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Welsh Affairs

They were introduced by the Labour party in Wales, as the hon. Gentleman knows. We in Wales will face a danger in the coming year from an unhealthy dynamic in Welsh politics. It is a dynamic that is already leading us into a blind alley, which goes by the grand title of the constitutional convention. I am told that the Welsh Assembly is to set aside £500,000 for this self-indulgent, wasteful exercise in navel gazing. That pointless convention is supposed to test the waters to determine whether we should hold a referendum on more powers for Cardiff and when it can be won. I wonder whether the Assembly will make the same amount of public money available to those who want a referendum at a time when the Welsh people will say no to more powers in Cardiff. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will enlighten us in his winding-up speech. I can save the Assembly that £500,000; I can help them test the waters. I have a cunning plan. I will take the authors of the idea on a walk down Blackwood high street—or any high street in Wales—and ask people whether they believe that it is worth spending £500,000 on the convention. People will be amazed that we can find that money when there are far more pressing needs. Wales spends less per head on educating our children than England spends. People will think that we should close that gap. We spend far less than England on further education, and people will think that we should close that gap. Waiting lists for hospital admissions in Wales are longer than those in England. People will think that we should close that gap, too. On top of that, incomes in Wales are lower than elsewhere in Britain and much of Europe. People will certainly think that we should close that gap. West Wales and the valleys, thanks to the Labour Government, obtained European objective 1 moneys because our income levels were lower than those in the rest of Britain and Europe. However, after six years of that funding, we must ask whether our income levels are any better now. The answer is that they have changed little, and continue to lag behind the rest of the United Kingdom. So far, to a great extent, objective 1 has been a lost opportunity. The Irish used objective 1 money to upskill their work force and have gone on to become the tiger economy of Europe. We should follow their lead, but we do not. A look through the Welsh European Funding Office list of the largest objective 1 projects shows that the money has been used for agricultural food processing, tourism promotion, and a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds scheme called, ““Aren't Welsh Birds Brilliant!”” I have no doubt that those are worthy causes, and I do not want to denigrate them, but are we seriously saying that they are priorities for investing the European money that we have won for Wales? Furthermore, the administration of objective 1 has been a bureaucratic nightmare, bound up in red tape. Only yesterday, the Welsh Local Government Association expressed frustration that, after 15 months of the new European structural fund programme, so little progress has been made.