Clwyd South: Mabon ap Gwynfor – Plaid Cymru

As part of Wrexham.com’s General Election 2015 coverage we invited all candidates from Clwyd South to take part in a written Q&A and present their own written biography:

Twitter: @mabonapgwynfor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mabonapgwynfor?fref=ts

Personal Statement:  Mabon ap Gwynfor, 36, is the father of three young children, and is married to Nia. Mabon is a Governor of the local school in Cynwyd, near Corwen, and is a director of one of Wales’ national Theatres. He has been a long time health campaigner having campaigned to keep hospital beds in the Dee Valley, before establishing the North Wales Health Alliance three years ago to fight for improved services. He has been at the forefront of campaigns for community health and maternity services. Mabon has also been active in campaigns for public services, including the Plas Madoc Leasiure Centre Campaign; Bus Services; Care Homes; and others. Before his current employment as a Senior political Adviser, Mabon was a regional manager for one of the UKs largest Health Charities, and previously he ran a national Music Centre.

Each candidate has also been invited to take part in a Q&A….

What do you feel is the top local issue for this election and what is your policy on it?

Jobs and the economy is the number one issue facing people. Regardless of how much politicians from London tell us that things are improving financially, the truth is that it is not felt here. 40% of people in Clwyd South earn less than the living wage (£7.85p/h), and agency work and zero hour contracts are rife. This needs to stop. Government needs to legislate to make the living wage a minimum wage, and ban zero hour contracts. The Government are currently balancing the books on the backs of the poorest. We need to stop austerity (cuts) which is hurting the most vulnerable and damaging our communities, and instead invest in our communities. There is money available – by scrapping Trident (£100bn), get a fair deal for Wales (£1.2bn extra a year), a financial transaction tax of 0.005% on City trading, clamping down on tax avoidance and dodging – all of these and more would secure investment in our communities.

The town centre is a focus for the area, what policies do you and/or your party have to help regenerate it?

While Wrexham Town Centre has been a topic of contention over recent years, the political debate forgets our High Streets in Cefn, Coedpoeth, Rhos, Ruabon, Chirk, and other important centres in the region. Our High Streets are the heart of our communities, and we would encourage more people to shop locally by improving transport links. Plaid Cymru would extend the current small business rate relief to cover all businesses whose rateable value is £15k or less. 83,000 businesses in Wales would benefit from this. We would also introduce free town centre parking which would be off-set by bringing car parks into the business rates system, so that businesses operating in out-of-town retail parks will have to pay business rates on their car parks. Finally we’d increase public procurement so that local firms win more of the public contracts. Procurement departments will have to consider value for money and how it will support local economy, not just go for the cheapest bidder. This would also create 50k jobs in Wales.

The current MP (Wrexham) was elected with just 24% of the electorate voting for him. Do you think this is a problem? What have you done to attract and encourage people to vote?

Plaid Cymru – The Party Of Wales has been campaigning on many issues locally over many years. This campaigning, standing up for our communities against London and Cardiff Cuts and against organisations who want to exploit our people and resources for their own profits, has attracted many people to the Party in recent years. I regularly email over 3000 people in the constituency informing them of developments with campaigns and inviting them to attend events. I also have an active Facebook page and Twitter account where dozens of people contact me on a daily basis. During this campaign our volunteers have so far hand delivered over 30,000 leaflets. Unlike other parties who are funded by wealthy individuals or organisations we depend entirely on small donations by local people, and also on local people to walk knock on doors and deliver leaflets. We have also held street stalls in our High Streets trying to engage with people in an open and transparent way.

What are your views on how a Welsh town like Wrexham sits inside a Welsh Government and Westminster system and inside Europe?

Devolution of power should not stop in Cardiff, but should reach all parts of Wales. The Labour Government in Cardiff has been given the power to borrow money to improve infrastructure in Wales, but instead of distributing that money equally they have decide to spend the whole £1bn on an 11 mile stretch of road to by-pass Newport in south east Wales. The London Government will be spending £80bn on train line from Leeds to London (HS2), which we are paying for, but will get none of the benefits. This area is crying out for investment in infrastructure, but is once again ignored. Plaid Cymru wants to see wealth distributed equally throughout the UK and throughout Wales. If we were to get our share of the HS2 spending that would be approximately £4bn extra over 30 years. We want each nation and region in the UK to be treated equally. Parity with Scotland would mean an extra £1.2bn of our money coming back to Wales to spend on our health, education, and public services.

