Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Thomson Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Wales (David T. C. Davies)
The UK Government fully recognise the challenges posed by cost of living pressures as a result of the covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which is why we have provided £96 billion since 2022 to support households and individuals across the United Kingdom —an average of about £3,400 per household.
David T. C. Davies
The hon. Gentleman is a champion of constituents in rural areas such as his, and I am happy to look at any information that he wants to give, but I hope that he will recognise that the increase in the living wage will have helped his constituents, even those who work seasonally. That is alongside the extra payments that the Government have made to households in which people are living on benefits or have disabilities.
Richard Thomson
Is the Secretary of State aware of a report published this morning by the Trussell Trust? It states that 55% of the people receiving universal credit in Wales ran out of food last month and could not afford more, nearly 40,000 have needed to use a food bank in the last month, and four in 10 have fallen into debt because they could not keep up with their bills. Whatever the UK Government are doing about this, it is clearly nowhere near enough. What is the Secretary of State going to do about it?
David T. C. Davies
The focus of this UK Government is on ensuring that people can work and do not have to live on benefits, but we recognise that there are those in need. That is why pensions, benefits and the living wage have all risen in line with inflation, and why we have ensured that additional payments are made to pensioners, those living on benefits and households where there has been disability. The fact is that people on low wages will not be helped by the plans of the hon. Gentleman’s Government in Scotland—and, indeed, the Labour Opposition—to shut down the oil and gas industry, which would throw 100,000 people out of work.
Welsh Affairs
Richard Thomson Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
May I say what a pleasure it is to speak once again in this annual, if sadly truncated, debate on St David’s Day? I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) on once more putting in the leg work to make sure that we had the opportunity for such a wide-ranging and good-natured debate on matters Welsh.
I was not intending to mention the rugby, mostly out of politeness, but the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) raised the three straight defeats. I have to say, from a Scottish perspective, that we gave Wales every chance in the second half, but perhaps I had better just move on. Just to say that the SNP wishes everyone in this House and beyond a very happy St David’s Day when it comes.
This is always a good opportunity to look back at history, but also to look forward. In looking forward, there is no issue of greater import, I would argue, to young generations than the climate, the energy transition and the economy, and we need to get all those parts working together, as the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) said so powerfully in her own contribution.
The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) spoke about the role that the Crown Estate has to play in that. I can speak from the perspective of Scotland, and when the Crown Estate was devolved, the Scottish Government used that to forge ahead in granting licences for over 25 GW of offshore wind development, which in many respects puts us at the forefront of offshore wind development globally. That is double the UK’s existing offshore capacity, and it will create high-quality jobs and draw in significant investment.
Having that power devolved has clearly been a huge benefit in Scotland, and as the hon. Member for Cynon Valley said—she did not quite say this, and I hope I am not putting words in her mouth—it is beyond time that Wales was able to directly benefit from its own resources, instead of only being able to catch a little bit on the way past as those resources are exported.
Those on the Treasury Bench sometimes get quite excited whenever that is brought up in the Chamber, but in light of the failure of the wind auctions, as the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) pointed out, we can see why. I think this is an area where the UK Government are in danger of being on the wrong side of Welsh opinion. YouGov conducted a poll that found that 58% of people in Wales support devolving the Crown Estate to Wales. That has also come out as a recommendation of the independent commission on the constitutional future of Wales, alongside other matters such as the devolution of justice and the devolution of railways, with a fair funding settlement to go along with them.
Another telling headline, at least from my perspective, from the independent commission’s report was the willingness of that cross-party body to say that independence for Wales was a viable option for Wales’s constitutional future. That might bring mixed reactions but I would say, from my perspective as a supporter of Scottish independence, that being able to get such a group to agree on that point is a pretty positive place to be, because it shows the respect there has to be between the different views on the constitutional position.
Too often in Scotland attempts are made to shut down debate around independence as if it is in some way too difficult or even, implausibly, unviable. The question should not be about whether this could happen, but should always be about whether it should happen; that is a good place for a respectful debate to take place. Support for independence in Wales now regularly polls at about 30% with apparent majority support among those aged under 34, so this discussion will find itself in the public domain to a greater extent in the years ahead.
Robin Millar
I have never seen a poll showing any more than 20% in favour of independence.
Richard Thomson
I am not about to open up my phone to look at the exact polling, but I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman after the debate to show him the figures and apologise if I am wrong or claim a pint if I am correct.
Beth Winter
On the point about the independent commission, which is a landmark moment, does the hon. Gentleman that it is really important that the commission did not pick any of those three options but instead said very strongly that it was up to the people of Wales to decide? Does he agree that that is the right way forward?
Richard Thomson
I absolutely agree with that point. The principle of consent is enshrined in the Good Friday agreement for Northern Ireland and implicit in that is that it is a decision for the people. I would argue that that is the position Scotland ought to be in—it is a position for the people—and of course it is for the people of Wales to decide how to form a Government best suited to their needs and to then bring whatever pressure they can through the ballot box to bring that about.
