Welsh Political News

Twelve months ago next week, the government of Wales took on a new look. Labour and Plaid Cymru took office together with a pledge that they were “passionate about improving the lives of people in Wales and making our nation a better place in which to live and work”. 

This document – “20 Questions for the One Wales Government” – highlights 20 areas where the One Wales Government has failed the people of Wales. It shows areas where they are falling behind The Labour-Plaid government has so far failed to meet its own aspirations.It has failed spectacularly to meet the aspirations of the people of Wales.

It has failed to make an impact beyond Wales’s border.

Its greatest success has been in preserving the status quo. Keeping Labour hands on the levers of power in Wales; keeping the powers of the Assembly so limited, and stifling initiatives to such a degree that no Assembly Member applied to make a law, when given the opportunity to do so in the June ballot. The One Wales agreement has kept two parties together, but failed to stop parts of Wales falling apart.

Education is the most glaring area. While the government has prioritised populist gimmicks – free car parking and free prescriptions for the rich most notably, the education system has felt the strain. The introduction of a revolutionary new style of teaching for the youngest children should have been a cause of universal rejoicing – but the failure to fund it properly has left a bad taste in the mouth of many parents, teachers and governors. They deny the existence of a stark and growing funding gap between universities in Wales and England – despite the evidence. And there is growing unease in Further Education at the funding gap there. All this comes at a time when the future of the economy depends more than ever on raising skill levels and standards of qualification.

But the style of government is disappointing too. Wales’ government over the last year has enjoyed a thumping majority on all matters covered in the One Wales Agreement. As a result of the Government of Wales Act 2006, it is potentially the most powerful government Wales has ever had. But the test of power is not how big your majority is, but how much change it can deliver. Having a hammer is all very well, the test is whether you use it to build or to tear down. And whether what you build is significant and enduring.

By this test, the One Wales Government has failed.

Being in government is the greatest honour for an elected politician. But it is not a goal in itself. It is a tool to making the changes we promise at election time. There can be no greater disappointment, than failing to live up to that promise.

Michael German AM,

Leader Welsh Liberal Democrats. 

20 questions for the One Wales Government

1. If your #1 One Wales pledge is broken, what chance the rest?

One Wales committed itself to ‘proceed to a successful outcome of a referendum for full law-making powers under Part IV as soon as practicable, at or before the end of the Assembly term.’

The All Wales Convention was supposed to be the first stage in this process, but this is crawling along at such a slow pace that it seems increasingly unlikely a referendum will be held before 2011.

In order to secure a yes vote at the referendum, the campaign needs to start now. The government is in danger of listening to devo-sceptics like Paul Murphy, and forcing the referendum further and further back.

2. Why introduce popular infant school reforms with insufficient cash?

The Foundation Phase has attracted universal support and the pilot scheme was well received. It is now clear that its anticipated success was based on hollow promises; as the government has failed miserably to deliver this flagship initiative along with the exceptional adult: pupil ratios that are so integral to its success and to achieving the One Wales commitment to 'radically' reduce class sizes.

Despite warnings that the scheme would be highly expensive to properly implement, the government grossly underestimated the money needed. Consequently, we have been left with inadequate funding which does not allow schools to employ the necessary staff; does not provide suitable training for existing staff; does not allow schools to retain staff throughout the academic year; does not allow pilot schools to keep up their levels of funding; and does not create the inside and outside learning environment that this government promised our children.

Eventually, after much pressure from the opposition parties, the government finally admitted there were problems with the implementation of the scheme and found an additional, though arbitrary, £5 million for the pilot schools – but even with this extra cash the scheme is still greatly under-funded with unions calling for a doubling of the funding pot. The Government has now extended the roll out of the scheme by a year but without the necessary extra cash this is only kicking the problem into the long grass - a year’s delay is unlikely to give the government enough time to find the extra money and without doing so it will undermine the initiative.

One year in and we have no guarantee of funding for the future. At First Minister’s Questions last week Rhodri Morgan said that “it will be for Jane [Hutt] to make the budget bid” for future funding. This means that the Foundation Phase will have to do battle with other areas of government spending, rather than being treated as a priority.
3. Why does the government deny there is a £60m HE funding gap?

