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4.45 pm
Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney): All of us who were at the birth of the Welsh Development Agency will naturally wish to scrutinise any recasting or revamping of its role such as is proposed in the clause. That is partly because we feel a sense of parenthood, but mostly because we believe that the agency has a fundamental role to play in the regeneration of the community. Having read the clause and discussed the amendments, I ask a simple question: will the changes create an enhanced WDA that is capable of doing more and better for communities such as the one I serve?
The clause recasts the agency by amalgamating it with other organisations. It also goes further, however, and I hope that the Minister will say whether the redefining of the agency's role and objectives is consequential on the amalgamation, or whether the agency is expected to play a different, wider and more significant role in the context of a Welsh assembly.
I hope that this does not sound like counter-bidding or, indeed, immodesty, but I think that even the Attorney-General, my right hon. and learned Friend the
Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris), would concede that I was the inventor of the Land Authority for Wales. As a Minister, I devised the idea and took it through Cabinet Committees. I was able to put the Community Land Act 1975 on to the statute book only after a mammoth session in Standing Committee--the record has only recently been broken--in which we sat from 10.30 am until lunchtime the next day to push the Welsh clauses through. By that time, I was already a Minister in the Foreign Office, so I found myself in a curious position.
As a result, I have always had a fond feeling for the Land Authority for Wales, especially as it was also an early example of the Welsh Office striking out on its own in legislative terms. I do not know how many hon. Members recall the Community Land Act, but in England, the powers were vested in local authorities, so we had contentious debates with Welsh local authorities about the establishment of the Land Authority for Wales.
We managed to establish the authority, and I think that it has served a practical and useful purpose. It is one of the great survivors. The rest of the Community Land Act has all but disappeared, but the land authority has survived. Therefore, I feel some sort of fondness for the organisation.
I make no complaint about the fact that the authority is now to be incorporated into the revised and revamped Welsh Development Agency--except to say that we should not oversell the change. The land authority was doing a perfectly good and effective job on its own terms, and it was one of the rare quangos that did not cost the state anything. It was a wealth-creating, profit-making quango in that one respect.
The land authority is to be incorporated into the Welsh Development Agency, but it could usefully have continued to serve its purpose outside the agency--although I have no reason to believe that it will not do so within the agency.
Mr. Denzil Davies:
I hate to carry on reminiscing, but while we are talking about the profitability of the Land Authority for Wales, may I ask my hon. Friend whether he was the Welsh Office Minister who came to me, when I was a Treasury Minister, asking for additional legislation to exempt the authority from taxation on its profits?
Mr. Rowlands:
I was not, but I certainly would have been party to the attempt. I think that it was Baroness White.
Mr. Davies:
The answer was no.
Mr. Rowlands:
The Land Authority for Wales represents a modest practical success story, and I am sure that that should be able to continue under the aegis of the new Welsh Development Agency in the context of the assembly. All I ask of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench is that they do not exaggerate the significance of the change. The authority is already carrying out its function, and will simply continue to do so in its revised form.
We have, however, heard many exaggerated claims for the new, revamped Welsh Development Agency. I read one recently, and in the context of the clause and the amendments tabled to it, I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to what extent it is correct. I refer to the belief
that the combination of a new assembly and an economic powerhouse will somehow create a new political momentum for a Welsh energy policy. I have heard that proposition debated in the context both of the assembly and of the proposed changes to the WDA.
When the provisions were recast, was it intended that in all the changes in the functions of the new, or rather revised, WDA, there would be any new kind of power or responsibility for devising, encouraging or developing a Welsh energy policy? Is that consequential upon the changes? I cannot see that it is.
I am sorry to say that the context in which I most recently read the claim that the changes would lead to a new momentum for a Welsh energy policy came from those who want massively to extend opencast coaling throughout south Wales. I have my doubts, therefore, about whether such a development is really consequential on the changes that we are making.
The key to that side of the policy is what will happen with consents for power stations. Will the power to give consents be vested in the assembly, or will it remain with the Department of Trade and Industry? Will the changes in the clause and the rest of the Bill, including the existence of the assembly, make any difference to who consents to power stations? If there is one instrument that could enable one to, or prevent one from, devising an energy policy, it is the power to give power station consents.
What I am about to say will be in a sort of shorthand form, because I do not really mean it in a pejorative sense. My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) was right to ask seriously whether the changes proposed in the clause would dilute or deepen the role of the Welsh Development Agency. As my right hon. Friend asked, will we be setting up even more competitive pressures on its budget, both inside and outside the agency? Those pressures are already there in powerful and significant form, even on the traditional functions that we all agree are central to the agency, but which have become Cinderellas in the context of its changing role, even in its existing form.
I am thinking especially of the agency's derelict land function. My right hon. Friend will know how, when we were in opposition, we had to apply continuous pressure to ensure that the WDA's budget for the derelict land programme was safeguarded and maintained in the face of all the other pressures. Will not the new, enhanced economic powerhouse WDA lead to even greater competitive pressures? Both my right hon. Friend and I have felt that the derelict land programme has become something of a Cinderella programme as the WDA's policy, programmes and budgets have evolved. Will it not continue to be a Cinderella and have to compete with other Cinderellas?
That question is serious. I have a vivid illustration: the Deep Navigation site is tied into millennium money, and we have been begging the WDA to come up with its share of the money. We have often thought that we had got the money, but then question marks have been placed against whether the WDA will budget for it. Even at this late hour, the question mark persists and I hope that it will be erased soon. That is an example of the set of pressures that already exist within the agency, but will not those pressures multiply within the new, revised agency, with the result that the agency's role in the regeneration of
communities such as the one I represent will be diluted and not enhanced? That is a serious question, which requires an answer.
In some ways, I suspect that the redefining of the functions and role of the agency contained in the clause reflects the changes in society and in the Welsh economy--
The Chairman:
Order. I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman's speech and he appears to be in danger of making a clause stand part speech. The amendments to the clause are very particularly grouped, and the hon. Gentleman appears to be ranging over them in a way that takes him outside the group that we are discussing.
Mr. Rowlands:
I am sorry, Sir Alan. I had not intended to do that. I think that one will find that most of my remarks refer to the alteration in the wording, whereby the word "social" is added and the word "industrial" is changed to "business". I intended to illustrate that in the point that I was about to make when you, understandably, intervened to ensure that I stayed on the straight and narrow.
My point is this: does not redefining the word "business" and excluding the word "industrial", as my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli suggests, extend the WDA's role into an area in which the WDA has thus far steadfastly refused to become involved? I do not know whether other colleagues have received representations on this subject, but companies that repair motor vehicles or garages have thought that they could benefit from the WDA. Does the redefining of the role from industrial to business mean that the WDA will now incorporate activities in the service sector, in which it had previously refused to become involved? That is relevant to the amendments, Sir Alan, and relevant to the points that I have put to Ministers.
Mr. Gareth Thomas:
Will my hon. Friend accept that there is a real need in Wales to invest in the service sector and the research and development sector? In that respect, why does he not welcome the broader scope of functions of the new enhanced agency in that it encompasses not only industry in the old-fashioned sense, but business in the wider sense?
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