Two other recommendations came out of the commission that struck me: the need to secure a duty of co-operation and parity of esteem between the Governments of the UK; and that the Sewel convention ought to be strengthened. That is something on which a Labour Government in Cardiff and an SNP-led Government in Edinburgh could probably find a lot of agreement. My party is often happier to find ourselves in agreement with the Labour party than the Labour party is to find itself in agreement with the Scottish National party, but there are examples that creep up where the Scottish Labour party appears to be at variance with its colleagues in Wales and I would like to use my remaining time to highlight one example.
When the UK Government find their record under attack, they point the finger, not always fairly I would say, at the record of the Labour Government in Wales, and in turn that Labour Government in Cardiff point a finger back about the funding settlement that is in place and it being imposed by the UK Government. Yet when Labour in Scotland tries to criticise the Scottish Government, it seems completely oblivious, in a way its Welsh counterparts are not, to the funding strictures also in place in Scotland. I do not know whether Welsh Labour ever speaks to Scottish Labour, but if they have not swiped right on each other yet, I would be more than happy to effect the introductions—I would be very happy to set up a blind date if that would be helpful.
Liz Saville Roberts
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will join me in wondering about the fact that nobody would come forward to recommend the status quo and the commission did not do so, because there are evidently no advantages to the status quo in the present devolution settlement.
Richard Thomson
Time is short and the right hon. Lady makes her point very deftly as always, but I want to come back to the point from the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire about the proposed expansion of the Senedd and the electoral system. I have to say that having multi-Member constituencies is not a new thing. They exist in Northern Ireland and also in Scotland for the regional lists, and they exist in local government here, and yes, of course, elected representatives treat people without fear and without favour, and without regard to who anyone voted for or even if they voted at all. [Interruption.] Yes, really, and certainly that is how any elected representative worth their salt will go about things. Conservatives, at least as I always understood it, used to be in favour of consumer choice and this means voters have an element of consumer choice in terms of who they wish to take their concerns to, or indeed if they wish to engage the services of more than one Member. There are examples which I would be more than happy to discuss with the right hon. Gentleman later, because it really is not the end of the world, as he is portraying it to be.
25 Years of Devolution in Wales
Richard Thomson Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I congratulate the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts) on finally securing the debate, and I echo his sentiment that all our thoughts continue to be with the Drakeford family at this difficult time.
It was something of a shock to me when I realised that I had started being able to measure my involvement in politics not in years or decades but in quarter centuries—and perhaps even in greater increments. Among the first political campaigns that I was involved in, as a university student, were the 1997 devolution referendum campaigns. Obviously, I had been involved in political campaigns before that, but what I found inspiring about the campaign in Scotland was its cross-party nature. Whether people supported devolution or independence, and irrespective of which party people supported—there were even a few intrepid souls from the Conservative and Unionist party who wanted to see a Scottish Parliament of some kind—the ability to set partisan political and policy differences aside allowed us to build a campaign for, win the consent for and then establish that institution.
The referendums in Scotland and Wales were a week apart. It was such a relief to get the thumping result that we achieved in Scotland, and it was with some trepidation that we waited the next few days to see what would transpire in Wales. I remember watching the results that night; I went to bed quite despondent at the way that it looked like things would pan out, only to wake up and find that the good voters of Carmarthen had turned out in such numbers as to take the result over the line and deliver a yes.
It is fair to say that, for different reasons, devolution in Scotland and Wales got off to a slightly shaky start. London imposed a Welsh First Minister who was not perhaps the choice of the governing party in Wales; that was not the wisest piece of party management. That was perhaps an early lesson, for those prepared to take it, that excessive interference in Welsh politics from the London end of the M4 is not the way to go, and that it is best to leave it to the people in Wales to decide for themselves.
After that, the Welsh Government got on with a pretty solid programme of delivery. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) gave a comprehensive list of their measures; I would add that it was the first part of the UK to introduce a charge for single-use plastic bags. There were the predictable squeals of outrage from the usual suspects, but the charge is now regarded as the norm right across the UK. There was the abolition of prescription charges, and the provision of school breakfasts. Wales was an early adopter of a children’s commissioner to stand up for the rights of young people who often find themselves without a voice in institutional settings. There were also a range of other policy measures taken to address social and economic inequalities. I have to say, having viewed all that from several hundred miles away in Scotland, that it seemed to me for a time that although Wales had a less powerful version of devolution, the Government in Wales were doing so much with so little, while our Government in Scotland appeared to be doing so little with so much.
As I say, a lot was done in Wales with limited powers. Since then, devolution has evolved, and further powers have been devolved. I was very taken by the child poverty figures. Child poverty outcomes in the UK show us that child poverty rates are far too high. They are far too high in Scotland, at 21%. However, now that Scotland has used its devolved powers, its child poverty rate is much lower than the rate anywhere else in the UK, as a result of measures such as the introduction of the pioneering baby box. I am sure that we will see further push-down on that figure as a result of the increase of the Scottish child payment to £25 a week. I must pose a question: how much more might the Welsh Government be able to do if they had resources at their disposal, and the power to use them?
