# Glyn Davies

# Glyn Davies (politician)

Glyn Davies (born 16 February 1944) is a Welsh Conservative Party politician and livestock farmer from Montgomeryshire. He was a regional member of the [National Assembly](/organizations/national-assembly) for Wales, now the Senedd, for Mid and West Wales from 1999 for eight years, and Member of Parliament for the Montgomeryshire constituency from 6 May 2010 until Parliament was dissolved on 6 November 2019.

He was brought up on a family farm near Castle Caereinion and was principal of the livestock firm T. E. Davies & Son, and a joint owner of Granary Restaurants, with premises in Welshpool and Oswestry. He sat on Montgomeryshire District Council from 1979 to 1989, chairing the council from 1985 to 1989 after periods as chair of its planning committee (1982–87) and finance committee (1987–89). On 1 April 1989 he became chairman of the Development Board for Rural Wales and, at the same time, a member of the Wales Tourist Board and an ex officio member of the Welsh Development Agency; he resigned all three appointments on 12 May 1994 after the Public Accounts Committee delivered a critical report on the rural board.

At the 1999 Assembly election he finished second to the Liberal Democrat Mick Bates in the Montgomeryshire constituency and entered the Assembly second on the Conservative regional list, serving as spokesman on agriculture and the rural economy and later on finance. In 2010 he gained the parliamentary seat from [Lembit Öpik](/people/lembit-opik) of the [Liberal Democrats](/organizations/liberal-democrats), polling 13,976 votes (41.3 per cent) to Öpik's 12,792 (37.8 per cent), a majority of 1,184 on a turnout of 69.4 per cent. He was re-elected in 2015 with 15,204 votes and in 2017 with 18,075. He twice served as parliamentary private secretary to the Secretary of State for Wales, under [Cheryl Gillan](/people/cheryl-gillan) and later [Alun Cairns](/people/alun-cairns).

In a Westminster Hall debate in May 2011 he said that plans for hundreds of wind turbines, an electricity substation and pylons in mid Wales would "totally destroy" the area. On 15 May 2019, aged 75, he told his constituency association that he would not stand again, describing frustration that the Brexit impasse had left the [House of Commons](/organizations/house-of-commons) "going round in circles" without taking decisions. He did not contest the December 2019 general election, at which [Craig Williams](/people/craig-williams) held Montgomeryshire for the Conservatives with 20,020 votes and a majority of 12,138.

## Early life and education

### Childhood and schooling

Glyn Davies was born on 16 February 1944 on a family farm near the Montgomeryshire village of Castle Caereinion. In a Westminster Hall debate on 10 May 2011 he said he had been born in mid-Wales on an upland farm that he still owned, and that he was then living about a mile from it. He was educated at Castle Caereinion Primary School and at Llanfair Caereinion High School.

*The former Castle Caereinion primary school building.*

He told the Commons on 2 October 2019 that he knew of no ancestor born outside Montgomeryshire, or Sir Drefaldwyn, and that, as far as he had been able to find out, every ancestor had spoken Welsh as a first language. His parents, both first-language Welsh speakers, had moved from the Welsh-speaking villages of Llanerfyl and Pontrobert to Castle Caereinion and Berriew, which he described as predominantly English-speaking. He and his five sisters were, he said, the first generation of their Davies, Lloyd and Evans families not to grow up bilingual. He did not remember his parents speaking Welsh in front of the children, and said that was not a criticism and not unusual: Welsh was then treated as "the language of failure", in what he called the age of the Welsh Not.

He left education at 16 to join his father on the family farm during a long illness. In the early 1960s he wrote a 20,000-word essay, "The Future of the Welsh Language", for an eisteddfod competition that accepted entries in English or Welsh. He said the piece took weeks of research, that his reward was to win the chair and to be crowned bard, and that the essay predicted the end of Welsh as a spoken language. He later called that conclusion common at the time, including among academics, and too pessimistic.

### Study at Aberystwyth

Davies returned to formal study as a mature student. At the age of 50 he chose to study for a Diploma in International Law and Politics at Aberystwyth University. On his parliamentary website he wrote that he attended in order to broaden his knowledge of politics and that he gained the diploma. A BBC profile dated 1 September 1999, prepared when he entered the National Assembly for Wales, listed his education as Llanfair Caereinion High School and the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, the name then still used for the college. The same profile gave his date of birth as 16 February 1944 and his occupation as principal of T. E. Davies & Son, livestock farmers, so the diploma came after decades on the family farm rather than straight from school.

The university's department of international politics, founded in 1919 with a £20,000 endowment from David Davies as a memorial to students killed or wounded in the First World War, describes itself as the first of its kind. In May 2010 the university included him among twelve alumni returned as MPs and, unlike the degrees it listed for the others, specified that his qualification was the diploma taken at 50.

