Amanwy

Commissioning is becoming a convention

2011-10-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

Posted on Wales Home on 11 October 2011

So, there’s to be another Commission to examine the future of devolution.

Ken Hopkins would have approved.

He died this summer. He was a complex man, and the epitome of the machine politician. Indeed, he wasn’t a ‘politician’ at all, a least not formally, which in a way proves the point. He was an apparatchik, and proud of it.

After Labour’s traumatic defeat in 1992 Ken Hopkins was appointed to Chair the Party’s Policy Commission to review its policy on devolution. As Secretary of the Rhondda Labour Party, and one of Neil Kinnock’s ‘mates’, Hopkins was certain to come up with a dependable compromise which would not upset the Party establishment. And he duly did, the long forgotten ‘Shaping the Vision’.

The reason I think of Ken today is something he said to me about the brief he was given. The purpose of the Commission, Welsh General Secretary Anita Gale told him, was “to occupy the troops”.

There was five years until the next election, and there was pressure on Labour to engage in a cross-party dialogue on the next steps. It was not inclined to do so, but was anxious to show it took the issue seriously without actually, you know, taking the issue seriously. So a Commission was a perfect device.

It wasn’t an original thought. When Clem Attlee faced pressure to create the post of Secretary of State for Wales, he instead set up a Commission in 1948: the Council for Wales and Monmouthshire. A solid trade unionist, Huw T Edwards, was made Chair and he and his fellow council men issued a series of earnest reports over its ten year existence. But after a decade of getting the run around ‘the unofficial Prime Minister of Wales’ realised Harold McMillan’s winds of change weren’t blowing Wales’ way. So off he went.

The Commission had served its purpose. The activity it generated took heat out of a difficult political issue and for this won the approval of Whitehall Mandarin’s. It allowed them and their political masters to avoid making a decision on a subject that not only failed to command a consensus but caused intra-party convulsion. So much so that when Harold Wilson saw solid Labour majorities melt in the face of Plaid Cymru advances in 1966 and 1968, the file marked ‘Commission’ was dusted off again.

The Kilbrandon Commission was set-up in 1969 to examine the merits of devolution across the UK. Wilson, typically, took a cynical view of Royal Commissions - they “take minutes and waste years” he said. This one took four years, and contributed to the death of two of its founding members. By 1973 it reached a very messy and confused conclusion. It didn’t end well. The elephantine majority in the referendum that followed put an end to Government commissions on devolution for a while.

But not forever. Even when Wales voted in favour of an Assembly in 1997, the age of the Commission was not over. No sooner had the referendum been won than another Commission had been set up – NAAG anyone?

The pattern of creating a Commission to help create a consensus, rather than simply to gage one, was truly established with the Richard Commission. Like previous exercises it passed the Anita Gale test, but this time it helped shape public opinion. It was established as part of the coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats and in retrospect it was their most significant contribution to the devolution story since the days of Cymru Fydd.

The growing consensus within the National Assembly that the Corporate Body model wasn’t fit for purpose, however, was not mirrored in the Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party. But the forensic analysis of Ivor Richard’s Commission of the ‘jagged edges’ in the 1998 Act shifted the intellectual argument - if not the partisan one.

The case made by the report for more powers, more members and a new voting system scored well academically, but as a case study in public affairs advocacy it offers many lessons. Chiefly, if you want to achieve change you need to win over those in power.

While Rhodri Morgan and Peter Hain had great personal sympathy for the arguments of the man they appointed, they had no political cover to follow it through. To his credit Rhodri Morgan initially said the publication of the report marked a “red letter day” for Wales; Peter Hain meanwhile was more circumspect. He made the defensible political judgement that the Richard Commission report had few friends in Parliament.

Though Peter Hain fashioned his own ‘elegant’ piece of political choreography in the form of the 2006 Government of Wales Act, it won fewer plaudits for longevity than it did for dexterity. No sooner than the ink was dry Labour was in need of coalition partners in Cardiff Bay. And as much as they acknowledged the skill of Peter Hain, Labour’s new (and unlikely) bedfellows, had little sympathy for Mr Hain’s footwork. They wanted a Parliament, but they knew they couldn’t get one – so they settled for another Commission.

Having rejected the work of one former UN Ambassador, they turned to another. Sir Emyr Jones Parry was appointed to lead an ‘All Wales Convention’. But in practice it had little in common with its Scottish namesake (circa 1988) and was more akin to Ivor’s biggun. But in politics, as in comedy, all is in the timing.

The ‘One Wales’ deal saw Labour deliver the substance of the Richard Commission’s recommendation to its original timetable, albeit via a different route. Now, six months on from the referendum, the constitutional question is open once again and through the age old medium: the Convention. In fact, in a delightful piece of choreography, the latest Commission is a result of the failure to resolve the issues raised by its two most recent antecedents. If you like, it is the love child of Ivor Richard and Gerald Holtham.

The cynical campaigners from True Wales could be forgiven for feeling smug at the rapid reopening of the devolution question. And I have some sympathy. As I have argued ( http://amanwy.blogspot.com/2011/07/challenging-culture-of-mediocrity.html ), given the profound challenges facing Welsh politics the constant search for more powers to devolve to Wales seems like displacement activity.

Although this two part Commission will turn itself, inevitably it seems, to the question of powers its founding purpose was to wrong-foot the finger pointing tendency in Cardiff Bay.

This commission is a creature of Westminster and follows the model of the Calman Commission in Scotland where the Unionist parties tried to turn the tables on those who were seeking ever more powers without the accompanying responsibility.

The Welsh Secretary thinks she is being clever by kicking the question of ‘fair funding’ into the long grass of the committee jungle. But just as the original the Calman Commission was borne out of an attempt to outsmart the SNP, and failed, so too Cheryl Gillian needs to be careful of the force that she is about to unleash. After his decade of seemingly futile toil Huw T Edwards observed, 'From tiny acorns, mighty oaks grow'.

So, the new Commissioners have their brief, they’ll be getting their papers. They are no doubt feeling excited. They have enough tricky conundrums to keep them occupied for a few years. Ken Hopkins would have approved.

New Sherriff’s in town

2011-09-09T02:31:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 9 September

There can be little doubt that this is a radical Government.

And one of its most radical innovations is almost upon us, and yet there has been very little debate in Wales about how it is going to work in practice.

In a little over a year’s time we are going to elect a Police Commissioner to oversee each ofWales’ four police forces. Each will have the power to hire and fire Chief Constables. But equally significant will be the considerable informal power that they will exert. Democratic mandates being what they are, the Commissioners will become significant players on the Welsh political scene. They will undoubtedly want to shape the communities they serve as well as influencing the national debate.

There has, inevitably, been strong opposition to the move by the Police Federation who fear it will lead to the politicization of the police force – a point reinforced by the existing Police Authorities and the Welsh Chief Constables who do not wish to change the current arrangements. The most effective opposition has come from Lib Dem peers. But rather than force the issue this week they settled for a delay in the elections. Rather than being held on the same day as next May’s local elections as planned, they will now take place in November 2012. Once Parliament rubber stamps the deal the planning can begin in earnest.

The picture is slightly complicated in Wales by the Assembly’s opposition to the abolition of Police Authorities. 9 of the 17 members of each Police Authority are currently nominated by local councils, and as local government is a devolved area the Home Office had to ask AMs for their consent to alter the scrutiny arrangements. Much to the chagrin of Whitehall, AMs were not compliant. Heads are still being scratched as how to deal with the relationship between local councils and the new Commissioners, but at least one Welsh Police Authority has started preparing for the transition
So who might these Commissioners be? Though, as I understand it, thinking in the political parties inWalesis at an early stage, it seems likely that there will be party candidates in each of the four Welsh police forces. As theSouth Walesand Gwent Police forces cover areas where Labour is the strongest, it is a reasonable working assumption that the party will be in with a good chance of getting its candidates elected in the most populous areas. Dyfed Powys and North Wales police areas may prove to be more fluid affairs, with an independent standing a decent chance in westWalesat least.

But as criminal justice is a subject not devolved there has been little thinking within the parties inWales– in policy terms at least – about policing issues. And are there enough quality candidates to match the high profile responsibilities of the Commissioners? These are big jobs and will require big personalities to fill them.

Who is there? I wouldn’t be surprised if Russell Goodway stepped forward. Perhaps Nick Bourne would have a reasonable chance in Dyfed Powys? Is Jeff Jones tempted to stand as an independent? I daresay there’ll be a few local government figures who will want a shot, and what about Lembit Opik now that he’s lost out inLondon(where the Mayor is also the Police Commissioner), might he throw his hat in the ring? And who knows which figures from outside politics might be attracted by this powerful role. Is Richard Brunstrom back from his sailing holiday?

It is a tantalising prospect. I tend to agree with Jeff Jones that “the reaction of the left to the idea of the directly elected police commissioner has also been pretty pathetic”. I suspect the dynamic that the elections will create will not only oxygenise Welsh politics, but help shape it. After all, once the genie is released from the bottle you can’t put him back in.

Stormy weather

2011-08-18T01:06:00.000-07:00

Posted on Wales Home on August 10th 2011

IT IS THE calm before the storm. With both Westminster and Cardiff Bay in recess the political scene appears tranquil, but storm clouds are gathering. And when the new Parliamentary boundaries are published for the rest of the UK next month they will erupt.

A reduction in the number of MPs Wales sends to the House of Commons by a quarter is certain to unleash powerful and unpredictable weather within the political parties as politicians digest the implications of reshaped constituencies. As well as having profound implications for the nature of future UK Governments, the changes will have more immediate impacts on Welsh politics.

Even though the detailed proposals for Wales will not now be published until January, the febrile Westminster atmosphere will make MPs jumpy. At a time when delicate political judgements will be required to decide the future funding arrangements for the Welsh Government, our MPs will be pre-occupied. Where calm minds and even tempers will be needed, frayed nerves and anxiety are likely to be found.

There will also be a direct knock on consequence for the way the National Assembly is elected. Some 40 of the Assembly’s 60 seats are based on the boundaries for Westminster constituencies. With the template changing it is almost certain that the Assembly boundaries will follow suit.

We could follow Scotland where voters find themselves in different constituencies for Holyrood and Westminster elections. But this messy arrangement is seen as an unhappy precedent that few want to follow. Instead Peter Hain has proposed a complete re-jig of the Assembly’s voting system. Instead of the present mixed system of First Past the Post and PR, Mr Hain – an advocate of PR for Westminster and one of the leaders of the 1997 referendum campaign which introduced the ‘element of proportionality’ into the Assembly’s voting system – now wants something quite different.

The Shadow Welsh Secretary is pushing for 30 two-member constituencies using the same electoral system as the House of Commons. A rival proposal favoured by the other three parties is to increase the number of AMs elected on party lists to make the Additional Member System more proportional – and in-turn less favourable to Labour.

The debate is likely to get ugly as each side in the debate digs in behind a voting system that is more likely to benefit their party. But behind this wall of white noise the National Assembly will be getting on with using its new law making powers. While the question of the distribution of seats will cause much angst, the question of whether 60 AMs is sufficient remains.

Though March’s referendum now seems like a distant memory some important issues that were raised in the campaign remain to be addressed. Much as I disagreed with True Wales, there was much in the analysis put forward by Rachel Banner that struck a nerve. In particular her points around deficiencies in scrutiny were well made. In her WalesHome essay during the campaign she argued that:

“the serious lack of plurality in the Welsh press means that it is much more difficult for a unicameral Assembly with the greatly enhanced law-making power… to be held accountable”.

On this her analysis was right, but her solution was wrong. So how do we address the problem of accountability and scrutiny in a more autonomous Wales?

Cymru Yfory has an answer to this question, and it’s been perfectly consistent in making the case of the Richard Commission. it says the number of Assembly Members needs to be increased from 60 to 80. Its position seems to have support from unexpected quarters. In a letter to the Western Mail in the aftermath of the vote the former Labour leader of Bridgend Council, Jeff Jones, wrote that: “one of the problems with our Assembly is that it is actually quite a tiny institution with not much depth of talent”.

He drew the comparison between the size of the Assembly with the Parliaments of Estonia (which has 101 MPs with a population of 1.3 million), and Ireland (166 TDs and a population of 4.5 million). He might have added that it is also smaller than the House of Representatives in the US states of North Dakota (94), and Vermont (148) – all of which have smaller populations than Wales.

Yet, while there may be an intellectual case for increasing the number of AMs, it is politically difficult impossible to justify in the aftermath of a referendum campaign that was fought on the premise that the number didn’t need to rise.

That said, the question of how we apportion elected representatives to our various levels of Government has been reopened by the decision of the Westminster coalition to reduce the number of MPs from Wales by 25%. The precise calibration of how many politicians we need at each level of government is a question that will come up again when the time comes to re-examine the number of Welsh councils. By then we will have had some experience of operating a legislative Parliament with 60 AMs. At that point it may be possible to recalibrate and increase the number of AMs, providing the total number of politicians in Wales does not rise overall.

