Oral Answers to Questions

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)]

What steps his Department is taking to strengthen the Union.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

What steps he is taking to help ensure that people in Wales benefit from the Union.

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

The Government are unwavering in their commitment to the Union as a social and economic partnership. Its strength is demonstrated by the economic support we have provided to Welsh business during the covid-19 outbreak and by the city and growth deals that help to level up communities across the UK.

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend touches on a current and important point: the Union is not a competition; it is a partnership. I sometimes think it gets portrayed as the former, whereas we all know that it is the latter. The UK Government have been able to introduce numerous financial interventions to assist the Welsh Government in fighting this dreadful pandemic. The most recent is yesterday’s joint letter from the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to the First Minister saying that where hospitals face real challenges and hardship in Wales, NHS England and the UK Government stand ready to offer whatever support we can and to put down our political differences to make sure that we fight covid as a UK-wide challenge.

[Theresa Villiers]

The scale of the response to covid in Wales in terms of economic support would never have been possible without the combined strength of our United Kingdom, so will my right hon. Friend emphasise that that strength will help us to ensure that Wales recovers alongside the rest of the United Kingdom as, hopefully, we move on from covid next year?

[Simon Hart]

My right hon. Friend is right. All the businesses in Wales that we have spoken to during the covid crisis have pointed out that they do not recognise political boundaries: they are fiercely Welsh and very patriotic, but they recognise that the economic regions stretch into the far corners of the UK and well beyond. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we do make that commitment. Whether or not we are Unionists in the original sense, we are very much on the same page.