## Farming, local government and public bodies

### The family farm

Before national office, Davies's work was livestock farming in Montgomeryshire. He told the House of Commons in 2011 that he had been born in mid-Wales on an upland farm he still owned, and that he lived about a mile from it.) In 2019 he said he had left education at 16 to join his father on the family farm during a long illness. The register of members' interests described him as a self-employed farmer and listed a farmhouse, bungalow and farm buildings near Castle Caereinion, with other Montgomeryshire property from which he drew rent. His local association said he was born and bred on a family farm near that village, and that he and his wife Bobbie lived at Cil Farm, Berriew.

A BBC profile at his election to the National Assembly in 1999 named him principal of T. E. Davies & Son, livestock farmers, and joint owner of Granary Restaurants, with a livestock farm in Powys and restaurant buildings in Welshpool and Oswestry. The profile also recorded membership of the National Farmers' Union, the Farmers' Union of Wales, the Country Land and Business Association and Farmers Ferry Ltd.

### Montgomeryshire District Council

The same profile recorded him as a councillor on Montgomeryshire District Council from 1979 to 1989, chairman of the planning committee from 1982 to 1987, chairman of the finance committee from 1987 to 1989, and chairman of the council from 1985 to 1989. In 1990 an MP recalled meeting him on 9 May 1988 at Powys Castle, at a Welsh Affairs Committee hearing, when he was already finance-committee chairman.

In 1986, during that chairmanship, [Elizabeth II](/people/elizabeth-ii) toured Montgomeryshire, including Montgomery. Davies later said the day ran from Machynlleth to Llanidloes, Newtown and Berriew, where he lived, and ended in Welshpool. After the Queen walked down Broad Street he gave a reception at the council offices, and said the cost took his chairman's allowance for the whole three-year term. Guests included the Lord Lieutenant, Colonel Lyon Corbett-Winder, whom Davies said he had followed as chairman of Berriew Community Council, the Secretary of State for Wales, Nicholas Edwards, and about 100 others.

### Development Board for Rural Wales

The Development Board for Rural Wales, also called Mid Wales Development, was created by the Development of Rural Wales Act 1976 and established in 1977 to promote economic and social development in rural mid-Wales. From its base at Newtown it built and let factories, made grants and loans, and managed rented housing. A 1996 written answer stated that Davies joined the board on 8 July 1986 and became chairman on 1 April 1989.

In November 1990 [David Hunt](/people/david-hunt-baron-hunt-of-wirral) told the Commons the board held 473 factories providing more than 8,500 jobs, and quoted Davies on firms still expanding with its grants and loans. Hunt reappointed him on 10 March 1992 for three further years. The Comptroller and Auditor General had qualified the 1991 accounts, and the department held a National Audit Office report on a former chief executive's retirement settlement. Hunt said he had weighed a Public Accounts Committee hearing on 15 January 1992 — the report followed on 24 September — against what he called the board's excellent performance under Davies.

The committee's twenty-third report of session 1993–94 then examined housing allocation and car leasing. The board had published allocation rules in 1981 but had also used an unpublished list for 13 years, a practice that therefore began before Davies joined. The National Audit Office found that 238 of 1,084 tenancies, about a fifth, had been let under the unpublished criteria, including cases that failed a published requirement to work in or near the town. The committee chairman, Robert Sheldon, said the Parliamentary Ombudsman had found gross maladministration: the housing officer had allocated a house to himself, and one to his former wife, though neither qualified under the published rules. Without Welsh Office approval, the board also cut essential users' contribution to a leased car from two-sevenths of the cost to one-seventh, and three directors paid nothing. *The Independent* also reported a £240,000 payment to the former chief executive, Dr Iain Skewis, made without the details being given to the Welsh Office. The committee called the hidden allocations wholly unacceptable for a public authority.

At the hearing on 24 January 1994 the permanent secretary, Michael Scholar, called the conduct wholly unsatisfactory and wholly indefensible. He said an internal review and an inquiry by Roderic Bowen QC had cleared officials of impropriety, and that no one had been dismissed or reprimanded because discipline lay with the board. The committee later said it was surprised that neither review had led to disciplinary action.

Davies resigned on 12 May 1994. He wrote to [John Redwood](/people/john-redwood) that he hoped the board could "recover from any damaging effect resulting from external criticisms." Redwood called the report clearly critical. On 7 July he told the Commons that the houses would pass in 1996 to a council or housing association, chosen after consultation with tenants; that social grants of about £2.4 million and small-business grants of about £3 million would go to local authorities; and that tourism work would move to the Wales Tourist Board. He appointed David Rowe-Beddoe, already chairman of the Welsh Development Agency, to chair the rural board as well.