In the meantime, how do we strengthen the Assembly’s ability to scrutinise the Welsh Government? Professor Laura McAllister from Liverpool University has analysed the devolved legislatures across the UK and believes there is a weakness in scrutiny capacity in general, and in Wales in particular. She points to the small scale of the Assembly and the weakness of civil society as the main causes, and argues that the coming of primary powers is likely to stretch ever further our capacity to scrutinise.

As Jeff Jones suggested, there is a need to draw on a greater ‘depth of talent’, and even if the number of AMs was to increase, the question of ‘depth’ would still remain a moot one. The dedication and drive required to gain entry into formal politics is resulting in an increasingly narrow political class. A small country such as ours with its democracy still in its infancy needs to draw on as wide a talent pool as possible to prove the naysayers wrong.

One way forward was floated three years ago by the former Welsh Government Minister Jane Davidson. She suggested bringing ‘talented non-politicians’ into the Assembly via the PR top-up lists. She argued there were many people of ability with a passion for Wales who did not want to enter formal politics, but would be willing to serve for a defined period. However, her call for political parties to reserve a third of the Assembly seats for outsiders and to put tribalism to one side came unstuck because of, well, tribalism.

Nonetheless, the spirit of her suggestion is surely right. Laura McAllister has pointed to examples of Scandinavian and Commonwealth states like Norway, Iceland, Canada and New Zealand where outsiders are co-opted onto parliamentary committees. By ‘outsourcing’ some of the scrutiny function their parliaments have increased their ability to hold their Governments to account and simultaneously strengthened civil society.

It is a model that should be considered by the Assembly Commission. After all, it was adopted by the business community long ago in the form of non-executive directors to challenge the executive, look after the interests of the company’s share-holders, and bring a range of experiences to the board table. The particular advantage of adapting the model to fit into the context of the Assembly is that it would bolster its capacity to scrutinise, without increasing the number of AMs.

No matter what electoral system we settle on, or where the constituencies’ boundaries lay, unless we can create the capacity and the culture to challenge the state we are in, we will not fulfil the potential of our country and its people.

This is an adapted extract from an article in the latest edition of the IWA’s Agenda journal

Challenging a culture of mediocrity

2011-07-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

Here is the unedited version of an essay published in the Summer 2011 edition of the IWA's journal, Agenda:

Rachel Banner was right. Well, about some things anyway.

Much as I disagreed with the arguments she marshalled to make her case for a No vote in the devolution referendum, there was more than a grain of truth in some of her central charges. As depressing and hypocritical as I found her anti-politics tone, there is no denying that there was much in her analysis of the challenges we face. The No campaign’s assaults struck a nerve in three areas: capacity, scrutiny, and quality.

It is only human for those of us who campaigned for a Yes vote to have basked for a brief moment in the satisfaction of a well fought campaign. But it is incumbent on us now to examine the weaknesses in the case that we presented and seek solutions, however uncomfortable they may be.

From the vantage point of the engine room of the Yes campaign Wales looked small. Of course, not literally. The task of creating an infrastructure across the towns and cities of Wales in a matter of months was an awesome one, and one I left to the formidable organisational skills of Cathy Owens and Daran Hill. But the challenge of engaging Wales’ civil society and media was one I helped take on, and it was a sobering exercise. To be brutal, there wasn’t much to work with.

Though non-governmental organisations have grown significantly in Wales since 1999 they remain a weak force. Most proved themselves either unwilling or incapable of persuading their UK head offices of the merits of engaging in the referendum campaign. Otherwise, they were too reliant on Welsh Government grant-in-aid to risk taking sides. Of course, as individuals most of the people engaged in Welsh civil society supported the reforms, in some cases actively. However, the small civil society to which they belong has developed a culture of risk aversion when it comes to political engagement. The rules of the Charity Commission do not help, although they are too often a convenient excuse to fall back on to justify the new credo: don’t upset anyone!

The tale of the ‘media war’ is another tale for another day, but the salient point for the purposes of this essay is that Of course, it is difficult to run a campaign in which few are taking much notice. A declining Welsh media, allied to a metropolitan corps of journalists disinterested in developments that do not fit into a Westminster narrative, made the telling of our own story very difficult. The frustration was only added to by having the disengagement played back to us as evidence of a disinterest in the devolution project amongst the people of Wales.

There’s no use railing against it, it’s a reality. And that reality presents enormous challenges to the future viability of Welsh politics. As Rachel Banner herself said, in an essay on the Wales Home website:

“The serious lack of plurality in the Welsh press means that it is much more difficult for a unicameral Assembly with the greatly enhanced law-making power... to be held accountable”.

She’s right, but of course her solution was to campaign against improving Wales’ law making powers. So how do we address the problem of accountability and scrutiny in a more autonomous Wales?

Cymru Yfory have an answer to this question, and they’ve been perfectly consistent in making the case of the Richard Commission. They say the number of Assembly Members needs to be increased from 60 to 80. Their position seems to have has support from unexpected quarters. In a letter to the Western Mail in the aftermath of the vote the former Labour leader of Bridgend Council, Jeff Jones, wrote that “one of the problems with our Assembly is that it is actually quite a tiny institution with not much depth of talent”. He drew the comparison between the size of the Assembly with the Parliaments of Estonia (which has 101 MPs with a population of 1.3 million), and Ireland (166 TDs and a population of 4.5 million). He might have added that it is also smaller than the House of Representatives in the US states of North Dakota (94), and Vermont (148) – all of which have smaller populations than Wales.

Yet, while there may be an intellectual case for increasing the number of AMs, it is politically difficult impossible to justify in the aftermath of a referendum campaign that was fought on the premise that the number didn’t need to rise.

That said, the question of how we apportion elected representatives to our various levels of Government has been reopened by the decision of the Westminster coalition to reduce the number of MPs from Wales by a quarter. The precise calibration of how many politicians we need at each level of government is a question that will come up again when the time comes to re-examine the number of Welsh councils. By then we will have had some experience of operating a legislative Parliament with 60 AMs. At that point it may be possible to recalibrate and increase the number of AMs, providing the total number of politicians in Wales does not rise overall.

In the meantime, how do we strengthen the Assembly’s ability to scrutinise the Welsh Government? Professor Laura McAllister from Liverpool University has analysed the devolved legislatures across the UK and believes there is a weakness in scrutiny capacity in general, and in Wales in particular. She points to the small scale of the Assembly and the weakness of civil society as the main causes, and argues that the coming of primary powers is likely to stretch ever further our capacity to scrutinise.

As Jeff Jones suggested, there is a need to draw on a greater ‘depth of talent’, and even if the number of AMs was to increase, the question of ‘depth’ would still remain a moot one. The dedication and drive required to gain entry into formal politics is resulting in an increasingly narrow political class. A small country such as ours with its democracy still in its infancy needs to draw on as wide a talent pool as possible to prove the naysayers wrong.

One way forward was floated three years ago by the former Welsh Government Minister Jane Davidson. She suggested bringing ‘talented non-politicians’ into the Assembly via the PR top-up lists. She argued there were many people of ability with a passion for Wales who did not want to enter formal politics, but would be willing to serve for a defined period. However, her call for political parties to reserve a third of the Assembly seats for outsiders and to put tribalism to one side came unstuck because of, well, tribalism.

Nonetheless, the spirit of her suggestion is surely right. Laura McAllister has pointed to examples of Scandinavian and Commonwealth states like Norway, Iceland, Canada and New Zealand where outsiders are co-opted onto parliamentary committees. By ‘outsourcing’ some of the scrutiny function their parliaments have increased their ability to hold their Governments to account and simultaneously strengthened civil society.

It is a model that should be considered by the Assembly Commission. After all, it was adopted by the business community long ago in the form of non-executive directors to challenge the executive, look after the interests of the company’s share-holders, and bring a range of experiences to the board table. The particular advantage of adapting the model to fit into the context of the Assembly is that it would bolster its capacity to scrutinise, without increasing the number of AMs.

Yet the main challenge we face is not simply about the number or quality of our politicians. Rather, it is about about developing a more mature political culture. In short, we’ve got some growing up to do. During the referendum campaign Roger Lewis, Chair of Yes for Wales, made it his mantra that in order to gain respect Wales first needed to build self-respect. And, as he said, the first step on that journey was to take responsibility for our own problems.

The theme was echoed just days after the result by Charlie Jeffery of Edinbrugh University, one of the few academics to take an interest in the development of devolution across the UK. In a sobering lecture to the Wales Governance Centre he deflated the rhetoric of the campaign with an assessment of the cold realities we now face. Professor Jeffery argued that “the political logic of the UK’s multi-level state” suggests that Wales will become an even more marginal to considerations at the centre. “Expect to hear refrains to the effect of, ‘Well done on the referendum, but you’re on your own now, hope it goes well’”, he told his audience at the Pierhead:

“Westminster will from time to time do things – like the near wholesale withdrawal of state funding for tuition in English universities – that have tremendous knock-on effects in Wales, without feeling a need to consult anyone in Wales about the policy and its effects. Get used to it.”

He suggested we can forget about demanding fair funding from the UK Government without first accepting responsibility for raising some of our own revenue. But the flip side was that if the new logic is embraced and politicians and interest groups understand that they can’t have it all ways, then Wales has the opportunity to fashion Welsh answers to Welsh questions. As Professor Jeffery concluded:

“It is an opportunity for the people of Wales and their representatives to define just what kind of political system Wales should have, what values it should embody, and what outcomes it should pursue”.

Of course he’s right. To govern is to choose. However, translate that into real world politics and the going gets tough. A problem is that we built a consensus leading up to the referendum, but we don’t have one on the direction beyond it. We did well on the rhetoric, but didn’t think much beyond 3 March. That’s where Rachel Banner was really right. Of course, we’d have never held a four party campaign together had we tried to do so. However, there’s now no escaping the need for hard headed assessments on what our real priorities as a nation are.

While anti-Tory rhetoric is seductive to our political leaders, it doesn’t address the scale of the challenges we face. Neither does the constant search for more powers to devolve to Wales. Both preoccupations seem like displacement activity.
If we want the vibrant and prosperous country we talk about, then we need to accept the stark reality of our situation. We are poor, we are small and we are bound together into a dependency culture. To become more self-reliant we must first encourage a culture of self-criticism. “Our critics are our friends,” Benjamin Franklin once said. “They show us our faults”. Well, there’s not much evidence of that attitude in modern Wales – the land of the pulled punch. That has to change.

So how do we encourage more people to speak truth unto power? As an early sign of intent the First Minister should make a statement that no organisation receiving public funds should fear criticising a policy or action of the Welsh Government. Indeed, he should demand that any that come under pressure for doing so should bring it to his attention. Though not a panacea it would be a useful symbol.

The same should go for the so-called sponsored bodies. Ministers must encourage arms length agencies to challenge official thinking. Since the ‘bonfire of the quangos’ the trend for seeing sponsored bodies as mere delivery arms of the Welsh Government has intensified. Civil servants have been actively discouraging chief executives and Boards from any ‘political’ role. Though that might have been an understandable instinct a decade ago as the new Welsh Government sought to establish itself, today there is a need to take a longer term view. Of course, it is Ministers that must decide but it must be in response to they also should respond positively to robust and challenging advice.

It has to work both ways. To achieve the new focus on outcomes and ‘delivery’ that we are told will be the hallmark of the fourth Assembly, Ministers must make greater demands of bodies that receive public funding. Until now politicians who have demanded an explanation for a culture of poor performance have been resented as interfering micro-managers. Indeed, the response of the teaching profession to Education Minister Leighton Andrews’ robust demands that they raise their game proves Corporal Jones’ famous dictum: “they don't like it up 'em”.

If we are to meet the challenges before us we must confront the culture of mediocrity. We have to shake ourselves out of our cosy, 'we all know each other' culture, and encourage a more testing environment. These are considerable challenges, but exciting ones nonetheless.

We should be under no illusions. The ‘project’ of making Wales a more self-reliant country is one that will take many generations to achieve. There are no quick fixes. Though some of her analysis struck a cord, ultimately Rachel Banner was profoundly wrong. The optimism of the Yes for Wales campaign won through. As Roger Lewis put it in his speech at the declaration on 4 March:

“Our country has great potential. Yes, it faces great challenges. But now is time for us all to take responsibility. Let us not be afraid to make decisions, or make mistakes. The real failure is if we do not try. The culture of blame and excuse is behind us. Today we have found our voice.”

• Lee Waters was Vice-Chair of the Yes for Wales campaign, Labour's representative on its steering group, and led on communications.

Were we wasting our time?

2011-07-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

Posted on the Wales Home website on 28 June 2011

“There was a very limited campaign impact.”

This was Professor Roger Scully’s verdict said as he presented the results of a survey of voting patterns in March’s devolution referendum last week.

“The campaign didn’t actually change a huge amount. It increased the levels of those intending to vote a bit, but other than that we’re not seeing a huge amount of change,”

This was his conclusion after analysing the results of a repeat survey by YouGov of more than 2,500 people. This is capable of being interpreted as an indictment of the Yes campaign. As one of the people who sacrificed several months of my life to help run the campaign, I naturally have an interest in discovering what kind of impact our efforts had on the end result.

