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Welsh Affairs

No, I want to continue. We need an improving economy in Wales. No matter what the Secretary of State says, he cannot escape the fact that 10 years of Labour government have left Wales the poorest part of the United Kingdom. That is one point that is curiously missing from the long list of so-called Labour achievements that he read out. Under Labour, the Welsh economy has suffered. For many, the very purpose and benefit of devolution was to enable more suitable policies to be developed for Wales, with the key aim of bridging the wealth gap between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom. Since 1999, there has been a range of Government-led activities, but it remains the case that Wales is officially the poorest part of the United Kingdom, and a quarter of Welsh children live in households at or below the poverty threshold. Labour wants to make its record a key part of the Assembly election campaign, but its efforts have largely failed. Official figures now show a widening wealth gap between the richest and poorest parts of Wales. Despite hundreds of millions of pounds of EU aid being spent in west Wales and the valleys since 1999, the region is now even further behind east Wales in terms of average wealth. West Wales and the valleys are now poorer than when the Conservative party left office in 1997. [Interruption.] Yes, unemployment rates have fallen since 1997, not least due to the increase in public sector employment, but inactivity rates are among the highest in the United Kingdom, and we see a rising trend of inactivity rates among men, while more and more women are going out to work to keep the bodies and souls of their families together. We will need some radical thinking to help the Welsh economy to thrive again, whether it is re-examining business taxes, incentivising entrepreneurs, improving our transport system or boosting our research and development and science base, Welsh Conservatives will be putting in that effort to raise our economic prospects. We have clearly worked enthusiastically with other parties, despite the Labour party’s efforts to claim sole credit, to support the St. Athan bid, which will bring some of these badly needed jobs to Wales. We will also work enthusiastically against them, however, if we feel that they are damaging and demoralising the work force, such as the Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs workers whom I met in Pembrokeshire the other day. The callousness of a Government who claim the credit for job creation in one part of Wales in advance of the elections, and then leaves a decision over the future of the Revenue and Customs workers until after the Assembly elections, deserves contempt. It is no wonder that politicians get a bad name. It is also no wonder that politicians get a bad name when we see one of the most important tasks that Government should execute carried out so poorly that our safety is no longer assured. I refer, of course, to the policing of our country and borders. I am second to none in my admiration of our four police forces in Wales. They carry out a difficult and dangerous job and deserve the support of the Government and the populations that they serve. They also deserve some common sense and responsibility. It is not responsible to make police forces waste time, effort and money on pursuing administrative changes that are then abandoned with a subsequent loss of time and money to those forces. It is not responsible, and it defies common sense, to preside over a system whereby the police arrest suspected illegal immigrants only to find that they are instructed to release them back into the community before processing. Despite countless promises to review, reform and redress its failings, the Home Office remains clearly unfit for purpose. There is absolutely no point in the Minister trying to blame that on us, as the responsibility rests fairly and squarely on his Government’s incompetent shoulders. I hope that when he makes his winding-up speech, he will address the issue and tell us what his Government have done to ensure that such a security lapse never happens again, either in Wales or elsewhere. Over the past year, I have listened to the Secretary of State and his colleagues imply that there can be no valid criticism of Labour’s record, because under Labour, there has been record investment. There may well have been record expenditure, but there has not been record performance. We all know that any fool can spend money. There may be new school buildings, but thousands of schoolchildren are leaving school without the basic skills to have a fulfilling future. We read today in The Western Mail, an excellent paper, headlines saying that a quarter of Welsh adults have literacy skills below those of an 11-year-old and that our school buildings in Wales are still falling down. There may be more spending on health care, but waiting lists are still higher than when Labour came to power. I repeat: less than half of all adults are registered with an NHS dentist. Too often, people in Wales have been denied access to modern medicines. There may be more grants coming in from Europe, but 3,500 jobs have been lost since April last year and there is still deprivation and social exclusion across the country. Record expenditure also comes at a price. The average family in the UK is paying £9,000 more in tax than when Labour came to office. Every homeowner in Wales knows about the cost of revaluation, and today we learn that the enormous increases in council tax in Wales is now likely to push the average bill above £1,000 for the first time. Let us remember all the money that Labour has taken out of people’s pockets; it has helped itself to the money from the windfall tax, the sale of gold, the third generation mobile phone licences and the pension funds—billions of pounds that have been spent, and still Wales is the poorest part of the United Kingdom. For decades Labour claimed that Wales would be better under its management than under the Conservatives, and that is now patently one of the great political deceptions of out times. As Patrick McGuinness, a former Labour candidate, wrote, Labour is the party that"““has presided over the increase of inequality between the rich and the poor, often in the very constituencies of those who most vociferously complain about the supposed ‘crachach’.””" He adds that it has run a health service that is"““a blight on the devolution project.””" I could not have put it better myself. The Conservatives now have a new spring in their step. We offer a new, fresh and appealing agenda. The prospectus that will be laid out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) together with me and the leader of our Welsh Conservatives, Nicholas Bourne, will offer hope—much-needed hope that there can be a better future in Wales. We are working for a better future for everyone. As Chris Chapman, who at 19 is our youngest community councillor, in Rogerstone, put it:"““The more I read, the more I was drawn to the…Conservative party—freedom of enterprise, freedom of choice, and freedom of opportunity for all members of society, regardless of their background.””" That is the Conservative message—one of which I think that St. David would have approved. When 3 May arrives, we will be asking electors in Wales to look at Labour’s record and wake up to the fact that after 10 years it has not fulfilled its promises. I urge them, for the sake of our future, to vote Welsh Conservative for a change—a much-needed change—in Wales.