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Yesterday at the Welsh Affairs Select Committee Peter Hain found himself insisting that the Wales Office is "a pretty feisty midget batting for Wales ... if midgets can bat for Wales."

Today he's left the cricketing analogies behind. Instead he's batted off Conservative questioning about the state of the Welsh economy by delighting in the fact that Wales is better off than Rwanda.

The conversation during Welsh Questions went a bit like this.

David Jones MP: "Given that figures recently published show that economic
inactivity in Wales is worse than in any other part of the UK; that three Welsh
local authority areas are among the five poorest in the country; and that Wales
has the highest rate of severe child poverty of all the home nations; what did
you have in mind when you boasted last week that Wales is still a wealthy
country? Complacent or what?"

Granted, when David Jones fixes you in his sights and goes for it, it can be a disconcerting experience.

Hr Hain appears to have been disconcerted.

"Do you not agree, that compared with Rwanda and most countries in the rest of the world - most countries in the rest of the world is the point I was making if you'd not chosen to take that quote out of context - that Wales is indeed still a wealthy country?
"Yes, we have suffered setbacks in the last few years. We suffered terrible setbacks in the 1980s and the 1990s, and one of the reasons that we are in a strong position is that we have moved forward with investment to support businesses, to support the economy, and that is one of the reasons why incapacity benefit has come down by over a fifth when under the Conservatives it was rising year upon year."

Welsh journalists have been hurriedly checking UN statistics. They tell us in 2005 77% of Rwanda's population lived below the international poverty line of 1.25 US dollars a day.

You can't argue with Mr Hain on the facts then.

UPDATE

A mea culpa from the Wales Office.

"Frankly, I could have chosen my words more carefully. Of course no one is suggesting that Wales has ever suffered from poverty on the same scale as in Africa.

"My point was that home repossessions and job losses in Wales are, thankfully, at a much lower level than under the disastrous recessions of the 1980s and 1990s when Conservative Governments were in power."

A mea culpa that doesn't take its eye off the ball mind.

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