My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, and particularly the noble Lord, Lord Harlech. I identify warmly with the plea he made for rural Wales.
I am not instinctively a monarchist but, in her jubilee year, I salute the remarkable way Her Majesty the Queen has carried out her responsibilities over the years with dignity and grace. Last year, Her Majesty was warmly welcomed to open Wales’s Senedd. Plaid Cymru looks to the day when she can come to our Senedd in the same role she fulfils for New Zealand and Canada.
The economic threats facing Wales are acute, particularly for our low-income households. Our recent council elections were a telling landmark. The people of Wales much prefer the values and policies pursued by our own Government, led by Labour with Plaid Cymru’s support, to the chaotic ambiguity of Boris Johnson’s Government. Labour controls eight councils in Wales; Plaid Cymru, four. No other party controls any council, and that tells a story.
Plaid Cymru seeks independence for Wales, not to detach ourselves from Britain, but to achieve a new relationship between our constituent nations. No one in their right mind would seek to build a Berlin Wall between Wales and England. What we do seek is to take full responsibility for our life as a nation and to work in close co-operation with our neighbours, with whom we share close trade and community links.
But we must learn to trust each other in a manner that has not been apparent at Westminster in recent years. Since Brexit, the UK Government have systematically eroded the economic powers devolved to Wales and Scotland. I have been lucky in last week’s ballot of Bills, and I hope to introduce a Bill to safeguard the Senedd’s powers. Perhaps the new Procurement Bill, published on 11 May, will give the Government a chance to open a new chapter in this regard.
There is a glaring need for the UK Government to work with the Welsh Government in pursing economic policy. When it comes to levelling up, investment projects should surely be developed in tandem with the Senedd. The Queen’s Speech should have contained a shared prosperity fund Bill, devolving the management of Wales’s portion of that fund to the Senedd in order to dovetail its use with the economic priorities of Wales’s Government.
I remind the House that, contrary to the promises made during the Brexit referendum, current plans reduce the resources coming to Wales during this Parliament by £772 million compared to the assistance we got under European funding. The Senedd budget for delivering devolved services such as health, education, housing and roads should be funded by a needs-based formula, as recommended by a Select Committee of this House several years ago. Another policy initiative to help the Welsh economy would be to devolve responsibility for the Crown Estates to Wales, bringing all the natural resources of Wales under the control of the Welsh Government.
My party also advocates a local electricity Bill to support local generation and distribution of electricity by green renewable methods, encourage diversity in sourcing electricity and reduce transmission lines’ wastage. This could enable lower electricity prices in local catchment areas. Wales has a huge potential to generate much more electricity from renewable sources: wave and tidal generation, estuarial barrages and wind turbines at sea and, where appropriate, on land. We need clarity on the Government’s plans for the Wylfa nuclear power station. I press the Government to help secure a new small modular reactor at Trawsfynydd, where the Welsh Government are seeking to set up a centre for medical radio-isotope production.
The desperate plight facing low-income families stems partly from escalating energy costs. I join others in pressing the UK Government to use an energy windfall tax to finance house insulation, particularly for older houses. Perhaps one reason that the Government did not mention house insulation in the Queen’s Speech is the shortage of skilled labour in the construction sector to undertake such work. This problem relates not only to building labour; there is an acute shortage of nurses and social care workers, of agricultural labour and of vets. There is also a desperate shortage
in catering and the hotel sector. All these have one common thread: the impact of Brexit. Of course, we should also train our own workforce, particularly nurses, doctors and dentists. The Welsh Government, who have responsibility for training in Wales, must have additional resources to do so but surely the Government can now see the need to get a new agreement with EU countries to facilitate those who want to come back here to work.
In under two years, I shall celebrate the golden jubilee of winning the Caernarfon seat for Plaid Cymru; the clock is ticking for all of us. If this coming Session transpires to be my last full Parliament in this House, I very much hope that progress can be made on Wales’s economic and constitutional fronts, which first motivated my involvement in electoral politics.
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