The analysis, by Aberystwyth University’s Institute of Welsh Politics and Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre, does not suggest that the Yes campaign failed. It simply reconfirms what previous studies have shown – Welsh public opinion has been steadily settling around the view that the Assembly should be the institution with the most influence on matters which effect day to day life in Wales.

Across all age groups there has been a growing consensus that the Assembly is ready to assume the powers of a Parliament. The same analysis – informed by the same authors – underpinned the findings of the All-Wales Convention. The referendum was winnable, the Jones Parry report concluded, but had yet to be won.

That was task we accepted at the end of 2010. Led initially by Leighton Andrews, a small core team of volunteers, supported by a broader cross-party steering committee, set about building a campaign. We went to work with no resources, little time and a backdrop of growing impatience with the absence of a visible Yes campaign. The challenge of getting our message across was considerable, and it is no surprise that most people felt they had insufficient information or understanding about the issues. For our part, we did what we could.

With the exception of BBC Wales and the Western Mail we were confronted by a media which displayed palpable indifference to the referendum. From a standing start the Yes campaign created an infrastructure, without Electoral Commission funding, to support the delivery of over 1 million leaflets. We raised £60,000 in the space of a few short weeks and were on to course to raise more before we ceased efforts in the face of a spending cap imposed on us as a result of the failure of the No campaign to organise a serious campaign.

The analysis by Richard Wyn Jones and Roger Scully does show that the Yes for Wales campaign was significantly more successful than any other ‘permitted participant’ at contacting voters. However, it is a surprise that fewer than 10% of people responding to the survey recalled being contacted by anyone during the campaign.

“For the most part people seemed to have voted on the basis of what they thought about the issues that were actually on the ballot”

Roger Scully told his audience at last week’s presentation. Well, in the face of a No campaign strategy that sought to widen the debate way beyond what was on the ballot paper that was no mean feat.

Further, the research showed that the percentage of voters certain to vote over the last four weeks of the campaign increased from just over 50% to just under 60%.

In a sense, the Yes campaign couldn’t win. Success was bound to have a thousand authors and failure would have been an orphan. But even if the psephology pointed to a likely outcome, the success of campaign was not inevitable.

Forging and sustaining a consensus across four parties and civil society so close to an election was a significant challenge. It is testimony to the determination to succeed of everyone involved that moments of real tension around the messaging of the campaign were contained, and kept private.

It is easy in retrospect to say that the Yes campaign was always going to win. But imagine a campaign where the parties were attacking each other, where there was no local network of organisations, no credible civil society figures endorsing the message, and no literature save the lamentable leaflet from the Electoral Commission setting out the issues. In those circumstances how confident could we be that people’s feelings about their constitutional preferences would have resulted in a Yes vote in all age groups and all but one of the Welsh counties?

I was clear in my own mind from the beginning that the referendum was the Yes campaign’s to lose. All we had to do was run a professional and credible all party campaign and we would win. But as experience taught me, that wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

While they may be some force to the analysis that “the campaign didn’t actually change a huge amount”, a poor Yes campaign could have produced a very different result.

The elephant in the room

2011-03-19T02:32:00.000-07:00

Simon Gibson, the chief executive of Sir Terry’s Wesley Clover International Corporation, told the Welsh Affairs Select Committee this week that his recent dealings with Assembly Government had been “fairly arduous” but he said this was not the fault of politicians, but of civil servants:

“One thing that I do find extremely frustrating is we are burdened with a civil service in Cardiff that is shaped for Whitehall.

“I don’t understand why a small, agile country like we are – or should be – in Wales is burdened with a civil service that’s monolithic in its rule structure... We’re somewhere between a small government and a local authority in terms of its critical mass – why don’t we have something that can move quickly?”

Vale says Yes

2010-12-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

A great letter in the local press today from representatives of the four main parties calling for a Yes vote in the Vale:

On March 3rd next year there’ll be a referendum to decide if Wales deserves a stronger voice.

Over the last decade the Assembly has gradually grown in stature and confidence. But the system for making laws that affect Wales is slow and complicated.

A Yes vote will help take Wales forward by speeding up the system of decision making to allow Assembly Members to get on with the job.

For example, it has taken three years to get permission from London to ensure that all new homes are equipped with fire sprinklers to stop needless deaths in house fires. Even though our democratically elected Assembly had supported the proposal it first had to be approved by civil servants, members of the House of Lords and MPs before it could become law.

Time and money is being wasted jumping through needless hoops. Even though we are from different parties we have come together to stand united behind a simple principle – laws that only apply in Wales should be made in Wales.

That’s what the referendum on March 3rd is about and we need your help to get a Yes vote. Please support the cross-party campaign by looking online at www.yesforwales.com and sign up to help

Yours

Jane Hutt AM (Labour),
Chris Franks AM (Plaid Cymru)
Andrew R T Davies AM (Conservative)
Eluned Parrot (Liberal Democrats)

What’s occurin’ @BarryIsland?

2010-12-02T05:54:00.000-08:00

Posted on Wales Home on December 2nd 2010

Barry Island is a name which resonates through Welsh folk memory. Long before Dave’s coaches, ‘the rocky islands’ have been drawn on by story tellers from Idris Davies to Max Boyce.

Let's go to Barry Island, Maggie fach,
And give all the kids one day by the sea,
And sherbet and buns and paper hats,
And a rattling ride on the Figure Eight;
We'll have tea on the sands and rides on the donkeys,
And sit in the evening with the folk of Cwm Rhondda
Idris Davies's Angry Summer

But miners fortnight is no more and Billy Butlin is a distant memory to the islanders. The sparkling beach remains at Whitmore Bay, but the backdrop looks tired and worn. Majestic ambitions have given way to the Bovis reality.

Barry, and the Island, have had few chances to access funding for regeneration by virtue of being part of the relatively wealthy Vale of Glamorgan. Now though there is a glimmer of hope. The town has been granted Strategic Regeneration Area status by the Assembly Government with £9 Million awarded in recognition of the area’s need.

So far a few shop fronts have been spruced up, the community radio station is to get a new studio and a housing estate is to get better lighting. As yet though there is no Big Idea to transform the image and prospects of the town.

A dormant slab of land overlooking Barry Island’s beach could provide the setting for a new era for the resort.

Since the last holiday camp closed in 1998 the local authority has been trying to market the 11 acre site without success. The latest idea is a caravan park for the windswept Nell’s Point. Though it has met with little enthusiasm locally it remains the default option, but as a result of the new Regeneration Status other options have a chance to be considered.

The proposal that is generating the most excitement from the community comes from the Island’s Primary school. Drawing inspiration from Brittany and from the Menai Straits the school sees an opportunity to create a cluster of coastal activities centered around a new eco ‘school of the sea’.

Sitting on the edge of the spectacular Glamorgan Heritage Coast the hub would make an alluring centre for activity tourism. With quality accommodation facilities the Island could become a centre for walking and cycling tourism, and on the doorstep of the Bristol Channel would be an ideal spot for a sailing and watersports centre. Add in a climbing centre and a sealife aquarium and the makings of a year round tourism offer start to become clear.

At the heart of this ‘village of the sea’ would be an educational centre of excellence. Ysgol y Mor in north Wales offers a model for integrating watersports and the marine environment into the school curriculum while delivering an economic boost to the surrounding area. As does the Classe de Mer model that has been running in Brittany for 20 years. Both show how educational centers of excellence can act as a catalyst for wider regeneration

Barry Island’s primary school already attracts visitors from across the country to see its innovative teaching practices. The drive that has seen this small community school crowned best ICT school in the whole of the UK and Welsh Eco school of the year - as well as getting an exemplary Estyn inspection report– has the potential to create an exemplar ‘coastal school’ that would draw visitors from around the UK that would come back again and again with their families.

It will be more than just a school, with its facilities serving tourists and locals all year round. A mix between Llangrannog and Center Parcs. It’s an exciting possibility, with far more potential for regenerating Barry than another caravan park. And what’s more the idea has come from the community.

A not for profit Community Interest Company called @BarryIsland is now being set up to try and attract partners and funders. The first project for the new social enterprise is to recreate the tidal paddling pool on Barry Island beach that entertained generations of children but fell into disrepair in the 1970s – an idea of the primary school’s children.

So far the Vale of Glamorgan Council has met both proposals with a list of reasons why they can’t happen. But it is too important and exciting a project to fail. We need partners not pessimists so that once again people will say Let's go to Barry Island, Maggie fach,

The return of macho politics

2010-09-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

The National Assembly for Wales has been rightly proud of its record on gender balance. At times over the last 10 years women have made up the majority of AMs and the majority of the Cabinet.

Things have slipped back a bit, women now make up 28 of the 60 places, but by international standards the Welsh Assembly remains one of the most representative legislatures by gender in the world.

But next May that will change. Eight women AM will relinquish their seats and in each case is almost certain to replaced by a a man.

Lorraine Barrett, Jane Davidson, Irene James, Trish Law, Val Lloyd, Jenny Randerson, and Janet Ryder are retiring and their local parties have selected men to replace them. Trish Law is also standing down and a man is very likely to succeed her. Nerys Evans' place on the Plaid Mid & West Wales list has been handed to a man - and though she may return to Cardiff Bay as AM for Carmarthen West it would be at the expense of a sitting female AM.

Only one retiring man (Andrew Davies) is likely to be replaced by a woman.

So all other things being equal it looks as though the number of female AMs will drop to 21 out of 60 in 2011.

None of the parties emerge with credit. Though Plaid Cymru and Labour make gestures towards positive discrimination they have had little impact on this round of selections. The Liberal Democrats have even less to be proud of and the Conservatives will end up as an all male group once again next year if their sole female loses her marginal seat.

If the results fall as expected the Assembly will still have roughly the same proportion of women representatives as the House of Commons does. But the Assembly was meant to be better than that.

Update: It has rightly been pointed out to me that the Conservatives have learned the errors of their ways somewhat and selected women in two marginals (Vale of Glamorgan and Aberconwy) as well as the top spot in South Wales West. If successful in all three would result in an extra two women AMs in the Assembly

Black balled

2010-08-05T02:10:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 5 August

A week and a half after the selection meeting the Western Mail finally reports this morning on David Melding's failure to be selected in the Vale of Glamorgan.

Nick Bourne is quoted as saying "This year we have made changes to many of our selection procedures in a bid to broaden the appeal and support of our Assembly candidates. In the seats selected so far we have a diverse range of candidates, with considerable political, community and business experience".

Indeed in Wrexham diversity has encompassed the sandal wearing community. John Marek ( ex-Forward Wales, ex-Independent, ex-Labour) was selected as the Conservative candidate in an open primary. Though not the first choice of the activists in Wrexham (for understandable reasons) he won as a result of the second preferences of members of the public who turned up at the public meeting - 26 people in total.

In the Vale of Glamorgan the Conservative Association didn't fancy giving up their exclusive power of selection. They opted for a curious model where the whole membership were invited to a meeting to hear from the aspirant candidates and then select the shortlist. But the final decision was made the by the executive committee of the local party - a group of some 25 people. This is the reverse of what happens in most parties.

Clearly some in this magic circle had some issues with David Melding and we can only speculate what they were. In a typically understated response he is quoted as saying “I was asked about my position on the referendum by party members during the hustings meeting, but I don’t know whether that was material to the result".

Candidate selection in all parties can be an arbitary affair. I've blogged before on the quirks in Labour's selection process. The Conservatives deserve praise for opening up the selection of candidates to the wider community. It is a brave decision and though it is open to abuse it has the potential to open up the system. But it needs to be applied evenly. It is little more than a token gesture if in Wales it is only adopted by seats the party does not expect to win.

Why Iona went...

2010-08-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 2 August

While we await an explanation from the S4C Authority for the abrupt resignation of their Chief Executive (and I'm not holding my breath) we'll have to settle for speculation. The word on the Eisteddfod Maes today was that the Iona Jones was faced with a demand from her board she could not accept.

It is said that Authority members Sir Roger Jones (former WDA Chair), and Sir Winston Roddick (former Assembly Counsel General) met the S4C Chief Executive and demanded the Authority be given a greater role in the day to day running of the channel. It is thought Iona Jones told them how to re-tune their set top box.

Let me make myself clear, I am not making any attempt to defend the way S4C is being managed. But one look at the membership of the S4C Authority convinces me that if any board can 'ditch due seperation' and involve itself directly in the running of a television channel, then this is not the board to do it.

What's more the S4C Authority has a role as a regulator, how can it scrutinise the management if it is part of the management?

If the rumours on the Maes are correct, then Iona Jones' exit begins to look a little different.

All talk?

2010-07-16T09:02:00.001-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on July 16th

I understand that last Monday the Cabinet finalised the Assembly Government’s Climate Change Strategy to be launched in October. From May all parties in the Assembly are committed to starting cutting our carbon emissions by 3% every year. Ministers have been justifiably proud that this makes the Welsh Assembly Government one the world’s leading regional Government’s. Indeed, one of Carwyn Jones’ first acts as First Minister was to head to Copenhagen to represent Wales and parade our record.

But we are some way off matching the rhetoric with action.

