593, c. 928.]

when we talked about the rise in low-paid insecure work in Wales. I say gently to the Secretary of State that he talks about a recovery bearing fruit, but not for the many of my constituents who come to see me week on week with their experiences of what it is like trying to find work out there. It is harder now to find a job with decent pay, predictable hours and security than it was before the financial crash.

We must of course all welcome unemployment coming down. I certainly do. We all want to see more people in work. However, we should not repeatedly ignore what is certainly the reality for many workers in Wales. We should not kid ourselves that everything is fine. The number of people in temporary employment in Wales since 2008 is up by 28%. The number of full-time jobs is down according to some estimates by about 51,000. There are 100,000 minimum wage jobs in Wales and 260,000 people earning less than the living wage. That is about a quarter of the work force, which is much higher than the UK average.

As we heard earlier, the Office for National Statistics estimated last week that about 1.8 million people were working zero-hours contract jobs, a statistic that could equate to about 90,000 workers in Wales on zero-hours contracts. These are often jobs without holiday pay, sick pay and pension rights. It is not always bad to be on a zero-hours contract—for example, there are students who hope that it will tide them over—but for many others, as my hon. Friend said, it is about financial security and the ability to plan for the future. Many of these jobs pay on average about £300 less a week than other jobs. Figures last week from the Office for Budget Responsibility show that the taxpayer has been hit with a bill of about £90 million for top-ups such as tax credits, because many of the new jobs are so low paid.

[Stephen Crabb]

The hon. Lady is of course absolutely right to describe the insecurity people feel when they are doing jobs that do not give them enough hours, or minimum wage jobs that do not bring home enough money to provide for their families. However, the ONS last week was very clear that the 1.8 million figure refers to the number of contracts in the British economy, not the number of individuals on zero-hours contracts. We have to be very careful. The actual, correct figure—I should have come back to the shadow Secretary of State yesterday on this—for the number of people in Wales on zero-hours contracts is 35,000. That represents less than 3% of all employees.

[Jessica Morden]

But 35,000, even if it is that figure, still represents a huge number of workers in insecure work who cannot plan for the future because they do not know what their weekly income will be.

There is now an extra bill for topping up pay with things such as tax credits because so many of the new jobs in the economy are so low paid. We can debate the figures, but we also need to think about the issues that people bring to me week after week. It is only fair in such debates that I give a voice to some of the people I have seen recently. Last week, a man contacted me about a jobs issue facing members of his family. A Newport company had changed its cleaning contract, presumably to save money, and the new contractors told the staff that they would have to work for six weeks before they were paid, and then they would be paid only for four weeks. That is how they were to keep their just-above-minimum-wage jobs that they had had for 10 years.

I met a graduate who works for a sports shop on a zero-hours contract and who had lots of hours before Christmas but is now being offered one or two shifts a week if she is lucky. She is a graduate who wants a long-term career, but she is having to hang on to that job because that is all there is. A constituent who is in the same boat is working in the care industry on a zero-hours contract. She is struggling to get any kind of mortgage because her weekly take-home pay is so insecure. A construction worker’s pay is being reduced because he is being paid through an umbrella company that is owned by the contractor he is working for, which then deducts unnecessary fees from his take-home pay. I am glad that that practice has been outlawed by the Welsh Government, particularly for the work on the heads of the valleys road, but it should be outlawed more widely, and I hope it is.

I recently spoke to a group who volunteer to work in food banks across south Wales. They said that the rise in the number of people going to food banks is due to welfare changes, but also that they are seeing more people who are in low-paid work. One of the volunteers asked me, quite reasonably, “Why won’t Government Ministers come and talk to us on the front line so that they can see the reasons why people are coming to use food banks and act on it?” I told her about the inquiry by the all-party group on hunger and food poverty, led by the Bishop of Truro. It has produced an extremely comprehensive and readable report called “Feeding Britain” that has come up with some very sensible recommendations. The report said that, yes, welfare changes, sanctions and the bedroom tax are all factors in the rise of food banks, but it is also due to the fact that a quarter of people using them are in low-paid work. I had to say to her that groups like this have been doing this work, and they have gathered the evidence, but the Government are choosing not to hear it.

