Posted: Mon 18th Apr 2016

Clwyd South: Ken Skates – Welsh Labour Party

Wrexham.com for people living in or visiting the Wrexham area
This article is old - Published: Monday, Apr 18th, 2016

As part of Wrexham.com’s Welsh Assembly Election coverage we invited all candidates from Clwyd South and Wrexham to participate in a video interview and submit a small bio on themselves and why they are standing in the election.

Personal Statement – Ken Skates – Welsh Labour Party

It’s been a great honour to serve Clwyd South since 2011.

In the last five years, and in spite of savage Tory cuts to the funding for Wales, we’ve secured new health centres, new school buildings and new investment in our communities.

Together, we’ve also fought for vital services to be saved from Tory cuts, including bus services and the much-loved Plas Madoc Leisure Centre
.
GCSE results have improved by 8% since 2011, and we now lead England in 12 A-Level subjects. Our apprenticeship schemes are also significantly more successful than those across the border. In fact, the gap is so big that training providers in Wales would have their contracts cancelled by the Welsh Labour Government if they were performing at the English average.

That’s because, here in Wales, we’ve set our ambitions higher.

Through Jobs Growth Wales, Welsh Labour has created more than 1,000 job opportunities for young people in Wrexham and Denbighshire, including at places like Splash Magic (formerly Plas Madoc), Canolfan Ni in Corwen and Fat Dubbers in Coedpoeth. It’s a scheme that was opposed by other political parties, who’ve also opposed our support for students.

Because we’ve had a Welsh Labour Government, students from Wales have finished university with £22,000 less debt than their English counterparts. We’ve also retained Education Maintenance Allowance grants, whereas in England the Tories and Liberal Democrats abolished it. More than 2,000 people in our area currently receive these grants.

Unemployment has fallen faster here than in almost any other part of the UK, with record inward investment leading to better jobs, closer to home.

In North Wales, we now spend more per person on health and social care than England, and we have more doctors than ever before. Yes, our Welsh NHS is under significant pressure as a result of Tory cuts to Wales, but we’ve refused to follow the UK Government’s failed top-down, multi-billion pound reorganisation.

In England, A&E departments have had to close. Although our brilliant staff at Wrexham Maelor have been under tremendous pressure, they – and all other A&E departments in Wales – have remained open.

We won’t go to war with junior doctors as the Tories have. In fact, we’ll work to attract even more doctors to Wales, where there will be a warm welcome and a Welsh Labour Government that values them.

Now is the time to accelerate the integration of health and social care – to strengthen the Labour movement’s greatest achievement – not to demoralise and devastate it.

We’ll also oppose Plaid Cymru’s plans to cause chaos in the NHS through mass reorganisation, and instead we’ll create an £80m New Treatment Fund to help people here access drugs for rare and life-threatening illnesses and conditions first.

Welsh Labour will invest in a new generation of integrated health and social services centres, and I will continue to press for Cefn Mawr, Corwen, Brymbo, Rhos and Hanmer, among other areas, to benefit.

Our tax cut for all small businesses will help our high streets and town centres. And, for working parents, we will offer 30 hours free childcare, 48 weeks a year, for three and four-year-olds.

I want to continue to help the people of Clwyd South to overcome the devastating challenges that Tory austerity has presented us with, so I’m proud that Welsh Labour will support the further roll-out of the Living Wage and will take action where zero-hours contracts exploit vulnerable people.

We will create 100,000 quality, all-age, apprenticeships and create a North Wales Metro, consisting of integrated transport and ticketing. This will include direct and regular services with key hubs and employment bases across North Wales and the North West of England.
Welsh Labour will also invest more than £240m to improve the A55, A494 and A483. I know how frustrating congestion on the A483 at Halton can be, as I live in Ruabon and regularly commute between home and Cardiff at peak times. I will welcome work to alleviate congestion.

I have demanded – and will continue to demand – that the UK Government delivers 4G mobile reception to at least 97% of Clwyd South customers by the end of 2017, and I will press for BT to honour its contractual agreement to connect 96% of properties to superfast broadband by next year.

I firmly believe that we should respect one another and respect the communities we live in. That means we need to save much-valued community assets from closure.

We did it with Plas Madoc Leisure Centre, but with Tory austerity showing no sign of ending we will need to work together again to ensure the longer-term survival of our pubs, banks and other key community facilities. Welsh Labour will help libraries survive by investing at least £1m in their transformation in the next Assembly term. Cefn Mawr has already benefited.

Right now we are witnessing the chaos of a Tory UK Government that is split down the middle and obsessed with its own interests, not yours. The disgrace of offshore banking, the lack of support for UK steel, cruel cuts to the benefits of our most vulnerable citizens and the shameless axing of crucial support for communities is leaving deep scars.

But where the Tories dismantle, Welsh Labour builds. Where they divide, we unite. I hope we will go on together, fighting injustice, building better communities, helping the most vulnerable in our society and delivering health and wealth for all.

Ken’s Twitter is @KenSkates4AM and Facebook is www.facebook.com/kenskates4am.



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