Had the ‘Rainbow Alliance’ been formed between Plaid, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats in 2007 Government Ministers would have pledged to cut 3% a year from all Welsh emissions starting immediately and delivered by 2011. The One Wales agreement had a watered down version. The 3% target would only apply to devolved areas (so the fear of shutting down the steelworks at Port Talbot could be avoided) and would only come into effect after 2011.

Between then and now WAG officials have been trying to find ways of achieving the cut, and indeed one senior civil servant has been arguing internally that the 3% target is unachievable and should therefore be dropped. He's been slapped down; instead the target has been watered down further still.

It is now believed that less than half the 3% target can be achieved by WAG. To achieve the remaining emissions cuts WAG are relying on policies being introduced by the UK Government being achieved, for example electric cars. And that assumes that the bits WAG are banking on being able to deliver will do so - which is quite an assumption. The end result may well be lower than 1% emission cuts.

So we've gone from 3% now (aka 2007), to possibly less than 1% after 2011.

Now of course the economic downturn will result in a drop in emission as a consequence of falling output, and that may well help the next Assembly Government present figures in its early years to show it is on the right track. But the work that the respected Tyndall Centre has been doing for the Welsh Climate Change Commission shows that we need cuts in carbon emission of 9% per year in order to keep global warming from reaching dangerous levels.

We’re a million miles for achieving anything like that. Environmental NGOs and advisers are in despair at the pace of progress but are self-censoring for fear of upsetting Ministers. This is difficult territory and I make no criticism of that. Leadership on this issue needs to be shared.

It is easy for all parties to pass motions in the Assembly promising cuts in ten years time. The tough politics is delivering cuts in the early years.

Over the next few months work on writing manifestos will intensify. If the political parties are sincere in wanting Wales to take a leading role in tackling climate change they must commit to a programme of Government which delivers cuts in devolved areas of at least 3% every year.

It can be done. There is little point in Wales having some of the world's best strategies if we do not deliver them.

Bumper Boost for Banner

2010-07-07T00:57:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 7 July

Eights months out from a referendum on further powers Gerry Holtham's latest report is, how shall I put it, unhelpful.

The conclusion by the three man Commission that the Assembly should be accountable for what it spends, just as a Local Authority is, by having to raise its own revenue is intellectually undeniable. But is manna from heaven for the No campaign.

And Holtham's rider that his package of financial reform should be subject to yet another referendum is sure to be seized upon as confirmation that the slope towards independence gets slipplier with every incremental step.

These arguments can be countered, but whereas the first report helped the narrative of the Yes campaign, yesterday's final installment does not.

Fatigue

2010-07-01T11:36:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 1 July

The Left Foot Forward blog is reporting that the timetable for the promised referendum on changing the Westminster voting system will be announced next week, and that the referendum itself is most likely to be scheduled for May 2011 – on the same day as local Council elections in England. And of course the day elections to the National Assembly for Wales are also due to take place.

The Con / Lib Government haven’t scored highly on sensitivity to Wales so far and bracketing the Assembly elections with other ‘local’ elections in England confirms the pattern.

If allowed to go ahead on the same day voters would face the confusion of media coverage about changing to the Alternative Vote for elections (they are unlikely to distinguish between Westminster and other polls) while voters in Wales will be expected to use the AMS system for only the fourth time.

Understandably Welsh Party leaders are looking to exercise their ability to request a delay of one month to postpone Welsh elections until June 2nd.

But that raises a further problem. Welsh voters will be asked to take part in a referendum on Assembly powers in early March, the 10 yearly census later that month, a referendum on a new voting system for Westminster in early May and then elections to the Senedd at the beginning of June.

It is going to be hard to get the arguments about the Assembly referedum heard through the noise of a Westminster debate about the voting system, and harder still to generate interest in the Assembly elections in June.

But I doubt that has crossed the minds of our Prime Minister and his deputy.

Regeneration?

2010-06-25T04:28:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 23 June

The South Wales Argus reports that £500,000 of regeneration funding from WAG is to be spent on a 'new salt storage centre'

The building at Waun-y-Pound in Ebbw Vale will able to store 10,000 tonnes of salt and cost £500,000 to construct.

Councils in the Heads of the Valleys area, which includes Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly, Torfaen, Rhondda Cynon Taff and Merthyr Tydfil, will share the building to store supplies of salt.

The authorities realised they needed additional storage for salt during the winter - when highways departments found themselves short of stock during long periods of ice and snow.

Some councils in Gwent were down to just a couple of hundred tonnes of salt in the bad weather in January and gritting teams worked round the clock to ensure road networks were safe.

Funding for the project has been secured through a £500,000 grant from the Heads of the Valleys Programme.

The programme is a 15-year regeneration project which aims to make the area more attractive, improve the local economy, ensure the residents are well-educated, skilled and healthy and boost tourism.

Exciting news no doubt, but will this really aid the long term regeneration of one of the poorest parts of Europe?

Don't look away now

2010-06-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 14 June

There's been discussion on this blog before on the rising price of oil. But it is a fast moving debate.

In the last few weeks Lloyds of London have warned businesses of a global oil supply crunch and price spike. Cheap oil has underpinned a whole range of economic activity in the past and that is coming to an end. So too is the food supply chain we've become used to. Lloyds warn that increasing transport costs will make the availability of some imported foods in supermarkets uneconomic, and the whole 'just in time' supply chain model may need to be re-thought.

Sceptics of the 'peak oil' debate had a further blow when the conservative statistics arm of the US Department of Energy published its International Energy Outlook for 2010. Its previously rosy forecasts of future oil supplies have been replaced by a pessimistic analysis. Peak oil is almost upon us it now says.

On top of that Sir David King, who was Blair's Chief Scientific Adviser and peak oil sceptic, wrote in yesterday's Observer, that the Interntaional Energy Outlook is too optimistic and has overestimated the oil reserves in fields yet to be developed by some 30%, making the shortfall even worse. We must end our dependency on oil he concludes:

We will also need to go beyond the designs of the vehicles and fuels themselves and look at changing urban design, building and improving mass transportation systems and changing the ways that people drive.

This, of course, is independent of the additional, but pressing imperative to reduce carbon emissions and prevent dangerous climate change. Put the two together and the case for change becomes overwhelming.

There's a final reason to wean ourselves off our current dependency on oil. In these difficult economic times, we need to stop bleeding our economies by pouring money into the handful of countries that hold most of the oil.

Today, the rest of the world pours more than $2 trillion a year into the Gulf states, which is $6m per day. This money would surely be better spent developing energy resources that are much closer to home?

These are not hippy radicals making these warnings. They cannot be easily dismissed. And what's more their predictions are not abstract theories they will impact on Wales and our public services.

What plans are Government in Wales making to address this emerging crisis? And why aren't politicians and the media asking these questions?

Framing the debate

2010-06-07T23:51:00.000-07:00

Published in the Western Mail on 8th June 2010

As the debate over the timing of a referendum on further lawmaking powers for the Assembly intensifies,political expert LEE WATERS looks at the challenges that will inevitably face the ‘Yes’ campaign

THE delay to the referendum on further lawmaking powers for the Assembly is a disappointment to some. But it provides an opportunity to assemble an effective Yes campaign and, crucially, to shape its message.

While working as a student in the US Congress in Washington DC in the mid 1990s I remember one of President Clinton’s advisers saying that in modern political campaigns the opponents of change have an advantage.

As competition for people’s attention becomes fiercer, he said, it is much easier to frighten someone in 60 seconds than it is to inspire them.

And that is the difficult task before the Yes campaign. In the midst of a recession and an anti-politics mood, how can we motivate people about what is essentially a fairly narrow and technical question: Should we move from part three of the Government of Wales Act to part four?

The No campaigners have already proved themselves to be formidable exponents of doubt and fear. Though they present themselves as political innocents, the men and women behind the “True Wales” campaign are sophisticated political operators. And though opinion polls consistently show that they are out of touch with Welsh public opinion, once the date is named for a referendum they’ll be given an equal platform by the broadcasters.

So how should progressives deal with their backward looking pessimism? In my view the Yes campaign should concentrate on three themes:

1. It’s about the future

As flawed as the law-making system is, the referendum is not going to be about mechanics.

There are bags of evidence that the LCO system is not working, but it is of little interest to most voters. There is little profit in getting drawn into opaque arguments about the Government of Wales Act. The Yes campaign needs to focus on the future.

The No campaigners will dust off the Leo Abse playbook from the 1979 referendum campaign and conjure up the bogeymen of the past – the elites, the language fanatics, the constitutional obsessives, who care little about bread and butter issues in their quest for an independent Wales. But the Yes campaign must not be distracted by the dog whistle tactics of the 1970s. We must frame the debate to be about the future and not the past.

Over the last decade the Assembly has gradually grown in stature and confidence. A Yes vote will help take Wales forward, giving Wales a stronger voice. It will give those we elect the tools to protect our communities from Whitehall indifference.

Of course not everyone will agree. About a third of voters are currently thinking of voting No in the referendum. But opinion surveys by academics have consistently shown the number of people wanting to return to direct Whitehall rule is declining, and among younger generations especially, people increasingly look to the Assembly.

2. Hope not despair

We face tough times in the coming years and the Yes campaign must set out an optimistic vision for the future and contrast it with the backward-looking message of the No campaign.

Jobs for the boys; the slippery slope to separation; “the lavish trappings of Government” – these are the messages of the anti- devolutionists. These barren slogans represent the old politics of fear. What is the vision of the future offered by the No campaigners?

The choice is between a more confident Wales where young people don’t need to leave their communities in search of jobs and challenges, or a dependency culture where we look to others for solutions to our problems.

3. The consequences of voting No

The majority of voters want to see devolution succeed, but the No campaigners want to hobble our Assembly.

They present a No vote in the referendum as a risk-free venture. Defeat the elites, says Oxford-educated True Wales spokeswoman Rachel Banner, and let Assembly Members carry on as they are.

But staying as we are is not an option. If Wales votes no to the proposals for modest reform, the Assembly’s ability to stand up for Wales will begin to unravel.

We already know that London officials need little excuse to sideline Welsh affairs. Indeed, Wales’ former top civil servant, Sir Jon Shortridge, has described in detail how awareness of the needs of Wales in Whitehall is poor. The UK Cabinet Secretary put the failure to take Welsh interests into account down to “forgetful- ness” among Whitehall chiefs.

If there is a no vote, the slow and complicated system of law-making will get worse.

The holes in the devolution settlement will be exploited. Whitehall mandarins will become even more absent- minded about Wales if they feel they have a green light to frustrate the Assembly.

So the status quo is not an option. Forward or back, that’s the option. And let’s not pretend otherwise.

Lee Waters is a former Chief Political Correspondent for ITV Wales and is editor of the Bevan Foundation blog Thisismytruth.org

Here we go...

2010-05-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 24 May

"A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" is how Oscar Wilde defined a cynic.

How else can you characterise someone who can describe the end of the Child Trust Fund scheme as "Action to cut Whitehall waste" ?

For those who don't have to worry about how to dodge inheritance tax because they can expect no handsome bequest the Child Trust Fund provided the promise of a future. Studies show that young adults with a small amount of capital at the beginning of adulthood had a significant advantage 10 years later over those who did not, enjoying more employment, higher earnings and better health It was one of the most radical attempts to engineer a more equal society in the long term. Waste, apparently.

Among the £6.2 Billion cuts this financial year is England's £5 million "Play Strategy". Encouraging the poorest children to play, learn, grow in confidence and explore freely has now been earmarked as a waste. The Sun cites it as another example of "the spendthrift culture in Whitehall".

But as Polly Toynbee notes these are not the things the better-off will notice, not their children, not in their schools:

This is no time to be a child, especially a poor child, and this is no time to be young. While David Cameron preserved every last perk for his over-60s wealthy voters – dukes keep their universal winter fuel payments – the young were the first sacrificial lambs.

The markets are demanding cuts. And cuts they will get. But it's not all taxis, first class rail travel, advertising and consultants. The cuts passed on to Local Government will mean care homes closed, social workers laid off, class sizes increased. Despite the spin, there are real victims to these first cuts.

Inevitable, perhaps. But have some respect for the lives of the people you'll be changing for the worst. It is beyond glib to describe such cuts as 'wasteful spending'. One man's "lower value spend" is another's life chance.

Lets hear no more that politics makes no difference.

New Politics?

2010-05-13T09:12:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 13 May

80% of the new Cabinet are male.

95% are white.

59% are privately educated

69% went to Oxbridge.

Don't be fooled

2010-05-07T02:04:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 7 May 2010

"Labour is the luckiest party in Wales. End of" Darren Hill concluded this morning.

It was a complex result no doubt. Labour held the notionally Conservative Vale of Clwyd and very nearly hung onto Cardiff North. It lost other Conservative targets in Carmarthen West and the Vale of Glamorgan as expected, but held on to Gower, Delyn, Bridgend and Cardiff West which could have been reasonably expected to have fallen into Tory hands.

Why? I'm wary of instant analysis so I'll reserve my judgement. But Labour should not be fooled into thinking that this was a good result. Across the UK they achieved less than 30% of the popular vote - lower even than in 1983.

