Wales

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 4 Tachwedd 1965.

Danfonwch hysbysiad imi am ddadleuon fel hyn

Photo of Mr Goronwy Roberts Mr Goronwy Roberts , Caernarvon 12:00, 4 Tachwedd 1965

Indeed, not as Welsh as Lianelly. Probably rugby has something to do with that. They play soccer in Mid-Wales.

Let us not dismiss this idea of a new urban centre. There will be three or four on the other side of Offa's Dyke. If those three or four modern new towns go up—because they must—will they not draw population not only from the hills of Wales but, to quote the right hon. Gentleman, from the towns as well? Should not we set up in Wales one new town into which can go people who must leave the rural areas. People do leave them even though they have not got to, and many people do so because they want to. Let us have an urban centre with all the facilities wanted today by those who wish to reside and work there and by those who need to go there from the villages. Mid-Wales is very far from the fairly large well-provided town which almost every family today wishes to visit for business purposes once a week or fortnight.

There is a further point concerning coal, which was mentioned by a number of hon. Members. My noble Friend the Member for Carmarthen put it in perspective. We remember the headlong closures, as she called them, of 1959. There will be closures now, but what a difference in the attitude of the Government of the day towards the consequences of whatever closures may prove necessary! I will not bandy probable figures, localities and closures across the Floor of the House. I think it would be most unwise for us at this stage to begin to speculate or prognosticate where and how many, which pits and how many men will be displaced. This is a matter of continuing change. The hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Box) said that he was delighted with the upsurge of production in the Welsh pits in the last few weeks. So are we. My right hon. Friend said that it may be that production will go up in some pits, and so they will come off whatever list there is of closures. I do not think therefore that we should serve the interests of the mining industry by going into this.

But what I will say is this. I have been impressed by the concern of the Opposition about the miners who will be displaced, as they think, from the old industry. I recall that between 1945 and 1964 the mining population was almost halved. There may be closures and redundancies—over a short period, we hope—now, but this is not a new thing. The decline of the mining population has been going on for a long time. But, somehow, it is in the year of the Labour Government that there is this strident protest and concern from the later-day saints opposite about the position of the miners. What a contrast with the attitude of the Government. The measures are described in today's White Paper. There is capital reconstruction involving the wiping out of £400 million, with an immediate gain per annum of £30 million to the National Coal Board.

I was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert), as well as others, to indicate what the Government are doing to help the mining industry. Here it is—something that no Government has ever done before, the wiping out of that dead capital and linking the depreciation with it. We are working hard on the expansion of training facilities. As some hon. Members have indicated, there are miners who, while not by any means totally disabled, need special training in order to fit into other work. There is the 5 per cent. preference for coal over oil in Government Department buildings. There are the special and substantial funds to meet social difficulty arising from closures. On top of all this, there is the recent scheduling of practically the whole of the South Wales coalfield as a development district and the sanctioning of advance factories in the valleys for which one or two of my hon. Friends made an eloquent plea.

I agree that where communities have established themselves in the valleys and where there is valuable social capital and, even more valuable, community capital, we should make every effort, compatible with efficiency, to bring industries into the areas. It may be a combination of both. I was asked whether we would place these factories in the valleys, at the mouths of the valleys, or on the coast. Some inevitably will be placed on the coast and others at the mouths of the valleys. There are fine sites here and there in South Wales where we may and, I hope, will be able to set up industrial estates, but there are also sites in the valleys themselves. We want a combination of all. Let us not be too dogmatic about this, but do what is pragmatically practical. Those are the measures on which I have been asked to speak about what we are doing for the coal areas.

I turn from industry and particularly coal to roads. I repeat what my right hon. Friend said—that we have been saddled with the five-year programme which the previous administration arranged. We can change it only at the point where the five years end, that is, what we can do is to improve five years ahead all the time. But apart from that, as my right hon. Friend explained, we have already been able to improve the heritage given to us by something more than £1 million per annum. It is not enough.

I entirely agree with what has been said about the importance of roads and of good communications for industry and tourism in Wales. The Welsh Economic Council and the Welsh Planning Board have made a special study of this. This is not the appropriate time for me to go into detail, but the House will be interested to know that the general attitude is that there should be not perhaps motorways, but dual carriageways along the North Coast through the Midlands and through South Wales, lateral, horizontal roads, East-West roads; and also a communicating link North and South. After all, this is a country and a nation needing to be enabled to come together. Present communications between North and South, although greatly improved in the past 20 years, need further improvement still.

Those are the priorities. I agree that the economic priority is the East-West connection, but close on its heels is the need for the people of Wales, as a national entity and as a community, to be able to travel from North to South freely, and when the new town materialises in Montgomery or thereabouts, the North-South road will obviously be an extremely important communication.