### Other public appointments

The 1989 chairmanship also made Davies a member of the Wales Tourist Board and an ex officio member of the Welsh Development Agency. He resigned those posts with the rural-board chair on 12 May 1994. *The Independent* reported that he left the new Welsh Economic Council at the same time. As a board member he was paid about £3,200 to £4,800 a year; as chairman, about £25,400 in 1989–90, rising to about £31,900 in 1993–94, plus several thousand pounds in expenses, and a part-year £3,604 in 1994–95. Tourist-board fees over the full years were about £5,000 to £6,300. The agency seat was unpaid apart from £793.83 in expenses in 1994–95.

## National Assembly for Wales

### Regional member, 1999–2007

Glyn Davies was a [Welsh Conservative](/organizations/welsh-conservatives) member of the National Assembly for Wales for the Mid and West Wales electoral region from the first election, on 6 May 1999, until the election of 3 May 2007. He was a regional member, not the Assembly member for the Montgomeryshire constituency. Members were elected by the additional member system. Four seats in each region were filled from party lists by the D'Hondt method: a party's regional vote was divided by one more than the constituency seats it already held there, the highest figure took the next seat, and the person returned was the next name on that party's list.

At the 1999 election Davies was second on the Conservative list. He also stood in Montgomeryshire and finished second to the [Liberal Democrat](/organizations/welsh-liberal-democrats) Mick Bates. The Conservatives polled 36,622 regional votes (16.7 per cent) and took two list seats, Nicholas Bourne and Davies; the others went to Labour's [Alun Michael](/people/alun-michael) and [Plaid Cymru](/organizations/plaid-cymru)'s Cynog Dafis. A BBC profile that September described him as agriculture and rural economy spokesman, and recorded that he had moved to finance after Bourne became leader on 18 August 1999.

Davies was re-elected on the list at the 2003 election on 1 May. The BBC results named the Conservative members as Nicholas Bourne, Edward Davies and Lisa Francis, while the party's candidate list began Nick Bourne, Glyn Davies and Lisa Francis: Edward Glyn Davies was returned under his first name. The Conservatives won 35,566 regional votes (19.3 per cent), up 2.6 points, and three of the four seats; Plaid Cymru's Helen Mary Jones took the fourth. Montgomeryshire was again a Liberal Democrat hold.

### Committee work

On 9 July 1999 Davies was elected chair of the Mid Wales Regional Committee. He also sat on the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee and the Equality of Opportunity Committee. After [Rhodri Morgan](/people/rhodri-morgan) and Michael German signed the Labour–Liberal Democrat partnership agreement in October 2000, the Assembly on 9 November elected Davies to replace Plaid Cymru's Rhodri Glyn Thomas as chair of the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee. The Assembly's chronology of the first term records that change and no later replacement in the chair.

The chairmanship covered the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak. In June 2001 a new case near Brecon closed Pen-y-Fan in the Brecon Beacons a week after the peak had reopened. Davies called it a very severe blow for tourism and warned that spread into a hill flock of about two thousand sheep could be a disaster. Powys then had 57 of 93 confirmed cases in Wales.

At the opening of the second Assembly, on 3 June 2003, Davies was elected chair of the Legislation Committee, while Alun Ffred Jones was elected chair of the Environment, Planning and Countryside Committee. He was a member, not the chair, when that committee reported in February 2004 on planning and affordable housing in the countryside. Jones's foreword said planning authorities needed more flexibility, within a national framework, to respond to local markets, including policies favouring local people where pressure and need were shown.

On 30 November 2005 the Assembly selected Davies from the panel of chairs to chair the Environment, Planning and Countryside Committee, the appointment taking effect on 1 January 2006. In April 2006, after a Mid Wales Regional Committee meeting in Dolgellau, he called the planning system a blueprint for forcing up rural house prices, undermining the Welsh language and destabilising communities, citing [flood-risk](/drivers/flood-risk) rules and a refused permission in Welshpool. The report identified him as the committee's chair, a Welsh speaker and a former chair of a local planning authority.

### Departure in 2007

Davies was not re-elected on 3 May 2007, although the Conservatives advanced in the region. They gained Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, where Angela Burns defeated Christine Gwyther, and Preseli Pembrokeshire, where Paul Davies defeated Tamsin Dunwoody by more than 3,000 votes. Montgomeryshire stayed a Liberal Democrat hold. Of the region's eight constituencies, Plaid Cymru held or gained four and Labour none.