We need decent work and decent pay. That was recently the subject of a Wales TUC campaign. I hope that a future Labour Government will pledge to take action on the minimum wage, encourage more people to pay the living wage, tackle zero-hours contracts, and begin to put some of this right.

I know that it is nearly time for the main act, but I want to talk about one more thing that I hope we get right in future. It was mentioned by the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) and is probably one of the few things on which I agree with him. It is the thorny issue of the Severn tolls, which are, as we repeatedly say, the highest tolls in the UK. That is felt most keenly in constituencies such as mine, by commuters, by businesses and by hauliers. The concession has not served us well, and we hope that it will end in 2018. Every time we ask when it will end, the period extends and extends again. That indicates how difficult the issue has been. It is now time for us to start to make sensible decisions about tolling levels in future. We all want the tolls to come down, and I think we should consider creative options such as off-peak travel for hauliers and concessions for people who live locally. The Welsh Affairs Committee has done some excellent work which I think could form the basis of a solution. I hope that we can cut those tolls dramatically, and ensure that high tolls are not used as a cash cow for the Government in the future. That—along with persuading First Great Western to increase its capacity on commuter routes such as the one from Bristol to Cardiff—would go some way towards resolving some of the transport problems in my part of the world.

Let me end by wishing a very happy retirement—well, it is not strictly a retirement, but it is a retirement from the House—to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd), and also to my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), who has given fantastic support to me over the years, both in this place and in my former job. I know that we shall miss him greatly.

Employment in Wales

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first or second time, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my great and hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) on securing this vital debate and on the clarity and passion with which he laid out his case.

This has been a very good debate so far. It has been slightly ill-tempered on occasion, but we have heard an excellent speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) and excellent interventions from my hon. Friends the Members for Caerphilly (Wayne David), for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) and for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). We have also heard equally passionate, albeit slightly misguided, speeches from the hon. Members for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) and for Arfon (Hywel Williams).

I wanted to respond personally to this debate, not only because it was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd but because work and employment are at the heart of our debate in this Parliament, our politics and our economy. The success of working people, what they do with their time and how they exchange their finite time for reward, are, of course, at the heart of not only our economy in Wales but all economies.

Our growth, productivity and dynamism are reliant not on innovation, entrepreneurialism or capital investment—all words that one often hears from Ministers of all Governments—but on the sweat from people’s brows. Hard work and hard graft underpin our economy, and they are key to a successful and stable society. More than an economic driver, work is the key to people’s dignity, security and, indeed, identity. In Wales we know that more than in many other parts of the UK. In Wales, whether it has been colliers and quarrymen, women working in service or people working in steelworks or on the land, our work has been how we have defined ourselves.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what has been ignored by Conservative Members throughout this debate—yes, there is a welcome rise in the number of people in work—is the huge rise in the number of people in temporary employment and the lack of full-time jobs? Underemployment affects 70,000 people in Wales, and a similar number are on zero-hours contracts. The Conservative party is ignoring just how precarious the employment situation is for many people who do not have a guaranteed income.

[Owen Smith]

I agree. That has been the yawning hole at the heart of what we have heard so far from Conservative Members, and I suspect it will not be filled by the Minister. In the past, our work has defined us in Wales, and work is in danger of defining us once more as a low-wage, low-security economy. That is becoming the reality of the world of work for people in Wales, which frankly is not good enough.

I do not expect the Minister to recognise that picture, and I am sure he will talk to us in a moment about the recovery and the extra jobs that his Government have created, but unfortunately the facts do not bear out his arguments or the arguments of the hon. Member for Aberconwy because the statistics are relatively clear. Despite all the rhetoric, the truth is that in May 2010, when the last Labour Government left office, there were in total 1,471,000 economically active people in Wales. Today, on the latest numbers, there are 1,471,000 economically active people in Wales. That is the reality. We have not seen a surge in new jobs in Wales; we have seen a displacement of jobs, often from the public sector to the private sector and absolutely from more secure, more stable, better paying jobs to worse jobs.

