Welsh Affairs

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:48 pm on 27 February 1992.

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Photo of Sir Anthony Meyer Sir Anthony Meyer , Clwyd North West 6:48, 27 February 1992

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell), who has been the Chairman of the Welsh Select Committee throughout this Parliament. He has carried out his duties to the unqualified admiration of all Members of the Committee, and has shown an extraordinary assiduity in research and in marshalling facts. However, on this occasion I thought that some of the facts that he marshalled were excessively assiduous and a bit selective.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman how important it is that the hard work done by the Select Committee should be taken seriously by the Welsh Office, and that it should not be fobbed off with what could be described as pretty glib responses. I hope that what the hon. Gentleman has said will have struck home.

I am only too conscious that 12 months ago I said that I was making my last speech in a Welsh debate in this place. This time it really is the last time, and I promise not to do a Mr. Chips act. I shall look back over 13 years of Tory government in Wales and try to draw up a balance sheet from a standpoint slightly more detached than other hon. Members may be able to afford on the eve of a general election.

I will certainly not step so far out of character as to claim that everything that we have done has been good; nor will I claim that everything that the previous Labour Government did achieved nothing at all—or that the policies which Labour now advances are entirely misguided. I have never believed that my lot were 100 per cent. right and the other lot 100 per cent. wrong. Still less do I doubt the sincerity and good intentions of the Labour party, although I must remind the House that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

What is more, I am ready to concede that the achievements of the past 13 years—the huge rise in personal living standards, the dramatic increase in home ownership, the modernisation of the Welsh economy—have been bought at a price. It has been a cruelly high price for thousands who have lost their jobs or who are now on short time, and for many hundreds of businesses and firms built up by a lifetime of hard work and thrift, which have been swept away, first by the harsh processes of industrial reconversion and then in the recession.

Society—for the avoidance of doubt, there is such a thing—carries an inescapable responsibility to the victims of change. I am hugely relieved that the Government, whom I am proud now to support, have not hesitated to acknowledge that responsibility. What is more, I have a horrible feeling that, although we may reasonably expect a revival of small businesses, the numbers of unemployed will not fall even when we move out of the recession.

In the past, experts always told us that technological change did not product lasting unemployment: new jobs came along to replace the old ones. I am not sure that that is now true. Until now, we have been thinking in terms of white-collar jobs replacing manual jobs, but it is precisely in the office that the information technology revolution will bring the largest job losses. These changes have portentous consequences for the future of our society. I do not believe that any Government in any country or any political party in this country has any kind of an answer, nor do I believe that academic thinkers are much help in trying to find one.

Having planted those seeds of doubt—they are indeed dragons' teeth—let me now continue my retrospective. What would have happened if Labour had been in power these past 13 years? I do not go as far as to say that all the coal mines and all the steel works operating in 1979 would be operating today. Labour closed a large number of coal mines during its period of office, but it is certain that a Labour Government would have put off and put off the decisions, as they did with the closure of steelmaking at Shotton. It was left to their Conservative successors in 1979 to take those tough and unpopular closure decisions.

When I arrived in north Wales in 1970, the whole area was frighteningly dependent on steel and coal. The Labour Government had consistently refused to face up to the problems that arose from overcapacity in steel and from the wrong siting of some Welsh steel works. They refused to face the consequences of the growing exhaustion of accessible coal seams in Wales, and, more damagingly still, they tamely acquiesced in the refusal of the Scargill-led National Union of Mineworkers to contemplate working methods which might have given a reprieve to some coal mines and which would, still more, have enabled other more profitable pits to be opened up.

In this as in other industries, Labour's record in opposition has been one of fighting to the death to preserve the sunset industries and the jobs that go with them. That is not necessarily an ignoble strategy, but it is one that would have hindered the emergence of the far healthier mixed industrial economy which can be seen today in Deeside, Wrexham, all around Cardiff, Newport and Swansea.

Whatever the solution to structural unemployment may be, one thing is quite certain: only a wealth-creating economy can possibly provide the necessary conditions for that solution, and that wealth-creating economy cannot be sustained by obsolescent industry. Any hon. Member who doubts that should go to eastern Europe and look.

Then there is the other huge consideration of Labour policy towards the European Community. I am delighted that the Labour party has now recognised this new elephant sitting on its doorstep, to use the picturesque phrase of the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris), but there is no getting away from the fact that, if Labour had won the election of 1983 under the leadership of the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) or that of 1987 under the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock), Britain would now be outside the European Community—and once out we could not have got in again except on our knees.

