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Welsh Affairs

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will certainly take your advice into account. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (John Smith). It has been a great triumph to bring this development to Wales and I share his ambition for the benefits to spread not just alongside the M4 corridor, but throughout Wales, particularly into the valleys and the tops and heads of the valleys, which have faced such difficulty in regenerating. I am thinking particularly of the top of the Neath valley in Pont Nedd Fechan and the top of the Swansea valley in Ystradgynlais in my constituency, which still suffer from the closure of the coal industry and have never really regained the economic vibrancy that they once had. Hon. Members have covered a number of issues and I do not wish to go back over them, but it seems to me that a theme running through the contributions is that while the Government trumpet localism, what is, in fact, happening is centralisation. As a result, we see local tax offices of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, along with local hospitals, threatened with closure. That certainly applies in my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), as four local community hospitals are threatened with closure. Schools and post offices are also threatened and, as we heard from the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams), there is also a problem with passports. It seems that some wish to reduce costs, but that is at the risk of reducing services, which is particularly worrying for people living in rural and sparsely populated areas. Certain figures that we have received about community hospitals show that keeping them open to deal with patients is cheaper than providing the service at home. That needs to be looked at again, because if those hospitals close, the bed-blocking problems that arise in district general hospitals will be exacerbated. I should like very briefly to raise two more issues. First, following the Government’s success yesterday in taking the Offender Management Bill through Report and Third Reading, I am worried about the provision of probation services in rural areas and in my constituency. I have no doubt that the Government will face stronger opposition in another place and I hope that some progress will be made. My message to the Minister in the short time that remains is that he should not set targets for contestability. I hope that he passes that message on to his fellow Ministers. They should not set targets for contestability that will be either unachievable in certain areas or achieved at the risk of bringing in providers who do not have the necessary knowledge and commitment to those areas. I notice that Turning Point, a large national organisation delivering support for offenders, has welcomed the Bill and said that we could always subcontract facilities to more local organisations. I really do not think that that is the best way forward, however. I visited Powys Drugs and Alcohol recently. It is providing a valuable service, and it has fears about its services being subject to competition, because it has put all its efforts into delivering the service. It finds that when its energies are dissipated by having to apply again and again for contracts, it only weakens the organisation and does not strengthen it or help it provide a better service. I hope that the Minister will take that message on board, and that when the Bill is considered in the other place, some of those issues can be corrected. The only other issue on which I would like to reflect was raised by the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith): the fact that the Competition Commission is now consulting on the role of supermarkets both in providing retail services in local areas and in the supply chain. It is a tragedy that only 13 farmers have replied to the consultation. Some people ask whether the farmers are content with the situation. I can tell the House that they are not content; they are feeling hopeless and weak and doubt whether their contributions will be taken into consideration. I ask the Minister, either with the Assembly or his DEFRA colleagues, to get the message over to the farming community that it can contribute and make a difference, and that its contributions need not be of a technical or academic nature; farmers need simply to reflect the circumstances as they see them in their business, with a lack of returns and increasing costs. As I told farmers in my constituency when I urged them to contribute, ““It’s your life and your family. Please get engaged.””