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Welsh Affairs

Yes. My hon. Friend makes an important point. I come now to the changes in our economy in rural and urban areas. I recall that when I was a boy, 250,000 Welsh men worked in the coal industry—that was not confined to south Wales; there was also the great north Wales coalfield—but very few people now work in coal. Thousands, too, worked in the steel industry. The hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Davies) will know how his constituency was dominated by steel. When I worked in Ebbw Vale for 17 years, virtually everybody, one way or another, was connected with the steel industry. But how that has changed. First, it changed to heavy engineering, a lot of which has gone too. In its place we now have lighter, more skilled jobs, and in our rural areas, very often tourism has replaced agriculture as the main employer. There have been enormous changes in the way in which people earn their living in Wales. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), at a rather, shall we say, excited part of the parliamentary day, rightly raised the issue of the creative industries in Wales. When I came back into this job, I was struck by the number of people who are now employed in those industries throughout Wales. I was also impressed by the fact that the knowledge economy now dominates many parts of Wales, with the techniums that have been set up, and the fact that so many of our Welsh graduates now stay in Wales or come back to Wales to work in the new industries.