Wales
Neath from 1991 to 2015, two spells as Secretary of State, and the constitutional argument running through both.
Neath was won at a by-election in 1991 and held for 24 years. Welsh Secretary twice, the first time from 2002 to 2008 alongside other Cabinet posts, which kept him on the constitutional argument throughout: the 1997 referendum, the Government of Wales Acts, and the Wales Bills that followed on tax and on candidates standing in a constituency and on a list at the same time.
Four men died at the Gleision colliery in the Swansea Valley in September 2011, and he pursued the Health and Safety Executive over the handling of it long after the prosecution had failed. In 2013 he spoke at the centenary of the Senghenydd explosion, which killed 439 men and is still the worst mining disaster in British history.
In 2012 he resigned from the shadow Cabinet to campaign full time for a barrage across the Severn estuary, on the argument that it would be the largest single renewable energy project in Europe and the biggest investment Wales had ever seen. The government did not proceed. The case was still being made in the Lords in 2015, and he has not conceded it since.
Selected writing
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Energy prices and the Severn barrage
His last major intervention on it before leaving the Commons.
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Gleision mine tragedy
The full record of his pursuit of the HSE.
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Letter to the chief executive of the HSE
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No to an English Parliament, yes to English devolution in a federal UK
Written days after the Scottish referendum.
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Senghenydd, 100 years on
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Wales and Slavery
Published to mark 200 years since the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, while he was Secretary of State for Wales.
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No hope of a £25bn Severn barrage being built