There is now a £61 million funding gap between higher education institutions in England and Wales, according to HEFCW, and this is set to grow in future. Unless properly funded, universities will struggle to attract the best lecturers and researchers, will struggle to invest in labs, libraries and facilities, and ultimately will struggle to compete with the top universities in the UK – let alone in other parts of the world.

Universities are huge catalysts for the economy, and while Wales continues to prop up the bottom of the league table for GVA, ensuring that universities are capable of doing their job should be one of the government’s top priorities. 

Despite the evidence to the contrary, the Labour-Plaid government believes that funding in Wales is ‘on a par with the levels in England.’

4. How does cutting FE funding help boost skills?

The One Wales government’s skills agenda emphasises the importance of the Further Education sector in training a skilled workforce. Though it talks the talk, the government has yet to put its money where its mouth is. This year, the FE budget increased by just 1.45% - well below inflation, and a cut in real terms. Capital investment is well below that in England. The government has also failed to introduce three year budgets, which would enable FE colleges to plan strategically – despite this being a One Wales commitment.

5. Why rule out any funding source when money is tight?

The One Wales government has systematically ruled out the use of PFI funding in the Health Service. The Assembly has no ability to raise its own funds, and as such, when the budget is limited – like it is this year – arbitrarily ruling out any source of funding could have a devastating effect on the ability of the Welsh Assembly Government to deliver essential services. The government is also dragging its heels on the use of other public-private partnerships.

While the use of private financing is not always the best option, the use of such funds should be based on whether or not they deliver for quality, value for money, services for the public – it should not be based on dogma alone.

As a result, tough decisions may have to be made about whether to fund future capital projects or to fund the day-to-day running of services.

6. Will you ever get around to the Finance Review?

Following a Welsh Liberal Democrat minority party debate in 2007, the Labour minority government at the time committed itself to reviewing the funding and finance of the Assembly – including a comprehensive review of the antiquated Barnett formula and a review of the Assembly’s ability to raise its own funds. This was then incorporated into the One Wales agreement.

The Welsh Assembly Government’s Finance Director said that the Commission was expected to start its work in ‘the winter’ 2007; we are now in July 2008.

Rhodri Morgan said, “with everything you read about the [All Wales] convention, read the same for the commission, but set the timetable three months later.” The establishing committee of the Convention reported back in March. We are more than three months behind this deadline, and there is still no progress on the more important review.

7. When will the government get serious about renewable energy?

In 2006 only 4% of Wales' electricity needs came from renewable sources - based on this figure the total output for renewables in 2007 was 1.79TWh - nowhere near the 4TWh needed by 2010. The government claims it will meet the target with the new biomass power plant in Port Talbot, but this is not due to start operating until around 2011.

The most comprehensive renewable energy planning advice, TAN 8, was failing when the One Wales government was established. In the year since, nothing has been done to improve this advice. It is extremely unlikely that the targets set for wind energy in TAN 8 will be met by the deadline – at present we are only 107MW towards the 800MW target.

8. When will our children’s classrooms all be fit for purpose?

Good quality school facilities are essential for improving academic standards. The One Wales government talks about the importance of improving school buildings to create a first class learning environment, but is making slow progress. After the previous Labour administration failed to meet its target to bring all school buildings up to scratch, the One Wales government has not even bothered to set itself a target for this important task, instead offering the vague promise of continued improvements. We have seen no estimate of the scale of the task or of the amount of money the government intends to allocate to it.  

9. Is the government systematically under-funding local councils?

The Assembly’s budget this year saw a derisory and below inflation increase in funding for local authorities. Local authorities keep receiving additional responsibilities from the Welsh Assembly Government and the UK government, but these are rarely backed up with increased funding.

Since the Assembly was founded in 1999, the Assembly’s budget has increased by almost 100%, while local authorities’ budgets over the same period have increased by just 49%. This will undoubtedly put additional pressure on local councils and may result in council tax hikes or service cuts. Local authorities are crying out to be funded properly, but the One Wales government has ignored these calls.

10. Why have buses fallen off the transport agenda?

The government claims to take sustainable transport seriously, and buses should form a big part of this. Yet the government’s recent bad management of bus service grants shows exactly how seriously it takes sustainable public transport.

