Clampdown on child abuse on the internet
The deep scar that has existed in the community fabric of Machynlleth in the wake of the murder of April Jones, may now, with time, have the chance to heal with the sentencing and imprisonment of Mark Bridger.
In the light of this horrific case, there have been increased demands from April’s family and from other organisations and individuals across the UK, for internet companies, such as Google, to take tougher action to stamp out images of child abuse and pornography online. But governments also have a responsibility to force these companies into taking real action.
I raised this with the First Minister last week and asked him to make representations to the Prime Minister and other heads of the devolved administrations on this, so that the strongest British case can be made to these companies that we are no longer prepared to tolerate this sickening material and that they have a moral and social responsibility to show real leadership and adopt a complete zero-tolerance policy in relation to this content. I was pleased that he agreed to do this, adding that he would pursue this to the "greatest extent that I can".
Wind Farms and Democracy
The hundreds of people that gathered in Welshpool last week on the opening day of Britain’s largest ever public inquiry into wind farms, once again demonstrates the strength of local feeling against the horrendous proposals which will see the industrialisation of our very beautiful and very special landscape. We now trust the inspector will examine the evidence carefully and come to the right conclusion.
There was positive news last week from the UK Government, who announced that local communities in England are to be given more powers to block onshore wind farms under 50MW. While this unfortunately will only affect England, as the responsibility for renewable energy under 50MW lies with the Welsh Government and Local Planning Authorities, it showed that at least UK Ministers were listening to communities that currently feel under siege by the development of onshore wind farms against their wishes.
With a real divergence now in planning policy between England and Wales, it seems to me that the ball is now firmly in the court of the Welsh Government and Carwyn Jones and that’s why I took the opportunity to raise this with the First Minister in questions this week. I asked him what he was going to do in Wales toempower local communities to stop a development at its earliest possible stage, if they did not want it to proceed in their area.
His response was that while the UK Government’s announcement looked ‘superficially attractive’ there were real problems in trying to ensure all those people who live within a given community are properly consulted. He also thought that there was already ‘robust’ guidance in place. This is an issue I shall be pursuing further with the First Minister and his colleagues.
Hydro Power
The UK Government’s announcement came the day after I led a Short Adjournment Debate on the need to rebalance Welsh renewable energy policy away from the over proliferation of onshore wind, towards other growth technologies like hydro power.
I believe the Welsh Government should be concentrating its efforts on hydro power, as it is one of the most cost effective means of producing clean, renewable electricity, with generally a higher efficiency, reliability and capacity factor than solar, wind and ocean energy technologies.
Yet issues of over regulation are making potential schemes unviable in Wales and this has to change.
If we develop more hydro power schemes, Wales has a very good opportunity to not only make a valuable contribution to the UK’s electricity generation needs but to also generate more local jobs and connect isolated areas up to the grid.
It is therefore very important that we have a policy in place which is well placed to make sure that we make best use of this resource.