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Welsh Affairs

I cannot take any interventions because we have very little time left. A serious concern arose last week, when illegal immigrants were discovered in north Wales and the police were told by the IND to give them a map and send them to Liverpool. There is a significant concern about security in Wales and it was right for the right hon. Gentleman to raise that issue. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) raised many issues in his contribution and many of his themes were taken up by other Members. However, he alone touched to any great extent on the issue of agriculture. We must never forget the importance of the rural way of life to Wales. Agriculture is a vastly important industry and many families have depended on it for their livelihoods for generations. However, there is more to the issue than that. The agricultural communities are frequently also the Welsh-speaking communities and, of course, agriculture has had some very tough times recently. We have had the fiasco of the foot and mouth episode and problems with bovine tuberculosis. Recently, there has been the reduction in support given by the Assembly to farmers in the less favoured areas. Tir Mynydd is being phased out and, in many cases it is all that keeps farmers in those areas going. As we heard from the hon. Gentleman, dairy farmers in Wales are going out of business at the rate of three a week. That is simply because they can sell their milk only for a price several pence lower per litre than the cost of production. Every time a farmer in Wales goes out of business, the Welsh community is weakened and the Welsh language is damaged. The Assembly could do more to concentrate on agriculture and support the agricultural community. My hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) made an excellent speech, and a number of his themes were taken up by other hon. Members. He was worried about the erosion of public services and the threat to HMRC offices in Wales. The latter point was taken up by the hon. Members for Gower (Mr. Caton), for Newport, West (Paul Flynn), for Caernarfon (Hywel Williams), and for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Williams). Various hon. Members noted that the tendency for increasing centralisation can only be damaging for Wales, where the population is thin and travelling long distances takes so much time. The hon. Member for Caernarfon said that the HMRC office at Porthmadog in his constituency had a face-to-face service in Welsh, and the importance of such a service to the community in that part of the country cannot be underestimated. As many hon. Members noted, it is not good enough to centralise HMRC offices in the large cities. The people of Wales pay their taxes—goodness knows, they pay more than ever under this Government—and they are entitled to a face-to-face service at HMRC offices. The right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) made a speech that departed from the norm. She touched, inter alia, on homelessness, which she rightly called a blight on Wales and the whole UK. Anyone who walks from Parliament up Victoria street after dark will be appalled at the numbers of people who sleep outside Government offices because they have nowhere else to go. The right hon. Lady was right to raise the question of homelessness in the context of a Welsh debate, and I commend her for it. The hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) spoke about justice and the provision of prisons. He was right to say that we need more prisons in Wales, especially in the north. Solicitors and probation officers from my part of the country sometimes have to travel immensely long distances—their journeys can take a whole day—when they see clients in custody at Altcourse. It is a problem that needs to be addressed. The hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr also spoke about substance misuse. He rightly said that it should be treated for what it is—a serious illness. One of my concerns as a north Wales Member has to do with the reduction in the availability of residential rehabilitation places. The Welsh Assembly’s shocking decision to fund an automated needle exchange machine—it was to have been situated in a dark alley in my constituency—caused an enormous outcry. The decision was dismissed, but there is no doubt that we need more rehabilitation facilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) made a characteristically forthright speech, in which he spoke about the Union and the need for caution in the extension of the devolution process. Those are important questions and, given that an election is approaching, I cannot resist the opportunity to mention that there is one party in this House that would cause Wales to be torn out of the Union and become an irrelevant state in an ever more powerful EU. We can well do without that, and it will be rejected by the people of Wales on 3 May. My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth was also right to highlight the issue of his constituent Mr. Vince Davies, the cancer patient unable to get the treatment that he needs. Again, hon. Members of all parties will have experienced similar problems. We all have constituents who find that they are having to wait longer and longer for treatment, especially if that treatment has to take place on the other side of the border. Waiting lists for treatment at centres of excellence such as the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt hospital in Gobowen are much longer for patients from Wales than from England. My constituents and, I have no doubt, those of other hon. Members make the reasonable point that they pay their taxes and national insurance contributions at precisely the same rate as English patients, so why should they be expected to put up with a second-class service? I find it extraordinary that when elective surgery is taking longer and longer for patients from Wales, and when the funds for such treatments are subject to such exigencies, the Welsh Assembly Government decide that it is sensible to scrap prescription charges for everyone whether or not they can pay for it. One might think there was an election approaching. Wales is a country that has unlimited potential. The hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), the Chairman of the Select Committee—without wishing to be accused of sycophancy, I commend him on his chairmanship; he is an excellent chairman—properly touched on the problems that Wales faces. They were also touched on by other hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig). We in Wales live in an increasingly globalised society. The threats and challenges to Wales come not just from down the road, down the valley, or the next town, but from a different continent. The evidence given to the Select Committee in the valuable globalisation inquiry pointed to the fact that, sadly, the Welsh education system was simply not keeping up with the challenge. Last week we heard evidence from witnesses from Admiral Insurance, who pointed out the difficulty in obtaining graduate trainees who were able to write simple business letters. By contrast, in India all Admiral’s basic call centre staff who answer the telephone are graduates. As one hon. Member said earlier, the countries in the far east are turning out graduates at an enormous rate. Wales simply has to rise to that challenge. We have a good future ahead of us as a country. We can do well. We can avoid the sniping that turns the public off and look towards Wales as a product that we can market, but we will be able to do that only if we have something good to sell. The key to that is education. That is something that everyone in the Chamber agrees on. If we pursue education, training and skills, we will all have a nation we can be proud to call our Wales.