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Legislative Programme and Budget Statement (Wales)

Welcome to the Committee, Mr Sheridan. You will be pleased to hear that the first successful prosecution in Wales under the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 took place a couple of weeks ago. That Act, which you guided through the House and on which I worked with you, is a positive measure. It is sad that the Secretary of State has hidden behind the Chief Secretary, who, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South eloquently outlined, came to make the unbelievable claim that the Liberal Democrat and Conservative Budget is progressive. It is not. The increase in VAT to 20% imposes a regressive burden that will fall disproportionately on ordinary people and the less well off, and that will be especially true in Wales. The Chief Secretary claimed that it is a fair Budget, which it is not, for the same reasons, and he claimed that the cuts are necessary and unavoidable to deal with the deficit, but the key challenge for the Government is to manage the tension between reducing the deficit and nurturing growth and recovery. The Budget cuts deep into the flesh of the economy, while failing to give those affected the time to plan and prepare. We all know that in-year cuts are expensive and inefficient and do far more damage than well planned and measured reductions. The Labour Government were realistic in facing up to the necessity of cutting public expenditure—let us remember that the need for cuts was caused by the international banking crisis—but they allowed time for the economy to recover. We heard in the media today that the Secretary of State for Justice plans to cut prison numbers by depending less on short-term prison sentences and placing more emphasis on community sentences. So far, so good. That follows the Justice Committee’s recommendation on justice reinvestment, which was published a few months ago. That report, however, recommended a coherent set of changes, and three other elements are necessary for the Justice Secretary’s initiative to succeed. First, the police and every other element in the criminal justice system need to focus clearly on cutting crime and disorder at local level, yet the initiative was announced in the week in which the policing pledge was scrapped. Secondly, the initiative requires a partnership approach that uses the capacity of a variety of bodies to reduce offending by reducing the prevalence of drug dependency, alcohol-related issues, mental health issues and other problems that fuel offending. Thirdly, the initiative requires investment in the justice system’s capacity to deliver effective community sentences. We know that schemes such as restorative justice work, but they do not happen out of the blue or without appropriate resources. Wales offers examples of success. There has been a 40% reduction, not in police numbers, nor in the number of people taken to court, nor in the numbers going to prison, but in the number of people going to A and E requiring treatment after being the victim of a violent offence. What victims want—other than not to have become a victim in the first place—is to know that they will not become a victim again. It is essential to get the criminal justice system to focus on reducing offending. That leads to savings for the NHS—through that 40% reduction in people coming for treatment—as well as savings in police time and a reduction in the number of victims. However, to achieve that requires a coherent, joined-up approach. To cut prison numbers while cutting all three of those necessary elements is a dangerous approach. I want policies that lead to a cut in prison numbers because crime has gone down, not an arbitrary decision to put a cap on prison numbers simply to save money. The cut to the policing pledge includes abandoning the emphasis on response times to 999 calls. That is not sensible. Going back to the economy, I heard the chairman of the CBI in Wales the other week. While welcoming the cuts, for reasons that were slightly unclear, she told us that the CBI was upgrading its growth forecast from 1% to 1.3%. She acknowledged that things are not as black as this Government had portrayed them only a few weeks earlier. She spoke of fears about the impact of the cuts, in particular the danger of creating a generation of young people who are abandoned and who have no jobs or opportunity. That is not a fear: that is about to become a reality as a result of this Government’s decisions. The Government have abandoned the pledge to give a job or a training place to every young person who is unemployed for a few months. Have they learned nothing from the appalling mistakes made by the heartless Government of the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher? That is what brought me into national politics— the experience of working in my city of Cardiff with unemployed young people who had been denied hope and opportunity, a job and a future. That is what the Thatcher Government gave us. What brought me into national politics was the desire to tackle and change that. That contrasts massively with the steps taken by the Labour Government in recent months, in some of the most difficult periods, to say that we will guarantee a future for those young people and engage them to make sure that they stay in touch with the economy and are not abandoned by cuts that go too deep, too fast. The Labour Government were prepared to take difficult decisions to cut expenditure, but to do so in a sensible way that was designed to nurture growth and keep the future generation in touch. Finally, the Chief Secretary claimed that this Government want to help small businesses. Wales is disproportionately dependent on public sector jobs. I share Carwyn Jones’s wish, rightly expressed, that we need to nurture the private sector and enterprise in Wales, but public sector employees spend money in the local economy, so the cuts, which will be disproportionate in the public sector in Wales, will also damage the private sector. That is the warning: the abandonment of young people, and pain for the private as well as the public sector in Wales. I call on Ministers to heed that warning and learn from the mistakes of their Conservative predecessors in the 1980s and 1990s.