There is a similarity between much of what I heard the hon. Member for Delyn say this morning and what some of his counterparts in Scotland say. It comes down to a “What have the Romans ever done for us?” style of argument, if I can characterise it thus. I hear echoes of Michael Forsyth, as he was in old money; he is now Lord Forsyth of Drumlean. This is going back 25 years. When I was a student at Stirling University, he was for a short time my Member of Parliament, and in the lead-up to the 1997 general election, he said that devolution would create a costly and unnecessary tier of government. I am sure that the hon. Member for Delyn would agree with that assessment. I almost agreed with it at the time; it is just that, as a supporter of Scottish independence, I took a slightly different view about which tier of Government was the costly and unnecessary one. The argument used to be made: “What could devolved Governments do that an engaged Secretary of State couldn’t?” I would say that, first of all, there would have to be an engaged Secretary of State, which we did not always have, or they might not be engaged in a way that we liked. However, the fundamental point is about democracy; it is about people in Wales and Scotland always getting the Government that they vote for, and their being able to hold that Government to account, however they think best.
It is telling that despite people voting for devolution in Wales by a very slim margin in 1997, when the opportunity came along to empower the Welsh Assembly with legislative powers to make it a proper Parliament—the Senedd—people in Wales voted decisively for that. That showed that the institution had won its spurs, and that Welsh self-government had very firmly come of age.
Rob Roberts
The hon. Member is making some excellent points. However, I am interested in the idea that this thumping margin in 2011, when there was a vote for increased powers, somehow made things legitimate. The turnout in Senedd elections has never been more than 46%. How can he possibly say that such elections have legitimised the institution in the eyes of the people of Wales, when more than half of the country does not even turn out to vote in elections to the Senedd?
Richard Thomson
If turnout is low in Wales, then politicians there—perhaps even including the hon. Member—need to look at the prospectuses and the arguments that they are offering. If they cannot inspire people to turn out to vote, that is perhaps as much a reflection of some of the politicians and the quality of the debate being held as it is of anything else. Certainly, however, decisions in a democracy are taken by those who turn out, and there was a difference between the vote in 1997 and the vote to empower the Senedd; for me, a very clear message came out of the latter vote.
We have heard today a litany of woes about the alleged shortcomings of this quarter-century of various Welsh Governments. As a Front Bencher for the Scottish National party, I am certainly not here to defend the Labour party in any way, but my response to that charge is twofold. First, many of the complaints we have heard have been about the enactment and delivery of policies, rather than about the institution of the Welsh Government. Secondly, it really does not say a great deal for the Conservative party in Wales that, if things really are as dreadful as we are invited to believe, it has not been able to persuade enough people in Wales that it offers a compelling alternative to replace the Government. For all we have heard about Swansea and Cardiff, I know that Cardiff has elected Conservative representatives in the past. It is simply a question of providing a compelling prospectus, which is quite clearly not something that has been done.
We hear a similar refrain in Scotland from some quarters, which is to attack the institution and the party in power without offering a great deal that is positive in return. That is perhaps one of the reasons why the last time such arguments were put forward at a Scottish election, people in Scotland chose to re-elect my party to Government and came within a hair’s breadth of sacking the Conservatives as the official Opposition. I think that that is part of the political failure that goes some way toward explaining the current centralising tendencies in Westminster. As we have heard, there has been a power grab through the United Kingdom Internal Market Act, which was designed purely to undermine the democratic choices made directly by people in Scotland, Wales and elsewhere, and to make sure that the priorities they vote for are not the priorities they will necessarily get—all this led by a Conservative party in London that is incapable of persuading voters to elect it in sufficient numbers to govern in either Wales or Scotland.
Looking to the future, it is clear that devolution still has some significant shortcomings, despite the way that the institutions have developed. In Wales, I find it bizarre that a major infrastructure project such as High Speed 2 can go ahead without the consequentials feeding through to Wales for investment in Welsh infrastructure; and the failure to devolve the Crown Estate in Wales, as has happened in Scotland to great effect, is inexplicable. It seems to be a complete disjoint and mismatch in terms of the strategic nature of government. Given the apparent determination of the UK Government to reassert themselves in direct, day-to-day governance of devolved matters in Wales, it is absolutely bizarre that Ministers should be content to see the number of Welsh MPs elected to this place reduced from 40 to 32, further marginalising the voice of the people of Wales in this place.
I will address as independently and as gently as I can the argument from the hon. Member for Delyn against expanding the size of the Senedd, even though the Senedd currently has fewer Members than many local authorities in Scotland. Broadly speaking, the Members of any democratic institution can be subdivided into four categories across parties: those who are running it, those who could run it, those who used to run it, and those who we would not want anywhere within a million miles of ever being able to run it. Sadly, sometimes people in that last category even get to be Prime Minister. I am sure that each of us knows which category we would like to fall in; if we are very fortunate, perhaps our friends and colleagues might even agree with us.
My fundamental point is that the success of self-government, wherever it is, depends very much on the three Ps: the powers that you have, the policies that you enact, and the personnel who are elected. Perhaps unlike the hon. Member for Delyn, I have full confidence in the people of Wales to continue making what they see to be the best choices across each of these categories.
Support for the Welsh Economy and Funding for the Devolved Institutions
Richard Thomson Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on Welsh estimates, and to congratulate the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) on a fine speech. I thought my good friend the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) was slightly unkind to tease him by saying that Yes Cymru would put it on YouTube, but I am sure that the Secretary of State will provide more than enough ammunition on that front in his summing up—I hope he does not disappoint.
