Garden Festival Wales (Hansard, 1 February 1993)

§ 1. Mr. Ian Bruce
To ask the Secretary of State for Wales if he will make a statement on Garden Festival Wales.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Gwilym Jones)
The national garden festival was an extremely successful event and, despite the adverse weather from July onwards, it succeeded in attracting more than 2 million visitors.

§ Mr. Bruce
In congratulating the Welsh Office on its role in promoting the garden festival, may I ask my hon. Friend whether there was a greater benefit to the economy in general, not only through visitors and tourists, but in expanding the economy and demonstrating that the Government are wholly committed to regenerating jobs in south Wales?

§ Mr. Jones
On behalf of my right hon. Friends and myself, I am happy to accept my hon. Friend's congratulations, which are very much due to Philip Weekes and everyone else who worked with and for Garden Festival Wales Ltd. They did an exceptional job, 2 as did the local authorities—Blaenau Gwent borough council and Gwent county council. I remember that thousands of people attended on the last day and everyone who went to see the garden festival came away impressed by what can be done in reclamation and by the positive images of Wales that it presented.

§ Mr. Llew Smith
While I accept all the remarks about the people who made such an outstanding contribution to the garden festival, and while the Government helped to finance the festival and to bring about those good works, on the other hand the Government have brought about a situation in which basic credit approvals for Blaenau Gwent have been slashed by more than £600,000. Environmental schemes in other parts of the constituency will have to be slashed, so the good work done through the garden festival is being outweighed by bad works in other parts of the borough. Will the Minister meet the local authorities to discuss the fact that the basic credit approvals for Blaenau Gwent are the lowest for any district council in Wales?

§ Mr. Jones
I am certainly not so pessimistic as the hon. Gentleman. I seem to recollect that the Government provided more than £30 million in support for the garden festival. That was a substantial and worthwhile investment for the local authority to build on. I know that Blaenau Gwent borough council and Gwent county council have formed a partnership with the Welsh Development Agency—the Victoria partnership—which has some interesting plans to take that forward. I look forward to developing the end use of the site.