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Welsh Affairs
Question again proposed, That this House do now adjourn.
6.5 pm
Sir Wyn Roberts (Conwy): I realise that some hon. Members may greet my announcement that this will be positively my last appearance in the annual debate on Welsh affairs with a polite sigh of relief. After 27 years' participation one way or another, even my feelings are mixed. I prefer beginnings to endings.
This has traditionally been a day for state-of-the-nation speeches from the Front Benches and state-of-the-constituency speeches from the Back Benches. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies) is not with us. I mean no disrespect, of course, to the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths), who took his place. I am consoled by the fact that the hon. Member for Caerphilly is in Llandudno, in my constituency, where he will undoubtedly see the record investment that has taken place there over the past 18 years. He will see it in the glorious vistas of the A55 and in that great triumph of engineering the Conwy tunnel, and in its sister tunnels at Penmaenmawr and Penmaen-bach. He will also see it in the development of Llandudno hospital, which the Liberals have been threatening with closure for the past 30-odd years.
All in all, year on year, the official record of these debates is an essential part of the background to the history of Wales and its people in our time. I hope that these debates will continue.
I shall dip only briefly into the past to set the present and future in perspective, but it is worth reminding ourselves just how heavily dependent we were for employment in Wales on coal and steel, and how both sides of the House came to realise that those industries could not be sustained indefinitely with subsidies from the taxpayer. It will interest hon. Members to know that, as late as 1978-79, the National Coal Board received the equivalent of £1.2 billion in subsidies, and British Steel £2.1 billion at today's prices. There was a string of pit closures in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and a slimdown in the steel industry. At the same time, considerable efforts were made, through substantial investment, to modernise those industries and make them economically viable.
Those efforts were more successful in the steel industry, probably because we started from a better base. There was no denying the fall in demand for coal, and the severity of competition in steel. Thousands of jobs were lost, and we needed new industries. They came as inward investment from abroad: Sony in 1972 and Ford in 1976. I pay tribute to our predecessors on both sides of the House who had to face up to those difficult problems and take some tough and painful decisions.
Some of us had the pleasure of hearing Lord Callaghan at lunchtime. When he represented Cardiff, South he had to endure the closure of East Moors steelworks in his constituency. Similarly, Michael Foot had to face the prospect of the end of steelmaking in his constituency of Ebbw Vale. I must commend the foresight of those, including the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris), who anticipated the devastating
consequences of those and other closures on our economy, and took steps to ameliorate the effects by establishing the means to attract and develop new industry.
Hon. Members will know that, from 1979, my noble and spirited Friend Lord Crickhowell, then the Secretary of State, led mission after mission to North America and Japan, at some cost to his health, as did his successors. As a result, some 300 overseas companies have established 380 plants and provided 75,000 jobs in Wales. I am glad to say that I played some part in that. I visited Japan and met the president of Hoya: I am still wearing the Hoya lenses that I acquired before I met him. I also visited North America and Europe to procure jobs for Wales. I know from experience how important an attraction to foreign companies was the unrivalled quality of the Welsh work force and its astonishing flexibility. The co-operative, welcoming attitude of the local authorities was also very much to the fore. All those people deserve the highest praise for their patience, and their readiness to embrace new developments.
Local indigenous companies were not ignored. Laura Ashley began as a kitchen industry: that is how the great lady herself described it. It was a local company and grew to employ hundreds of people in mid and north Wales; and it still does. Control Techniques and other companies also achieved international stature.
Someone said that history is the biography of great men--and, I am sure, women. Wales has been fortunate in having people who have dedicated themselves with a will to tackling its problems, including my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State. My dearest wish is that that tradition will continue.
I must also draw attention to the extensive support that Wales has received from the rest of the United Kingdom in its transition to a more diversified economy. It was not just money that came to us; there was more to it than that. There was good will towards us; a will that we should succeed in Wales. Without that assistance from the rest of the United Kingdom at home and abroad, the change that we have witnessed would hardly have been possible.
We still require that assistance to make further advances, and to raise the standard of living of our people in Wales. The standard needs raising, as is shown by the statistical data to which the hon. Member for Bridgend referred. We all know that, but it stands to reason that we should not put support from the United Kingdom at risk. If we do, we put the future prosperity of the people of Wales in peril.
