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Welsh Affairs

That is an important point. It is strange that I, a Member of Parliament, can get free prescriptions when others cannot. I hope that the Minister and the Secretary of State will take up the case that I have reported, as my constituent will be dead in a very short time if no one is prepared to fund his treatment. That is the background to my opposition to calls for extra powers for the Welsh Assembly. I strongly disagree with Plaid Cymru’s calls for policing and justice to be devolved. Putting to one side questions about whether the Assembly could do a better job and the constitutional issues involved, I tend to agree with what the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) said about involving the Assembly in such matters, rather then devolving them to it. I like to think that I know a little bit about policing. I completed the parliamentary scheme, and some of the training needed to become a special constable. We all agree that terrorism and organised crime are the two big problems that we face, but the proposal to make Wales’ four police authorities answerable to a body that is not the same as the one to which England’s 39 are answerable will not make it easier to tackle either. I also take issue with Plaid Cymru’s attitude to our armed forces. There are differences in this House about whether we should have gone into Iraq and about our involvement in Afghanistan, but most hon. Members want to support our armed forces. Both the Territorial Army and the Royal Engineers have bases in my constituency—many of their personnel have been in Iraq, or indeed are still there—and I will do everything that I can, wholeheartedly, to support them. I am shocked by calls from Plaid Cymru to keep the military out of schools. We should be celebrating our armed services; we should be encouraging school pupils to join the armed forces, to go out and get a trade and to get specialist skills of the sort that we very much need in Wales. It is a shocking state of affairs when people make such calls. The Government cannot cover themselves with much glory, either. Our armed forces are not always earning even the minimum wage, especially when they are out on deployment. They come back to accommodation that is sub-standard and would not be suitable in some cases for people who have newly arrived in this country. So the Government have to do a lot more if they want to support the armed services— not simply talk about it, but ensure that they are properly paid and properly housed. We had a few bizarre history lessons earlier. I was writing down some of the things that the Secretary of State for Wales said about the previous Conservative Government and I am afraid I simply did not recognise the picture that he painted. I was born in 1970, so I cannot remember the late 1960s when twice as many coal mines were shut down by Labour than were ever shut down by Mrs. Thatcher’s Administration—twice as many in four years, I believe, as Mrs. Thatcher in eight. Of course, that is something that the National Union of Mineworkers, the Labour party and the trade unions would rather forget about. I can remember in 1979 walking past the Royal Gwent hospital, where there was a strike going on. People could not get into hospital because the hospitals were all out on strike. I remember being told by my parents that at the same time dead people could not be buried because the gravediggers were out on strike. The streets could not be cleaned because the roadsweepers were out on strike. The whole country ground to a halt in 1979 and the Prime Minister did not even seem to realise when he came back from the Caribbean that there was some sort of crisis. The Government try to sell a good story to us. Now they talk about inflation. Of course the figures look low because they do not take into account house prices, council tax and all the other things that people need. Of course the unemployment figures look good because everyone is signing on the sick, which is a very good way of covering up things. Everyone has got a bad back or they are stressed. Of course, the headline figure for income tax looks low because they have allowed everyone to come into the higher tax bracket and they have taxed everything that moves. The Government talk about their commitment to human rights. What sort of a Government are they who cannot deport serial rapists to Somalia, but can spend £10,000 chartering a jet to pick up a load of people who have been fighting with a terrorist organisation, bring them back to Britain and release them a few hours later to walk the streets, probably even backdating their benefit payments as well? I have no doubt those people are planning their next sojourn to the jihadi front line.