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Mr. Donald Anderson: Does not that put in context the two new pledges made by the Secretary of State on increasing investment in west Wales? If the resources are not there, they will not happen.
Mr. Davies: That is exactly the case. It is also true that the Secretary of State said in this debate, in reply to an intervention, that, in the next two years, there would be a guaranteed land reclamation programme. To my knowledge, no such announcement has been made by the Welsh Development Agency, and no financial provision is being made to allow such land reclamation work to proceed. I look forward with great interest to hearing some clarification on those matters, perhaps in the Minister's reply to this debate. If he cannot clarify the matter today, perhaps the Secretary of State will write to me and tell me when those decisions were taken, when they will be made public, what financial provision is being made and when he intends to tell local authorities about the decisions that he has apparently made.
Dr. Howells : Does my hon. Friend agree that it was very unsatisfactory that the Secretary of State refused to name the big schemes included in those 3,000-odd acres, and that some reclamation schemes are a good deal less expensive to implement than others? If one has to detoxify land and cart away thousands of tonnes of toxic material from sites, it will bite into any agency's budget. To learn now that those projects are in doubt for the immediate future will do nothing for the confidence of the communities that will have to put up with that stuff for generations.
Mr. Davies: I know very well the site referred to by my hon. Friend, and the site at Treharris, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney. From my own experience--if I may be a constituency Member of Parliament for a moment--I am also very familiar with the situation at Bargoed, which provides the clearest testament of the WDA's failure to possess a sustainable budget. Work finished two years ago at the Bargoed colliery tip. Half the tip was removed, but the other half is still in place, dominating the entire central part of the Rhymney valley. All my hon. Friends who represent former mining constituencies are well aware of the inadequacies of this budget and of the WDA's inability to sustain a land reclamation programme.
The third charge I make against the Secretary of State is that, whereas he has been more than anxious to try to take party political credit for the WDA's endeavours--especially for the LG investment--he has been singularly uninterested in developing an analysis of the various needs of Wales's economic regions, and especially of the hard-pressed west. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Ainger) was very anxious to speak in this debate, but he has had to leave the Chamber because representatives from his constituency are visiting.
The Secretary of State has also not shown any interest in the case for developing our indigenous industries. Barry Hartop was a very successful chief executive, and he played a crucial role in attracting LG to Newport. He could have played an equally important role in ensuring
maximum spin-off benefit from that investment. I would have been the first to congratulate him and to wish him well had he found other opportunities to use his skills. However, I think that the Secretary of State's connivance--a word which I use advisedly--in releasing Mr. Hartop on a "sale-or-return" basis to the Conservative party's pet project, the Greenwich millennium dome, was not only insulting to Wales but, by leaving the agency without a chief executive at this crucial time, likely to prejudice the chances of our getting maximum benefit from LG.
The coming general election will be important for the Welsh Development Agency, and I have been open about our intentions for the agency. I want it to operate within a new democratic framework, and to retain its operational independence. I believe that it can continue to play a crucial role, and I want to see its funding put on a more secure and sustainable basis. I also want it to develop a closer working relationship with the other development agencies, and specifically with providers of education and training.
The conflicting pressures within the Conservative party are now clear for all to see. We had a graphic demonstration of those pressures at the start of this debate. Conservative Members cannot agree on their own devolution policy, and they cannot agree on their policies for regional economic development. For us, the Welsh Development Agency is an essential instrument for economic development. For the Conservatives, it is increasingly becoming an unwanted, unacceptable and expensive mechanism which interferes in the operation of the free market. Many in the Cabinet--such as the current Chief Secretary to the Treasury--would be happy to see the end of the agency and the Welsh Office's ability to make independent bids for inward investment.
Sir Wyn Roberts (Conwy):
I must begin by nailing the travesty of the truth perpetrated by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies). As I remember his speech, he said that, over the past 18 years, the Government appear to have attempted to undermine the efforts of the Welsh Development Agency. That bit of rewriting history really does equate with some of the worst rewrites in the history of modern Europe.
We all know that the WDA is and has been one of the most important engines in the transformation of the Welsh economy that we have seen over the past 18 years. Its achievements have been astonishing, and astonishingly good for Wales; and we should not forget them. As the hon. Member for Caerphilly implied, they were summed up in the concise document published last year on the occasion of the WDA's 20th anniversary. The document was entitled "Twenty Reasons To Celebrate", and I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has updated those achievements today.
The agency has helped to bring hundreds of new international companies and tens of thousands of new manufacturing jobs to Wales, and it is still doing so--one need look only at the enormous current investment in Newport by the Korean company LG, and the 6,100 jobs in the pipeline. I am sure that, even as I speak, the agency is in touch with other potential investors in Wales from all over the world. I am sure that we all hope that its efforts will continue, and will result in further successes.
