The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Saville Roberts on 2015-11-25.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many people from each constituent part of the UK used the Welsh Language Unit of HM Revenue and Customs in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement.
Mr David Gauke
The details of the numbers of people from each constituent part of the UK who use the Welsh Language Unit of HM Revenue and Customs are not recorded.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Saville Roberts on 2016-03-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, whether he has had discussions with the Welsh Government on strengthening and extending the remit of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales.
Guto Bebb
The Children’s Commissioner for Wales plays an essential role as part of wider efforts to protect children.
I have already spoken to the Commissioner by phone and look forward to further engagement in the future to discuss any concerns she may have about the extent of her remit.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Saville Roberts on 2016-09-14.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether she plans to publish a green paper on the case for a victims’ law for consultation during this parliamentary session.
Dr Phillip Lee
Victims deserve the best possible support to help them cope with what they have been through and recover as much as possible. We have protected the victims’ budget and given PCCs the flexibility to decide which services are needed in their local area. Under the revised Victims’ Code, victims of all criminal offences are now entitled to support from a wide range of organisations. But we know there is more to do, which is why we have committed to introduce measures to increase further the rights of victims. It is important that we take the time to get this right and we will announce our plans in due course.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Saville Roberts on 2016-10-17.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether Working Links in Wales plan probation staff redundancies.
Mr Sam Gyimah
All Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) are contractually required to maintain a professional and appropriately skilled workforce to deliver the services set out in their contracts. We robustly contract manage each CRC to make sure they fulfil their contractual commitment to maintain service delivery, reduce reoffending, protect the public and deliver value for money for taxpayers.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Saville Roberts on 2015-12-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what criteria will need to be satisfied for sites to qualify for inclusion in a list of potential new build nuclear sites for the development of a small modular reactor.
Andrea Leadsom
The Government is currently undertaking a techno-economic assessment of SMRs which will provide a detailed analysis of the opportunities and challenges facing SMRs. The recent announcement by my Rt. Hon Friend Mr Chancellor of a competition to identify which SMR would offer the best value for development in the UK is a further demonstration of the Government’s commitment to exploring the potential of SMRs for the UK. As Government develops SMR policy further, we will address the issue of site identification for SMRs. No potential sites or siting criteria specifically for SMRs have currently been agreed.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Saville Roberts on 2016-04-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish the minutes of the negotiations on the 1990 Dublin Convention which took place between 1987 and 1990.
James Brokenshire
The Government has no immediate plans to publish the minutes of the negotiations on the 1990 Dublin Convention which took place between 1987 and 1990. Any surviving papers relating to negotiations will be contained in files relating to the Convention and these will be considered for selection and transfer to The National Archives in line with the 1958 Public Records Act as amended by subsequent legislation.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Saville Roberts on 2016-09-14.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, which authority is responsible for the safety of (a) beach users and (b) swimmers at beaches in Gwynedd.
Mr John Hayes
Safety at public beaches is generally the responsibility of the local authority, who carry out risk assessments to determine appropriate safety measures.
Gwynedd Council have information guides about beach and harbour safety on their website.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz Saville Roberts on 2016-10-17.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what proportion of new court orders were made by the courts and subsequently allocated to (a) community rehabilitation companies and (b) National Probation Service in England and Wales, for the most recent period for which figures are available.
Mr Sam Gyimah
In the 12 months to 31 March 2016, 89 per cent of offenders sentenced to a community order or suspended sentence order were allocated to a Community Rehabilitation Company and 11 per cent to the National Probation Service.
The speech made by Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, in the House of Commons on 14 December 2022.
I take this opportunity to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn)—he is not in his place, but I am sure he will be speaking later —and to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) sincerely for his friendship and co-operation since I became leader of the Plaid Cymru group in Westminster. It has been an honour to work with him. I welcome the opportunity to discuss this important matter today and fully support the motion in the name of the SNP, as well as the principle that Scotland should be given the right to decide when an independence referendum should be called.
Westminster’s refusal to guarantee the right to self-determination for all the devolved nations demonstrates the fundamentally undemocratic and therefore broken nature of this Union. It exposes the well-worn narrative that this is a voluntary association of four nations that somehow choose to pool sovereignty as the flagrant falsehood it truly is. There is no doubt that this is a UK Government who are politically and openly hostile to devolution. They have consistently disregarded the Sewel convention, rendering that supposed constitutional protection almost meaningless. They have shut out the devolved Governments from key economic decision making on post-Brexit funding and are more than happy to ignore the Welsh Government’s warnings that their trade deals will devastate key Welsh industries in their pursuit of glossy headlines.