The other statistics are even more damning. In Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics labour force survey, the number of economically inactive people has gone up from 989,000 to 1,039,000; the economic activity rate has gone down as a percentage; the employment rate has remained absolutely static at 54.4%; and the economic inactivity rate has gone up from 40.2% to 41.4%, which is in part a reflection of the offsetting effects of public sector job losses in Wales over the period. Some 351,000 people were employed in the public sector at the beginning of the Government’s term; the figure is now 315,000. That is a reduction of 36,000, part of the 1 million public sector jobs that have been lost.

That is the truth of the headline statistics, but let us look a little deeper at the nature of the jobs that people are currently enjoying. There are perhaps more jobs in the private sector, but the truth is that productivity in Wales and in Britain is down; corporate and personal tax receipts in Wales and in Britain are down; investment in Wales and in Britain is down; and consumption in Wales has flatlined.

My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd made the point earlier in relation to the respected leader of the CBI, John Cridland, who says that, if we have a low-wage economy with increasing numbers of people who are unable to pay for white goods or even basic services, we will have lower consumption, less productivity and less growth in Britain. Those are the basic economic facts in Wales, and the reason for that is simple: the Conservative party set out to create and—let us give it its due—has succeeded in creating a low-wage, low-security economy in Wales and in the rest of the UK. That has been the Conservative party’s objective—greater flexibility but, unfortunately, at the expense of working people.

It is a reality that wages are down on average by £1,600 per family over this Parliament. It is also a reality that Wales already has the lowest disposable incomes of any part of the UK—just £14,623 versus an average in England of £17,066. The Conservatives have succeeded in overseeing a shift in the nature of our employment from a relatively secure, better paid work force to a less secure, worse paid work force. The facts do not lie. Total temporary employment across Wales has increased by 28%, and in the same period the number of people on permanent contracts in Wales has decreased by 25,000, more than 2%.

There is a direct transfer of people from being full-time employees to effectively being part-time employees. Some of those people are calculated and recorded as FTEs, but that is because of the nature of their zero-hours contracts. There are 300,000 people in Wales on less than a living wage, and far too many of those people—more than 40,000—are currently on zero-hours contracts, which have been the great explosion and change in our economy. That shift from permanent, properly contracted work, in which people have rights to maternity pay, paternity pay and sick leave, towards a low-wage, insecure, zero-hours-driven culture is unparalleled in any other period of modern economic history.

I will give one illustration, involving a young woman in my constituency whom I met a fortnight ago. She is 17, just about to turn 18, and she works in a local pizza restaurant. She goes in to work at 10 o’clock, when she is expected to be there. She has no guarantee of how many hours she will work that day: it might be six, eight or two. The nature of her contract is such that she can be laid off by the company for a period of its choosing during her working day if demand in the pizza restaurant drops below a certain level. She cannot afford to go home and wait for the company to call her to bring her back in, so she sits in the back room of the pizza restaurant for up to four or five hours in the middle of the day, waiting for the volume of customers to pick up later in the evening so she can be taken on.

It is an utter scandal that that sort of practice is going on in Britain—and not just occasionally; it is becoming the norm, just as minimum-wage jobs in Britain are becoming the norm, not the exception. The minimum wage in this country is becoming a ceiling on wages, not a safety net. Governments of all colours must recognise that, and the fact that we must do something about it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

My hon. Friend is a strong voice for improving all transport connections in west and mid-Wales. We are seeing the largest investment in our railway infrastructure since Victorian times, and I want Wales to get the maximum benefit from that. I would very much welcome a meeting with the group that he has mentioned so that we can discuss further how we can make sure that west and mid-Wales benefit from rail infrastructure investment as much as anywhere else.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

6. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Transport on cross-border rail services.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Alun Cairns)]

The Wales Office has worked closely with the Department for Transport and the Welsh Government to resolve the dispute over funding for rail electrification. Electrification of the south Wales main line will bring significant journey time savings, an increase in capacity and a much improved passenger experience.

[Jessica Morden]

My constituents who use commuter services to places such as Bristol are increasingly frustrated by overcrowding and lack of capacity. Will the Minister make the point to the Department for Transport that the operator of the new First Great Western franchise must be able to meet demand for such services now, and anticipate future demand, which will only grow?

[Alun Cairns]

The hon. Lady has already made that important point to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales. The Secretary of State for Transport has set a minimum service requirement based on the current level of services between south Wales and London, and I have no doubt but that the hon. Lady will be a feisty champion for ensuring that those local services remain.