What then would have happened to all the inward investment which not only provides so many tens of thousands of jobs but which has done so much to raise standards of management in Wales? The old xenophobic prejudices still lurk below the surface of the Labour party—I can almost sense the presence of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) in his seat. Perhaps a future Labour Government would no longer threaten to take Britain out of the European Community, but potential inward investors would not feel the same comfortable certainty that investment in Wales guaranteed open access to the whole single market of the European Community.

It is all very well for Liberal Democrats to promise just about everything to everybody—or rather, everything that the opinion polls show people want—because they will never have to deliver, but it is disturbing to see how far the Labour party is going in the direction of finger-in-the-wind politics.

To take a trivial but revealing instance, opinion polls show that the abolition of fox hunting would be a vote winner. Personally, I think that hunting and killing animals for pleasure is a nasty business and that some so-called sports, such as hare coursing, constitute real unjustifiable cruelty and should be outlawed forthwith. I cannot be persuaded, however, that hunting foxes with hounds is a crueller way of killing an extremely cruel predator than shooting, which as often as not leaves a wounded animal to crawl away to a slow and painful death.

But that is not the point. The point is that the Labour party, which as a party has never shown that animal welfare is right at the top of its priorities, has suddenly scented a possible electoral quarry. By preventing a minority from enjoying something that they very much enjoy doing, the Labour party hopes to win votes from the majority, guided thereto by obliging opinion polls. I find that pretty squalid.

Then there is education. It was a Labour Secretary of State, Mrs. Shirley Williams, who gave us comprehensive education, and a mixed blessing it has turned out to be. Of course there are some excellent comprehensive schools—I have some outstanding ones in my constituency—but variety of educational provision is worth preserving. It is not to be lightly cast aside—all the less so when there is so little of it left.

Labour's pledge to abolish the remaining direct grant schools and to bleed the independent schools to death by abolishing the assisted places scheme may satisfy the envious instincts of an electoral majority, but the money saved by abolishing the assisted places scheme will have no discernible effect on total provision for maintained schools. It will do nothing to improve standards of education, which benefit immensely from what little choice and competition has been left by the rush to mass comprehensivisation.

What would a Labour Government have meant—what would a Labour Government mean—for the health service? It would have meant quite simply a refusal to accept the changes—necessary, even if they were at first unpopular—that would enable the national health service to survive the pressure of ever-mounting demands created by its own success. I am glad to say that the Labour party has picked a loser, and that serves Labour right. The Government have stuck to their guns over hospital trusts and budget-holding practices. There is increasing evidence that the changes are working well and are popular.

Finally, we must consider devolution, which we may or may not be debating in the Welsh Grand Committee in Cardiff, depending on whether the Labour party has the stomach for it. As those hon. Members who are members of Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats are aware, my views on devolution are not far removed from theirs. I am quite happy with the idea of an independent Wales as a full member of the European Community on fully federal lines with strict regard for the principles of subsidiarity—but eventually. I do not believe that the time for such a radical change has come, and it probably will not come this decade.

I am reminded of the former French Prime Minister, Mr. Rocard, who went to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) when she was Prime Minister. When he emerged, he said that he was glad to say that his views and hers on European integration were virtually identical. He had asked her when she thought that there would be a united states of Europe, and she had said, not in 1,000 years. Mr. Rocard said that there would be one within five years. He then said, "As you can see, the difference is merely one of timing."

Whatever the opinion polls may say, I remain totally unconvinced that public opinion in Wales is really ready yet to pay the price of devolution. That price involves inevitably higher taxes of one sort or another, not just to run the assembly. If there is to be an assembly, it must have revenue-raising powers. There is a price also in terms of disincentives to inward investors, who may fear that devolution might impose new burdens and fresh complications on them. Above all, there is a price in terms of the loss, or at the very best the downgrading, of the Secretary of State for Wales, who, in this Conservative Government, has been such an outstanding success in getting for Wales far more than its due share of inward investment and central Government funds—for example, by way of revenue support grant.

Until I am satisfied that the people of Wales regard an elected assembly as something more than a status symbol, I shall support the cautious approach of the Secretary of State and his advisory council. In this, as in so many other matters, I have great faith in the judgment of my right hon. Friend. He has shown a quite extraordinary sensitivity to Welsh feelings and aspirations, and a startling ability to fight his corner for Wales in the Cabinet. I can hardly suppose that he will remain in his job after the election: he is clearly destined for higher things. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about Scotland?"] That might be a good idea. My right hon. Friend will be a very hard act to follow, perhaps even harder than his predecessor. I believe that, in their secret hearts, all hon. Members, in all parties, wish him well.