I have remarked before in debates about Wales on the ambitious policy programme of the Welsh Government, and the package of measures that they are taking forward to reinforce the foundations of society in Wales and create a modern, prosperous, socially just, confident and inclusive modern European nation. I noted the plea from the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) for everyone to plight their troth to the Labour party. We in Scotland are quite happy with where we are with our SNP-Green coalition in Holyrood, and with our contingent down here. In Cardiff, there is obviously a coalition of ideas, if not in Government. It seems to be only in Westminster, where there is a single-party Government with a thumping majority, that dysfunction reigns. If there is a coalition of chaos anywhere in these islands, it seems to be in the Conservative and Unionist party, as it tries to stagger forward coherently from one week to the next.
While I was preparing my speech, I saw the Welsh Government’s annual report for 2022; it came hot off the presses today, in fact. I hope to have a chance to browse it later. It is due to be debated in the Senedd later this month. It reports on the Government’s 10 objectives. Some of the themes that leapt out of it will not be surprising or indeed unfamiliar from the Scottish perspective, particularly the need to tackle post-pandemic issues in the health service, which are common; protecting, rebuilding and developing services, particularly for vulnerable people; the urgent need to build an economy based on the principles of fair work and sustainability; embedding a response to the climate emergency in all that we do; and leading the broader civic conversation about how we wish to be governed, what we want our institutions of government to look like and what our place in the world should be. None of those things, particularly the last, should be under-looked as key components of building back better, especially when it comes to ensuring that we take the right actions and, just as importantly, have the right tools to tackle the cost of living crisis.
At the beginning of 2022, Wales had the highest poverty rate of the four nations, with almost one in four people living in a measure of poverty and 14% of Welsh households—nearly 200,000—living in fuel poverty in October 2021, which was prior to the price cap increase. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) for all his work on this issue and on fuel oil. I tried my luck on the subject at Welsh questions, just minutes before the Chancellor made his spring statement; I asked the Secretary of State—very much in the hope of getting a sneak preview of what might be coming in a few minutes—what discussions he had had with the Chancellor about the Government’s plans in this area to tackle the cost of living crisis. I was told to wait and see. So I waited and I saw. The Secretary of State said that, as a heating oil customer himself, he also suffered from this problem. Indeed, I probably know more about the Secretary of State’s domestic heating arrangements than I do about how the Chancellor plans to tackle the issue for homeowners who are in that group.
However, it is not just homeowners who are under the cosh. Fuel poverty is a key driver of in-work poverty. Nearly 400,000 households in Wales are on universal credit or legacy benefits, and nearly 40% of those in receipt of those benefits are in employment. That problem is clearly not confined to Wales, but it is a depressing statistic, and one that is pretty damning of the UK Government’s policies over many years. In the St David’s day debate this year, I remarked that the UK was one of the most geographically divided countries in the OECD when it comes to economic performance. Beyond the political knockabout, there are some deep-rooted structural reasons for that. There is a history of de-industrialisation, and a real imbalance in research and development funding; London and the south-east hoover up 54% of the total R&D spend in the UK, whereas the equivalent figure in Wales is only 4%.
For a country where prosperity has traditionally been based on what it can manufacture and export, it has been a significant blow to Wales to be taken out of the single market. With Welsh exports to the EU accounting for some 60% of its total exports, compared with just over 49% for the UK, it is a particular blow that neither major UK party represented in this place now supports being in that market.
The Office for Budget Responsibility has calculated that under the trade and co-operation agreement, the trading arrangements between the UK and the EU are set to reduce UK productivity by 4% in the long run relative to where we would have been had Brexit not happened. With those headwinds, it is absolutely imperative that there is some kind of silver bullet—some dynamic initiatives—that might help us to overcome those disadvantages with which we have been saddled.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
The hon. Member’s contribution is very good, and it actually rings a bell with me. In years gone by, were not the sheer rurality and distance factors in both Scotland and Wales tackled by the European Community’s objective 1 structural funding, which was carefully calculated to assist those areas that had the biggest disadvantage? The challenge for the UK Government is to try to do something similar—if they ever will—to what the EC used to do for us.
Richard Thomson
The hon. Member makes an excellent point. I remember well the benefits that were brought to the highlands and islands, part of which he represents, through objective 1 funding. The fact that the money came direct, bypassing London, gave us an assurance that the money would actually be spent in those areas. I am not certain that we could have had the same confidence in the UK Government in office at the time. The hon. Member and I differ on certain things in politics, but I think we might be able to make common cause on that.
The hon. Member leads me neatly on to levelling up. The Welsh Economy Minister, Vaughan Gething, has stated that Wales is set to lose some £750 million over three years, compared with the situation that would have pertained had the UK remained in the EU. I heard the plea and the earnest hopes from the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) that, somehow, Wales might be able to do better with less when it comes to that funding shortfall. I certainly applaud the ambition, but surely there can now be no doubt that there is a deficit of funding, relative to what it would have been, and that will be problematic when it comes to delivering projects. I see that even in my area of Aberdeenshire in north-east Scotland.
We could look at freeports. There are opportunities there for sure, but Stena notes that in the ports of Holyhead, Fishguard and Pembroke, traffic is down 30% on the pre-pandemic period. It will take significant activity around our freeports to compensate for that loss of economic activity in the ports, and resulting from that reduced traffic.
