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Welsh Affairs

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mark Williams). I am grateful for his work in support of my private Member's Bill, the Grocery Market Ombudsman Bill, which will be before the House next week. I will shorten my remarks, as I look forward to listening to the hon. Member for Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr (Adam Price), if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as it will probably be his last chance to speak in a Welsh affairs debate. I pay tribute to him and other hon. Members who are voluntarily stepping down. He and I were elected on the same day, and we agree on many things, particularly social policies. We do not agree on the constitutional issues, which I will let him develop in his speech. I wish him well in his new chosen career. I also want to pay tribute to our armed forces in Wales, especially those on active service overseas in Afghanistan. I pay special tribute to the Royal Air Force and the excellent job it does. Many of its members have been trained in my constituency, in RAF Valley on Ynys Môn, which is now a centre of excellence and has seen a lot of investment for the future, for fast-jet trainers, pilots and search and rescue. I was going to be very positive about the future, but I must take issue with a comment made by the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) about Anglesey Aluminium. She perpetuates the myth that too little too late was done to help that company—the opposite was the case. The company was given a great deal of help for about 10 years. In the late 1990s, a moratorium on gas was lifted to help it to develop a project enabling it to have its own source of energy, but it chose not to pursue that avenue. It then looked to the main grid for its electricity supply, but the market was high following a spike in prices—as my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire (Nick Ainger) pointed out—and that put it off. The company then considered using biomass to bridge the gap. Assistance amounting to some £48 million was due to it. Having talked to senior Conservatives, I know that they were not prepared to match public investment to help the company. It is disingenuous of the hon. Lady, on behalf of her party, to suggest that too little was done too late, given that the Conservatives' policy was not to intervene to assist the company.