Government Policies (Wales)

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Owen Smith]

I am aware of that, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding the House about it. Right across Wales, wage inflation last year was just 0.6%, while price inflation was 2.2%. That real-terms fall in people’s wages comes on top of the fact that wages in Wales are already the lowest in Britain. Average weekly earnings in Wales are now just £473.40, compared with the UK average of £518. One in four workers in Wales earns below the living wage, which should shock the House in the 21st century.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we have not only some of the lowest wages in the UK, but the lowest disposable income, the highest energy bills and the highest levels of energy debt, which are also contributory factors?

[Owen Smith]

Yes. All those things contribute enormously: they are all symptoms of the widespread, systemic problem in our society and economy, which this Tory Government’s current policies are unfortunately making worse. In fact, the Welsh Government have calculated that by next year, £1 billion will have been taken out of the Welsh economy directly as a result of the welfare changes made by this Tory Government. It is estimated that the average annual loss per working-age adult in Wales will be £500 by 2015-16. The bedroom tax, the most pernicious and cruel example of this Government’s welfare policies, hits Wales harder than anywhere else in the UK. The Department for Work and Pensions statistics confirm as much—more than 40,000 Welsh men and women hit by the bedroom tax, 26,000 of those, disabled.

Welfare Reform (Welsh Valleys)

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Wayne David]

My hon. Friend makes his point extremely well and reinforces my points about the everyday hardship experienced by so many of our people—our poor people, in particular. All of us who represent valley seats are well aware of such examples, and many others.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing an important debate on a piece of work that focuses on the valleys, but is also important for constituencies such as mine. Does he agree that the impacts that the report talks about are keenly felt by women in particular? Some reports estimate that 74% of savings from benefit changes come directly from women’s pockets.

[Wayne David]

My hon. Friend makes her point well. I am aware of an excellent paper prepared by Chwarae Teg that highlights how women are all too often at the sharp end of benefit changes in Wales and elsewhere.

I have been aware of all the changes on an individual basis, as they have affected my constituents, but until recently I was not fully aware of the impact that the reforms are having on the south Wales valleys as a whole.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Crabb]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Giving the Welsh Government fiscal powers for the first time means that they have to raise money as well as spend it, which I think will lead to a much healthier political debate down in Cardiff on real responsibility. It is about not only deciding how to spend the money, but taking responsible decisions on how it is raised, and I think that is a big step forward in the political development of Wales.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

2. If he will estimate the potential effect of increasing the minimum wage rate by £1.50 on the economy in Wales.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Alun Cairns)]

The Government’s increase of 3% in the national minimum wage this year means that low-paid workers are enjoying the biggest cash increase in their take-home pay since 2008. The independent Low Pay Commission is responsible for recommending the level of the national minimum wage.

[Jessica Morden]

About 73,000 people in Wales are in minimum wage jobs, and a quarter of a million earn less than the living wage. Will the Minister commit his party to Labour’s plan to raise the minimum wage to £8 an hour, which would at least start to tackle the scandal of low pay in Wales?

[Alun Cairns]

I am surprised that the hon. Lady raises that question, given that the commitment to £8 an hour by 2020 has been somewhat derided by independent commentators—Alan Milburn himself said that it lacked ambition—because the current projection shows that the minimum wage will rise to £8.23 an hour by 2020.

Welsh Affairs

Jessica Morden Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

That ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker, necessary as it is, shows how truncated what used to be the great St David’s day debate, which has been held in this House since 1944, has become. It has been reduced to an hour and a half with seven-minute limits at the tail end of a Thursday. Of course it is not St David’s day today. It is the feast day of St Colette of France, a well-known mediaeval saint and, among other things, the patron saint of pregnant women.

I want to talk not about pregnant women but about a serious matter that is becoming a scourge in Wales, in my constituency and across the United Kingdom. I refer to the absolutely inappropriately misnamed legal highs. I have no doubt that there are many Members who have some knowledge about the people who sell such substances to our constituents. In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden), we have suffered the scourge of legal high shops, or head shops. There is one in Pontnewydd in Cwmbran and one in Newport.