I could go on to talk about fair funding and how HS2 has conveniently been placed outside the brackets for Barnettisation, but I come back to the points that the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire was making about offshore wind. I welcome his comments about the benefit that ScotWind promises to bring to Scotland.
As the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) said, Crown Estate devolution can play a major role in making sure that all the pieces that the right hon. Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire talked about are brought together strategically, so that we get all the supply chain spin-offs. It is, I would say, a fairly conservative argument that the Government should bring policy and resources into alignment, so that we get the best possible outcome and transparency—not just transparency of Government, but transparency in how we spend public cash. I cleanse the palate by saying that, to me, true devolution is empowering Government to act in that way in Wales and Scotland. That is preferable to bypassing devolution, as the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 did to get around the fact that the Conservative party does not seem able to win elections in Scotland or Wales. It instead seeks to allocate resources without going to the trouble of winning elections in those areas.
Welsh Affairs
Richard Thomson Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
It is a great honour to speak in such a wide-ranging and overwhelmingly good-humoured annual debate on Welsh affairs. Before I get properly under way, I associate myself with the remarks that all hon. Members have made about the current situation in Ukraine, which distresses us all very greatly. The Scottish and Welsh Governments have used the powers they have to assist as well as they can. In this fast-moving situation, we are all looking to come up with the best possible outcomes for Ukraine. I associate myself with the calls for the UK Government to open routes that allow more people to come to safety and sanctuary in these islands.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) on securing this debate, and I hope everybody in Wales and the Welsh diaspora enjoyed a very happy St David’s day on Tuesday. I assure our Welsh friends that, despite recent events at the Principality stadium—I am sure you share my distress in equal measure, Madam Deputy Speaker—we bear no grudges. Hearing the speech by the hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) about the amount of rugby development work going on, particularly in the younger generation, it is perhaps no surprise that Scotland has had such a dismal run of results in Wales recently.
In addition to our sporting links, Wales and Scotland have strong historical and cultural ties going back many centuries. Many of our traditions are shared. If the House will permit me, I offer my own modest example. When I was a student at university, I had a good friend called Carwyn, who achieved some measure of fame going around Wales playing the harp to put himself through his studies.
Carwyn and I met in Cardiff and we decided to go out busking. Carwyn had his harp and I had my violin. We went up to Cwmbran, where we did quite well—we made about £30 in an hour, with which we were very happy. We then headed up to Brecon and made about £70 in an hour, with which we were even happier. The following day I was coming over to see friends in London, so we decided to go busking in Weston-super-Mare once we got over the bridge, and we made the grand total of no pounds and no pence in the two hours we were there.
I bear no grudges against the good people of Weston-super-Mare, and perhaps some day I will go back without my violin. I am not sure where that leaves us, but our combined Scottish and Welsh cultural efforts certainly seemed to find more fertile ground in Wales than on the other side of the Severn bridge.
A debate on Welsh affairs is an opportunity not just to reflect but to look forward. The 2021 Senedd election, for the first time, enfranchised 16 and 17-year-old voters, just as we did in Scotland at the 2014 referendum. It amplified the voices of young people in the political system, allowing them to have their say on important issues. Perhaps just as importantly, it allowed what we might call the devolution generation to pass its verdict on the shared and sometimes competing visions for Wales we have heard expressed this afternoon.
The election late last year yielded a working relationship between Labour and Plaid Cymru. Plaid is not in government, but that cross-party co-operation reflects the relationship that the Scottish National party now has in government with the Green party in Holyrood. It just goes to show how parties’ setting aside differences, establishing their common ground and working together on delivering a common purpose can be an incredibly positive way of working, rather than having some of the crude majoritarianism we sometimes see in legislators closer to where we are now, who are able to press on despite a minority share of the vote.
That agreement, certainly when viewed from Scotland, has resulted in a hugely ambitious policy programme: extending free schools to all primary school pupils; extending childcare to all two-year-olds, setting up an expert group to create a national care service, free at the point of need; taking action on housing—on unaffordable housing and ending homelessness; exploring the creation of a shadow broadcasting and communications authority for Wales to address concerns about fragility in the media and the attacks we have sadly seen on the independence of the print and broadcast media; and, perhaps very significantly, working on plans to reform the Senedd, based on having 80 to 100 Members, to allow for better scrutiny of matters that comes under the auspices of the Assembly, and a voting system that is at least as proportionate, if not more proportionate, than the one that is there now, with some gender quotas, which can really begin to transform the debate in politics. Although I am sure that neither party will have achieved everything out of that agreement that they perhaps desire, all told it is a very broad package of social, economic, cultural and environmental measures, which can help to reinforce the foundations of society in Wales as a modern, prosperous, socially just, confident, inclusive and outward-looking European nation.