This is clearly not a strong platform to enter the Assembly elections. Depending on the colour of the Government that is formed Labour looks out onto perilous territory. The Liberal Democrats are in strong positions in Swansea West, Pontypridd, Newport East and Merthyr to steal away Labour's strongholds in 2011. It is not inconceivable that the party will be left with a rump of seats.

After the last Assembly elections Labour did not heed the lessons of their near catastrophe. Entering into coalition allowed them to avoid confronting the fragility of their position. There's a danger that the same will happen at Westminster.

It is time for Labour to lie down in a dark room and think through its future strategic direction under fresh leadership

The Presidential election

2010-04-24T03:02:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 24 April

Its been creeping up on us for years but this election marks the turning point when Britain adopted a Presidential system.

The TV debates have formalised the trend towards focusing a party's election campaign on their leader. From now onwards when choosing a leader parties will be judging candidates even more so on their 'character' and ability to perform on camera. Inevitable perhaps, but today's proposal by David Cameron goes too far.

The Conservatives are proposing to change the law to ensure that if the governing party changes their leader they'll be forced to hold a general election within six months of the new Prime Minister taking office.

Far from shifting power back to Parliament from the Executive - as Mr Cameron has been insisting he would d0 - this move would concentrate even more power in the hands of the Prime Minister.

Surely in a Parliamentary system Prime Ministers emerge from the body of MPs. Political parties widening the franchise have diluted that a bit, but nonetheless the precedents of Callaghan, Major and Brown taking over in mid-term has confirmed that we vote for MPs and parties, not simply for Leaders.

If a PM loses the support of their MPs between elections then they give the keys of No 10 to someone else. In that scenario a party low in the polls looking for a fresh direction would be held to ransom by a PM who had lost their way if they knew that they'd be forced to go to the polls in mid-term. Cameron's proposal will strengthen the hand of the incumbent - perhaps he's thinking ahead to stymie David Davis?

This will not strengthen Parliament, this will weaken it. In Opposition politicians always talk about making the Commons more effective at holding the Government into account, but as soon as they get a whiff of power they go off the idea.

Change you can believe in?

A good election to lose?

2010-04-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 20 April

The historian Norman Stone has set the hare running with a piece in tonight’s Evening Standard. The High Tory thinks Cameron’s Conservative Party is so limp, or ‘Dianafied’ as he puts it, that he would rather keep them in Opposition and let a new Lib-Lab coalition take the responsibility for the ‘quite bad’ storm that is about to hit us.

‘Cobblers’ cries Iain Dale in return:

If the Tories lose this election to a Lib/Lab coalition, the first thing a new government would do is to introduce PR. Not just AV, but full STV. Clegg would demand it and Brown would have to agree. And if that happened the British people can look forward to a semi permanent left of centre government.

Similarly I’ve heard the view expressed on the left that David Cameron’s policy of cutting the number of MPs by 10% would result in redrawn constituency boundaries that would favour the Tories and rule out a Labour Government for a generation.

After the 1992 General Election anonymous Government Ministers were quoted as saying that it would have been better had they lost and let Neil Kinnock face the ERM meltdown. And detached observers are saying similar things about this election.

But despite the intense economic and social pressures that the next Government will face tribal instincts on both sides run so deep that they find it impossible to take such a detached view.

The current opinion polls beggar belief. Never underestimate the common sense of the public it is often said. And though I can understand the desire for a ‘balanced’ Parliament, I can’t help but feel that what’s about to hit is us going to be so destabilising that a stable Government is essential to withstand it.

Of course, as coalitions in the National Assembly demonstrate, stability is not always synonymous with one party rule. Stable Governments can be forged from cross-party co-operation. But whether they’ll have the authority to re-write the rules of the game is yet to be determined.

The issue that won't be discussed in the campaign

2010-04-07T06:05:00.001-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 7 April 2010

AA's figures from last week showed average petrol pump prices at 118p a litre, with diesel at 118p.

The Daily Mail reports they look set to overtake the previous record high of 119p due to a combination of a weak pound and rising fuel duty. And that's before the economy grows.

If the economy is going to pick up demand for oil will rise and prices will rise further still (which may well push the economy back into recession).

After having denied there was a long term problem about the availability of cheap oil the Government appear to be coming round to the view that there may be trouble ahead.

The Government's former chief scientist, Sir David King, now says the world's oil reserves have been exaggerated by up to a third. After being one of the chief critics of so called 'peak oil theory' Sir David is now warning of shortages and price spikes within years.

He's not alone Richard Branson and Ian Marchant, chief executive of Scottish & Southern Energy, are members of the Peak Oil Industry Taskforce, which is trying to raise awareness of potential shortages in the coming decade.

A private seminar convened by the Energy Minister Lord Hunt under Chatham House rules at the end of March indicated that the warnings are no longer being dismissed as crackpot. “Government has gone from the BP position – ‘40 years of supply left, the price mechanism works, no need to worry’ – to ‘crikey’” taskforce member Jeremy Leggett told the Guardian

One of the attendees helpfully gave an account of the conclusions of the private meeting. Rob Hopkins noted that the summit concluded:

Peak oil is either here, or close enough.
Prices will have to go higher as demand outstrips supply.
Governments will be forced to intervene to maintain critical levels of oil supply, and limit volatility.
Rationing measures may be unavoidable.
Electrification of transport must be pursued in order to reduce demand.
Communities will need to work quickly to reorganize around walking instead of driving, producing food and energy locally instead of importing, and generally try to reduce their need for oil

Before anyone rushes to point out that there is still plenty of oil to be had it is worth noting that nobody denies this. However the counter argument is that most of the oil available cannot be accessed quickly or cheaply. Indeed oil that is very expensive to produce, such as deep sea oil, is unlikely to be profitable except at a price which puts the economy into recession.

There is a great deal of uncertainty around the exact details of the debate, but the general point is becoming more widely accepted.

We need to start thinking and planning for a world where cheap oil cannot be relied on...but don't expect that to feature in the General Election campaign

Keeping up with the Jones'

2010-04-03T01:05:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on April 3rd

Carwyn and Ieuan that is. It is hard to track their current thinking on when to hold a referendum, though my sense is that the option of this coming October is looking increasingly unlikely. But, of course, it ‘all depends’. One of the factors in the mix is how the arguments will play post-election. And it’ll all come out in the wash-up.

As Westminster business managers decide which legislation lives or dies in the final days of this Parliament the fate of the Housing Legislative Competence Order is unlikely to grab headlines. But it will provide the backdrop to a key test of wills that will be closely followed by the Jones’ for signs of how the devolution debate might play out.

Only legislation with the support of both main parties will reach the statute book this week and the conservatives are threatening to exercise their veto if this threat to Margaret Thatcher’s legacy stands.

It is by now a familiar argument. The LCO would give the Assembly the power to prevent council house tenants from buying their homes in areas where rented housing is hard to come by. But by itself the LCO does nothing, it simply passes the power down to Cardiff Bay. It would take fresh legislation in the Assembly to suspend the right to buy. However, it is a chance MPs are reluctant to take.

The debate has become caught up in the pre-election maelstrom, and the Tories are thoughtfully playing the role of pantomime villains. But of course the history of this particular LCO is long and tortured and those with long memories will remember that Labour MPs played their part in trying to stymie the Assembly’s wishes. The truth is it’s hard to let go.

But now party politics comes into play. Enter stage right Peter Hain:

“From my point of view this looks like another example of two-faced Toryism. They tell the people of Wales they support devolution but they oppose new powers. They support a referendum but they oppose new powers on housing”

Putting the double standards to one side, if the Tories don’t blink and succeed in stopping the LCO they’ll gift the Jones’ a component of the narrative they need for the Yes campaign. Welsh MPs don’t always give us what they want, they’ll be able to say, but wait until the Tories have a majority on the Welsh Select Committee. You think Alun Michael is unhelpful, wait till Stephen Crabb, Simon Hart and Alun Cairns get going….you get the picture.

Depending on a series of other factors this week’s negotiations on the Housing LCO may point the way towards an October referendum.

Is the game up?

2010-03-09T00:52:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 9 March

For all the noise coming from Local Authorities protesting that another re-organisation is the last thing they need, Councils seem to be playing into the hands of those who want a massive re-jig

The Western Mail report this morning that:

A MUCH-HERALDED project aimed at getting councils to work together has collapsed, throwing into jeopardy the Assembly Government’s strategy to avoid huge public sector job cuts.

Nearly half the local authorities in the country were originally involved in discussions over the South-East Wales Shared Services Project, which was intended to save millions of pounds by getting councils to collaborate across a range of functions.

But after years of meetings and reports the project has now folded with the participating authorities unable to agree on a way forward

Savings of some £2 Million a year were identified by PricewaterhouseCoopers from the South-East Wales Shared Services Project. But plans to pool human resources, payroll and training service among ten Councils collapsed with "authorities unable to agree on a way forward".

In July 2006 the Beecham Review gave Councils five years the work together of face reorganisation. By my calculations they have a year left...

Local candidates

2010-03-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on March 3

The case of the Islwyn Four inevitably evokes the memory of the Blaenau Gwent fiasco. But not only is it a false parallel, it masks the reality that in the Labour Party at least the premium placed on 'local' candidates is greater than ever before.

Any glance at the selections to replace retiring AMs will show that local candidates have been chosen: Mike Hedges in Swansea East and David Rees in Aberavon are recent examples. In Cardiff West and Cardiff South the constituency party has opted for people who have track records as Councillors in the area.

In the Westminster selections too locals have been selected in target seats: Susan Elan Jones in Clwyd South, Ronnie Hughes in Aberconwy, Nick Smith in Blaenau Gwent are examples. There are some exceptions in the Vale of Glamorgan and Carmarthen East where they've broken the mold and gone for someone from the constituency next door.

There aren't many exceptions to the 'locals only' rule. It is understandable that party members in Islwyn resent the fact that the shortlist has been drawn up by the central party, but perhaps they should ask Don Touhig why he decided to make his announcement so late in the day?

I believe that the premium placed on 'local' candidates is too strong. As membership declines local activists become increasingly unrepresentative of the communities they are drawn from. They often look to select someone in their own mould and those who don't fit the bill are seen as a threat.

The selection rules are now heavily stacked in favour of local activists. It used to be possible for an 'outsider' to be able to appeal to the wider membership by making a game changing speech at a branch meeting. But now aspirant candidates aren't allowed to address members directly until the final shortlisting meeting - by which point votes are often committed. It is a process which disadvantages women in particular.

From the little I know about Islwyn politics it seems that there are other forces at work which has led to the resignation of the four local activists. That's not to dismiss them. But a narrative which presents a mighty party machines parachuting in candidates to the disadvantage of local candidates is way off the mark.

Toothless

2010-02-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 24 February

In an masterfully understated sentence the Commons Culture Select Committee today concluded that the Press Complaints Commission "is widely viewed as lacking credibility and authority".

Its unanimous report on press standards accuses Rupert Murdoch's senior executives of concealing the truth about the extent of illegal phone hacking by journalists on the News of the World. The cross-party committee of MPs found that "a culture undoubtedly did exist in the newsroom of News of the World and other newspapers at the time which at best turned a blind eye to illegal activities such as phone-hacking and blagging and at worst actively condoned it".

But the Press Complaints Commission had already looked into the same allegations that the committee examined and cleared the tabloid.

The PCC had rushed out a report purporting to exonerate the News of the World that took the paper's claims of innocence at face value. "We find the conclusions in the PCC's November report simplistic and surprising. It has certainly not fully, or forensically, considered all the evidence" the MPs concluded.

It goes on to describe the PCC as 'toothless', but fails to recommend much to really sharpen its teeth.

There are many villains in this tale. The need for change seems irrefutable. There's lots of political noise and indignation, but no will to take on the press.

Gerry puts out the candles

2010-02-20T13:39:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 20 February

Gerald Holtham has a forensic mind. The former IPPR head who came close to heading the WDA in the early days of the Labour Government has established his effeciveness in distilling a complex argument in his Commission's first report on funding. Today he used the same skill to gently but brutally unpick some of the loose thinking around the replacing the Barnett formula.

At a meeting in Plaid Cymru's conference in Cardiff Holtham disarmingly pulled apart many of the assumptions of his hosts. Every time Helen Mary Jones or Dafydd Wigley lit a flame of hope, Holtham gently placed his fingers on the wick and extinguished it.

A fair share for Wales? You'll be lucky. Though Wales is £300m under-funded by his calculations the Treasury say that's within the margin of error and would quickly disappear with a different set of assumptions. But the real problem is that using the same calulation Scotland gets £4.2bn-a-year more than it would if every part of the UK was treated the same as an English region. With the SNP running strong the Treasury won't consider change: "If you think they're going to change that, forget it" (quotes courtesy of Tom Bodden).

A fairer income tax regime in Wales? Not on your nelly. The high earners would flee across the border: "You would get virtually no revenue from the upper rate of income tax and if you raise it too far you would probably lose it...If you want to maximise revenue you would cut the upper rate of income tax, [and] put a penny on basic rate...How you explain that to the Welsh electorate I don't know."