Since the shops have opened, there has been an increase in the number of youngsters between the ages of 14 and 17 affected by these particular drugs, according to the accident and emergency department at the Royal Gwent hospital. Between 2012 and 2013, the Gwent drug interventions programme in Cwmbran tested 500 people in police custody for legal highs, 70% of whom came back positive. In an attempt to deal with those serious issues, the two shops were raided last October. Five people were arrested and 58 different substances were seized and sent for testing. The shops were temporarily closed, but they are now back, and another one has opened on Osbourne road in Pontypool, further up the valley in my constituency.

We can look at the websites of these dreadful places, as young people undoubtedly do. This is just one example. The owners of the shop ask the question, “What are legal highs?” and the site states that they

“are substances made from assorted herbs, herbal extracts and ‘research chemicals’. They produce the same, or similar effects, to drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy, but are not controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act. They are however, considered illegal under current medicines legislation to sell, supply or advertise for ‘human consumption’. To get round this sellers” –

that is, the owners of the shop themselves –

“refer to them as research chemicals, plant food, bath crystals or pond cleaner.”

The site concedes that the effects of these so-called legal highs are no different from the effects of those that are illegal.

One product called “Exodus Damnation”, which is currently advertised on the shop’s website, was the cause of a near fatal heart attack suffered by 17-year-old Matt Ford in Canterbury. In Pontypool in my constituency, 176 people signed a petition saying that the shop should not be opened. Their views were strongly expressed to the police and local authorities, all of whom could do absolutely nothing. It is simply not right that our councils, our police forces and our law enforcement agencies can do virtually nothing to stop such shops opening and poisoning hundreds and thousands of young Welsh people with these appalling so-called highs.

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech on an important subject. Does he also agree that the long-term health implications of the substances that some young people are taking should also make us extremely worried? We do not know what is in them and that could lead to serious problems in the future.

[Paul Murphy]

Indeed, we do not know that. People have been temporarily blinded by such substances and have had large lumps come out on their bodies, and it could be that in the long term they will suffer even greater illnesses.

One of these groups of shops, called Chill South Wales, has a Facebook page on which it promotes its products. The most recent post is an image of four children’s cartoon characters with a range of drugs paraphernalia. We have looked at the list of 394 Facebook friends; many of them are still at school and some are as young as 12. Those young people have no idea what they are taking and no way of knowing the possible dangers or the long-term health risks. These products are just as dangerous as illegal drugs, if not more so as people unwittingly think that they are safe because they are legal and are being sold on our high streets. That could not be further from the truth.

To be fair, I think the Government are doing what they can by using temporary class drug orders to ban substances as they come along, but it is a game of catch-up: as soon as one substance is banned, another appears in the marketplace. More than 250 substances have been banned, but more are appearing at a rate of one a week.

The Home Office review is to be welcomed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) for the opportunity to debate Welsh affairs today. I want to raise two issues relating to employment in my constituency.

However, let me begin by strongly agreeing with the excellent speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) on the problem of legal highs, particularly in Gwent. That issue very much came home to me on Sunday, when I was with my kids in a corner of a park in Newport and saw dozens and dozens of empty legal-high packets of all shapes, sizes and colours, with enticing graphics on the front. As in my right hon. Friend’s constituency, premises in Newport were closed down; I believe they were part of the same operation. As a result, I went to a briefing by the team in Gwent police who are dealing with this issue and working extremely hard on it with the local authorities. When the Home Secretary came into post, she promised swift action on legal highs. However, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, it is an extremely difficult issue involving hundreds of different substances and thousands of different sellers. The legislation is out of date and we are playing catch-up. We need to give local authorities and the police the tools to do the job, not least because people have absolutely no idea what they taking, and we are very much storing up health problems for the future.

I want to talk about the economy in Newport. In recent times, we have heard much from the Government and their Welsh team about how things are improving in Wales, with the recovery under way and things getting easier. Of course, I welcome falls in unemployment in my constituency, although youth unemployment remains unacceptably high, but beneath those figures there is a different story. It is still the case that about 300,000 Welsh workers earned below the living wage in 2012. I would like to say a very big “Well done and congratulations” to Newport council for its decision last week to implement the living wage.

