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Work Programme (Wales)

I certainly will. I point to the Jaguar Land Rover investment in the midlands as one success. I spoke to Jaguar Land Rover in early June, when it was considering what options to take, and it was looking hard at south Wales. An enterprise zone had been established in the midlands, however, and that factor would have been taken into account. That demonstrates where the policy is working. A major international investment project might have come to south Wales, but it certainly did not, and the Welsh Government must accept part of the responsibility. They are unable to attract large inward investment projects as they did in the Conservative years, when, despite making up only 5% of the UK’s population, Wales attracted 20% of its international investment. The Welsh Government have approached enterprise zones on a sectoral basis, which is a needless complication that adds to the delay. There is no enterprise zone west of the Vale of Glamorgan. There is no enterprise zone in some of the neediest parts of Wales. One has been set up in Cardiff. I am delighted that Cardiff has been successful, but on the day that they announced it, they could not produce a map of where it was. Barry, just a short distance away from Cardiff, is a part of my constituency that needs regeneration, needs that focus and needs to diversify the employment base. It was unsuccessful, despite being a strategic regeneration area, where clearly the policies need to be dovetailed together to ensure that we get the biggest bang for our buck. I hope that the Government will seek to develop the enterprise zone benefits and that the enterprise zone will become a fundamental building block of future budgets where incentive enhancements can be built upon. I hope that the Assembly Government will accept that and consider that it may well be a possibility as the Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills continue to develop policy. There is a problem with definitions in the sectoral approach to enterprise zones. The Jaguar Land Rover project that I mentioned and the enterprise zone that has been set up in Cardiff or in St Athan in my constituency will not have made any difference to attracting that major international investment to South Wales because of the sectoral approach that the Welsh Government want to take. If a major manufacturing plant operates in aerospace and in the motor industry, does the benefit of the enterprise zone apply only to the aerospace operation if it sets up in the Vale of Glamorgan? It is an ill thought out plan. It was announced the day Jaguar Land Rover went to the midlands and demonstrated that the delay potentially cost millions of pounds of investment and a significant number of jobs. It is quite obvious that the Welsh Government have many of the levers. They need to accept some of the responsibility and work positively with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales and the Under-Secretary as well as with the other Westminster Departments. The politicking that is taking place between the First Minister and Whitehall is not helpful. It does not create that opportunity for better co-operation to try to generate employment. The hon. Member for Llanelli mentioned the comparable places across the rest of the UK when we are considering employment statistics and unemployment data. With regard to European aid and objective 1, which then developed into cohesion funding, Wales’s performance has been extremely damning over the last 10 years. In 2000, the GDP of west Wales and the valleys compared with the rest of Europe was 66.8%. It is down to 64.4% in the latest data that are available which relate to 2008. West Wales and the valleys was one of 66 regions of Europe that would have received significant sums of European aid, supported by the UK Government at the time. But it is one of eight that have not progressed economically. There has been a relative decline in performance. Despite millions of pounds being made available to encourage people into work and to try to encourage more employment and entrepreneurship and to overcome the difficulties, Wales is one of only eight of the 66 that have not developed positively economically within that period.