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Dissolution of Parliament

I will give way in a few moments. It is good to see that the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) has found time from his millionaire speaking and consultancy contracts to be with us today. He has a vivacious Welsh wife, but sadly she has not managed to educate him politically. He opposed the minimum wage, which has benefited millions of workers throughout Britain. He opposed the social chapter, referring to""minimum wages, social chapters and all the other job-destroying nonsense".—[Official Report, 20 January 1997; Vol. 288, c. 606.]" He said that the National Assembly for Wales would be ""nothing more than a talking shop and a terrible waste of money"." Does he still hold those views? Should he not now apologise to the shadow Welsh Secretary for landing her right in it? When the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State for Wales, at least he learned the national anthem—indeed, his rehearsing it led to him marrying his private secretary—but he blocked billions of pounds of objective 1 and convergence funding for Wales, which a Labour Government subsequently delivered. He is now part of an Opposition who want to implement billion-pound cuts that would decimate those very European programmes right across Wales.