§ 1. Mr. Wigleyasked the Secretary of State for Wales how many additional civil servants, and what associated annual budgeted expenditure, came under his control following the transfer of responsibilities for employment to the Welsh Office.
§ The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. John Morris)I have taken over responsibility for the activities of the Manpower Services Commission and the careers service in Wales. This involves 17 posts within the Welsh Office. Estimates for Welsh Office expenditure on the above services in Wales will be presented to Parliament in due course.
§ Mr. WigleyWill the Secretary of State accept our best wishes for his tenure of responsibility over at least parts of employment in Wales and our hope that he may be more successful than previous regimes in London at overcoming the problems? Will he give an assurance that he will take a quantified approach, trying to identify how many jobs are needed in each part of Wales and using his employment brief, his industry brief and his responsibility for the Welsh Development Agency together? Further, will he consider bringing forward an economic plan for Wales aimed at overcoming the unemployment problems there?
§ Mr. MorrisI am grateful to the hon. Member for Caernarvon (Mr. Wigley) for his kind remarks, although I do not perhaps agree with him in respect of 1070 his advocacy of an economic plan. At the meeting that I had with the Manpower Services Commission on 11th November, I said, following the tenor of the speech I made when I opened the jobcentre in Port Talbot in July, that I wanted an approach to be made, bringing together the various strands of responsibility that I hold, on a travel-to-work basis. It is my hope—and the Manpower Services Commission has agreed—to start with two pilot areas in North Wales in order to look at the industrial needs and at the employment and training needs. We shall seek to marry them, which I have the unique opportunity of doing because so many of these responsibilities are under one roof.
§ Mr. Ioan EvansDoes my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the problems of unemployment in Wales cannot be separated from the unemployment problems in the rest of Britain, and that if we are to solve them we must solve them in the whole of Britain? Does he agree also that there should be no further transfer of functions to the Welsh Office until we can obtain the decision of the people of Wales on their attitude to the Welsh Assembly?
§ Mr. MorrisI think that my hon. Friend is mistaken, in the sense that we are not devolving. We are decentralising certain functions, including economic functions, which we believe that it is essential to leave in the Welsh Office as part of the central approach of the United Kingdom Government. There is an opportunity here to bring together industry, which has worked so well since decentralisation—we have had substantial gains from this in Wales—my responsibility for manpower services and, in due course, further and higher education as well. I believe that here we have a unique opportunity of tackling, area by area, the problems of Wales.
§ Mr. Wyn RobertsIs the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that, according to a Written Answer given on Friday last, beween 1st March 1974 and 1st July 1977 the staff of the Welsh Office increased from 1,093 to 1,541, which is an increase of 41 per cent., compared with the general increase in the Civil Service of 6.1 per cent.? Can he assure the House that this increase is entirely accounted for by the increase in functions on the part of the Welsh Office?
§ Mr. MorrisOne would have thought that the hon. Member would have welcomed the increase, since it is due to the transfer of functions. The Health Service transfer came, I believe, on 1st April 1974, industry came in July 1976, and there has been the transfer of a host of other, minor functions. Generally, the drive in the Welsh Office has been to economise on the number of civil servants in exactly the same way as in the central Departments of Whitehall. What we have done is to decentralise new functions on to the shoulders of the Welsh Office. I should have thought that there would have been a word of welcome for that from the hon. Member.