The devolution generation might like what they see their Government doing in Wales, just as our devolution generation like what they see in Scotland, but the evidence is mounting that they are far less likely to be enamoured of what they see being done in their name in Westminster, under the current Government. Like most things, that comes back to the problems we are facing as a result of the hard Brexit that has been inflicted on us. Neither Wales nor Scotland were given a seat at the negotiating table and our voices were marginalised. We were told to just suck it up—again, that comes back to the crude majoritarianism I mentioned. That approach displayed a complete lack of respect, not just for the devolved institutions, but for the Union itself—I say that as someone who is avowedly not a Unionist. It seemed to me to tear at the very fabric of what many of us, even if we did not support the Union, thought it had at its heart and what it was all about. Through the likes of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, the remit of devolved powers is being undermined by the UK Government, whether we are talking about not transferring, as we were told would happen, all the powers that were invested in Brussels back to the devolved institutions; simply arrogating the ability to spend, overrule and overreach in respect of the properly devolved structures of governance; ignoring the lack of legislative consent motions; tearing up the Sewel convention, which was such an important part of embedding relations between Westminster and devolved Parliaments and Assemblies at the outset; and undermining the strategic approach that comes from having devolved government working closely with local authorities by simply trying to create bypass streams of funding.
Nowhere do we see that more than in the “levelling up” agenda. I have to say that it is going to take a considerably greater amount of money than has been indicated to date to compensate for the loss of economic opportunities as a result of Brexit and for the loss of structural funding and individual grants programmes that were supported by the European Union and were done in partnership with devolved Governments and local authorities, rather than being done to them. It is going to take a great deal more than what we have heard and seen so far to tackle some of the deep-rooted economic and structural inequalities that we see across the UK. Let me give an example on the shared prosperity fund. I am happy to be corrected on it if I am wrong, but I do not think I will be. Seven out of 10 of the most deprived local authorities in Wales have yet to see any funding coming through. The situation is only marginally better in Scotland, where about six in 10 authorities are failing to get anything through that process.
That takes us to a really fundamental problem: the UK is one of the most geographically unequal of all the OECD nations, with a political and economic system that is skewed very heavily towards London and the south-east. Success breeds success, but so many parts of the UK are performing below their potential because of the way that we choose to structure our politics and the economy. To give an example, gross value added per head in Wales in 2018 was just 72.8% of the UK level, which is pulled up considerably by the heft of London and the south-east. It is important to recognise that Wales is not necessarily the outlier; it is London and the south-east, because of the pull of the capital city effect.
There are, however, other long-term reasons for the disparity which are equally applicable to Scotland, such as the legacy of rapid deindustrialisation through the ’80s and the failure of successive UK Governments to use the powers that they possess in order to alter that picture. Research and development is one such area that seeds success for the future. The Office for National Statistics has data that shows that London, the south-east and the east of England accounted for 42% of total UK R&D funding in 2017. In 2019, that share of the cake had risen to 54%. Meanwhile, Wales in 2019 managed to gather in only 4% of that, which is lower than we would expect from the population share. We have to ask some serious questions about why that is and how it will be addressed, because it certainly will not be addressed by levelling up, or by the modest increase to R&D spending that the Chancellor announced in his recent Budget.
Any commitments to invest in infrastructure would carry far greater weight had the Government not, as I said earlier, bypassed aspects of devolution and the established funding formulas. In Wales, we have a particularly egregious example of that when it comes to HS2, the building of which will diminish Welsh competitiveness at the expense of those regions that will benefit. I am happy to be corrected if wrong, but HS2 also sits outside the funding formula, meaning that the Welsh Government will not even get the benefits of the proportionate spend that could be put into extending the electrification to Swansea, electrifying the valley lines, or any of the other major infrastructure investments that could really unlock potential in parts of Wales that are crying out for it, and make transformative changes to infrastructure from north to south. Members might expect me to say this, but I do not think that active interest from Whitehall is really needed in order to do that, or more of the self-serving cant that we sometimes hear that devolution is somehow misused whenever the Welsh or the Scots have the temerity to vote for more non-Conservative politicians than Conservative ones. What is needed is to give our devolved Governments the tools they need to get on with the job.
In that regard, I particularly commend the suggestion of my good friend the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) when he spoke of Crown estate devolution. He spoke of the £700 million that has come to Scotland from the latest licensing round for offshore wind, but that is only part of the picture. A significant part of that, once the offshore wind farms are up and running, is the additional revenue stream per megawatt-hour of electricity generated that will be able to be directly invested in public services. That is exactly the sort of empowerment agenda that could really start to bring benefits to Wales, just as it hopefully will in Scotland, in terms of supply chains—tackling the world’s environmental problems, ensuring an independent funding base for public services in Wales, and giving our politicians the ability to get on with the job.
My party has long argued that the UK’s fiscal settlement is simply not fit for purpose, and the pandemic has really taken that argument out of the abstract and into reality. In his speech, which I listened to closely, the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Simon Baynes) spoke of the money that had come in Wales’s direction as a result of the pandemic. What I did not hear him say was that the Welsh Government, like the Scottish Government, had to wait for decisions to be taken on the English response to the pandemic before those moneys were generated through the Barnett formula and transferred. That made it much harder than it ought to have been to plan the public policy response in Wales and Scotland—and, incidentally, in Northern Ireland—to the pandemic. A Government who were confident in their stewardship, not just of government but of the Union, would surely look to see how they could overcome such frictions instead of perpetually demanding gratitude when a sclerotic and creaky system of funding eventually coughs and splutters its way into life to deliver the money that it was always designed to supply.