Compared with the billions of pounds of investment secured for Wales--I believe that it had reached £6.7 billion last year; that is only since 1983, and my right hon. Friend has updated that figure by a couple of billion pounds yet again today--the WDA's total funding, even with the enhanced limit set out in the Bill, almost pales into insignificance.
Inward investment, however, is only one aspect of the WDA's activities. It has literally prepared the ground and provided well-infrastructured land and buildings, not only for inward investors but for developing local businesses, and it has sought to improve and assist them by a variety of means, including the Source Wales programme, Eurolink and now Globalink. The Source Wales programme has helped to secure international orders for some 500 Welsh businesses.
The agency's flexibility, entrepreneurial thrust and expertise has, on the whole, been a great asset in many areas, and has helped to loosen some long-standing logjams in development, sometimes not without risk to its own reputation.
The agency's work in land reclamation has already been mentioned. I regard it as a triumph of persistence, and the face of Wales looks much better as a consequence. Last year, when the agency celebrated its 20th anniversary, 15,000 acres--the equivalent of 4,000 rugby pitches--had been reclaimed, providing land for 180 industrial sites and factory premises employing 25,000 people, as well as land for homes, hospitals, schools and parks.
There is hardly a significant town in Wales that does not have a WDA presence. I regard urban regeneration as an extension of the land reclamation policy. Some 40 towns in Wales are earmarked for economic and environmental renewal, with some £120 million of agency money generating about £200 million of private investment.
I have only touched on some of the agency's considerable achievements of the past few years, but I think I have said enough to justify my belief that the agency has given extremely good value for money to Wales and the British taxpayer--long may it continue to do so.
I am sure it is only through the agency and the allied efforts that we are going to get good-quality jobs, raise average incomes in Wales and bring work to our westernmost areas and outside the M4 and A55 corridors, where the unemployment percentages are very high in some places, although the actual numbers involved are small compared with the industrialised areas of east Wales. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has announced his new policy guidelines to be given to the agency, to extend its efforts in the most rural western areas.
The Government's financial strategy of requiring the agency to generate a substantial proportion of its base programme costs is, I agree, challenging, but it is surely
right--we do not want the agency sitting back and playing landlord on an ever-increasing industrial property estate. That would be bad for the agency, and might skew, if not emasculate, its entrepreneurial thrust. Enabling investors to purchase gives them a bigger stake in their success on site, wherever they have settled, and spreads any risk to the taxpayer's investment.
The European connection is also looming large in importance. The WDA acted as a focus for Welsh representation in Brussels, and has extended its office there from the public to the private sector. Wales is one of the first regions to have received European Commission funding for a regional technology plan, designed to promote investment in innovation and technology. That is a very important step forward, full of promise for the development of the Welsh economy.
I pay tribute to the agency for its active support of the Welsh link with the four motor regions--the most advanced regions in Europe--which enabled many companies in Wales to develop links with those markets, something that they would not otherwise have been able to do.
Not unexpectedly, the agency's life has not been without its troubles. It is a measure of the stature of the present chairman, David Rowe-Beddoe, that he has been able not only to deal with the mistakes of the past but to keep the agency's eyes fixed on achieving its targets for the present and the future.
I was very glad to hear the hon. Member for Caerphilly pay tribute to the chairman and his team, as he does deserve our thanks for restoring the agency's good name and reputation. He certainly has my admiration, and I have no doubt that he is probably the best chairman the agency has ever had. Praise in the Chamber for anyone outside is such a rare delicacy that I should perhaps say immediately that I have no interest to declare, and that my paean is beyond suspicion.
What is to be the future of the agency which the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris), whom I am glad to see in his place, had the foresight to establish, and which we had the wisdom to reform and retain on a new basis, in spite of our earlier critical opposition? Perhaps none of us at that time foresaw just how much we would need the agency and how much success it would achieve for Wales--140,000 jobs created or safeguarded since 1983 alone, which is certainly no mean achievement.
It has never been clear what future the Opposition have in mind for the agency, other than that it would be responsible to the proposed assembly. I hope that that does not lead to internal meddling and parochialism, but I have to say that I suspect the worst.
I read the article in The Western Mail this morning by the hon. Member for Caerphilly, and was more confused than enlightened by it. My impression was that other hands were involved in the writing of it, but I do not know whether I am right. The hon. Gentleman was happy to acknowledge Labour's parentage of the Welsh Development Agency, but he was also prepared to damn with faint praise its other offspring--the Development Board for Rural Wales and the Land Authority for Wales. He almost implied that they were surplus to requirements. He said:
"It is wasteful and bureaucratic to have the WDA, the Development Board for Rural Wales, the Welsh Office Industry Department, the Land Authority for Wales and Local Enterprise Agencies.
18 Feb 1997 : Column 90
I believe these bodies should be streamlined to achieve substantial cost savings".
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