Mrs.
Gillan: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his
kind remarks, and I agree with what he has said. Does he agree that it
would be nice if we could hold the next Welsh Grand Committee in
Wales?
Mr.
Murphy: That is a very good idea, and the closer it gets
to Cwmbran or Pontypool the better.
Over the past decade, there has
been a huge transformation in how the people of our valleys live and
work. For example, in the 11 valley constituencies that run from
Swansea, East to Torfaen, the average unemployment rate is 4.4 per
cent., and the average percentage drop since 1997 in people out of work
is 31 per cent., which represents an enormous change in how
people work and the jobs that they
have. My right hon.
Friend the Secretary of State for Wales was right to say that when he
and I walked the streets of Neath in
1991—
Mr.
Murphy: It always rains in Neath, and it rains a bit in
Torfaen, too. There is an enormous difference between then and now in
how people lead their lives and in the work that they do. One reason
why it has changed is the granting of objective 1 status to the valleys
of south Wales and to other parts of Wales, too. I played some part in
that with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in trying to ensure that the
money was genuinely
additional. However,
we would be wrong, as Members of Parliament, especially those of us who
represent the valleys, to conclude that there is no more to be done to
sort out some of the difficulties that people in the valleys still
face. There is still a big distinction between what we might call the
heads of the valleys and the lower parts of the valleys. In Blaenau
Gwent, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhymney, the Rhondda and valleys such as mine,
work and deprivation are still divided between the north and the south
of our valleys. In Pontypridd, unemployment is 2.7 per cent., which is
the lowest it has ever been. However, in Blaenau Gwent it is still 6.5
per cent., which is much lower than it used to be, but hon. Members can
see the difference between the two. In my constituency, the level is
3.7 per cent., which is about
average. Something,
therefore, that has come as a bit of a surprise—the hon. Member
for Preseli Pembrokeshire raised this in questions, and I believe that
he and the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr.
Williams) have both raised the point on another occasion in
Parliament—is the question of Her Majesty’s Revenue and
Customs and its proposals to close various offices in Wales, and in
particular those in the valleys of south Wales such as Pontypridd,
Merthyr Tydfil and, in my own constituency, Pontypool, as well as
Newport, which serves the valleys. I was delighted that my right hon.
Friend said that the Under-Secretary will meet the Paymaster General in
January to discuss those important issues. I understand that Paul Gray,
who is the acting chair of HMRC,
said: “We think
it is essential that we take full account of the impact of our plans on
communities before final decisions are
made.” It is a little
crazy, to say the least, that, if we are trying to ensure that more
jobs go to the valleys, jobs are now going from them to the capital
city, which does not need them as some of those valley communities do.
In Pontypool, for example, 42 jobs are involved, and the people who
work there are in a relatively new building, with plenty of space for
more people to come from Cardiff. Work that is now done in Cardiff
could be done in the valleys.
Hywel
Williams: I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on that
cross-party point, which affects constituencies held by Plaid Cymru,
Liberal Democrat and Labour Members. Jobs are being shifted from Rhyl
and Porthmadog in my constituency to Wrexham—there is nothing
wrong with Wrexham—and Swansea, and the reductions in Cardiff
are very small. That makes no sense, as I am sure that the right hon.
Gentleman will agree.
Mr.
Murphy: I do agree. I do not disagree with the thrust of
the changes, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said,
in relation to ensuring that we transfer money to front-line services
for our people, which is exactly the right thing to do. However, we are
talking about the way in which the changes are being implemented. The
42 jobs in Pontypool are not being lost, because the people in question
are being offered the opportunity to go to Cardiff. In reality, because
many of the people concerned are young working women with young
families, the offer of going there, certainly by public transport,
probably means that they cannot keep their jobs. The jobs are not
going, but the way in which they are organised and the proposed
implementation need to be
examined.
Mr.
Crabb: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that part of
the problem is that we are talking about not just the streamlining of
back-office functions, but a fundamental change in the business model
being implemented by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which
will lead to a deep cut in front-line services to the detriment of
businesses, families and individuals across rural mid and west south
Wales?
Mr.
Murphy: Yes; I am troubled by the way this is being done,
not simply because hon. Members are talking about job losses or job
movements in their constituencies, but because of the work that the
people in those jobs do. To take Newport as an example—my hon.
