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Legislative Programme and Budget Statement (Wales)

Clearly it is not sustainable. As I said in prefacing my remarks, there will be some examples of waste—I do not deny that. What I am trying to say is that in my 19 years in this place, I have come across very few people who are in receipt of benefits but should not be. I say that in all honesty. I am not making a political point, but telling it straight: I have come across very few, so let us be careful about how we proceed. If there is waste to be cut and if there are people who are being wrongfully paid, fine, let us deal with that, but let us not in any way take a general view about such people; for example, that everyone on DLA should not be on it. That, clearly, would be the wrong premise on which to start. Ironically, we should give higher funding to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, to look at tax evasion and avoidance. A recent TUC report estimated that £3 is lost for every £1 saved in efficiencies. We will need to look at the whole issue of tax havens and so on. We should be serious about looking at financial deficits, as the hon. Gentleman said—I agree—but we must also be serious about UK taxes being paid at the higher rate and more regularly. Time is pressing so I shall move on quickly to the whole issue of bilingual juries, which I have been concerned about for a long time. I am disappointed that the response earlier this week noted that there were not enough Welsh speakers—the worst response I have heard in my life. I hope that at some point there will be a consensus across the board on the issue, and I am sure there will be. It does not cut across random selection; there are enough Welsh speakers, even in places considered anglicised—where there are often more Welsh speakers—and we need to address that. The call for bilingual juries has always been supported by the Liberal Democrats, who, as we all know, are all things to all men—and women, of course. Members who have had a classical education will know about Janus and that in Roman times he was depicted as having two faces or heads facing in opposite directions. Apparently, he was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings—there being no god of actually sitting on the fence. However, that is an appropriate description of where the Liberal Democrats currently sit or stand, depending on the day of the week. I will give a few examples. On Trident, the student vote was garnered by saying, ““We are against Trident.”” Yes, they were, but the Liberal Democrats were also in favour of another form of weapon of mass destruction—on a smaller platform—or so we understand from their party’s spokesman on the Astute class submarine. That is a clever move. If we launch a Trident missile from an Astute class submarine, one of the unfortunate side-effects is sinking the submarine, so I am not sure how detailed their thinking is on that. I wish they had finished the sentence with, ““We are against Trident but we are still in favour of nuclear weaponry””, because that would have been the honest position. They were garnering votes and carrying them in thousands from the colleges in Aberystwyth, Cardiff Central and everywhere else. It really is not good enough.