Where do you most strongly disagree with your party’s manifesto? (For the independents: What do you most strongly disagree with that the current government has done).

The Plaid Cymru manifesto is the only political manifesto that refers to a citizens constitution – a written constitution for Wales guided by us, the people. But I would go a step further. I’d like to see us introduce a Participatory Budget. This could, and should be done, immediately at all levels, for all public expenditure. By including people in the budgeting process for Government finances, Health Expenditure, right down to Community Councils, people will be far more understanding and supportive of actions taken in their name. Currently there is a lack of transparency and trust with Government at all levels. Public outrage has been palpable in Wrexham with the closure of Leisure services, bus routes, libraries etc. A Participatory Budget would start to tackle this. It is being done in cities such as Puerto Allegre, in Brazil (population 3m), Kerala in India, and Freiberg in Germany to name but a few.

As an MP you may get the chance to bring in a new law via a Private Members bill; if you got this opportunity what law would you seek to bring in?

When I was selected as the Plaid Cymru candidate for Clwyd South one of my main priorities was to tackle Fracking. My Private Members Bill would be to call for a ban on Fracking. The fundamental principle that I have against Fracking is that it would commit us to another generation of fossil fuels and the environmental damage that this would bring. But Fracking is also a dangerous and dirty industry which could poison our water supply, and in turn our food chain.

Wrexham is due to become the home to one of the largest prisons in the UK? What is your stance on this?

North Wales needs a prison to accommodate some 500 inmates. But we do not need what is dubbed a Titan Prison. Titan Prisons don’t work, and we are seeing other States close them down and move to smaller facilities. They are notoriously bad at rehabilitating the inmates and staff morale is usually low with a high turnover of staff. Staff training takes time therefore it is likely that the top jobs will go to former staff from prisons which have recently been closed in England. Titan Prisons also have poorer records, and higher levels of trouble which will in turn bring a bad name to Wrexham. Finally it will also bring significant added pressure onto our already over stretched infrastructure, more especially our health service. Once again, the views of the people of this area have been ignored.

The NHS is one of the main talking points heading into the General Election? What changes would you make to how the service is governed and delivered?

I have campaigned for many years to improve our health services, participating in the campaigns to save community hospital beds in Llangollen, save the neonatal unit at the Maelor and now campaigning to save the breast cancer service at the Maelor and stop the downgrading of maternity services in north Wales. Wales has the lowest number of GPs per head of population, and around a third of GPs in Wrexham are due to retire over the next five years. We would employ an extra 1000 doctors for Wales. This would start to tackle the problems that we are seeing at our A&E’s and waiting times for surgeries. We would also stop the downgrading and centralising of our services, and introduce more community nurses. We also need to integrate health and social services, to bring down waiting times and stop the practice of patients being passed from one organisation to another, and the delayed discharges from hospital into the community.

What are your views on fracking and why?

Please see my response to 5, above.

What do you think makes you stand out from the other six candidates?

As the acclaimed Human Rights activist and author Alice Walker said, ‘Activism is my rent for living’. I am an active campaigner, unafraid to challenge the establishment and stand up for my principles. I am also a member of a political party which is not answerable to London, but uniquely am answerable to the people of Wales, putting the interests of our communities at the heart of everything we do. For instance when the Tories put forward a Welfare Budget Cap, which will put 345,000 more children into poverty, impact on severe disablement allowance, incapacity benefits, child benefit, maternity and paternity pay, universal credit and housing benefit, driving more people into poverty and foodbanks, Labour voted for it, Plaid Cymru voted against.

What do you think to the diversity of the list of candidates for Wrexham?
Not very representative of our society, but an improvement on the days when only old, pale males were candidates.

Do you think you will have the power and or influence to deliver on your promises to the people of Wrexham, if so, why?

This election is different from any other. No one party will have a working majority, and the largest parties will ask the other parties for help to form a Government. So a vote for Plaid Cymru – The Party Of Wales is a positive vote, knowing that a Plaid MP for this area could have real power and influence decisions. A strong group of Plaid Cymru MPs will insist on an end to austerity, and end to the cuts, and investment into our communities. Investment in infrastructure would mean more jobs, better pay and an improved local economy. At last Wales would be on the agenda. We have been ignored for far too long, and nobody has stood up for this area. Plaid Cymru is unique in that our priority isn’t to cow-tow to the financial markets in London, but instead to fight for our communities here. Vote for Plaid Cymru and insist that Wales gets equal treatment to Scotland and receives our share of investment.