Scotland and Wales have been on quite a political journey since the Parliaments opened their doors. In my own party, we certainly stand in solidarity with the entitlement of people in Wales to exercise their right to self-determination; to choose the form of Government that is best suited to their needs; to choose their own future; and to have their choices accepted without hesitation or qualification from the UK Government. I hope that we can all agree in this place, as democrats, that how far and how fast Wales and Scotland continue on that direction of travel ought to be a matter for the Scottish people and the people of Wales to express for themselves, and for themselves alone.
Richard Thomson
The Secretary of State is nothing if not prescient, on that point at least. Of course there may have been a slim majority in Wales for Brexit, but does he honestly think that has exempted Wales from any of the problems that have afflicted the rest of the UK from that, and if a referendum were held tomorrow would he truthfully expect that result again?
Simon Hart
The obvious statement to make in relation to the hon. Gentleman’s claim that somehow Wales and Scotland were not involved in the negotiations is that I was one of the lucky ones who had to sit and listen to his colleague Mike Russell putting the case, as he did loudly and persuasively in the numerous meetings we had on the Brexit negotiations. It is simply not correct to say that the devolved Administrations did not play a very full and active part in those discussions.
Today’s debate has had its moments of optimism, its moments of hope and many moments of respect for our friends and colleagues in Ukraine. I hope it has also served to show what we have in store on levelling up, and also the huge amount of funding. People sometimes question the amount of funding coming to Wales and make an erroneous comparison with what might have been the case had we remained in the European Union, but actually the numbers and the facts show that there is everything to be cheerful about. I want the relationship with local authorities and the Welsh Government to be positive, because if it is, and if we do not get strung up on the minutiae of power and instead concentrate on our important jobs and inward investment agenda and are prepared to enter those negotiations in the spirit intended, we have a real opportunity of the Welsh Government being able to demonstrate they are good and competent at what they do and the UK Government demonstrating we have an important strategic and economic role to play in Wales as well. That is the challenge that faces us, and today’s debate has enabled us to move just a few small steps towards achieving it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Thomson Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Wales (Simon Hart)
There is no public appetite at all in Wales to devolve the Crown Estate, which would serve merely to fragment the market and delay the further development of key projects.
Simon Hart
I think I caught the majority of the hon. Gentleman’s question. Yes, we have undertaken significant analysis of the potential, but the potential is massively enhanced by this being a UK-wide—an international—approach. It is not enhanced—indeed, it is jeopardised—by constant reference to devolution of the Crown Estate, which seems to be almost off-putting to future investors in this particular sector.
Richard Thomson
Well, it has not put off investment in Scotland, certainly.
The Crown Estate portfolio in Wales, with its marine assets, has risen in value from £49 million in 2020 to its current value of £603 million. The evidence from Scotland is that it is hugely beneficial for the devolved Government to be handling that and maximising the supply chain opportunities. Why is the Minister not open to the idea of devolving it, or is the message to the people of Wales that when it comes to governance in Wales, Westminster still knows best?
Simon Hart
Absolutely not. I made it clear earlier that where I take my advice from and listen the most intently is the views of port authorities, councils, investors, employees and the public. That is what really matters to me. This is about job creation and sustaining jobs and not about looking at every single issue through the prism of independence and what works for the Scottish Government. This is about making this work for the people of Wales, and that is what is important to us.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Thomson Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Wales (Simon Hart)
May I align myself very much with your comments, Mr Speaker? I know the whole House will share the sentiments you expressed.
I have regular discussions with the Welsh Government and the First Minister on a wide range of subjects, including the UK Government’s international trade policy.
Richard Thomson
Does the Minister share my concern that the devolved Governments have had no democratic involvement or oversight in the negotiation and approval of the Australian trade deal, despite the disproportionate impact it will have on their areas? When does he think that this “Union of equals” will start working equally— or, like this Government’s post-Brexit promises to farmers, is this another empty set of words that will turn out to be all bull and no beef?
Simon Hart
It will not surprise the hon. Gentleman that I do not agree with his comments. We have engaged devolved Administrations and numerous other stakeholders during the whole course of the various free trade agreements that have been reached, in particular the Australia trade deal. It would be nice if we could reach some kind of consensus between us about the opportunities that these trade deals offer, not only for businesses in Wales but for businesses in Scotland.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Thomson Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
It says here that I must not express a preference on the location of freeports, and I will not, but my hon. Friend makes an outstanding case, as ever. Together with our Welsh Conservative colleagues, she is helping to apply the Vicks inhaler to the bunged-up nostrils of the Welsh dragon.
Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
The Prime Minister
I totally reject what the hon. Gentleman just said. I notice that, actually, the Scottish National party did less well than it did under Alex Salmond in 2011—I hesitate to point that out to the hon. Gentleman, but that is the reality. I think the reason for that is that, notwithstanding the nationalist approach that he takes, the people of Scotland have been very disappointed by the record of the Scottish Government in fighting crime, improving education and making Scotland a great place to live and to invest. That is the failing for which his Government are being held to account.
Welsh Affairs
Richard Thomson Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, or diolch; it is a great pleasure to be called to speak in the debate and to have the opportunity to wish everyone, on behalf of my group in this place, a very happy St David’s Day when it comes. I also want to pass on my best wishes for the rugby on 14 March—not too many, although I do not think Wales will need much luck on that score.
