Commenting after Peter Hain boasted at Welsh Questions today that Wales is more prosperous than Rwanda, Shadow Wales Minister David Jones said:
“It says it all that after 13 years of economic mismanagement under Labour, all Peter Hain can crow about is the fact that Wales is more prosperous than one of the poorest countries of the third world.
“Mr Hain’s unguarded comment underlines the full extent of Labour’s lack of ambition for Wales.”
We are told (not having access to Hansard) that the exchange in the Commons was as follows:
Mr David Jones (Clwyd, West) (Con): Given that recently published figures show that economic inactivity in Wales is worse than in any other part of the UK, that three Welsh local authority areas are among the five poorest in the country, and that Wales has the highest rate of severe child poverty of all the home nations, what did the Secretary of State have in mind when he boasted last week that “Wales is still a wealthy country”?
Mr Hain: Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, compared with Rwanda and most countries in the rest of the world—this is the point that I was making, if he had not chosen to take that quotation out of context—Wales is indeed still a wealthy country? Yes, we have suffered setbacks in the past few years, but we suffered terrible setbacks in the ’80s and ’90s. One of the reasons why we are in a strong position is that we have moved forward with investment to support businesses and the economy. That is one of the reasons why the number on incapacity benefit in Wales has come down by more than a fifth, when under the Conservatives it rose year on year.