How about a tax on natural resources then? Small change. Even if you could overcome the barriers a tax on water exported from Wales would only raise about £30 Million a year - and the Treasury would probably deduct it from the Welsh block in any event. Not worth the grief.

But Helen Mary Jones refused to be sidetracked, this simply confirms that Wales needs to flex our muscles more she said. The Scots have shown that extra support for the SNP gives the country greater leverage (though Plaid's affection for the SNP may not last long if there's a hung Parliament. Dafydd Wigley said they'd be working at cross purposes and should hold separate negotiations with the Tories).

Helen Mary went on to say that the Conservatives might not mind "annoying the voters of Scotland" because they have so few votes there. But I don't buy that. My reading of the Conservatives is that they see the generous Barnett settlement for Scotland as a price worth paying for keeping the Union together.

But Gerald Holtham did give leave his audience with some cause for hope. The Calman Commission in Scotland suggested extending the tax-raising powers on the grounds of accountability. Without a stake in revenue raising the Executive will have too easy an excuse to blame London for not providing sufficient funds. The UK Treasury have accepted his argument. "That's boxed me in" Holtham explained. 'How can I not recommend tax raising powers now' he mused...

The Establishment

2010-02-19T01:50:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 19 February

As Rachel Banner digs out her Leo Abse press cuttings and evokes the horror of the Welsh Establishment pushing for greater devolution to feather their own nest, it got me thinking: what do you have to do to join this illustrious group?

Apart from the obligatory house in Pontcanna (though the boundaries are edging wider these days), and the second home in Pembrokeshire, what else is on the checklist for joining the crachach?

Here's a start, feel free to add your own:

A Kyffin Williams original, naturally
A copy of the Welsh Encyclopedia
A Melyn Tregwynt blanket
A fondness for skiing (can't beat a slippery slope)
Anything else?

A Professor writes...

2010-02-16T14:34:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 16 February

His may not be a name widely known outside the Cardiff Bay bubble, but Mark Drakeford has been a key figure in Welsh Government over the last decade. On Saturday he's likely to be selected as the Labour candidate for Cardiff West at the next Assembly elections - succeeding the man he's been advising.

A very thoughtful man, he was the one who effectivley made Rhodri Morgan's Governments hang together - ideologically and organisationally. The Professor of social policy at Cardiff University gave a short lecture to the Labour Grassroots ginger group at the end of January which I have just come across on the web

It is an interesting read on a number of levels, but the point that struck me particularly was his fear that without strong political leadership over how to deal with spending cuts the civil service will lead the way in crudely slashing schemes they were never keen on in the first place. Or as Prof Drakeford put it "unless we are prepared with our own democratically driven way of dealing with reduced budgets, the machine will take it over".

He warns there will be:

- An assault on the entitlement agenda: much despised as low populism, rather than the production of strong social capital which we know it to be;

- An assault on jobs: a firm belief that the public sector is bloated here in Wales, with lots of easy opportunities to slim back and make room for the private entrepreneurial spirits which we have held back for so long;

- An assault on public services: those creators of dependency and sullen apathy which save people from the consequences of their own behaviour and teach them that, no matter what havoc they wreak in their own lives, and those of others, the state will always be along to bale them out.

In particular he foresees a temptation to engage in displacement activity by going after local authorities: "there are voices, at the Assembly, who believe that the solution will be found in an attack on local government in Wales", he warned. I half agree with his advocacy of PR for Local Government allied with a new settlement centred on "binding agreement around a small number of key outcomes". But can't help observe that this has been done in Scotland without much effect on the culture of Local Government. Anyway, that's an aside.

Here is a man who intimately knows the way the Assembly Government works, at both a political and official level. His warning about the 'machine' taking over is a sober one. There are undeniable failings of delivery right across the Government in Wales. Ministers need to deal with that and not let their officials get away with sloppy work. But capacity problems pose challenges and there is clearly a fear that when the spending cuts bite and the fog of war descends, the civil service will have the perfect cover to cut the big schemes they never wanted (free bus passes, free prescriptions) rather than deal with the inefficiencies and inadequacies throughout the system.

So we must rely on "our own democratically driven way" to ensure the response to the cuts is driven by political priorities and not administrative prejudices. But Mark Drakeford doesn't seem confident that this will happen...

Is no news good news?

2010-02-04T03:19:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 4th February

As the panel considering the future of ITV news packed up and headed out of town last night, the word on the street was 'citizen journalism'.

All three bidders for the £6 Million pilot to provide Welsh news for the third channel promised to democratise news provision by opening up news gathering to the masses. Who needs professionals when you can have amateurs?

Of course it could all go pear shaped as the Tories have promised to unpick any contract signed if they win the General Election.

But regardless of the outcome an important principle has been recognised. Wales needs more than the BBC to provide a 'plurality' of news coverage, and if the market can't provide it then the State has a role.

But clearly it is not just broadcasting that presents a problem. Less than 1% of the population now read the Western Mail. The business model of the regional press is imploding across the world. As the Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger noted in his very interesting Cudlipp lecture "the old models are breaking faster than the new models can be put into place".

On Monday Sir Martin Sorrell, one of the biggest buyers of advertising in the world, suggested that governments might have to consider subsidising newspapers such as the Guardian to maintain a diversity of editorial viewpoints if their losses reached a point that would force them to close.

After all if banks are too important to fail why not newspapers?

I have little doubt that 'hyper-local' news will flourish in the digital age - as Rob Williams discussed in an excellent posting over on Wales Home. My worry is the all-Wales level. How can we sustain a democratic tier in the face of a profound information deficit?

As I've argued here before there's a case for looking at a Welsh equivalent of the Scott Trust – the not for profit foundation that owns the Guardian Media Group. A public interest company underwritten by the taxpayer that could safeguard Welsh news.

The consequences of a No vote

2010-02-02T08:55:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 2 February

So it looks like there will be a referendum in either October or March.

I'm still not entirely convinced of the wisdom of this course, as previously discussed. But if it going to happen then it needs to be won. In my view perhaps one of the most misleading points made by True Wales is that voting No will have no negative consequences. That somehow we'll be able to carry on as before.

Irrespective whether you think a Yes vote will give the Assembly the tools it needs, it is certain that a No vote will be a damaging reverse in the devolution process.

We already know that Whitehall mandarins needs little excuse to sideline Welsh affairs. If there is a no vote within the next 12 months the slow and complicated system of law making will get even worse. Whitehall will feel emboldened and legitimised in frustrating the Assembly's requests.

So the status quo is not an option. Forward or back, that's the option. And lets not pretend otherwise.

A headache for Nick Bourne?

2010-01-28T11:09:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 28 January

Cheryl Gillian has begun to carry out her pledge to appoint a Minister for Wales in every shadow departmental team.

The Western Mail reports today that Forest of Dean MP Mark Harper is the first. If the Tories win "Each department would have a minister with a specific duty to ensure Wales is not inadvertently left out of key legislation", the paper reports.

On top of a Conservative dominated Welsh Affairs Select Committee, and Dame Cheryl herself, every Whitehall Ministry is to have a Junior Minister with licence to meddle in devolution.

I am sure the ex-pat future Welsh Secretary means well. “It places the interests of Wales at the heart of every government department” she told the paper. But it could easily get out of hand.

At the moment the chief frustration is a disinterested Whitehall machine and a Welsh Select Committee eager to use their oversight powers. But we could have idle hands getting in on the act.

Surely if you invite a Minister to have a role in deciding which powers should be devolved they will exercise that right?

Has this one been properly thought through...?

Cuts, cuts, cuts - in MPs that is

2010-01-25T15:32:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 25 January

There are likely to be few dissenters when David Cameron gets round to cutting the number of MPs if he becomes PM.

The Conservative Leader has pledged to cut the size of the House of Commons by 10% as part of his initiative to reduce the cost of Government. It is of course completely unrelated to the desire to recalibrate the Parliamentary boundaries that currently disadvantage the Tories.

It is assumed that a 10% cut would reduce the size of the Welsh Parliamentary Party from 40 to 36. But as Richard Wyn Jones from Cardiff University's Welsh Governance Centre has pointed out, this may be an incorrect assumption.

The only clear statement setting out how the change would be implemented comes from Lord Kenneth Baker. The Tory grandee introduced a Bill into the Lords in 2006 proposing that every constituency should be equalised at 76,000 electors - up from around 56,000 in Wales at present. This is said to be the working model by experts in the field.

That would mean just 29 Welsh MPs. And given that the number of Assembly seats is related to the number of MPs it would cut the number of AMs from 60 to 49, throwing the Assembly into chaos. And causing profound tensions within the main parties as politicians scrabble for seats.

Little detail has been given by the Conservatives in public about exactly how they will determine the cuts - or indeed how much money it will really save, or the exact implications for devolution.

The upside of snow

2010-01-10T04:31:00.001-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 10 January

Despite the grumbling the snow covered roads have served as a reminder of how things used to be. This week many residential streets have been recaptured as a social space. With cars taken off the roads people have been socialising with their neighbours and children have been playing freely outdoors. I've spoken with neighbours I've never met before as they've been forced out of their 4x4s and walked instead.

By getting to know their neighbours better parents are typically a lot happier letting their children play in the streets. As well as being less fearful of traffic, parents tend to be less concerned about 'stranger danger' when they feel neighbours are keeping an eye on the street.

Research shows that the greater the levels of traffic the lower the level of social interaction. When streets are dominated by cars people tend to sense danger and retreat indoors. Rather than allowing children to play outside parents feel happier if they are 'safe' indoors playing with an Xbox. This trend coincides with rising levels of childhood obesity - a trend which is now classed as an epidemic.

When the snowmen have melted minds will be turned to the lessons to be learned from low grit levels and the strain on the National Grid. But perhaps there are other lessons to learn from the snow too.

The credibility gap

2010-01-05T01:09:00.001-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on January 5th

I feel sorry for the Liberal Democrats. Why aren't they taken more seriously?

In the Times this morning Nick Clegg has outlined some very attractive key election pledges:

No income tax to be paid on the first £10,000 you earn
Cutting class sizes and provide more one-to-one tuition to children by introducing a new “pupil premium” in our schools (he fails to make clear this applies to England only).
Measures to boost the Green economy, including tens of thousands of new jobs in public transport, a national programme of home insulation and new social housing.
Political reform through recall elections, PR, devolution and a ban on tax avoiders standing for Parliament, sitting in the House of Lords or donating to political parties.
But as ever Nick Clegg's appearance on the Today programme was dominated about questions on what he'd do in a hung Parliament. I fell into that trap too when I was a political interviewer. It never takes long to get round to a variation of the 'what's the point of voting for you' question. It must frustrate the hell out of the Lib Dems, and so it should. It is pedestrian journalism.

But it reflects an ambivalence amongst the public towards the third party (or does it simply feed it?). The Party's poll numbers have been flat for some time, and the resurgance of the Conservative Party threatens a number of their seats. After a rough time for both of the two largest parties why haven't the Lib Dems done better?

The platform set out by Nick Clegg is an appealing one. Surely those on the left can rally around that flag? So why the ambivalence?

Predictions

2010-01-02T06:01:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on January 2 2010

I normally try to avoid them, as they are invariably wrong. But...man a man a mwnci

Gordon Brown will lead Labour into the General Election
There will not be a hung Parliament
There will be a big turnover in Welsh MPs, and tension will increase between Westminster and Cardiff Bay
The One Wales Coalition will wobble in the face of severe public spending cuts but the commitment to hold a referendum will see it through. But this time next year options will be reviewed.
There will be a referendum on further devolution in October 2010 and there will be a clear Yes vote, but less than half the electorate will vote
All the Welsh Party leaders will still be in place this time next year
Obama will fail to get a meaningful commitment to combating climate change through Congress
Tony Blair's long term reputation will be severely dented by the Chilcott inquiry
The Conservatives will wish Mohammed Asghar had stayed in Plaid
This blog will still be going at the end of 2010

Rhodri looks down the well

2009-12-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 27 December 2009

Martin Shipton has written an interesting valedictory interview with Rhodri Morgan in which he reflects on his own political philosophy and the challenges ahead. It is worth a read

In one passage that caught my attention Rhodri muses "What are the limits to which left-of-centre parties can go?". He said:

“It’s going to be very much put to the test over the next few years now in this period of taxation restructuring which we are having to have in Britain because North Sea oil revenue is going out. We’re going to have to start making things again and encourage capital and enterprise to make up the trade gap because we haven’t got North Sea oil and gas any more.

“We’ve got a 30-year run of oil and gas, then it’s gone. There’s a massive change in the economy needed now, so you have to persuade people with the capital to use the capital or borrow capital to run those businesses, and run those businesses to believe that Wales is a very good place to run those businesses".

Rhodri always has been an astute analyst of the economic scene. He is right to identify the enormous trade gap which is already beginning to emerge through the decline of the North Sea oil field. The ongoing implications for the balance of payments will be profound.