The Local Transport Services Grant – the principal source of funding for local authorities to deliver bus services – has been delayed for more than four months with no justification. Local authorities are now having to fund this themselves in the hope that the government comes up with the cash later in the year.

Another grant – the Bus Service Operators’ Grant – will not be increased this year to reflect the increase in fuel duty. This will put additional pressures on bus services – and the threat to ‘unprofitable’ services is very real indeed.

11. Will lack of planning scupper proposals for more affordable homes?

The government is already setting a firm course for failure on their promise to build 6,500 new affordable homes by 2011. The fact that they do not even have processes in place to monitor the number of houses built using Section 106 agreements and are not clear even how many homes Housing Associations and local councils are building shows that they are not taking this target seriously. Statistics researched by the Welsh Liberal Democrats show that only 1,816 affordable homes have been built by private developers under local planning agreements in the past five years. The lack of direction given to local authorities means many still have weak planning schemes in place and are unable to extract the highest amount of affordable housing from new developments. With the credit crunch slowing house building (down by a third from this time last year) it inevitably means that there will be fewer new developments from which to extract a quota of affordable housing and that the chances of meeting the 6,500 target on time becomes even more remote.

12. What does it say about your ambition, when Whitehall mandarins step in to say you need more powers?

The One Wales government’s lack of ambition for Wales meant that Whitehall officials had to step in to offer the Assembly more powers. The Affordable Housing LCO was too narrow in scope and failed to realise the potential of what could be done. It took the UK Government to knock some sense into the Assembly Government.

We have also been treated to the spectacle of a Plaid Cymru minister arguing in a Committee meeting that the Assembly Government does not need more powers over broadcasting.

13. Why is the Environmental Protection and Waste Management LCO delayed?.

The second LCO to be put before the Assembly last June has disappeared and no-one knows why. The LCO has been held up somewhere in Whitehall, presumably because the UK government has a problem with the scope of the powers requested and WAG is failing to convince them. Apparently, ‘discussions are proceeding’, but the extent of the problem is unknown.

14. How many post offices have to close before the government acts?

The Westminster government has embarked on a plan to close 2,500 post offices across the UK. In Wales, the closure plan has proceeded in stages – meaning that some regions know which post offices are going to close while other regions are still waiting for their fate to be decided.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats made repeated requests for the Welsh Assembly Government to re-open the Post Office Development Fund on a region-by-region basis, so that in those areas where the plans have already been finalised, we can get on with supporting our post office network, rather than continuing to run it into the ground. The Labour-Plaid government rejected our plans at every turn.

15. Why is the Labour Party blocking new powers coming to Wales?

The Labour-Plaid government insists that it is committed to devolving further powers to Wales, and that Wales should ultimately have a full legislative parliament. Despite these empty promises, more than half of the members of the government voted against bringing a new power to the Assembly last month.

Peter Black’s LCO would have brought the power over local government elections under the Assembly’s control. This included the ability to change the voting system, as well as the power to decide on the number of councillors, ward sizes, boundaries, etc.

Carwyn Jones said that ‘the government does not have a view, and, therefore, there will be no formal response from the government.’ This is not what we would expect from a government that claims to be pro-devolution.

16. Can helping just 100 families solve the housing crisis?

The personal debt crisis, banks and building societies lending irresponsible amounts of money to borrowers (up to 5 times income levels in some cases) and reckless credit card lending have created a situation where people are unable to meet payments on their mortgages. As a result, the number of repossession orders made has increased in Wales by 26%, and the number of houses actually repossessed has also increased by a staggering 75%.

WAG plans will help just 100 families, around 10% of those in need.

17. Whatever happened to the Welsh Language LCO?

The One Wales government identified six LCOs that it intended to pursue this year. One of these, the Welsh Language LCO, has been quietly forgotten about. But not by us. The Minister admitted that the LCO ‘has been more complex and has taken longer than we expected.’ The last thing we heard was that the LCO was due to be put before the Assembly before the end of the summer term… three weeks from now.