On the regional vote the Conservatives polled 49,606 (22.9 per cent, up 3.9 points) but won only one list seat, taken by Nicholas Bourne. Plaid Cymru, with 67,258 votes (31.0 per cent), also received one regional seat, Nerys Evans; Labour, with 39,979 votes (18.4 per cent) and no constituency in the region, received two, Alun Davies and Joyce Watson. That pattern follows the D'Hondt rule: parties that had already won constituencies in the region started with a larger divisor, and Labour, with none, took the first two list places despite fewer regional votes than Plaid Cymru or the Conservatives. In 2003 the same region had returned three Conservative list members—Bourne, Edward Davies and Lisa Francis—and the 2007 constituency changes in the region were gains rather than holds.

A poll of local Conservative members placed Bourne ahead of Davies, Lisa Francis and O. J. Williams, in that order, and Bourne headed the list for the 2007 election. With only one Conservative list seat, the second-placed Davies was not returned, nor was Francis. The BBC described the outcome as the "vagaries of the list system": the Conservatives had gained seats, but Davies, from Welshpool, had lost his, and he said he would miss the work and his colleagues. The result was not a personal succession. Bourne, who had been a regional member since 1999, kept the party's single list seat; Alun Davies was elected the same day as a Labour regional member, not as the next Conservative on the list.

## Parliamentary elections

### Challenges to Lembit Öpik

Montgomeryshire, a rural seat in north Powys that includes Welshpool and Newtown, was long held by the [Liberal Party](/organizations/liberal-party) and then the Liberal Democrats. The Conservatives won it in 1979, ending what the BBC called a 99-year Liberal tenure, but only for one parliament; [Alex Carlile](/people/alex-carlile-baron-carlile-of-berriew) regained it for [the Liberals](/organizations/the-liberals) in 1983.

At the [1997 general election](/facts/1997-united-kingdom-general-election), on 1 May, Lembit Öpik held the seat for the Liberal Democrats with 14,647 votes (45.9%). Glyn Davies, the Conservative candidate, was second with 8,344 (26.1%). Labour's Angharad Davies polled 6,109 (19.1%) and Plaid Cymru's Helen Mary Jones 1,608 (5.0%). Öpik's majority was 6,303 (19.7%) on a turnout of 74.7% (31,925 votes).

During eight years as a member of the National Assembly for Wales, Davies was not the Conservative candidate for the Westminster seat in 2001 or 2005. [David Jones](/people/david-jones) stood in 2001, and in 2005 Simon Baynes took 8,246 votes (27.4%) to Öpik's 15,419 (51.2%), a majority for Öpik of 7,173.

His second contest with Öpik was the [2010 general election](/facts/2010-united-kingdom-general-election) on 6 May, the first on boundaries used until 2024, so share changes on the House of Commons Library site are measured against notional 2005 results. On that basis the Conservatives gained the seat from the Liberal Democrats. Davies received 13,976 votes (41.3%, up 13.8 percentage points) and Öpik 12,792 (37.8%, down 12.5). The majority was 1,184 (3.5%). Turnout was 69.4% from an electorate of 48,730 (33,813 valid votes). Plaid Cymru's Heledd Fychan took 2,802 (8.3%) and Labour's Nick Colbourne 2,407 (7.1%). The BBC reported a swing of more than 13 percentage points and called the result only the second Conservative win in the seat in 130 years. Davies was 66; Öpik had been MP since 1997.

### Re-election in 2015 and 2017

Davies held Montgomeryshire at the [2015 general election](/facts/2015-united-kingdom-general-election) on 7 May with a wider margin. He polled 15,204 votes (45.0%, up 3.7 points). [Jane Dodds](/people/jane-dodds), for the Liberal Democrats, was second with 9,879 (29.3%, down 8.6). The majority was 5,325 (15.8%) and turnout 69.3% (electorate 48,690). Des Parkinson of the [UK Independence Party](/organizations/uk-independence-party) was third with 3,769 (11.2%). Labour's Martyn Singleton received 1,900 (5.6%) and Plaid Cymru's Ann Griffith 1,745 (5.2%).

[BBC News](/organizations/bbc-news) reported that the returning officer accepted one ballot on which a voter had made an explicit drawing inside Davies's box rather than a cross, because the mark lay wholly within the box. Davies later noted the decision on Facebook. The paper did not decide the result.

At the [2017 general election](/facts/2017-united-kingdom-general-election) on 8 June the majority grew again. Davies took 18,075 votes (51.8%, up 6.8 points), a majority of 9,285 (26.6%) over Dodds. Dodds received 8,790 (25.2%, down 4.1). Turnout was 68.7% from an electorate of 50,755. Labour's Iwan Wyn Jones was third with 5,542 (15.9%, up 10.3 points), ahead of Plaid Cymru's Aled Morgan Hughes on 1,960 (5.6%).

