5. Debate on NNDM6753: The Secretary of State for Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:41 pm on 27 June 2018.

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Photo of Neil McEvoy Neil McEvoy Independent 3:41, 27 June 2018

I'm disappointed to be here today to speak on this motion of no confidence in the Secretary of State for Wales. He should be Wales's voice in Westminster, but it's clear that he's not that at all. His record is one of absolute, utter failure. With Alun Cairns as Secretary of State, we've seen rail electrification cancelled. In how many countries in the world is it impossible to take an electric train between the two biggest cities? Is there anywhere else in Europe? It's an absolutely shocking state of affairs.

Now we have the Swansea tidal lagoon cancelled. Here was a chance for Wales to be world leaders in renewable energy. The kind of re-industrialisation that Wales desperately needs in the twenty-first century, but Alun Cairns didn't see it that way. He has allowed this Government to scrap that project under his watch. If he had any courage—political courage—then he would have resigned over it, or perhaps he clearly just doesn't care.

If we think of the Severn Bridge, the Secretary of State continues to claim that there is a silent majority who want to see the bridge renamed, when all the polling evidence from the leading companies in the UK shows that a tiny, tiny percentage of people support a name change.

The real question here for me is why Labour is voting against this motion, and just 10 or so Labour AMs are here to debate this motion. They clearly have confidence still in the Secretary of State for Wales. It doesn't surprise me, because I've known for a long time that the Conservatives and Labour are two sides of the same coin—red and blue Tories, working together to keep Wales down.

The people of Wales have lost confidence in the Conservatives with so many projects not delivered and promises broken. But we can have nuclear reactors, nuclear mud and superprisons dumped on us. And this is the Wales that we live in today. The simple truth is that Labour are just as bad as the Conservatives. They wouldn't even admit that they supported the change in the name of the bridge. It took a freedom of information request to discover that. I wonder if, on Monday, we'll see the First Minister bending his knee to the monarchy just like the Conservative Prime Minister before him.

Wales needs to stand on its own two feet and Labour is stopping us doing that. The Conservatives are stopping us doing that. So, it's time for the Welsh people to stand up, because clearly we'll get nothing while we keep being overlooked time and time again, as part of this very unequal, so-called United Kingdom.