In Wales, we have seen the largest increase in the UK in the number of people who want to work more hours but cannot find them due to the Tories’ failed economic policies. Some 65,000 people are deemed to be under-employed in Wales. Only this morning, a young girl came into my office in Newport and talked about how hard it was for her family because her father’s hours had been reduced from 40 to 14. That is the reality for many people in my constituency.

In recent weeks, there has been bad news for employment in our city of Newport. First, there were the job losses at the Avana bakery—the Secretary of State has been involved with this—in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). The bakery announced that it would possibly lose up to 650 jobs following the loss of a contract with Marks and Spencer. Secondly, we learned that there is a threat to public sector jobs at the Ministry of Justice shared services centre in Celtic Springs. Then, only this week, we heard the very hard news that 123 jobs are under threat at the Orb steel works, which has a long history of steelmaking in my constituency and is a subsidiary of Tata Steel. At the MOJ and Orb works, there are things that the Government could do to step in, and that is the focus of my remarks.

This week’s announcement that Tata Steel will be restructuring the work force at the Orb steelworks may lead to the loss of 83 direct jobs and 40 contractors’ jobs. That is really hard news for those workers—and their families—who have worked extremely flexibly over the past few years. These are skilled jobs that we can ill afford to lose from Wales. It is an extremely challenging time for the steel industry in Wales, and this announcement underlines that. Demand for steel is down, imports from outside Europe are up and steel manufacturers are being hit by higher energy costs. The price of electricity for steelmakers in the UK is about 38% higher than in France and 56% higher than in Germany. Those are massive differences and they are hitting our industries. UK producers also pay levies and taxes such as the carbon floor price and the renewables obligation, but German and French steelmakers—not to mention those outside Europe—are largely protected from those. The accumulative impact is that we are putting UK steelmakers at a competitive disadvantage, with customers seeing UK energy costs as a particular problem.

I know that the Government have accepted the arguments that high energy prices impact on UK manufacturers and that the most energy-intensive industries should be protected from rising green taxes. However, what has been done so far is not enough to mitigate those costs or reverse the manufacturers’ fortunes. In the Budget, the Government need to take more action on high energy costs, the carbon price floor and renewables obligations, which are hitting us really hard, particularly in Wales, at a time when demand for steel is down.

[Albert Owen]

My hon. Friend is making a very important point. The carbon price floor, which disadvantages this country, was brought in unilaterally in the past couple of years. We cannot blame Europe for that; it is down to this British Government.

[Jessica Morden]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I very much agree with him. I know that time is running out, but we need Wales Office Ministers urgently to press the Treasury on that matter in advance of the Budget.

The Government are also potentially to offshore Government jobs from the MOJ shared services centre in Newport. I am very reliant on the public sector in my constituency. People in the public sector have had their wages frozen and there has been a sustained attack on their numbers. In fact, in the recent Centre for City report, Newport came bottom for employment growth in the private sector.

Was it only in January that the Prime Minister said that we must become the “reshoring nation”? You would not think so, because only weeks later his Ministers are embarking on a path that could lead the MOJ shared services centre into a contract that will allow offshoring. The Newport office employs about 1,000 staff in back-office functions. The Cabinet Office and the MOJ want to privatise those jobs, and so far nothing has been said by Ministers to alleviate fears. In fact, the Justice Secretary told me:

“To be a competitive and viable business…needs to be in line with other companies of this kind, which often see non-customer facing transactional roles being sourced offshore. The creation and operation model…reflects government guidelines with off shoring being a feature of many successful public sector contracts.”

If the Prime Minister is so keen on private companies reshoring jobs, why is his Government so keen on offshoring Government jobs? The situation is ludicrous. Will Welsh Ministers tell the Cabinet Office and the Justice Secretary that, especially in the light of other job losses in Newport, these are good public sector jobs that we really need to keep in Newport?

To end on a positive note, the Welsh Government’s deal with Pinewood Studios to bring a new film studio to Newport is very welcome and a good boost to us locally, as is the Welsh Government’s setting up of the reNewport taskforce, which has recently come up with lots of innovative ideas for improving things in Newport. It has been warmly welcomed and has harnessed much local enthusiasm.

Last but not least, I welcome the announcement about the NATO summit in September. We are looking forward to that and I am also looking forward to working very closely with Wales Office Ministers to maximise its impact on the community and employers of Newport.