Time to get back round the table?

By -
Posted on This is my truth on 7th July


At yesterday's Bevan Foundation conference on the second anniversary of the One Wales agreement Steve Thomas, the Chief Executive of the WLGA, suggested that the programme of Government for the next two years should be ripped up. "One Wales needs to be re-examined and re-prioritised", he said.

The Opposition spokesman on Local Government, Darran Millar, also lined up behind the proposal.

They argued that the scale of cuts facing WAG and Welsh Local Government over the next few years renders a programme agreed in a more benign economic climate redundant.

And given that some 60% of Welsh GDP is accounted for by the public sector, it is hard to argue that the projected cuts in public spending will have profound consequnces for the Assembly budget.

Nick Bourne repeated his demand for free prescriptions to be abolished - even though he conceded this would only bring savings of £13 Million after extra funding for stroke services and hospices are taken into account. It'll take a lot more than that to meet the cuts.

The Cabinet yesterday considered their transport priorities for the next five years. It'll be interesting to see if large capital pet projects survive. It has long been rumoured that the new M4 around Newport is for the chop (hardly a surprise with a price tag of £700 M), and the proposed new road to Cardiff airport will be hard to fund. It seems that days of big road schemes are over - unless they shave a few minutes off the journey to north Wales, of course.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2023 - 5 big changes in transport in Wales

By -
Image
Changing direction takes you to a different destination... We ask our transport system to do a lot of things, but we’ve not asked it to make its contribution to our shared challenge of reducing carbon emissions. Indeed, transport is the sector that has contributed the least to the legal duty to cut emissions. Unless that changes we will not meet our overall NetZero imperative . It is difficult for any incoming Transport Minister to change much in the short-term - road and rail projects take upwards of seven years to implement, and the ongoing pipeline of schemes means that significant spending has already been committed and political expectations raised by the time a new Minister takes office. Though the political spotlight is inevitably on short-term problems, significant change is a longer term project. Over and above the day-to-day activity of keeping a transport system on track I have tried to focus on how to ‘change the wiring’ to secure medium to long-term change. For all its ch
Read more

Transport for Wales 2.0

By -
Image
Speech to Transport for Wales senior management at Llys Cadwyn, TfW HQ, in Pontypridd on 6th February 2024 Diolch am y croeso a y cyfle. James Price and I meet regularly, and sometimes it feels like we’re in charge. But it really is a privilege to be in the same room as the people who actually do run transport in Wales. And it’s so nice to see people together. I’m still adjusting to meeting people in the flesh who I’m used to seeing online; I still can’t believe how short everyone is when I meet them! Apart from the ones I already knew were short, obviously (you know who you are). The worst thing about those mass Teams calls is that I can’t see people’s reactions to what I’m saying – to confirm that they are drifting off.  So at least I’ll know for sure today that I am boring you – the people in the room at least. It won’t stop me, but it gets rid of the uncertainty. I know we’ve priced-in that politicians' speeches will be insincere, but I really do mean what I say. And I
Read more

How much is a life worth?

By -
Image
  So what will the cost to the economy be of a safer speed limit in residential areas?   The headline figure that has been estimated is 4.5 Billion.  It is an arresting figure, but it isn’t really what it seems.  As part of the  Explanatory Memorandum  we have to publish we have to produce an estimate of costs and benefits. And we have to use the approach set out in the  UK Treasury’s Green Book  for evaluating schemes.   And we have to try and put a financial value to this, but of course there are some things you cannot measure: the grief to a family of a child killed on their street; the social value of meeting neighbors in the street and chatting, the absence of stress from engine noise that is louder in a street with a 30mph limit.  Those things and more aren’t captured by the Treasury Green Book.  It measures what it can, and it tries to put a monetary value next to it. And as the Explanatory Memorandum makes clear there is a lot of uncertainty about these figures. 
Read more