Friends the Members for Newport, East (Jessica Morden) and for Newport,
West (Paul Flynn) are not present, but I am sure they would agree with
me about this—the work done in Newport is business support for
what used to be the county of Gwent. If people want to go, as they do,
physically to an office to talk about their businesses and the impact
of taxation, it is much easier for them to go to Newport than Cardiff.
The local situation also means that people would be more at ease
dealing with problems
there. The other issue
is that, because of technological advances, the people in Pontypool,
for example, work on self-assessment. The nature of computers these
days is such that there is no reason why 100 people could not move from
Cardiff into the offices in Pontypool, thereby creating more employment
and dispersing jobs into our valleys, which seems to be the exact
purpose of objective 1. I am delighted that the Under-Secretary is
meeting the Paymaster General. I also suggest that this is an issue for
the Assembly, and that perhaps Andrew Davies should be in discussions
with HM Revenue and Customs.
Mrs.
Gillan: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is
alarming to see Wales at the end of the list of all the consultation
processes? If he looks carefully at
the detail in the timetable, he will see that Wales’s position is
due to be considered after the Assembly elections in May, so the matter
will not be settled and there will be a threat to those jobs in the
valleys, which will denude the areas in Wales that need the most
support. I hope that he will support me when he meets the
Under-Secretary by asking the Under-Secretary to look carefully at the
timetable as it applies to Wales and to put an end to the
uncertainty.
Mr.
Murphy: I have absolute confidence in the Under-Secretary
and the way in which he will take these matters up with the Paymaster
General. He knows Wales extremely well, and I know that he has listened
carefully to all the points that have been made on this issue. As I
have said, I think that there will also be some value in liaising with
the Assembly. The
Queen’s Speech also referred
to—
Chris
Bryant: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, as he
seemed to be moving away from the issue of the location of jobs in the
valleys. I wholly support what he says about what sometimes feels like
a complete lack of strategy towards so-called peripheral
economies—peripheral because they are not in cities. We have a
difficulty in the valleys when the Government want to centralise,
because there are not any places available. We do not have large
amounts of office accommodation, because in the past everyone was
working down the mines rather than in offices. We are therefore unable
to accommodate jobs that the Government or the Assembly might take out
of Cardiff or Newport into valley communities. Will my right hon.
Friend say something about the changes needed to ensure long-term
investment in office accommodation across the
valleys?
Mr.
Murphy: I agree with my hon. Friend that, with the
different technologies that people use in their work, there is now an
opportunity to place offices anywhere. They do not have to be in cities
any more, but it is for local planning authorities, and local
authorities generally, to deal with the identification of probable
sites. Some valleys are obviously better than others because they are
less constrained by lack of space. I agree that the strategy for
identifying space for offices is important.
The Queen’s Speech
referred to supporting the police. I know that individual Welsh Members
will make representations to the Home Secretary about the police grant.
I would like to make a point about Gwent’s grant. The
introduction of police community support officers has been enormously
successful: it is one of the finest examples of reform in the police
service. The visibility of the officers on the street is important and
we could do with more of them. I am worried, because Gwent planned to
have 250 officers, but there are currently only 129. Ironically, we
could have had more, but when the Foreign Ministers meeting was held in
Newport some time ago, part of the cost burden fell on the Gwent police
authority, which I understand is still owed about £2 million by
the Home Office. The interest alone could have supplied six CSOs. I ask
my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Wales to make
representations to the Home Secretary about that issue and also about
the fact that
there is no separate Welsh representation on the National Policing
Board. I think that my right hon. Friend is conscious of that and is
making representations to the Home Secretary. My hon. Friend the Member for
Rhondda mentioned the question of officers in the valleys. He also
referred to the need for a strategy for the south Wales valleys,
particularly in those areas that still need extra help on issues such
as unemployment. An
election will take place in May and a new Government will be formed
after that. I think that the time has come for the Assembly to consider
establishing a post, in the First Minister’s Cabinet, of
Minister for the valleys. If that is not possible, a Minister in the
Cabinet should be given special responsibility for the south Wales
valleys. I am thinking of Peter Walker’s valleys initiative all
those years ago. There is a need to bring together the different
functions of Government in their impact on the people of the
valleys. One million
people—a third of the Welsh population—live in the
valleys. They are very special places, and there would not be
devolution in Wales without them. In 1978, all the
valleys—without exception—voted overwhelmingly against
devolution. Whereas in 1999—with the exception of my own valley,
which still voted against, but only just—all the valleys turned,
and voted in favour. The combination of the population and that
enormous shift—the support of valleys men and women—is
the reason why the Assembly exists in Wales. The Assembly therefore has
a duty to consider the problems of the valleys especially carefully,
and to ensure that the best men and women in the world receive the best
services. 10.36
pm Lembit
Öpik (Montgomeryshire) (LD): May I first record my
utter contempt for the business managers, who have once again scheduled
Northern Ireland and Welsh business not just on the same day, but at
the same time as well? That makes it physically impossible for myself
and the Secretary of State for Wales and Northern Ireland to attend
both Welsh and Northern Irish business. I do not blame him for
that—he must be as frustrated as I am—but it is not the
first time that it has happened. It is beyond me why the responsible
Government business managers show so little respect for Welsh and
Northern Irish business that they are willing to make double bookings a
fact of life in the
House. I do not wish
to name-drop, Mr. Caton, but I was having dinner with the
Queen in Estonia a few weeks
ago.