### Retirement ahead of 2019

On 15 May 2019 Davies, then 75, told the Montgomeryshire Conservative Association he would not stand at the next general election. He called the decision "very difficult and emotional". He told BBC Wales that deadlock over Brexit had left MPs "going round in circles" and making no decisions, and that he did not want to come to London to "do nothing". The "current uncertainty in politics", he said, made it the right time to step aside so a successor would have "the freedom to become established". He was announcing that he would not contest the following election, not then due until 2022, though the BBC noted that the Brexit impasse might bring a poll sooner.

The County Times reported on 21 July 2019 that the association had, at a special meeting the previous Saturday, selected Craig Williams, born in Welshpool and living in Llanfair Caereinion. Davies called him a "fantastic community champion" for rural mid-Wales. At the [2019 general election](/facts/2019-united-kingdom-general-election) on 12 December, Williams held the seat for the Conservatives with 20,020 votes (58.5%, up 6.7 points) and a majority of 12,138 (35.5%). Liberal Democrat Kishan Devani was second with 7,882 (23.0%) and Labour's Kait Duerden third with 5,585 (16.3%). Turnout was 69.8%.

## House of Commons

Edward Glyn Davies was the Conservative member for Montgomeryshire in the House of Commons from 6 May 2010 until dissolution on 6 November 2019. He held no ministerial office. His only government posts were two spells as unpaid parliamentary private secretary to the Secretary of State for Wales.

### Parliamentary private secretary

The Ministerial Code treats a parliamentary private secretary as outside the government. Appointment needs the Prime Minister’s written approval. A PPS is expected to support the government in divisions and cannot keep the post after voting against it, and should not speak or question on the connected department’s business. Committee service is allowed, but the MP should withdraw from inquiries into the appointing minister’s department and avoid recommendations critical of the government.

Davies became PPS to Cheryl Gillan in the week before 13 September 2010, calling it a great honour. The Prime Minister’s Office list of 17 November 2010 names him against the Secretary of State for Wales. The post ended when Gillan left the Wales Office in [David Cameron](/people/david-cameron)’s reshuffle of 4 September 2012. He told [BBC Radio](/organizations/bbc-radio) Wales that morning that he had been “a huge supporter”, “openly supportive of retaining her”, and that there would be “a tinge of disappointment” because he was “a great admirer of Cheryl Gillan’s”. The choice, he said, was “a matter for the Prime Minister always”; she “did a great job”; a Welsh-speaking MP for a Welsh seat would “in an ideal world” be “terrific”; but “what really matters is that we have the best person for the job”.

On 6 September 2016 the BBC reported his reappointment as PPS to Alun Cairns, succeeding David Morris, who had moved to the Scotland Office in July. Davies called himself the secretary of state’s “parliamentary eyes and ears”, said he had worked with Cairns for 15 years, and hoped to remain on the Welsh Affairs Committee. Lists for July 2017, January 2018, September 2018 and June 2019 still name him as Cairns’s PPS, so the second spell began in September 2016 and continued at least until June 2019.

### Backbench activity and constituency work

His maiden speech, on 20 July 2010, came in the first Backbench Business Committee debate, on ministers announcing policy in the House before they announce it elsewhere. He said a week in hospital had kept him from the emergency Budget debate, and he spoke of a lifetime in Montgomeryshire and its uplands. The Welsh language, he said, was probably dominant in a third of the seat, and his first words after the election had been in Welsh. He recalled that the Liberal Arthur Humphreys-Owen had owned his house, traced a line from Humphreys-Owen through Lord Davies of Llandinam to Clement Davies, paid tribute to Lembit Öpik, and said he would represent the seat and Wales and defend the Commons.

He served four terms on the Welsh Affairs Select Committee: 12 July–2 November 2010, 5 November 2012–30 March 2015, 25 April 2016–3 May 2017, and 11 September 2017–22 October 2018. He was also on the Energy and Climate Change Committee from 8 July 2015 to 17 October 2016, and on the Environmental Audit Committee from 31 October 2016 to 3 May 2017 and from 4 December 2017 to 4 June 2018. The 2010 Welsh Affairs place ended soon after the Gillan appointment; he returned in November 2012 once it was over. From September 2016, and again through 2017–18, he sat on that committee while PPS to Cairns.

The Public Whip scores a rebellion as a vote against the majority of an MP’s own party, not automatically against a whip. He rebelled in 14 of 1,054 votes in 2010–15 (1.3 per cent; attendance 85.1 per cent), in none of 403 votes in 2015–17 (attendance 86.3 per cent), and in 2 of 428 votes in 2017–19 (0.5 per cent; attendance 92.4 per cent). He was never a teller. Both late rebellions were spring 2019 Brexit votes: No on 27 March, against the Conservative majority, to indicative motion H on [European Free Trade Association](/organizations/european-free-trade-association) membership without a customs union, and No on 3 April, again in a party minority, on a clause of the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill which the Public Whip titles “No Delay to Withdrawal Beyond 22 May 2019”.