We are all agreed--Conservative Members at least--that we need more and better jobs in Wales, and that that is the way to raise wage levels and improve conditions. We must pursue present policies vigorously and relentlessly, as my right hon. Friend is doing. We realise that circumstances may change, that there may be fewer potential inward investors about and that competition for their investment may become keener. We have known that situation in the past. We may have to change tack and provide more forceful encouragement to indigenous businesses in the westernmost parts of Wales, but our main thrust is right: jobs, more jobs, better jobs. That must be our top priority. I want to see Wales vie with the very best and most prosperous regions in the United Kingdom.
The Opposition pay lip service to that kind of thinking, but in reality their major priority is purely political: to make constitutional changes and to establish a Welsh Assembly. That is already taking a great deal of their time and energy. If Labour wins the election--which I do not think it will--it will take up even more time. There will be the referendum campaign followed by a protracted legislative process. What will happen to the Welsh economy while all that diversionary activity is going on? There will be little progress, if any, because everyone will be distracted from the main aim of improving economic conditions in Wales.
I listened to the hon. Member for Bridgend, but he had nothing to offer us. He talked about partnerships, about chatting up people across Wales and about asking for more money, but he did not tell us where he would get it from or say what he would do as a result of that talking-shop activity in Wales. It is not just him: I do not want to blame him unduly. If--it is a very big if--a few years from now, the 60 assemblymen are comfortably seated in Cardiff, Caerphilly or perhaps Llandudno, sorting out their responsibilities for the quangos, how much better off will the people of Wales be as a consequence? Not a penny piece.
There will be confusion. We already know of the 20 questions that the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) has put to the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair). They contain an implicit threat. We can be sure that confusion will reign, and confusion is not a prescription for progress.
I warn Labour Members that their assembly proposals are a recipe for divisiveness. Wales is easily divided: Cardiff versus the valleys, north versus south. Furthermore, it is a recipe for unfairness. One thing that can be said of my right hon. Friend and his predecessors in the Welsh Office is that they have always dealt fairly and equitably with every part of Wales and with all the people of Wales. I am not sure that that would happen necessarily under an assembly.
An added problem is that an assembly would isolate Wales from the rest of the United Kingdom and, possibly, from the world, which would be dangerous because our national needs in Wales will not be met if we are isolated. They would be ignored, so I have serious misgivings about the future that the Opposition hold out to us, and I assure them that those misgivings are shared by many people in Wales--as they were almost 20 years ago.
I may be accused of being somewhat servile--that is the worst that has been thrown at me. My reply is that at least I recognise a gift horse when I look it in the mouth. I know where power lies. Opposition Members should not forget that Nye Bevan set out on that search and he ended up here. It is here in Westminster and in Whitehall that power lies, and this is where it will remain.
Members of Plaid Cymru frequently refer to the recent progress made by the Republic of Ireland with assistance from Europe--which I welcome--but they tend to forget that the Republic has taken a long time to reach its present position, that it still has 11 per cent. unemployment, and that 43 per cent. of its population is under 25. A fifth of our population are pensioners, so the situation is different and, of course, the Republic does not have the generous backing that we in Wales receive from the UK. The Irish receive strong support from Europe, but for how long if Europe is enlarged?
Hon. Members will know my tradition--the tradition of the manse--so it is not without reason that I say that, without vision, the people perish. Conservative Members have long cherished the vision of a more prosperous Wales, and we are determined to harness people's energies to realise that vision. I regret to say that the Opposition only pretend to share that vision. It seems to be alien to their thinking. It is certainly not at the core of anything that we have heard this afternoon. The core of their vision for Wales is the consolidation of their party's political power in Wales, so I am inclined to share Nye Bevan's nightmare of people starving in front of their television sets. That seems a distinct possibility as one listens to the offbeat plans and priorities, and the discordant, irresponsible separatist voices in the wings.
In the past 18 years, we have made considerable progress in building new hospitals, laying new roads and improving education and training. Our further and higher education colleges are pervaded by a new spirit of enterprise, but there is still a vast amount to be done by way of improving services when we have the resources at our command. We must keep our eyes fixed on those needs and try to meet them head on. We must not allow ourselves to be diverted in the race--that is the great danger--and we must realise that those needs can be met only by driving the wealth-creation process as hard as we can to produce the necessary resources.
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