18. How can our ambulance service meet call out targets, and save more money than other Trusts?

There were over 24,000 emergency calls, in April 2008. Only 65.1% of first responses to immediately life-threatening emergency calls arrived within 8 minutes. However, in some areas this was much worse; in Powys, less than half arrived in the 8 minutes.

The Ambulance Service is shouldering a massive burden in the form of debt which has to be repaid following overspends in previous years. Last year they had to make savings of £12m from within their budget and this year, required savings have risen to a massive £17m. This equates to approximately 9% of their budget and is proportionately the biggest saving required of any Trust in Wales.

Compare this to the way that English Ambulance Trusts have received significant extra funding, in some cases, up to 5% more, it puts the Welsh system in stark perspective. In a largely rural country like Wales, we have to accept that providing ambulances on time will cost more.

19. Where is the plan to close the prosperity gap?

Wales’ GVA is constantly declining compared to the rest of the UK. In 1999, with the establishment of the Assembly, Wales’ per head GVA was 78.7% of the UK average, but it has fallen to 78.1% today. The richest locality in UK – Inner London, West – had a GVA per head figure more than eight times higher than Anglesey. Now, the per head difference in GVA between Wales and the rest of the UK is nearly £4,000.

They have failed to address the regional imbalance as well. For example, the Gwent Valleys region is at just 58% of the UK average, and Anglesey at just 53%. The discrepancies across Wales are staggering. The national GVA figures camouflaged the government’s failure to change the way that economic development happens in our most needy regions.

20. Why is the government stifling opposition AMs from using powers?

The One Wales government seems incapable of allowing opposition members the opportunity to pursue their own pieces of legislation. In addition to Peter’s LCO being thrown out, two more Welsh liberal Democrat Measures were rejected by the government.

Mike German’s measure on school closures was voted out, despite the government agreeing that what the Measure was trying to do was needed.

Peter Black’s Measure on youth services was thrown out – again, the government didn’t have a bad word to say about it. In fact, Jane Hutt intends to take Peter’s ideas and incorporate them into their own guidance to local authorities next year.

Allowing backbench members the chance to legislate is a tradition that we have inherited from Westminster – but when the One Wales government sees a good idea coming from the opposition benches, it is reluctant to allow the opposition any part in proceeding with the legislation.

Welsh Liberal Democrats will be raising these questions in the Senedd over the final weeks of term.

For up to date news on the Welsh Liberal Democrats visit www.welshlibdems.org.uk

20 Questions for the One Wales Government

Welsh Liberal Democrats today launched a study of the first year of the Labour-Plaid coalition, highlighting 20 areas where the One Wales Government has failed the people of Wales.

The document – “20 Questions for the One Wales Government” – highlights 20 areas where the Labour-Plaid government has so far failed to meet its own aspirations, failed to meet the aspirations of the people of Wales and failed to make an impact beyond Wales’s border.

Mike German, leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, said: “Twelve months ago next week, Labour and Plaid Cymru joined together with a pledge that they were ‘passionate about improving the lives of people in Wales and making our nation a better place in which to live and work’.

“Sadly, we have seen all too little improvement.

“Its greatest success has been in preserving the status quo. Keeping Labour hands on the levers of power in Wales; keeping the powers of the Assembly so limited, and stifling initiatives to such a degree that no Assembly Member applied to make a law, when given the opportunity to do so in the June ballot.

“The One Wales agreement has kept two parties together, but failed to stop parts of Wales falling apart – particularly in education where there are major issues surrounding the introduction of the foundation phase, funding of FE, funding of HE, and the backlog in building repairs.

“The style of government has been disappointing too. The Labour-Plaid government enjoys a thumping majority. As a result of the Government of Wales Act 2006, it is potentially the most powerful government Wales has ever had. But the test of power is not how big your majority is, but how much change it can deliver.

“By this test, the One Wales Government has failed.”

Notes:
The document, 20 Questions for the One Wales Government, is attached, and will be available to download from www.welshlibdems.org.uk this afternoon.

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Gareth Price
Head of Communications - Pennaeth Cyfathrebu
Welsh Liberal Democrats - Democratiaid Rhyddfrydol Cymru
029 2089 8426
07976 898285
Gareth.price1@wales.gov.uk
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