For the first time members were permitted to speak in Welsh, if they wished, and Mr Davies announced that he hoped to extend the public finance initiative, with the pounds 1bn Cardiff Bay developmentscheme an early target.. The committee’s standing orders allow for five such co-options. No reply was forthcoming so the meeting in Tory- free Wales went ahead – Tory-free.Meanwhile, the committee got down to business. Six weeks ago Mr Davies wrote to his shadow – William Hague – inviting him to nominate Tory MPs from England to participate.

“Totalitarian dictators would be taking a leaf from the book of Welsh secretary Ron Davies.”The roots of his excursion to Mold from his Lancashire constituency are buried deep in the Tories’ post-election confusion. At 39, he is three years older than his leader and almost as relentless in pursuit of his goal.He did not try to force an entry to the committee, which considers all legislation relating to Wales “I wouldn’t dignify the meeting with my presence. The Welsh Grand is the Welsh bland – a slap in the face of democracy,” he complained later. And like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who regularly find Stormont a no-go area, Mr Evans experienced the closed-door treatment. However, that was insufficient to win a single seat.Being opposed to proportional representation hardly made his plea valid. “Employer subsidies offer a clear opportunity for collusion and fraud,” said Mr Duncan Smith.He also raised doubts that Mr Brown will be able to secure the pounds 4.7bn savings on social security fraud that Kenneth Clarke, the former chancellor, included in his Budget figures to balance the books.Leading article, page 19. A small demonstration was mounted outside the local council’s headquarters with a handful of party members showing solidarity with Nigel Evans, MP for Ribble Valley, named by William Hague last month as interlocutor-in- chief on Wales, even though he was denied the title of shadow Welsh Secretary.
Mr Evans reckoned he should have been invited in because the Tories collected 20 per cent of the Welsh vote on 1 May.

The Tories tasted the politics of exclusion yesterday when the Welsh Grand Committee – all 40 MPs in the principality – met at Mold in Flintshire. Gordon Brown, his Labour successor, is widely expected to be ready to cut mortgage-interest tax relief, worth pounds 30 a week to those on average earnings, in a pounds 2-3bn tax raid on the middle classes, to damp down inflation. He said Mr Brown had stated before the election that there were “no public expenditure commitments which require extra taxes” but there are clear signs at Westminster that Mr Brown was preparing to blame Mr Clarke for leaving a “black hole” in the accounts.Mr Brown’s wide-ranging package will hit drivers, smokers, and but the underlying concern is over the rising value of the pound, driven by the speculation surrounding the creation of a single currency with a soft euro.There are fears that the Bank of England may increase interest rates next week, threatening a further rise in the pound, unless Mr Brown convinces the City in his Budget that he will reduce the inflationary pressures through personal tax increases, in addition to the pounds 5bn windfall tax to pay for the welfare-to-work package.Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory spokesman on social security, claimed last night that ministers had been warned that social security fraud with a welfare-to-work programme estimated pounds 300m could blow a hole in the Chancellor’s calculations.Mr Brown will announce that pounds 750m is to be spent over four years on welfare- to-work schemes, but Mr Duncan Smith claimed ministers had been told the system of paying employers to take on young unemployed people was open to fraud.He wrote to Frank Field, the social security minister, challenging him over the figures after he brushed aside the claims in the Commons. Ministers said the Budget would be less harsh than many were predicting, and that the Chancellor would produce a balanced package.The pain will be offset by the schemes to help the unemployed back to work, with the prospect of a 10p in the pound starting rate of income tax for the low-paid.Peter Lilley, the shadow Chancellor, said the “nods and winks” about the impact of the Budget on the middle classes were “testing the water for a betrayal of trust” by the Government.