Alun Cairns
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way, but I cannot let her get away with such inconsistencies. She says the UK Government are hostile to devolution, but the most powerful devolved Administration in the world is the Scottish Parliament. As the Secretary of State for Wales who took forward the last Wales Act—the Wales Act 2017—I know that Wales is much more powerful now than under the Labour Government, when it even had to ask Westminster for powers to change the law on an individual basis. Now a Parliament has been created. There is significant inconsistency in what the right hon. Lady is saying.
Liz Saville Roberts
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for turning towards the Labour party, but what is striking in the responses from both major Westminster parties is the sheer lack of a convincing, gripping, emotionally valid and economically rational argument in favour of the Union. Time and again, we hear these remarks. In all honesty, this is politicised in the sense that we are talking about health in relation to England and health in relation to Scotland. If there were proper respect for devolution, that would not be a political football, because the devolved nations would have the proper means to answer those problems with powers given to us 20-odd years ago. But we do not. It is fair to throw at us the argument that we should be looking after the day-to-day bread and butter matters, but the real point is that we do not have the powers to sort out the problems left to us under the influence of this Government from this place.
Alun Cairns
The facts are clear. In 2010, Wales had a legislative competence model for devolution left by the Labour party, with which the right hon. Lady’s party is now working closely in Government in Cardiff Bay. We now have a Parliament in Wales, which the Conservative Administration delivered in spite of the opposition that came from her party.
Liz Saville Roberts
It is very interesting that there are Conservatives in England questioning the devolution model proposed by Gordon Brown. None the less, those of us who are politicians must try to do the best we can for our people. That is what I believe we are doing in Wales. Unfortunately, looking at the powers for Wales put forward by the Labour party in Gordon Brown’s proposals, we do not really see the biggest transfer of power away from Westminster that he proposes referring to the people of Wales. In recommitting to the principle of parliamentary supremacy, his report reminds us that for Labour, the Senedd will always be subservient to Westminster.
Not only would the proposals put forward by Brown do nothing to change the fundamental inequalities of the UK, but he has back-tracked on previous Labour promises to devolve policing to Wales. In addition, and despite the Labour-run Welsh Government’s Thomas commission recommending that justice should be wholly devolved, Brown’s timid proposals offer only piecemeal powers over youth justice and probation. The level of disdain that the central Labour party holds towards the only Government that it currently runs beggars belief.
Indeed, last week, the deputy leader of Labour in Wales, the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), directly undermined her leader in Wales, the First Minister Mark Drakeford, on the devolution of policing. Although full devolution of policing was included in Welsh Labour’s winning 2021 manifesto, its deputy leader rejected the idea outright, despite evidence of poor outcomes in a structurally broken system. And her reason: “I just wouldn’t”. The anti-devolutionists are still in control of the Labour party but their arguments are being crushed under the weight of evidence.
The Brown report also fails to support the Welsh Government’s request to be empowered with stronger economic levers. The Institute of Welsh Affairs recently warned that a combination of Wales’s limited taxation powers, its inability to influence its block grant from Westminster and its exceptionally limited borrowing powers is having a chilling effect on Welsh policy, and that the England-led nature of the fiscal framework is restricting Wales’s ability to deliver transformational projects that would really make a difference to people’s lives in Wales.
To paraphrase a former Conservative Mayor and the current chair of the eastern powerhouse writing in City AM this week, devolution is a “sham” while the UK Government continue to hold the purse strings—from the mouths of babes. The Labour party in Westminster seems quite content to leave the situation as it is.
Plaid Cymru’s co-operation agreement commits Labour’s Welsh Government to the devolution of five powers—policing and justice, the Crown Estate, welfare administration, gender recognition, and broadcasting—yet Gordon Brown’s report makes no mention of the latter two policy areas. The consistent way in which Labour in Westminster undermines their colleagues in Wales raises questions about whether a UK Labour Government would ever properly implement the recommendations of their Welsh Government’s independent constitutional commission.
That commission, chaired by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Professor Laura McAllister of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre, was established as part of the co-operation between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government. Last week, it published its interim report, which set out clearly that the status quo simply is not working for Wales. The commission argued that Wales is
“trapped within a UK economy that is overwhelmingly shaped in the interests of the South-East of England and the City of London”.
It came to the conclusion that
“this broken UK economic model does not deliver prosperity to Wales and”—
importantly—
“offers no prospect of doing so.”
The commission made it clear that the answer to those issues does not lie in unwinding devolution. Indeed, it concludes that in this context, independence is one of three viable future constitutional options available to Wales.
As part of Plaid Cymru’s work to build the road to independence, we have published our submission to the commission entitled “The Road to Independence”, and we are working with the Wales Green party to establish a future Cymru forum, which will explore key questions surrounding independence more deeply, including the central question of a how a new Welsh economy would work. Working together, we can show that there are positive and hopeful alternatives to the destructive agenda pursued by the Conservatives here in Westminster.