On 18 November 2015 he called Shropshire the gateway to mid-Wales and pressed the Pant–Llanymynech bypass on the A483 and the Middletown scheme on the A458, saying devolution had made the cross-border projects less likely. The inspector at the 2015 inquiry into the A483/A489 Newtown bypass listed him, with Russell George AM, Powys County Council and several community councils, among supporters of the orders. The Welsh Government later recorded that the bypass, built to remove congestion at the A483/A489 junction and through the town, opened in early 2019.

On 11 January 2017 he called accident-and-emergency care for Shropshire and mid-Wales “the most important and concerning issue in my constituency”, because nearly all Montgomeryshire patients needing secondary, elective or emergency treatment went to Shropshire. Future Fit, he said, had spent about three years and £2 million to £3 million recommending an emergency centre at Shrewsbury and urgent care at both Shrewsbury and Telford. He called the refusal of that recommendation a “shambles” for people already travelling about an hour, and put about a fifth of attendances as life-threatening and the rest as suitable for urgent-care centres.

## Political positions

### Onshore wind and grid infrastructure

Large onshore wind farms, and the lines needed to connect them, were the main constituency argument of Davies's years as Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire. Technical Advice Note 8, published in July 2005 by the then Welsh Assembly Government, concentrated schemes above 25 MW in seven Strategic Search Areas. Three were in mid Powys: Carno North (an indicative 290 MW), Newtown South (70 MW) and Nant-y-Moch (140 MW), within an all-Wales indicative total of 1,120 MW and an Assembly target of 800 MW more onshore wind, aimed at 4 TWh of renewable electricity by 2010. Energy policy stayed reserved, so UK ministers decided the largest projects. In 2011 National Grid consulted on a substation at Abermule, near Newtown, or Cefn Coch, near Llanfair Caereinion, and on pylons up to 154 ft (47 m) over about 26 miles (42 km) toward Shropshire, with ScottishPower lines from about ten wind farms.

On 10 May 2011 Davies led a Westminster Hall debate and said the plans would "totally destroy" the area by industrialising the uplands and "desecrating our valleys with hideous cables and pylons". He spoke of another 600 to 800 turbines, a substation of about 20 acres and about 100 miles of cable on towers around 150 ft high, and said the landscape would be "sacrificed at the altar of a false god", with tourism and house prices at risk. Energy minister Charles Hendry replied that wind was cost-effective and reliable, but had to be in the right place and needed more democratic legitimacy. The Welsh Government said clustering, within a wider mix of renewables, was meant to protect the landscape from ad hoc development.

On 24 May about 1,500 people gathered at the Senedd at a protest Davies had called. He likened the scheme to the flooding of Tryweryn, the valley drowned in the 1960s to supply Liverpool, and said: "This is our Tryweryn and we are going to fight." The Welsh Government answered that emissions cuts required more renewable generation, and that fewer large farms were preferable to many small ones. In July 2012 National Grid chose a Vyrnwy valley route and a Cefn Coch substation; Montgomeryshire Against Pylons was "disappointed but not surprised", and National Grid said the line would not be built if the farms were refused.

In December 2011 Hendry said further farms and pylons might be required "in the national interest", because the plant could not be invisible. First Minister [Carwyn Jones](/people/carwyn-jones) said TAN 8 capacities should be an upper limit; a source close to him said Hendry meant England's interest, not Wales's. In March 2013, during the Silk Commission's review of Assembly powers, Davies broke with Welsh Conservative AMs who wanted consents up to 100 MW taken in Cardiff, writing that energy devolution would happen "over my dead body", though he would accept income tax and policing powers. Group leader Andrew RT Davies said the policy would stand. In 2004 a company asked to site a wind farm on his own land. He called that a "huge personal problem", took no payment and left it to the planners, though neighbouring farmers wanted it built.

In September 2015 energy minister [Andrea Leadsom](/people/andrea-leadsom) refused schemes at Llanbadarn Fynydd, Llaithddu, Llanbrynmair and Carnedd Wen, and rejected an overhead line from an approved Llandinam repowering to Welshpool. Davies said a "dark cloud" had lifted. The Welsh Government called the outcome "very disappointing", citing lost jobs and carbon savings, and again sought Welsh control of energy consents.

### European Union and Brexit

Davies had opposed British membership of the European Union since the 1975 referendum. In May 2016 he was the last of the 11 Welsh Conservative MPs to declare on the 23 June vote, and the fifth to back Leave, against six for Remain. He said he had "never believed that the UK should be subsumed into an undemocratic bureaucracy which is today's EU", but would not campaign, because every citizen's opinion was of "equal value".

