Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Tachwedd 1965.
That seems to me to be precisely what I said, that the work should go forward, that the Government themselves, naturally in consultation with the local authorities, should seek to produce their own proposals, which seems a sensible way of doing it, and when the proposals are produced they should deal with powers as well as boundaries. I am not trying to make a difference in this matter. I think that the greater the continuity, particularly in matters of this kind, that we can produce, the better it is. So much for local government reform.
Another matter for which the right hon. Gentleman holds a direct responsibility is roads. We are rather concerned about the nature of his responsibility in some parts of Wales today, and not least in my constituency. The Government's agents and contractors there are in liquidation. On behalf of the United Kingdom Government the right hon. Gentleman owes £25,000 at the moment to the quarry owners in my constituency, and a great many other sums are owed, many of them to small people, to small hauliers, and so on, and there is the gravest anxiety. I hope that before the end of the debate the Government will say whether these debts are to be honoured or not, because, obviously, the standing and repute of Her Majesty's Government in matters of this kind are important, and, indeed, will have some effect on the energy and enthusiasm with which people can be recruited in all parts of Wales to play their part in carrying out Government contracts, in which, normally, firms are only too willing and happy to participate.
There are wider questions on roads. I am not for a moment saying that this narrow, though important point is the only matter. The hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Donnelly) dealt with
the right hon. Gentleman more harshly. He said:
The road programme is a scandal. It is a bloody scandal.
This is a literary quotation from the Western Mail of 23rd October. They are not words that I would wish to use in the House, but my constituents who have not been paid are rather in agreement with the hon. Member for Pembroke.
What is the right hon. Gentleman's broad policy here? He gave some indications. He read out some figures which quietly levelled out. That does not impress me very much. I have seen Government spending programmes both from the spending end and from the point of view of the Treasury. It does not impress the Treasury when one shows the graphs dipping. They all dip. One goes along happily to the Treasury saying that they will come down from ten to eight to seven, but new programmes are phased in. I am glad to see that the right hon. Gentleman is thinking of phasing some of them in.
But what is happening about a double carriageway road in Mid-Wales, a road which would open up Mid-Wales? The right hon. Gentleman referred to Mid-Wales and its problems. Such a road would open up Mid-Wales from the Midlands through Welshpool and Newtown to Machynlleth and on to Cardigan Bay. That would be a really practical contribution to the solution of some of the problems of the area. I should like to know the Government's thinking on that subject and where the project stands, if anywhere, in their priorities.
So far I have dealt with the matters for which the right hon. Gentleman has a direct and personal responsibility in the Government. But it would be a poor thing if his responsibilities as Secretary of State ended there. Not only in the White Paper, but in the eyes of all of us who represent Welsh constituencies, it must be regarded that he has a wider responsibility in some way. It is said here that he has some general oversight over a number of other matters—an oversight over planning. He paid a tribute to the National Plan, but my reading of the National Plan, as it applied to Wales, did not give me a good deal of encouragement. There were eight rather turgid paragraphs, which announced that there were mountains in Mid-Wales, and a few other interesting geographical notes, which fell far short of the purposive planning which we have always been told is such an important aspect of modern government.
Other things are happening which cause us some concern. Take the power industries which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. Let us begin with the gas industry. This is mentioned in the Report, and it is said that in 1964 there was no increase in the gas tariff. This year there is going to be an increase in the gas tariff. On 18th June, Mr. Mervyn Jones, the very able Chairman of the Welsh Gas Board, put up a proposal to increase the price of gas by 1½d. a therm. This came to the United Kingdom Government. What happened? Absolutely nothing at all. Mr. Jones was left ringing them up, writing to them, begging for some kind of answer. Eventually, on 8th September, he was told to raise the price of gas, not by 1½d. a therm, but by 2d. a therm. He was rather surprised, but he was assured that the Prices and Incomes Board would have no interest in this. Finally, at an hour's notice, he was told, on 20th October, that the whole thing would be referred to the Prices and Incomes Board.
I ask the right hon. Gentleman where was he consulted in all this, at what stage was the Welsh Office brought into this particular situation. It is all very well for the First Secretary to say, "What we want is planning, and what we want is machinery." We do want machinery, but we want the existing machinery of Whitehall to work. A situation like that, as the Chairman of the Welsh Gas Board pointed out, is a serious matter, because it is going to lose about a quarter of a million pounds on the present basis. He said that the combined result of the delay by the Ministry and the reference to the Prices and Incomes Board,
will be to lose for our Board in irrecoverable revenue in this current year, something more than £250,000.
I hope that the Minister will refer to this in his winding-up and say what his Department's view is, and what its judgment was, and what ad vice it tendered in a matter of this kind. Mr. Jones went on to say that, apart from all that, it put the Board into a very bad position of repute. It looked as though it had
been trying to put the prices up and the Government had been trying to get them down, when the reverse was the case. It was the Government which was trying to put the prices up, and put them up higher than the Welsh Gas Board really sought to do.
Another aspect of the Plan deals with electricity. The South Wales Electricity Board has a proposal at the moment to spend somewhere near a million pounds on a new headquarters. Has that been approved by the Secretary of State, or has he been consulted about this? At a time when, in North Wales, we are putting back road projects and being told that we cannot have the new flyover bridge, when we are being told that hospital programmes have to be phased out, what is the sense of building an enormous new, palatial office for the South Wales Electricity Board? From a Government which lectures us on not having a sense of social priorities, which boasts of giving Welsh road schemes the go-ahead, this sounds strange. The road schemes, three of them, amount to £650,000. They do not amount to the cost of the offices which the South Wales Electricity Board is going to erect in the near future. Can we be told whether the Welsh Office has been consulted about all this; what part it played, and whether it really approved of these kind of priorities; whether it really thinks that the Government have their priorities right, and whether this building is going to take priority over hospitals and roads?