Lembit
Öpik: The Queen of Great Britain, Northern Ireland
and the Commonwealth—I believe that that is the right title. I
was tempted to ask her what she really thought of the Queen’s
Speech, and obviously although I did not do so, I felt that there was a
glint in her eye that suggested that she wished that I was Secretary of
State for Wales. I did not pursue it with her, but it
would not surprise me were that to be true. After all, aside from being
short the speech was also very much a Conservative speech—one
does not have to elect a Conservative Government to get Conservative
policies. When I read it, it was obvious to me that the values and
tenets of old Labour are now completely buried in a new Labour party
that seems to owe more to the legacy of Margaret Thatcher than to that
of the Labour party founding fathers.
The speech emphasised
centralisation, privatisation and the authoritarian approaches that
have been seen to fail to quite some extent in addressing the problems
of our time. It said that the Government would seek to address the
terrorism threat, which affects Wales as well as the rest of the United
Kingdom. Although I agree with that intent, I do not think that many of
the Government proposals will do anything other than merely address the
threat. I am disappointed that having achieved a peace in Northern
Ireland—not a perfect one, but one that seems to be
holding—the Government have forgotten the lessons of the
protracted peace negotiations in the Province, thrown them out of the
window, and returned to the failed policies of the 1970s and the early
1980s in seeking to address terrorism.
It is obvious to everyone who
considers the relative success story of Northern Ireland that one
cannot successfully address terrorism simply by oppressing the
opportunity to terrorise. What made the Northern Ireland experience so
effective was the fact that the Government were willing to negotiate
over the motives of terrorism without condoning terrorism itself. That
is why Sinn Fein, which is clearly connected to the IRA, has had some
success in preventing its paramilitary wing from continuing the
operations that so blighted the Province in the past.
To an extent, the same could be
said of loyalist terrorism, yet the Queen’s Speech, as it
affects the whole of the United Kingdom including Wales, would see a
return to the oppressive legislation that was so utterly ineffective in
generating accord across the communities in Northern Ireland. That is
why legislation on terrorism of the sort that we have seen before, and
are likely to see again in the next 12 months, will not be effective. I
would put identity cards in the same category. They will impose an
expensive burden on Welsh citizens but will provide none of the
benefits that the Government claim for them.
It seems to me that the same
attitude can be applied to the Government’s changes to probation
services. Far from taking a more insightful attitude on how to make
them even more effective, the Government want to privatise them. That
is very much from the Conservative stable, not the old Labour stable.
By the same token, changes to the immigration service and the alleged
giving of further powers to the policing of the country’s
borders has to be tempered with the fact that the police are hugely
stretched by their existing work load.
As other hon. Members have
said, the removal of jury trial in serious fraud cases shows that the
Government are more concerned with the quick fix than the underlying
causes of intimidation and other aspects of the jury system that
sometimes make it more
difficult to implement. The precedent of removing jury trial is terribly
dangerous, and the Liberal Democrats have always opposed it. The Queen’s Speech also
refers to public services, but time and again, as we have seen, that
really means their privatisation. Once again, that is reminiscent of
the darkest days of the Thatcher era.
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