In March 2019 a petition to revoke Article 50 had 4,291 signatures from Montgomeryshire, just under 10% of the electorate. He said a change of position would be "wholly undemocratic and dishonest": he had voted in 2017 to invoke Article 50, opposed a re-run and revocation, and supported the withdrawal agreement reached by [Theresa May](/people/theresa-may) and [Michel Barnier](/people/michel-barnier). He voted Aye when that agreement was rejected on 15 January 2019, by 432 votes to 202; on 12 March, by 391 to 242; and on 29 March, by 344 to 286. In indicative votes he also backed [John Baron](/people/john-baron)'s no-deal motion, defeated by 400 to 160, and voted against confirmatory public votes tabled by [Margaret Beckett](/people/margaret-beckett) on 27 March and by [Peter Kyle](/people/peter-kyle) on 1 April. On 26 June 2019 he told the House of Commons he had supported the agreement all three times because of its effect on the constituency, "particularly on the sheep farming industry".

### Health, rural services and the Welsh language

Montgomeryshire's specialist care was largely in Shropshire. In October 2016, after Future Fit was delayed by a threatened challenge from Telford and Wrekin Council, Davies said further delay threatened NHS care for Shropshire and mid-Wales patients, and that the only logical emergency centre was the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Keeping full emergency departments at both Shrewsbury and Telford was, he said, already undermining care; Newtown councillor Joy Jones wanted the decision made carefully as well as quickly. In January 2015, after Mark Drakeford, then Welsh health minister, said patients should be treated wherever care was best, Davies said the border must not override clinical need.

In March 2016, in a debate on the bowel-cancer screening age, he said he would not be an MP without an early diagnosis, and that screening raised awareness as well as detecting disease; surgery had left him with a stoma. On roads, he called the A458 mid Wales's link to English markets. In May 2019, with Cefn Bridge at Trewern down to one lane for months after a crash, he said the delays were "totally unacceptable" and pressed Network Rail to restore two-way traffic.

His last set-piece speech, on 2 October 2019, was an adjournment debate on the Welsh language, opened in Welsh. He said Westminster should discuss the language at least once a Parliament, welcomed the Welsh Government's aim of a million speakers, and argued that devolution was not a reason for the UK government to disengage.

## Public communication

### A View from Rural Wales

Davies kept a personal political blog, *A View from Rural Wales*, on Blogger at glyndaviesam.blogspot.com, the address given in a WalesOnline profile written after the May 2007 Assembly election. Posts under the same title continued into November 2018 at glyn-davies.blogspot.com.

He wrote it as a Conservative member of the National Assembly for Wales for Mid and West Wales, and continued after losing the seat on 3 May 2007. The profile, on blogging in Wales, called the site fairly non-partisan for a Conservative and often very funny, and said that over the previous year he had been almost single-handedly arguing on it for a "rainbow coalition". Described as a personal view, not a count of readers, and listed alphabetically, he was one of four bloggers it presented as Wales's main examples. The piece quoted the commentator Iain Dale: "By common consensus the best politician blogger in Wales and he's a real character." Dale had also told WalesOnline that, of 38 Welsh blogs he followed, Davies's was his favourite.

In a separate reader poll for a *Total Politics* guide — not a count of traffic — 1,142 people each named a top ten, and on 26 August 2008 Dale placed "Glyn Davies" second of 40 Welsh blogs, behind the Liberal Democrat AM Peter Black. He noted that Plaid Cymru-linked blogs took 18 of the 40 places.

In July 2008 an unnamed former Welsh Government civil servant was taking a tribunal case after dismissal for an anonymous blog, "Christopher Glamorganshire", on the previous year's Labour–Plaid coalition talks. The government said the posts had broken the Civil Service code, that it had won at the Civil Service Appeals Board, and that a tribunal was listed. Davies said the blog had seemed "sensible and rational", and that dismissal for supposedly breaching the code, rather than a contractual ban, was "very harsh and heavy handed" and "smacks of the heavy hand of the state."

### Remarks about academics

On 29 October 2016, as MP for Montgomeryshire and a Wales Office parliamentary aide, Davies wrote on Twitter: "Nothing more irritating than academics rubbishing the efforts of those operating at the sharp end, without facing up to the hard decisions." He added: "Personally, never thought of academics as 'experts'. No experience of the real world." BBC Wales correspondent David Cornock set them against [Michael Gove](/people/michael-gove)'s remark, in the referendum on leaving the European Union, that people had "had enough of experts". Lord Norton of Louth, a Conservative peer and professor, replied: "They probably know, though, a non sequitur when they see one!" Cornock suggested the timing may have been more than coincidence, after a Welsh academic's attack on the Wales Bill and a House of Lords Constitution Committee report that included Norton.

