Hansard struggles to tell Welsh Labour MPs apart

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Welsh MPs Wayne David and Albert OwenWayne David

Separated at birth? Wayne David and Albert Owen

By David Cornock
BBC Wales Parliamentary correspondent

One is Labour MP for Ynys Mon; the other is Labour MP for Caerphilly.

But for one unfortunate Hansard reporter, they are both called Albert Owen. Readers of the official report on Monday's House of Commons debates will have noticed an intervention from someone of that name during questions to the secretary of state for work and pensions.

Except the intervention didn't come from Mr Owen, but from his colleague Wayne David, who was most put out - in a genial way - to discover his words credited to the Ynys Mon MP.

"Albert Owen wasn't there," Mr David tells me. "It was me. I can't understand how they mixed us up. I'm a south Walian, he's a north Walian. I'm much taller than him. I've got more hair."

I'm not sure the last argument is really a clincher, but the Caerphilly MP joked that he was now consulting his solicitor. It doesn't help his case that he was 550th in a "sexiest MP" poll, more than two hundred places behind Mr Owen).

Be that as it may, Hansard has now corrected the record online and Mr David's views on job creation in Shipley and Yorkshire are now recorded correctly for posterity.