---

Welsh Affairs

I refer specifically to my own constituency, where the fall in unemployment—according to the latest Library figures and the claimant count figures—makes us 11th out of 646 constituencies. We have seen tremendous improvement on unemployment and employment, and one reason has been the clear success in my constituency of objective 1 funding—now convergence funding. The county council, the Welsh Assembly Government and the private sector have worked well together on some significant investments. Not least of those is the Bluestone project, which I know my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath has visited and which has the potential to create 600 new jobs when it opens this summer. My right hon. Friend the Member for Neath mentioned renewable energy. The technium in Pembroke dock was created specifically to bring together the private sector and universities in Wales to develop renewable and alternative energy, develop new products, improve existing technologies and spin out companies into larger premises. I was at the technium last week, where Welsh energy sector training, or WEST—which brings together the private sector, universities such as Swansea university, Bangor university, the university of Glamorgan and the Welsh school of architecture—highlighted specific areas in which it thinks the private sector can become actively involved. WEST is also getting involved, rightly, in encouraging the private sector to expand training for technicians in installing renewable technology and so on, because we in Wales must address the skills gap. It is important to have technologists—not just graduates but people who have the hands-on skills required to develop a modern economy, particularly in renewable energy. We are trying to encourage people to install renewable energy in their homes, so it is important that we have qualified technologists to do so. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) said that Wales was becoming a capital for renewable energy development. In my constituency, apart from technium, a UK aerospace company in Pembroke dock is building wind turbines on a smaller scale for domestic and small commercial use. The Bluestone project will be heated and powered by a miscanthus-fired boiler system which will heat the water world and provide 1.5 MW of power. It will be the biggest renewable-fired system in Wales, and will be considered as a pilot for other large projects. We as a Government need to incentivise people to change their habits and make the investment needed in alternative energy and microgeneration. I am thinking of the experience in Germany in particular, where they have a feed-in tariff, and of the take-up there of photovoltaic energy, for example. Much of Germany's PV technology is manufactured in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas); I have visited the Sharp factory. Sharp management say that Germany is their biggest market, because of the feed-in tariff. We as a Government must address that issue, so that we can incentivise people.