[Times Higher Education](/organizations/times-higher-education) reported that editor-at-large Phil Baty proposed the hashtag #realworldacademic for posts on clinical work, research and ordinary jobs. On 31 October it published a reply by Emma Sheppard arguing that the tweets treated non-physical academic labour as not "real". The BBC quoted her conclusion that they "devalue emotional and non-masculine physical labour", and reported her note that he had left school at 16 for the family farm and later studied as a mature student.

An editorial in *Nature* on 1 November 2016 said the "real world" claim had drawn the angrier response, with #realworldacademic still running and replies running from intensive-care work during a PhD to "Dude, you literally work in a palace." It noted a tension with his own blog: after criticism for attending a lecture by [Matt Ridley](/people/matt-ridley) at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, he had written that policy should not rest on "a partial view of science" and that he liked "to make judgements based on evidence."

On 1 November 2019, still the Montgomeryshire MP, he wrote in the *Guardian* that anonymous comment had created "a cesspit of vileness", which was why he "gave up on Twitter years ago", and that he had "stopped about two years ago in favour of Facebook, where debate is (mostly) constructive." He called Twitter "the deathbed of humour", and did not in that article connect leaving it with the 2016 posts.

## Personal life

### Family and home

Davies and his wife, Bobbie, live at Cil Farm in Berriew, in historic Montgomeryshire, now in Powys. A profile published by the local Conservative association states that they have four children and two grandchildren, Ffion and Darragh. The BBC had described him in December 2002 as married with four children. While he was MP for Montgomeryshire, the Register of Members' Financial Interests listed a house, land and buildings near Berriew, farmland and buildings near Llanerfyl, and a farmhouse, bungalow and buildings near Castle Caereinion, and recorded him as a self-employed farmer. The same entry stated that he employed his spouse, Bobbie Davies, as senior secretary, paid from parliamentary expenses.

In his last House of Commons speech, an adjournment debate on the Welsh language on 2 October 2019, Davies said that he and his five sisters were the first generation in the family not brought up bilingual. His parents, both first-language Welsh speakers, had moved from Llanerfyl and Pontrobert to the more English-speaking villages of Castle Caereinion and Berriew, and he said Welsh had been treated as "the language of failure" and was not spoken in front of the children. He told MPs that he learned Welsh as an adult, prompted in part by his grandmother, and became fluent enough to appear on Welsh-language media, including Radio Cymru's *Post Cyntaf*, and to be spoken to in Welsh in Welshpool and Newtown.

### Illness and advocacy

In December 2002, as Conservative Assembly member for Mid and West Wales in what is now the Senedd, Davies said he had rectal cancer and faced major surgery that week. He told BBC Wales that he had ignored warning signs for months and urged others not to put off seeing a doctor. The operation was an abdominoperineal resection for a cancerous tumour and left him with a permanent colostomy. Speaking in the Commons in February 2017, he called the surgery the most traumatic event of his life and said that diagnosis before the disease had spread had made a full recovery possible.

He later used that recovery in public campaigns. In February 2006 he trained with the former All Black Jonah Lomu, then playing again after a kidney transplant, and captained a veterans' side of London Welsh players and Assembly members against a Westminster team before an England–Wales match in the Six Nations Championship. Davies, who had not played rugby union for nearly 30 years, said that cancer was not a death sentence and that he hoped the match would show a full life was possible after serious illness. Stoma nurse Tracy Lunt at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital introduced him to colostomy irrigation, which he said had given him the freedom to live without wearing a bag all the time. He secured the February 2017 adjournment debate, close to World Cancer Day, to describe the technique and argue for wider awareness, while stating that it was not suitable for every ostomate. In the same speech he said he had promoted bowel-cancer screening in Wales and backed the charity Beating Bowel Cancer's case for offering screening from 50 rather than 60, if endoscopy capacity was available.

### After Parliament

Davies left the Commons at the 2019 general election. In September 2020, after about nine months away from politics, he became chair of the Welsh Conservatives, a voluntary party office, succeeding Byron Davies, Lord Davies of Gower, who became president. Davies told members that the party was starting its first organisational review in 23 years, with a Senedd election due the following May; Sam Rowlands and Tomos Dafis were his deputies. He was still chair in October 2022, when Nation.Cymru reported a letter he signed, with other voluntary-party chairs, urging Conservatives to stop infighting and unite behind Prime Minister [Liz Truss](/people/liz-truss).

At the Welsh party's annual general meeting in Llandrindod Wells on 9 November 2024, Bernard Gentry was elected chair. The North West Wales Conservatives described Glyn Davies as the former chairman and said that he continued as president.

## Dated facts

_No published facts on this page yet._

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/people/glyn-davies