William Hague 'delighted to make home in area'

Mr Hague MP, made the comments while addressing more than 200 people with a wide ranging talk on his career at Welshpool Town Hall.

The former Conservative party leader will move to a new home at Cyfronydd Hall, near Llanfair Caereinion, with his wife Ffion when he steps down as MP for Richmond following the General Election.

He said: "It is great, we are very pleased with it, have had a couple of weekends here, met some local people, been for one or two walks and are looking forward to meeting a lot of local people. We are very happy with it."

During a question and answer session following his talk Mr Hague was pressed on how to tackle the rise of extremist political parties across Europe, views on wind farms and pylons, his most difficult tasks as Foreign Secretary, the extent of devolution, and whether he knew the words to the Welsh national anthem.

When quizzed about whether he would join the campaign against pylon plans from National Grid Mr Hague said: "Funnily enough I fought in North Yorkshire against a line of pylons for many years.

"I think Glyn, with many local people has fought a very strong campaign on this.

"The important thing at UK level is to be clear that we are reaching the end of development of onshore windfarms.

"We need renewable energy but we cannot go along forever like that so it is important to bring an end to new subsidies for windfarms which are not already in the pipeline."

Mr Hague also said the only way to tackle an increase in extremist parties in Europe would be to address economic difficulties.

He said: "There is deep disillusionment in Europe. Greece's GDP has fallen by 25 per cent. Think of what we have just been through, we lost about six or seven per cent of GDP, that hit people really hard, which we have now got back.

"Greece has gone down 25 per cent in national income and spend. Spain is also facing difficulties with unemployment and these countries are trapped in that 'burning building with no exit' that I talked about when describing the Euro 15 years ago. It is very difficult to make Greece and Spain work when they have to have the same interest rate as Germany.

"The answer is to get the economy working, more flexibility and de-regulation within Europe, where the economy of Europe can grow the same as our economy has started to grow."

Asked about "English votes for English laws" and calls for greater devolution, Mr Hague told the audience that more power should be devolved to local people to take decisions.

He said: "I think it is a good thing for decisions to be made democratically nearer to the people affected by them.

"That requires not only devolution to Wales and Scotland but also requires decentralisation within Wales and Scotland and I think the danger for Wales and Scotland is England has become the most decentralised part of the UK, where parish councils are able to write local plans and more powers are being moved back to cities like Manchester.

"So I hope I am not going to set myself up as a Welsh politician because I have bought a house down the road, but I hope Wales will go down a road of more decentralisation because they are not concious enough of the different parts of Wales."

Asked about his hardest decisions in politics Mr Hague said: "The most difficult, agonising things are hostage rescues.

"Life and death decisions, and it is a largely hidden part of the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister's jobs, you do have to make life and death decisions sometimes.

"Sometimes people think that is the easy thing to do when people are held hostage, to go and rescue them, but sometimes doing that you put more people's lives at risk and the life of the hostage."

Mr Hague also revealed that the words to the Welsh national anthem do indeed take centre stage at his new Powys home, thanks mostly to his Welsh wife Ffion.

He said: "You will be pleased to hear that in my new home in Cyfronydd the words appear right above our cooker. Ffion would not go anywhere without them."

Montgomeryshire MP Glyn Davies also received Mr Hague's backing ahead of the next General Election.

He said: "It is impossible to have a better MP. He is everything, he knows everybody, he has spent his whole life in this area, speaks up very vigorously in parliament on all local issues for this constituency.

"It would be impossible for the people of Montgomeryshire to have a better representative in the House of Commons."