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6.43 pm
Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon): The hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Sir D. Knox) spoiled a very good case with his last few words, because many of us would regard it as one of the saving graces that the legislation in the next parliamentary year--if there is one--will be saved by the bell, as a general election will prevent it from reaching the statute book.
I agreed with the hon. Gentleman, however, when he said that he would have preferred there to have been much less legislation during the past 16 years. So would many of us; that would have avoided legislation introducing the poll tax, water privatisation and so on.
May I pick up the hon. Gentleman on the main theme of his speech--the enthusiastic thrust of his speech relating to Europe? I warmly approve of the tone of his remarks.
I was on the other side of the Atlantic ocean in the United States for two or three weeks this autumn, visiting industrialists to try to persuade them of the importance of investing in Wales, which would help overcome our economic difficulties.
While I was in the USA, the Secretary of State for Defence made his appalling speech at the Conservative party conference. Industrialists in the United States asked me, "Does that mean that the United Kingdom may not be a full part of the European Community? May that mean
that you are on an outside track, that you may pull out?
If that is the case, we don't want to invest in the UK; we shall invest in mainland Europe."
That is the effect that speeches such as that made by the Secretary of State for Defence have on the real living standards and prospects of people such as my constituents. Ministers should think very seriously indeed before they make that type of speech.
As the hon. Member for Moorlands said, the importance of the European Union--whatever the problems are with the details--to the industrial structure of these islands is immense. We have 160 American companies in Wales and 47 Japanese companies, and I am certain that they would not have been investing in Wales were it not for the fact that we were part of the European Union.
Yes, let us make Europe more effective and efficient. Let us cut out the waste. Let us avoid any fiddles that are going on. However, to rock the boat and suggest that we are pulling out is contrary to our interests in Wales, and, I suspect, to the interests of the inhabitants of the rest of these islands.
I am sorry that I did not speak sooner after the former Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). It was interesting to hear him address the agenda that is close to his heart. It was interesting that, in a speech made so soon after he relinquished office as Secretary of State for Wales, he made not a single comment about Wales. That was the extent of his interest in Wales while he was Secretary of State; we are very much aware of that.
The Government would be well advised to take good heed of the warnings coming from below the Gangway on the Conservative side; otherwise, they will have an almightily difficult task in the intergovernmental conference.
Conservative Members said that the Conservative party was proud to stand on its record. Well, we know what the Tory record for the past 16 years has been in Wales. Unemployment has increased. Having increased from 80,000 to more than 130,000, even after changes in definition bringing it down to 110,000, the net figure for unemployment is 35 per cent. greater now than in 1979. A devastating pattern has become visible in male employment, which has decreased from 618,000 to 492,000--a reduction of 20 per cent.
Gross domestic product per capita in Wales has decreased from 88.3 per cent. of the UK average in 1979 to only 84.7 per cent.--a reduction of 3.6 per cent. Wales is now at the bottom of the league. Industries such as the coal industry have been almost emasculated. That industry now employs only about 1,000 people in Wales, and only three of the former National Coal Board pits remain.
The one glimmering of hope that the Conservative Government had--the pattern of inward investment in Wales during the period of office of the previous Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt)--has been totally undermined, and inward investment has been reduced from more than 11.5 per cent. to half that figure. That was the success of the Secretary of State who is now the Back-Bench Member for Wokingham. Thank the Lord that he is no longer Secretary of State for Wales.
As I read the Queen's Speech, I cannot help but notice that not one of the legislative proposals has anything directly to do with Wales. Wales is not mentioned in the Queen's Speech. It appears to be a Queen's Speech of a Government who have run out of ideas and lost direction. Its proposals appear to be geared as much to holding the Conservative party together as to any agenda that is required outside the Chamber.
Very different items would have been included in a Queen's Speech addressed to the needs and agenda of Wales. The priorities would have been, obviously, to try to overcome unemployment--the scourge that we have suffered so long--to invigorate the public services, to strengthen social justice, to improve community identity and community responsibility and to provide transparent and democratically answerable government in all its aspects.
I believe that those aims will be achievable only when we have our own Parliament in Wales, because they do not appear to have got any closer under successive Governments, albeit Conservative Governments, in the past 16 years.
Many aspects of the Government's proposals are disturbing for us in Wales. We are worried about aspects of the broadcasting Bill. I take a different line from the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott), who commented on the independent television sector. There are as many as 14 small independent companies in my home town of Caernarfon, and 800 jobs are dependent on that sector. They may not have the security of jobs in the BBC 20 years ago, but they form an important part of our economy.
We are worried about possible changes to the broadcasting structure. If S4C has to share a six-megabyte slot with Channel 4 in Wales, we shall return to the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s that have since been overcome by the present broadcasting structure. We are worried about the prospect of achieving an English language service for Wales, which is desperately needed. There is a danger that the ITV contractors that serve Wales may be gobbled up by super-national conglomerates, which are designed to meet not a broadcasting need but a commercial need.
We are worried about the implications of the housing Bill. The hon. Member for Moorlands said that it was an attractive Bill. For some people, the right to buy a house from a housing association may be attractive, but the hon. Gentleman should cast his mind back, as I do, to the time when there was an abundance of council-rented accommodation available. Such accommodation has now gone, because it has been sold. Many of my constituents who cannot--and will not be able to--afford to buy a house have had to depend on the housing association sector.
If that sector also starts to lose its housing stock due to the same mechanism, where will those people turn? It is no use saying that they will turn to the private sector, because, in my area, the rents in that sector are driven by the holiday home rents of midsummer, making it impossible for people to rent houses all year round. That is particularly true of those on low wages. The alternative for such people is to become totally dependent on housing benefit--it then becomes almost impossible for them to return to employment. That constitutes a trap, and I urge the Government, whatever changes they are undertaking, not to undermine the housing sector in that way.
I have doubts about a prospective nursery voucher scheme. I do not want to see the introduction of such legislation in Wales.
I agree with the sentiments expressed by the Opposition on the implications of the asylum Bill. I heard the Prime Minister's heartfelt assurances that he did not have racism in mind when introducing the legislation, and I accept that he is genuine. But I suspect that other people do not view the legislation in that way.
Documents have been quoted in the Chamber to show how such an agenda has been considered to secure a party political advantage, whether in the 1992 election, the European elections or other elections. Any general approach to asylum that cuts out certain countries-- perhaps Nigeria or Sri Lanka--and does not allow asylum seekers from those countries is nonsense. The truth of that has been shown in Nigeria in the past few days, and, sadly, in the difficulties of the Tamil people and the Singhalese suffering in Sri Lanka.
There will be genuine asylum cases. I am aware that the present Home Secretary's family came to these islands not so many decades ago. I welcome the fact that it is possible for people like him to come here. What I find it difficult to understand is that he should be the man who closes the door on other families with equally pressing reasons to be seeking asylum.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Timothy Kirkhope):
The hon. Gentleman makes a mistake in assuming that the Government have any plans to change their approach to the United Nations convention. We continue to support it, and always will, when we look at individual asylum-seeking cases in this country. It would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman waited to see our Bill before making such remarks, and carefully studied the proposals contained within it. Meanwhile, he should think carefully about what proposals he would introduce to stop the massive number of bogus asylum applications to this country, which come from all parts of the globe, not specific parts.
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