Welsh Affairs

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:09 pm on 28 February 1991.

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Photo of Mr David Hunt Mr David Hunt , Wirral West 5:09, 28 February 1991

The hon. Gentleman's party political points are always a little contrived. He did, however, raise a point of substance about a drug. I shall not pontificate from the Dispatch Box about which drugs should and should not be used; that must be a matter for the clinical judgment of those involved in the medical committees. As for the hon. Gentleman's point about money, I need only point to the record of the past 12 years. When we came into office, £480 million was being spent on the health service in Wales. Next year it will be £1,654 million. Opposition Members should not try to read us lessons on their failure to fund the health service properly in the 1970s.

The hon. Gentleman's other remarks give me a chance to pay tribute not only to those who work in the health service, but to the extremely hard-working and professional civil servants who look after Wales from the Welsh Office. During my nine months as Secretary of State, I have never failed to be impressed by the commitment of all those who work in Wales to improve the quality of the service there.

I now want to sy something about the essential foundation of all our achievements in the Principality. I hope that, in doing so, I shall be able to dispel some of the myths perpetrated by the merchants of doom and gloom on the Opposition Benches who seem so determined to talk Wales down. I do not include all Opposition Members in that description, but to listen to some of them one would think not only that our traditional industries had contracted—which is true—but that nothing had come in to take their place, which is far from true.

The Welsh economy is not isolated from that of the rest of the United Kingdom. Unemployment is rising now, but there is no sign that it will return to its previous high level. Since 1986, the unemployment gap between Wales and the United Kingdom as a whole has fallen from 2·6 per cent. to 0·7 per cent. In the meantime, employment in Wales has never been so high, with the civilian work force standing at 1,239,000.

The narrowing of the gap between unemployment in Wales and that in the rest of the United Kingdom is a symbol of the point that I want to make to Opposition Members—indeed, to the whole House. The rebirth of the Welsh economy over the past decade—I pay tribute to all the people in Wales for the part that they have played—has left us extremely well placed to ride out the present downturn, and to exploit the upturn as it comes.