But there seems to me to be a piece missing from the analysis. Of course we need to start manufacturing things again, but if North Sea Oil is running out this is likely to be part of a piece. It is not just revenues that will dry up. The price of the remaining oil from other parts of the world (often unstable regimes) will inevitably rise. And an economy based on traditional manufacturing will struggle.

Rhodri Morgan's solution - according to Martin Shipton's account - is “You need more people like Admiral Insurance – you need half a dozen Admiral Insurances, not just one".

I can't help but feel this is akin to fighting the last war. It is not just that we need to start making more things, but we need to start putting a heavy emphasis on cleaner technologies - allied with measures to encourage people to change their behaviour and the way we consume. We need to become less dependent on oil.

If we don't we face a considerable threat. If we grasp the challenge there is a considerable opportunity for Wales to lead. But to do it we need a change of mindset.

Everybody wants to win an Oscar

2009-12-12T04:19:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on December 12th

So the dust is settling. Oscar is a Tory.

In his defence he is not claiming his defection to be an act of principle. In a candid interview with the Golwg website he confirmed that the reason for his shift was that the chances for advancement were greater with the Tories - even suggesting he may have had reassurances that the number 2 spot on the south east Wales list would be his. Indeed at the press conference to announce his defection he said he looked forward to 'playing an important role in the shadow team within the National Assembly'.

As Paul Flynn has recorded "His four changes of party all coincided with times when his chosen party was in the ascendancy". Oscar seems unashamed. Indeed in an interview with the Politics Cymru blog he seemed bewildered by all the fuss - it is worth a look.

There's been much venting of spleen, which is understandable - as is the inevitable criticism of the list system and its application. But for me what this episode shows up is the dangers of political parties going for a quick fix to address their own lack of diversity.

Ieuan Wyn Jones and Dafydd Trystan (then Chief Executive of Plaid Cymru) put enormous time and effort into securing a seat for Mohammad Asghar. The Party Chair John Dixon acknowledged that the defection had thrown up flaws in the selection process but said in the Party's defence "We don't use polygraphs to test their sincerity, nor would I want to".

Of course, there can be no safeguard against crude opportunism. But the question in my mind is were causes for concern overlooked in the rush to secure the prize of diversity?

Writing on his blog this week Dafydd Trystan said he took Oscar to be an "honourable person, idiosyncratic in his views and his approach to life, rather more right-wing than your average Plaid member, but dishonest no".

I have been hearing stories of two years of concern about Oscar's political ability and performance, but it was all treated as a joke - Oscar, he's a one!

It is only fair to point out that of course he is not the only AM whose behaviour or ability is the subject of criticism. Blind eyes are turned for others too. But Plaid suspected he may have been an opportunist and chose to ignore it because of the political value of having a Muslim AM (both to the Assembly as an institution and the Party).

Now the Conservatives are in danger of doing the same. Nick Bourne has been able to make little progress diversifying his stable of candidates. It is only by luck they have a female AM. And political tacticians will not blame him for a bit of opportunism of his own in swooping on Oscar. But the far harder task of changing the culture of his own party remains

I have no quarrel with wanting a more diverse political class, far from it. But it will take more than tokenism to achieve it. And as this episode has demonstrated token gestures open parties up to opportunists, and that does nothing to advance the cause of diversity.

Show offs

2009-12-12T04:18:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 8 December

There is no shortage of assessments of Rhodri Morgan today, so I'll leave the political obits to others.

But I was struck by Rhodri's assessment of Ryan Giggs in naming him the BBC Sports Personality of the Year last night: "I think it's incredibly wonderful to be an incredibly good player and not a show-off".

In its editorial this morning the Western Mail concluded of Rhodri "Wales is in his blood". I think that's right, and his assement of Giggs is therefore especially insightful.

I'm wary of ascribing traits to nations. I always stuggle with the question 'what makes the Welsh different' and take care not to fall back on trite romanticiation. But I think Rhodri has hit on something here.

We admire talent, application and learning, but we don't like a show-off.

Hey, hey Copenhagen

2009-12-07T03:16:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is my Truth on December 7th

As I remember it that was the title of the B side of Black Lace's classic 80s disco track Agadoo. But today the focus on the city is a little more mainstream.

56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. "The science is complex but the facts are clear" the editorial says:

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

But the doubters are gaining credibility and publicity. Funded by a well organised and industry backed network they remind me of those scientists who were wheeled out through the 70s and 80s to raise doubts about the links between cancer and smoking.

People are easily confused by science. By planting seeds of doubt it will be even harder to persuade people that they need to alter their lifestyles as part of coming to terms with a carbon constrained future.

It seems de rigueur on the right to question the links between human activity and global warming, and even to doubt the planet is warming. It is a shame that Glyn Davies is genuflecting in the direction of the sceptics.

Put aside the details of climate change science, it seems common sense to me that we have developed an economy and society based on over consumption which cannot be maintained without a significant impact on the environment which we rely on.

Perhaps that it is putting it too simply, but you can overcomplicate these things. We cannot exploit our natural resources indefinately without consequences.

Simple as...Push pinapple, ground coffee...

Power brokers?

2009-12-02T02:01:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 2 December

An interesting feature of Carwyn Jones' decisive victory was the trade union section of the electoral college.

It has been widely assumed that with the majority of 'regional' Union executives backing Edwina Hart their members would follow suit. One of the more sobering images of the early part of the campaign was the welcome extended by Unite boss Andy Richards to his favoured candidate. But far from being an uncomfortable echo of 1999the result throws doubt on the influence that union leaders have on their members.

Carwyn Jones was on virtually level pegging with Edwina Hart among Unite members.

Earlier this year a private opinion poll on the political affiliation of Unite members showed that just 34 per cent favoured Labour and 31 per cent the Conservatives. Now only those who pay the political levy to Labour voted in the Welsh contest, but it adds to the picture of a breaking down of the traditional political role that the Unions have played.

If the Conservatives win the General Election and Labour go into opposition union leaders will want to reflect on how they use their remaining political influence, and may want to focus more on campaigning on issues rather than try to play the role of power brokers.

When?

2009-11-20T01:40:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 20 November

Huw Irranca Davies makes this case in the Western Mail this morning for delaying the referendum beyond 2011. I’ve heard very serious people outside the Labour Party say the same thing.

I am concerned about the game of chicken that seems to be going on within the Cardiff Bay bubble, with enthusiasts for a referendum goading each other to race across the road confident of avoiding the juggernaught of public opinion.

Though there is merit in Geraint Talfarn Davies’ argument that “our politicians are going to have to make their own weather on this issue”, the consequeneces of losing the referendum are too great to rush into it.

My own view is that the All Wales Convention has not properly addressed the long-term issues and has locked itself into the sterile trajectory of Peter Hain’s Government of Wales Act

As I’ve argued repeatedly in recent days, the offer on the table is not so much extra powers but a different way of aquiring them. The Assembly would still be the poor relation of the Scottish Parliament, both in scope and shape.

Public opinon is volatile and the narrative of a yes campaign not yet clear. I’m less concerned about the sub-text of Huw Irranca Davies’ argument (that Labour need time to unite before a referendum is triggered), than I am about the need to get this right.

I would rather time to build a consensus around revisiting the settlement and fighting a referendum on a stable model of devolution that would last more than 10 years, rather than risk defeat for another flawed outcome.

A case in point

2009-11-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 19 November

So its official, the LCO system is flawed

On the day the All Wales Convention delivered its verdict, the Assembly's Enterprise Committee was meeting behind closed doors to discuss the progress of its own bid for extra powers. There was exciting news. Ministers were dropping their opposition, and if the committee was willing to agree to a delay WAG would swing behind the draft Highways & Transportation LCO in the spring and negotiate its passage through Whitehall.

As the Committee Chair Gareth Jones put it, “This is a triple first when it comes to creating new laws for Wales. Not only is this the first LCO to be proposed by an Assembly Committee but it is also the first to come directly from the National Assembly’s petitions process. Furthermore, the petition came directly from civic society”. He added "It’s democracy in action.”

Well, up to a point Lord Copper.

An important point of principle has been conceded, and now the LCO has cross party support and the blessing of the Minister. But even with a fair wind the LCO is going to struggle to get on the statute book by 2012 – assuming there is Whitehall co-operation. Then there's the business of consulting and agreeing on an Assembly Measure.

Remember the LCO system was meant to speed things up. It has taken me two years to get to this point - and there still hasn't been a vote in principle on the Assembly floor, let alone engagement with Westminster.

As I set out in my evidence to the All Wales Convention on behalf of Sustrans, “We do not believe the current settlement is satisfactory, stable or sustainable”.

The All Wales Convention agrees. But even if we draw down the powers in the 2006 Government of Wales Act, we will still have an unclear division of powers. Unlike the Scottish model where there is a list of powers that are reserved for Westminster and the rest go to Holyrood, we’ll continue to have ‘jagged edges’ – to use the phrase of Lord Richard.

Will we be still having this debate in ten years time? Maybe by then we’ll have succeeded in getting our Assembly Measure passed!

*I try to keep my professional and personal activities seperate on this blog but please excuse me this once.

What has Sir Emz got up his sleeve?

2009-11-15T03:34:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on November 15th

So Emz (as he's known to his friends) will deliver his big report this week.

I've set out my own views on the All Wales Convention Convention, and on the points they've been considering. More important is the question of what will flow from the report. The worst kept secret in Cardiff Bay seems to be that the Convention will encourage AMs to trigger a referendum. I'm sure it will flesh out what the latest YouGov poll showed, that the referendum is winnable but not yet won. But might Sir Emz go further?

The former UN Ambassador teased us with his comment that people will be surprised by the "extent of its recommendations". What's he got up his sleeve? I wonder if he'll suggest that the devolution settlement go beyond the 2006 Government of Wales Act?

The One Wales agreement commits Labour and Plaid 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".

A Yes vote based on the powers in the Government of Wales Act would improve the devolution settlement, but it would still be messy. By moving from Part III to Part IV the Assembly would have the power to pass laws without recourse to Westminster in areas devolved to Wales. But there would still be 'jagged edges' (to use the words of the Richard Commission). There would still be gaps and some ambiguity over what AMs can and cannot do.

A far more sustainable model would be to replicate the Scottish model where the areas reserved to Westminster are clearly set out and the rest is for Holyrood. But that does not seem to be an area where the Convention can examine - if it sticks to its terms and conditions. But if I am corresctly interpreting Sir Emyr's hint, it may be something that they have decided to do anyway.

And why stop there? Even the practiced fence sitter Glyn Davies suggests that the range of devolved powers should be extended.

If we are going to have a referendum it should settle the question for a generation. Much as Peter Hain tried to claim that his clever fix did that, I suspect it was said more in hope than expectation.

I fully expect Sir Emyr's report to be nuanced, but that doesn't preclude a measure of boldness...

A more optimistic vision ?

2009-11-07T00:03:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 7 November

There will be people who think that this is the wrong time to be discussing a referendum, Rhodri Morgan told an audience in Aberystwyth last night. But there will be others who will have “a more optimistic vision”, the First Minister said in a lecture to the Welsh Political Archive.

What could that mean?

I understand he was given the option of the All Wales Convention report being delayed until his successor was in place, but insisted on it landing on his desk.

Those with long memoeries wil recall that Rhodri Morgan initally gerated the publication of the Richard Commission report in 2004 as a “red letter day” for Wales, only to recoil from its main recommendations days later in the face of a backlash from Welsh MPs.

Perhaps this time, as a last hurrah, Rhodri will want to leave ”a more optimistic” legacy?

The day the Welsh Secretary nearly died

2009-11-01T12:57:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 1 November

Those with long memories will remember the Cabinet re-shuffle in the summer of 2003 as a complete mess. You may recall Peter Hain becoming Leader of the House of Commons(as well as Welsh Secretary), the post of Lord Chancellor abolished and the Wales Office subsumed - administratively at least - into a new Department of Constitutional Affairs.

As someone reporting on all this at the time I remember the confusion amongst Welsh MPs and within the Wales Office at what was going on.

Well, some light has now been shed on it all. Lord Derry Irvine, the Lord Chancellor who was sacked, has now published his personal memo to Tony Blair urging him to tread carefully.

Irvine revals that Blair has originally intended:

"the creation of a Department for Constitutional Affairs with a Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs with a Secretary of State in the Commons including the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for Wales, the staff of the Scotland Office and ODPM's responsibilities for devolution"

Peter Hain was to be the man who was to head up the new Department of Constitutional Affairs and take on most of the functions of the Lord Chancellor. It would in effect have been the end of the Wales Office and the beginnings of a UK department for devolution.

As it happens Blair pulled back slightly and gave the job of Lord Charlie Falconer and moved Hain to the Commons job, denying the new Constitutional Affairs Department the coherence that was intended.

It is no less a mess than we thought at the time, but fascinating that Blair came so close to creating a Department for the Isles even though he insisted at the next General Election that abolishing the position of Welsh Secretary was not an option.

Signs of life

2009-11-01T02:27:00.000-08:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 1 November

For me the interesting feature of the leadership election is not the coded attacks, though there are plenty of them, but the early signs of policy innovation.

