2. Urgent Question: The Closure of the Department for Work and Pensions’ Office in Llanelli

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:26 pm on 31 January 2017.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:26, 31 January 2017

I thank the Member for that. I’m very happy to write to both the Secretary of State for Wales and the Minister responsible for this on the grounds that the Member has outlined. There is the possibility that the Member would like to put his own views into the consultation. There is a consultation website at www.gov.uk/dwp/consultations. I’ve tried it myself and it’s very easy to find. I would urge all Members to put their own views in on that basis. But I’m more than happy to say that we will write directly to the Secretary of State and remind him of those words.

I would just emphasise, though, that we are in conversation with the DWP on the employability programme that we’re running, and we will be taking this forward as part of that. But I don’t have any more information than the Member about the job losses. It wasn’t shared with us in advance. We knew that there was an estate rationalisation going on, but we didn’t have the detail. It is not devolved, so they’re within their rights to do it in that way, although it’s disappointing that they didn’t see fit to share it with us in advance to see whether we could ameliorate some of the effects.