Cairns challenged on first minister's 'kind offer'

Today was supposed to be the day Business Secretary Greg Clark revealed the fate of the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon.

For reasons that have yet to be properly explained to me, that isn't happening. But as Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns was due to answer MPs' questions in the House of Commons, the delay in announcing a decision on the lagoon left MPs with plenty of ammunition.

Mr Cairns insisted an announcement would be made "in due course", that curious meaningless Whitehall phase that ministers have been deploying for more than a year now.

Several Labour and Plaid Cymru MPs raised the issue. Alun Cairns told them: "I would really like the tidal lagoon to go ahead but of course it must be value for money."

Swansea East Labour MP Carolyn Harris linked the delay with the scrapping of rail electrification to Swansea and asked: "When is the secretary of state going to start speaking up for the people of Wales?"

Alun Cairns replied: "No announcement has been made on the tidal lagoon because we're still looking at the numbers and we're doing anything and everything possible to try to make this fit. You shouldn't want it to go ahead if it's not."

Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards told him: "The secretary of state is fast becoming the Grim Reaper of Welsh politics - the bearer of bad news. When he pulls the plug on the tidal lagoon, there will be huge public anger in Wales.

"Isn't it the reality that many people will not only wonder, what's the point of the current secretary of state for Wales but what is the point of having a colonial secretary at all?"

Shadow Welsh Secretary Christina Rees asked for Tidal Lagoon Power to be given the same deal as the Hinkley Point C nuclear power site.

Mr Cairns said Hinkley was "extremely expensive" and the highest the UK government would pay for electricity.

He added: "We've already said that the tidal lagoon as it stands under the current proposals is twice the price of nuclear so clearly we wouldn't want to be in that position. But I would add that I really want this project to happen if it's good value for money for the taxpayer and my record is strong.

"I was the one who took TLP [Tidal Lagoon Power] to meet the special advisers in Number 10 at the very beginning in 2012 and it was from that moment on that this project was taken seriously."

That didn't satisfy Christina Rees, who told him: "The whole of Wales is waiting for this decision because the tidal lagoon is not just about Swansea. If this UK Tory government accepts Carwyn Jones's kind offer then the tidal lagoons for Cardiff, for Colwyn Bay and Newport will quickly become a very real prospect, bringing jobs and prosperity to the whole of Wales boosting our vital steel industry."

Speaker John Bercow intervened to offer this assessment of Christina Rees' distinctive despatch box style: "I sometimes wonder whether your questions are more in the manner of an academic thesis but I trust they'll be published because they're in Hansard."

Mr Cairns then suggested that "Carwyn Jones's kind offer" would cover merely a small fraction of the cost. He said the UK government had shared the numbers with the Welsh Government, which had not pushed back or rejected them.