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Welsh Affairs

I welcome the opportunity to speak, albeit briefly, in our St. David’s day debate. St. David’s day is a day of celebration for the Welsh people, and I shall focus on the announcement on 17 January that the new tri-service military academy, which has been mentioned, will be located in Wales, at St. Athan in my constituency. It is a matter of great celebration, not just for my constituents and south Wales, but for the whole of Wales, as it presents us with an unprecedented opportunity as the biggest ever public investment in any constituency in the UK. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) referred to the success of the Cardiff bay investment, but the investment in the military training academy will be 32 times the size of the Cardiff bay investment. It is worth £16 billion, so it is bigger than the total Olympic bid. As was pointed out to me earlier today, it is by far the biggest single investment since Edward I constructed his castles around the coast of our beautiful country. It offers the people of Wales a huge opportunity, not because of its size or value, but because of its nature. Numerous colleagues have referred to the challenge that we face in a global market of upskilling the Welsh work force and developing a knowledge-based economy. We could not wish for anything better than the investment, which will provide up to 12,000 military trainees with an enormous range of high-quality skills, including aeronautical engineering to mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer sciences, languages, photography and logistics. St. Athan will be a world centre of excellence for military training. Some people may think that that training is just for the military, but they could not be further from the truth. The success of our aerospace industry in south Wales has been predicated on the existence of the military aviation facility at RAF St. Athan for over 50 years. The spin-offs from the investment could be enormous, as long as we get our act together and get our act right. It presents us with considerable challenges. I have placed on record my thanks to colleagues in all parts of the House for their key contribution in ensuring that we secured the investment, and my thanks to the Welsh Assembly Government. Having worked so well together, it would be a big mistake for us to sit back now and say, ““Having won the £16 billion investment for Wales, let us just wait for all these wonderful jobs and opportunities to come to us.”” We should be doing the opposite. We have a three to five-year window of opportunity to get our act together to make sure that the people of my constituency, of south Wales and of the whole of Wales benefit from the investment. We should be setting up taskforces now in local business and industry, in our schools and colleges, and in our local authorities to ensure that we provide what is required to get the benefits of our success. Training programmes need to be thought about now to provide for the 5,500 direct jobs that will be created by the investment, not to mention the indirect jobs, of which there could be a far greater number if we get our act together now. We should be talking about developing a sourcing policy for the investment—a source Wales policy. By that I do not mean, as I have heard mentioned, that the company that comes in must buy Welsh goods, services, supplies, products and so on. But we should encourage the companies involved in the consortium to source first in Wales. The project will be like a new town created in the Vale of Glamorgan. If the products that the development requires, starting with day-to-day consumer goods and food, can be provided locally, of the right quality and at the right price, they should be purchased locally. That makes good business sense, if the consortium coming in knows what goods and services exist in the community. Over the next five years we can take practical steps to ensure that we benefit not just in the Vale of Glamorgan, but from Brecon to the coastline and from Monmouth to Pembrokeshire, if we work together as we worked together to secure the investment as team Wales. Now we must exploit all the benefits. One of the big challenges that we face is to provide the right infrastructure to access the site, especially by road. There will be a 600 acre site accommodating just the academy, with 10,000 to 15,000 personnel. The special forces support unit will run alongside that, and the aerospace park will be located within those 600 acres. The traffic generation from that development will be enormous, so we have to think about building or modernising the roads to facilitate the development and make sure that we get the most from it. We had a setback in February. The Welsh Assembly Government’s plans to retrunk the A48 and the A4226 were lost at public inquiry. The inspector came out against the upgrading of the roads, which was an integral part of the proposal to secure the investment. We know that the roads in the immediate vicinity, 20 km from the M4, are not very good. I was very surprised to be told that an economic spokesperson—or whatever he calls himself—in the Welsh Assembly stated on his blog last week that this was a sweet victory, yet we lost the opportunity to upgrade that access road. I found that hard to believe.