Welsh Affairs

The problems of the credit crunch in my constituency mainly affect the manufacturing sector. At one point, 50 per cent. of Newport's work force were involved in manufacturing, and about half of that figure are involved now. We have had serious problems, such as redundancies and short-time working in Novelis, Quinns radiators in Llanwern and Panasonic. These are terrible blows to the many thousands of workers concerned and their families. The only good thing to have come out of this recession is that there have not been any closures. No one has closed down a plant, or a section of plant, and then demolished the plant itself. Sadly, that happened in Llanwern in the last recession, where they started to knock down the coke ovens in the very week that the price of coke rocketed throughout the world, and we ended up importing coke from China. There is optimism that the manufacturing industry will be ready to take off when we come out of the other side of recession. There are some good news stories. A month ago, a plant opened on the docks in Newport, at Sims, which is the biggest of its type in the world, and it is next to two other plants that are the biggest of their type in the world. The Sims plant deals with redundant electronic equipment under the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive, and it is a remarkable piece of machinery. Old computers, vacuum cleaners, calculators and so on are wheeled in one side, and at the other end they come out as four different types of plastic, metals and precious metals such as silver. It is a wonderful piece of equipment that is unique to the world, and the biggest in the world. Next to it, on the same docks, is the biggest piece of end-of-life car recycling equipment in the world, and next to that is the biggest refrigeration recycling plant in the world, which is also the most efficient at extracting gas. There are, therefore, some good news stories to tell. Much that is good is happening in Wales this year. It is the 10th anniversary of having our own Government on the soil of our country for the first time in centuries, and we should acknowledge what a success that has been, particularly the One Wales agreement, through which two parties are working together to give us stable government in Wales that can plan for the future. I am looking forward to that anniversary being suitably marked. Unfortunately, it is up against—[Laughter.] I hear laughter from one of the obstacles that I was going to mention. The two main obstacles to the Assembly and drag anchors on it have been neurotically power-retentive Welsh Members of this House who weep when they see power flowing down the M4 to Cardiff, and the inertia of civil servants who do not like change and are not attuned to taking on purely Welsh initiatives, particularly those that come from the Labour party. It is significant that about half a dozen of the civil servants at the Welsh Assembly earn more money than the First Minister himself. I have been asked to be brief, but I have great concerns about the legislative competence order. I think that it will make little difference to the Welsh language. In 1961, Saunders Lewis made a great speech, entitled ““Tynged yr Iaith””, that shook the Welsh-speaking nation—saying that the Welsh language would be dead by the year 2000. It should have died out centuries ago, given that it is spoken by fewer than 1 million people and is up against a great world language, but it has prospered magnificently. A list has been mentioned of prominent people from Wales who have won competitions on UK television for choirs, performers, singers or musicians. Many of them are the products of Welsh language education, because of its emphasis not just on the Welsh language but on music and acting skills. It is a great success story, and we have been successful in many other ways as well.