My perspective in this debate is one of looking from afar, from the north-east of Scotland. If the House will permit me, I want to share some personal recollections. One of the first major political campaigns I got involved in was the devolution referendum of 1997, campaigning for a yes-yes vote in Scotland. I well remember the delight that my colleagues and I experienced that evening and the sense of the bright future that was beckoning, whatever it held. The following week, there was the vote in Wales. I remember a considerably more youthful looking Huw Edwards—I am sure he would not mind my saying that—anchoring the results programme. I went to bed that night quite despondent at the way the result appeared to be panning out, then woke up to find that the final result in Carmarthen had delivered a sufficient margin to ensure that it was a yes all round.
In Scotland, we had a significant task after that, because it was very difficult to live up to some of the unrealistic expectations that had built up around the institution. To those of us watching from Edinburgh, it seemed in those early years that Wales was doing devolution rather better than we were. Scotland’s First Minister at the time, Jack McConnell, had a much mocked ambition of trying to do less, better. It often seemed to us—in those early years, at least—that Wales was doing considerably better with less than we were.
If we fast-forward to the referendum on legislative powers in 2011, the contrast between the result then and the result in 1997 was striking. The vote to transfer legislative powers was supported the length and breadth of Wales by a margin of two to one. That seemed to be not only a vote to transfer legislative powers but a vote of confidence in that institution—here was an institution that was now firmly embedded in the democratic and political landscape of Welsh life.
I well recall the then Deputy First Minister, Ieuan Wyn Jones, describing the period to follow as
“the decade to deliver for Wales.”
Others in this place will have strong views, and they are perhaps better qualified than I am to decide whether that was in fact lived up to. Looking from afar, I remember the Government led by Carwyn Jones commendably being prepared to speak out on what he thought were the shortcomings of the UK Government—he certainly put many of his Scottish colleagues to shame in his willingness to do so—but the perspective is one of drift rather than delivery. Post Brexit, the UK Government are in their pomp at the moment—I hope they do not think me unkind for saying that—about getting Brexit done and the need to level up. We will measure over time how the rhetoric matches up with the reality, but there is no doubt for me that considerable levelling up is required in Wales.
HS2 has been mentioned by several Members. My constituency, in the north-east of Scotland, is forecast to lose out as a result of HS2 being constructed, as parts of England become more competitive at our expense. I have to ask: where is the equivalent benefit for Wales out of this, other than the crumbs that will come from the table? I understand the argument about being able to bid into the supply chain and that process, but where are the transformative projects to balance that out and do some of the levelling up? For example, why will electrification of the Great Western line stop at Cardiff, instead of going on to Swansea? What about the full electrification of the valleys lines? We all know we have a climate change crisis that we need to tackle, and this is just one of a number of transformative projects that could benefit everyone in Wales and help to level up.
In that vein, where is the investment in the A470? When we look at a map of Wales, it is clear that considerable priority has been placed on east-west links, but where is the corresponding investment in north-south links? Where is the investment in digital connectivity? Since the UK Government retain regulatory responsibility for that, where are the coverage guarantees for 5G, so that it does not just hit the main population centres, and the main lines of communication and, crucially, rural areas are able to enjoy the same level of connectivity as their urban counterparts? It is clear that there is a need for that sustained investment in physical and social infrastructure in order to deliver the sustainable growth that Wales needs and the productivity increases that will allow all parts of Wales and all the people of Wales to reach their fullest potential.
In hopefully drawing my remarks to a controlled and orderly stop, as I tap the dashboard I would like to make one further observation on politics in Wales. If we can measure the democratic health of a country by the state of its Opposition, Wales seems to be in a rather better condition at this point in time than Scotland. Several years and a few jobs ago, I had the great pleasure of working here as the head of research for the Scottish National party group, although it was a considerably smaller group then. During that time, I had the great pleasure of seeing the former Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, Adam Price, at work. I have to say that I am also very impressed with the current Member for that seat.
I well remember the contributions that Mr Price made in this Chamber and the way he used to light it up with his ideas, his eloquence and his clear passion to make Wales a much better place. I am delighted that he has made it back into active politics and to see him in his place in the Senedd. The people of Wales are incredibly fortunate to be in a position where they can choose him to be their next First Minister; they would be incredibly well served if they did so.
Finally, a point often made is that for all that Wales now has the significant legislative powers that came in in 2011, it lacks some of the institutional architecture that might help to make sense of those laws and allow them to be used to their fullest extent, particularly when we compare Wales with some of the institutions and the institutional architecture in Scotland, which are able to implement and monitor different policy choices. I urge people not to be frightened of or to feel inhibited by that, but rather to press ahead because self-government, if it means anything, absolutely means not just having the opportunity but having the right and indeed the obligation to make the best choices they can for the communities that have elected them to sit in whichever democratic institution they are elected to.
Looking from afar, as I say, it seems very clear that Wales is on something of a journey, and that journey goes on in terms of resolving its relationship within the United Kingdom and looking outwards to the rest of the world. Whether or not the end point of that journey is full national status, it is pretty clear that the people of Wales should be constrained only by the limits of their own talents, the limits of their own resources, the limits of their own imagination—and by the limits of nobody else.
Several hon. Members rose—