Welsh Affairs

If things are worse in Wales than elsewhere, it is much more important to have more schemes to help people, not least schemes such as ProAct. That scheme is uniquely Welsh, partly because the money that has come into it from European objective 1 and convergence funding came uniquely to Wales as a consequence of the British Government negotiating that deal, and partly because that deal is delivered to the people of Wales through the Welsh Assembly. That would not have happened elsewhere. There is a strong case for people in Wales looking to their directly elected representatives in Cardiff, as well as here, to help out. We are able to have our summits and to listen to people in a way that perhaps could not happen in a country of 50 million people, but can happen in a country of 3 million, and that gives us the opportunity to have that free flow of information between us. There is also the possibility of having very localised summits—almost every local authority in Wales is thinking about an economic summit of its own, and some have already held them. In Newport, in my own authority in Torfaen, in Flintshire and in Anglesey, the local community is looking at how it can help itself in different ways. Local authorities can help considerably to alleviate difficulties in the local area.