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Welsh Affairs

If the hon. Gentleman is so committed to the interests of the mining communities, I wish he had been on our side when we were fighting his party to give compensation to miners who had suffered a terrible life in the pits. I did not see his party campaigning on our side on that occasion. When my father went down the pit at the age of 14, in 1925, it was arm muscles that were important. When my grandchildren Rebekah and Jessica enter the workplace, it will be the muscles between their ears that they will need to develop. To put it simply, the people of Wales will have to go back to school if we are to close the skills gap. No one in full-time education today will have a job for life; everyone will have to re-train and re-skill throughout their working lives. For that reason, it is vital that, whatever might follow from objective 1 funding, it should first and last be used to educate and upskill our people. We got objective 1 funding for west Wales and the valleys because our gross domestic product was below that of the rest of the United Kingdom and Europe. At the end of the day, if we have invested heavily in infrastructure projects such as bypasses and multi-storey car parks—worthy as they may be—but not given our people new skills, we will not be better off economically as a country. Wales needs to keep ahead of the change in the global economy that places a higher premium on knowledge, innovation, research and development. However, the plain fact is that our ability to attract potential investors will be based on the skills of our work force. We have already shown that we can do it. General Dynamics, which has the contract for developing and producing the MOD’s Bowman communications system, came to my constituency despite advice from consultants who said, ““Do not go to Wales; you will not find the skills base.”” It ignored that advice, and now 700 highly skilled people are involved in research and design. Indeed, the company has spent £1.8 million on training in the past two years. If ever there was a potent symbol of the new Wales, it is the fact that General Dynamics is based at the Oakdale business park, on the site once occupied by the Oakdale colliery. When I think of entrepreneurship in Wales, I often remember when I was a councillor and 700 jobs were lost at Panteg steelworks, in Pontypool. Ian McGregor was running steel then—he had not got to coal—and he agreed to meet me. I asked if he intended to use funding from British Steel enterprises to provide seedcorn investment to help some of the redundant steel men to set up their own businesses. He was not rude, but he gave me a strange look and said that it had not occurred to him that anybody in Wales would want to start their own business. That was how Wales was perceived in those days—when the Tory Thatcher Government were out of touch and did not give a damn. Every time I walk past that statue out there, my blood runs cold, given what that person did to the economy and people of Wales. The implementation of the first ever entrepreneurial action plan for Wales, which seeks to put enterprise at the heart of our economic development policy, is certainly a step in the right direction. Wales accounts for nearly 15 per cent. of graduate business start-ups in the UK as a whole. However, more needs to be done to help those who are taking their first steps toward establishing a new business. Projects such as Venture Wales do excellent work in helping people to set up in business, but again, it needs to be better advertised. That means challenging the mindset in Wales. We have done much to eradicate poverty, but we still have to tackle something that, although it was touched on earlier, is rarely talked of: poverty of ambition. To me, poverty of ambition is just as real as the other form of poverty. The great socialist James Maxton once said that poverty is man-made and therefore open to change. Poverty of ambition is an attitude of mind, and it is up to us to change it—to give people hope, self-confidence and self-esteem. Talented people have said to me that going to college or starting a business is not for them. The task that we face is to equip them with skills and confidence to meet the challenge, set up in business and set out on their own. Those who say that that is impossible should look at the example of Ireland, which in 2003 was called the most globalised economy in the world. We in Wales should be challenging for that title. However, to achieve that we need to focus heavily on using EU funding to provide the skills and technical innovation that modern business needs. I hope that in years to come, rather than talking about the Celtic tiger economy of Ireland, it will be the dragon economy of Wales that others will look to as the best example of the use of European funding. Come the Assembly elections in May, the choice will be clear. On the one hand, voters can choose a party led by Rhodri Morgan that is committed to a programme of innovation, training and social justice. On the other, they have the Tories who have betrayed Wales in the past, the nationalists who dream of separation but never dare say so, and the Lib Dems who, if jumping on a bandwagon was a crime, would be serial offenders. The message to the people of Wales is that if they vote for the Tories, the nationalists or the Lib Dems—or worse, stay at home—on 3 May, they will wake up to a Tory-led coalition, a marriage of convenience. Wales would be led by a ragbag of mediocre politicians and that would only end in tears. The people of Wales deserve better than that. A vote for Labour on 3 May will ensure continued growth in public services, prosperity and a new self-confidence in Wales that our forefathers could only dream of, but which we are creating today.