The present devolution arrangements are dysfunctional and they cannot hold. It is time to acknowledge that federalism is dead—it is a dead end—and that only independence can deliver the greener, fairer and stronger economic futures that the communities of Wales and Scotland so urgently need and deserve.
The speech made by Liz Saville Roberts, the Plaid Cymru MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons, on 7 December 2022.
Diolch yn fawr. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this important debate.
Wales has 2,120 km of coastline and a marine area of approximately 32,000 km. We have immense offshore wind and tidal potential, with Welsh Government estimates setting our marine energy potential at at least 6 GW. The Swansea bay tidal lagoon was mentioned earlier. With tidal lagoons, there is also the potential for coastal protection and other benefits that we need to consider in the round. Although only a small number of projects have been built and deployed in Wales to date, the marine energy sector is already driving economic development and regeneration, with cumulative investment and spend in Wales amounting to £159.6 million, with Gwynedd, my county, benefiting from over £18 million. Marine Energy Wales believes that with the right support there is vast potential for the sector to grow. It estimates that it could deliver £603.3 million in economic benefits for Wales over the next five years.
I want to draw attention to a tidal energy project that is being developed at Ynys Enlli in my constituency of Dwyfor Meirionnydd. The Llif Llanw Enlli tidal project is being delivered by the Edinburgh-based company Nova Innovation in collaboration with the community energy company Ynni Llŷn, who are seeking to install turbines on the seabed and demonstrate that commercial devices at a small scale can indeed work before scaling up as the technology matures. It is their ambition for Ynys Enlli, a small island off the end of Llŷn, to switch from a dependency, as it presently has, on diesel to become the world’s first blue energy island.
A number of issues have already been mentioned, and I also have a list of asks for the Minister. I hope that they will co-ordinate with those that have already been aired. Nova Innovation is concerned that what is slowing down the development of marine technology across the UK is the slow route to market for projects. It is concerned that the timescales associated with contracts for difference and delays with securing consent for projects are contributing to delays. It has called for the introduction of a CfD innovation pot to support emerging technologies, and for the time between CfD award and the project’s start date to be reduced. When he winds up, I would be grateful if the Minister could let us know whether such matters are to be considered.
On CfDs, I ask for clarity on whether—as with the fourth allocation round—tidal stream energy will continue to have ring-fenced funding into the fifth round. Having funding set aside specifically to support tidal stream is key to getting projects in the water and bringing costs down over time. There are pre-consented demonstration zones in Wales, such as Morlais in Ynys Môn, that are dependent on securing funding through the scheme to deploy. Finally, will the Minister clarify whether any consideration is being given to adjusting the CfD scheme so that it can support renewable energy hubs that contain multiple technologies by assessing together projects that are linked? Again, that would be very significant for many parts of Wales.
Of course, for Wales to realise our marine renewables potential, our grid infrastructure desperately needs to be brought into the 21st century. A recent report of the Welsh Affairs Committee on grid capacity in Wales warned that our renewable energy potential is threatened by UK Government inaction on improving grid connectivity. The inadequacy of the grid in Wales is a barrier to the decarbonisation of heat and transport across Wales, let alone to the future potential that we should be realising. It is well known that Wales exports more energy than it actually uses. I am very comfortable with that—I think Wales should be exporting into England and, in future, into Ireland—but we need to have the means to do that, and the grid structure does not permit that. It is not sufficient for our needs, let alone for the future.
Therefore, I ask the Minister how investment in grid infrastructure is to be accelerated. What consideration are the UK Government giving to the role that multi-connection substations could play in reducing the cost and the delays associated with grid construction? Importantly, that would also provide strong signals that would, in turn, engender confidence for local supply chains, particularly for marine renewables.
Before I bring my remarks to a close, I draw Members’ attention to the absurd situation in Wales whereby our seabed will be a key driver of our renewable transition, yet it is the UK Treasury that controls, directs and ultimately reaps the Crown Estate’s profits from the seas around Wales, out to a distance of 12 nautical miles. Management of the Crown Estate in Scotland has been devolved to the Scottish Government, and a ScotWind auction earlier this year raised almost £700 million for Scotland’s public finances, yet the UK Government refuse to devolve its management to the Welsh Government. That is an anomaly in our devolution settlement, which again leaves Wales the poorer, and I do not find a justification for it. I see no rational justification from the Government, save an obstinacy regarding changing the status quo—a status quo that disfavours Wales. Marine energy and offshore wind together represent a historic opportunity for the Welsh economy, and it is the people of Wales who should be able to direct how best to benefit from that economic opportunity, not Westminster.