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Welsh Affairs

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd). She is a powerful voice for Cynon Valley, and also a persistent and tireless champion of the rights of women and other oppressed groups living under authoritarian Governments and dictators in different parts of the world. She has won my respect and admiration for both those aspects of her work. So far, this St David's day debate has largely followed the pattern of previous such debates, and, indeed, our debates in the Welsh Grand Committee. The Secretary of State always leads with a highly combative and partisan speech, engaging in heavy historical revisionism and distorting the Opposition parties' track records and policies. Members of his party then take up the theme, and usually end up looking back to the 1980s and 1990s and comparing the record of previous Conservative Governments with what they consider to be that of the current Government. I would caution against that, and I intend to use the next few minutes to inject some corrective content into the discussion. First, however, I wish to join other hon. Members in paying tribute to all the Welsh servicemen and servicewomen who are serving in Afghanistan. During the recent recess, my constituents learned that Lance Sergeant David Greenhalgh, of north Pembrokeshire, had been the latest Welsh soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan. He was killed on Saturday 13 February in Lashkar Gah, aged 25. He was an outstanding young man, and he will be remembered with the deepest honour and respect. I think all hon. Members will agree that the young Welsh men and women out there represent some of the finest role models for all Welsh people at this time. The context and backdrop for this year's St. David's day debate is, of course, the crisis in our public finances. I should emphasise the word "crisis" because nothing the Secretary of State had to say on the matter got close to recognising honestly the challenge this country is facing, with the disaster that has been visited on our fiscal affairs and the state of the public finances. The projected deficit is a truly enormous £178 billion. That is an unprecedented sum: the country has not had a deficit like it before. Frankly, for the Secretary of State to try to reassure us that somehow under a Labour Government it can be halved or eliminated within four years, without giving any real idea of how they will do that, does not cut it. The truth is that within two years the interest we will be paying on our national debt will be approaching £60 billion a year, which is more than the Ministry of Defence and education budgets combined. We will be spending more on servicing our debt than on educating our children and young people, and on defending our borders.