Welsh Questions today witnessed a spectacular stumble by the normally sure-footed Peter Hain:
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”?
Complacent or what?
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.
Well, yes, I’m sure Wales is doing very nicely compared with Rwanda, which, according to the CIA World Factbook (excellent reference source, despite its spooky title) is:
a poor rural country with about 85% of the population engaged in (mainly subsistence) agriculture and some mineral and agro-processing… The 1994 genocide decimated Rwanda’s fragile economic base, severely impoverished the population, particularly women, and temporarily stalled the country’s ability to attract private and external investment… a majority still live below the poverty line of 250 Rwandan francs per day (about US$0.43)… Rwanda continues to receive substantial aid money and obtained IMF-World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative debt relief in 2005-06.
On the other hand, I’m not entirely certain that the people of Wales would be wholly comfortable in the knowledge that their Secretary of State regards the landlocked African country as an appropriate benchmark for gauging their economic progress.
As my Mother used to say, “Eat up the children in Biafra would be glad of this” lol.