Labour has struggled to develop policy in Wales. Partly because the culture and structure of the Party has not been geared towards developing separate policy for Wales, and partly because the leading players have been engaged in Governing. New policy has been developed in a hurried, and often shockingly casual way, in the immediate build-up to an election.

The Leadership election is forcing the Labour Party to think about new Welsh policies in the middle of the electoral cycle. And there are encouraging signs.

Dave Hagendyk is right to say that the ideas of Huw Lewis will feature in the next manifesto. So too will the ideas of the other candidates.

Here are three suggestions that caught my eye which I believe deserve a place in Labour’s programme in 2011 – I’ve chosen one from each of the candidates and I’ll let you guess which candidate came up with them:

•Set up a Leadership Academy for public service leaders and managers to promote innovation and spread best practice
•“immersion placements” for students from every school in Wales in Welsh-speaking communities to develop a positive interest in Welsh as a living language.
•A co-ordinated government plan to support looked-after children, putting energies into engaging directly with children affected, reducing educational disruption, enhancing independent advocacy and providing a personal support plan for children leaving care;

Ok, these aren’t exactly radical. But in fairness to all the candidates it is not easy to come up with proposals when the winner will be tied into an already agreed coalition programme for the next two years, and against the backdrop of painful budgets cuts.

Whoever is named Labour leader on December 1st needs to ensure that the process of gathering ideas is not restricted to the periods around elections. It is an essential part of rebuilding the party.

It's not just houses that people can't afford to fuel

2009-10-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on October 20th

The Charter aimed at ridding Wales of fuel poverty by 2018 launched today outlined how one in four Welsh households suffered from fuel poverty, meaning they have to spend 10% or more of their income on heating.

Though the concept of fuel poverty is familiar to us the figures are stark and shocking. Perhaps less well known is the fact that Wales is also riddled with transport poverty.

One in four households don’t have access to a car – in communities like Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil as many as 35% of families are car-less. But because jobs and services are often difficult to access by public transport many on low-incomes feel forced to ‘invest’ in a car.

Research shows that buying and running a car is a major cause of people getting into trouble with debts. Those on low-wages who do have cars spend nearly a quarter of their income on the cost of motoring. And the cost is set to rise. The price of oil has already more than doubled since early this year and is predicted to keep on going up.

Transport poverty in Wales will increase further if our society continues to be shaped by the idea that running a car is the same kind of ‘basic need’ as heating our homes. Wales needs to rethink its transport priorities so that sustainable transport options are seen as realistic and convenient for people and owning a car is no longer seen as a necessity but a lifestyle choice.

Objective what?

2009-10-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on October 11th

The BBC today reports what we already know - the current round of EU Structural funds is likely to be Wales' last.

It was only our lamentable economic performance that saw us narrowly qualify for the current round of Convergence funding. The enlargement of the EU to include even poorer areas than our own is likely to mean that in 2013 we'll have to learn to live without the top level of European structural funding.

What the BBC failed to ask was, is that a bad thing?

Clearly £1.2 Billion over seven years is not to be spurned, £171 Million pounds a year clearly matters. But in the context of the annual WAG budget of over £16 Billion a year, it is relatively small.

More important to my mind is the opportunity cost incurred trying to spend the EU grant available to Wales. Over the last decade Welsh public servants have learned a whole new language - Eurospeak. It is a secret code. They talk of the intervention rates which they can draw down EDRF to match funds - and that's the intelligible bit.

Civil servants, Quango staff, Local Government officers and voluntary sector workers have become very creative in piecing bits of funding together to access European money. But it has a distorting effect on the way public services are designed and delivered in Wales.

The amount of time, effort and imagination that is being absorbed by tapping into a relatively small funding stream must have a considerable opportunity cost. Time spent on finding ways round opaque EU funding rules is time not spent on thinking new thoughts.

Looking back the debates of ten years ago about 'match funding' seem rather quaint. Anyone with a rough working knowledge of way the Structural Funding is working in practice knows that genuine 'match funding' is a myth. But the amount of energy exerted keeping the myth alive is considerable.

In a contracting public spending environment losing access to any top-up cash is regrettable, but it is a far more nuanced picture than the reports suggest.

Lame legged duck?

2009-10-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 9 October

So on Tuesday December 1st the new Leader of the Assembly Group will be announced. A full week later the Assembly will vote on next year's budget and, so we are given to understand, once it has been 'put to bed' Rhodri Morgan will relinquish his seat at the centre of the Cabinet bench in the Senedd chamber.

He's staying on because the budget negotiations are expected to be tricky, and the coalition could be destabilised if he went before they were complete.

But for a whole week Rhodri Morgan will be First Minister in name only and we'll enter into a period of 'cohabitation'. Authority is bound to flow away from the incumbent, and no deal can be reached without the consent of the First Minister in waiting. This is hardly a recipe for stability.

If I were Ieuan Wyn Jones I'd be looking to make the most of this potenital window of opportunity. And as my old friend Gareth Hughes has noted, there are already trouble makers looking to exploit the handover.

The Tories on...poverty

2009-10-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 7th October

As part of his own medium-term strategy for positioning himself for the leadership Conservative AM Jonathan Morgan has set out his party's claim on the Social Justice agenda.

He is right that tackling poverty cannot be the property of any one party. But he gets carried away with the symbolism of the Conservatives setting out to capture this agenda, without tackling the difficult detail of this intractable problem.

He wants to see a greater emphasis on business and enterprise in the Communities First programme. He echoes the criticism of the community lead initative and suggests the answer lies in a clearer focus and a greater "understanding toward the economic issues which are the most pressing".

He wants a greater role for central Government and a strong set of targets and benchmarks. That will be help acheieve "a positive synergy to bring about affirmative empowerment", apparently.

I believe that we should restructure the programme to ensure the delivery of specific economic outcomes. Communities First was designed to tackle poverty, therefore the focus should be on those economic factors and shouldn’t be a panacea to cure every problem.

Much of his critique is widely accepted. But his solutions are vague. Yes, Communities First is very broad, but so are the causes of poverty. Also it allows each community to decide the priority for their area. The Conservatices rhetoric of localism is in danger of giving way at the first sign of difficulty to the target culture they have done so much to criticise.

His engagement with the issue is to be sincerely welcomed, but I can't help feel that when it comes to solutions it is easier said than done.

An invitation

2009-10-07T00:25:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 6 October 2009

I must admit I am fascinated by who will get the nominations of Jane Hutt, Brian Gibbons, Don Touhig and Mark Tami. But I doubt I’m terribly representative.

So far the attention has fallen on the process of how the next Labour Assembly Leader will be chosen, and on the personalities of those who wish to lead it.

We've been told about their voices too. Edwina Hart tells us she’ll be a strong voice for Wales, and Carwyn Jones we're told will be a voice for the whole of Wales. No news yet on Huw Lewis' voice, but I'm sure it's coming.

Of course these are all relevant to the choice facing Labour Party members, but the bigger question is what they would do.

With cuts to make to public services, what will their priorities be?

Will they continue to pursue economic growth or will they seek to place a greater emphasis on quality of life?

With Labour membership falling and its social base changing, what direction will they take the Party?

These are just some of the strategic questions that need to be addressed over the next eight weeks.

We will hear a lot about how the Unite trade union will allocate their share of the votes, and the relative support each candidate will have from Welsh MPs – and what that tells us. And I am interested in all that. But most people will be more interested in what the next Labour leader will do.

So here’s an invitation to each of the candidates to use this blog to set out how Wales would change under their leadership.

After Rhodri Morgan

2009-10-01T08:14:00.000-07:00

Posted on Comment is Free on 1 October

He entered the national consciousness with a metaphor about an amputee duck, and bowed out with an equally incongruous line about mushy peas. Rhodri Morgan likes being contrary.

The 70-year-old first minister for Wales today formally announced his retirement and triggered the race to succeed him as Labour group leader in the Welsh assembly.

True to form he kept everyone guessing about exactly when he would go, tweaking the nose of the Welsh media as he went. But while Morgan has long exasperated those in the bubble, his great gift has been his ability to project himself as a man of the people.

Even as his party provokes angry reactions from their traditional supporters, there remains a residual affection towards "Rhodri". Universally known by his first name, he is one of the few politicians people will still cross the street to greet.

His record as first minister has been mixed, but his eccentric style has served as a balm and elevated his status to that of a national leader – as likely to opine on the Welsh Rugby squad or the detailed process of steelmaking as on economic policy.

A raft of psychological studies would not properly answer the question "who is Rhodri Morgan?", so perhaps a more fruitful exercise would be "who are those who seek to succeed him?"

There are three Labour assembly members who wish to take his place when he finally relinquishes office at the turn of the year. With the powers of the national assembly limited, the differences between the candidates are as much about style as substance.

The man often described as the frontrunner is Carwyn Jones. The 42-year-old AM for Bridgend earned his spurs as agriculture minister during the foot and mouth crisis in 2001. His assured performance in a brief Labour have struggled with marked him out as the man to beat, but since then has been likened to a man carrying a crystal vase across an icy floor – afraid to make any move which could bring it all crashing down. Consequently he's been criticised for being lazyand bland. It may still be his to lose but he's got a lot of ground to make up.

The standards bearer for the left, Huw Lewis, has done well filling the vacuum left by Jones. A former party official who sees himself in the mould of Jon Cruddas, Lewis has been gathering momentum. Cast out of junior office by Morgan he has been the leading critic of Labour's coalition with Plaid Cymru in the Welsh assembly, using his valleys power base with effect. A convincing performer, he is certain to command a strong vote and will strengthen his position in the party as a result.

The wildcard candidate is health minister Edwina Hart. Her late entry into the frame has thrown the proverbial cat amongst the Cardiff Bay seagulls. Most often described as a no-nonsense politician, the former union official avoids the media unless she has something to say – and when she does demonstrates a deft populist touch that is not to everyone's taste.

Abolishing the internal market in the Welsh NHS and ruling out PFI has reinforced her popularity with the unions – who control a third of the vote in the contest. Edwina Hart's weakness is her lack of support among Welsh MPs – who share a further third of the electoral collage with assembly members. They are not so keen on being told to shove it by a woman who is more concerned with how issues play in Wales than London. For a candidate often complimented for her shoes, perhaps her real achilles heel is the majority in her Gower constituency – with just 1,192 votes separating her from the Conservatives, her footing is a little shaky.

The contest seems remarkably open, with attention already falling on the intentions of MPs and individual unions as the key to the result. But the extent to which policy and strategic challenges will be confronted is a moot point.

Labour in Wales came within an inch of being decimated at the last assembly election, and two years on their position is masked by the security of their remarkably stable coalition with Plaid Cymru. But their partners in government came within 2% of eclipsing them in June's European elections, and a resurgent Tory party that has worked hard at adopting to post-devolution politics knocked Labour off the top spot for the first time.

The party that has taken Wales for granted cannot be complacent about its position in the nation's future. Over the next eight weeks those aspiring to replace Morgan will have to show if they have a recipe for blending the mushy peas of old Labour with the guacamole of New Labour. Duck is off the menu.

Is today the day?

2009-09-30T01:15:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth

We’ll see…

But we know that Rhodri will stay on as First Minister until December 8th at least, to put the budget to bed. As the contest for Labour Group Leaders will take eight weeks once it is trigerred this is not exactly hot news, and as has been discussed on this blog previously there is great concern on the fifth floor of the Assembly building about the stability of the Coalition during the negotiation of this year’s budget.

But next year’s budget is going to be even more difficult to negotiate. Is he going to stay to make sure that one is ‘put to bed’ too?

As General de Gaulle once said, “The graveyards are full of indispensable men”.

And they're off...

2009-09-27T04:13:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 27 September

Rhodri Morgan will today fire the starting gun for the race to succeed him.

Ten years ago when Welsh Labour last held a leadership contest, the process for appointing the leader of the Labour Group in the Assembly was as controversial as the issues.

Even though Rhodri Morgan has not delivered on his pledge to overhaul the election process (nor did Alun Michael deliver on his pledge to secure a seat for the Welsh Party on the ruling NEC), there have been some changes to the way the electoral college works.

Each section of the college gets a third of the votes, but the Union (affiliated organisations) section will no longer be open to the abuse of 1999 where 'regional' executives decided how the votes of their membership should be cast.

This time there will be no block vote. Unions will be have to ballot their membership and then divide their vote proportionaly according to the wishes of their membership.

Here's how the electoral college breaks down, as I understand it:

Section 1 (AMs / MPs):

56 people

Section 2:

Members – 11,000

Section 3 (affiliated organsiations)

Unite 100,450

Aslef 2,000

Bectu 10,000

CWU 14,000

Community 10,000

GMB 51,000

Musician’s Union 2,000

NUM S Wales 5,000

Ucatt 5,000

Unison Wales Labour Link 52,000

Usdaw 22,000

TSSA 1,000

Societies:

Fabian 1,000

Socialist Health Associations 1,000

Wales Co-op Party 10,000

Welsh Lab Students 1,000

So an individual party member vote will be worth less than 1% of an MP/AM vote. People power!

R.I.P

2009-09-24T14:06:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 24 September

The Neath Guardian

The Port Talbot Guardian

The Wrexham Chronicle

Big tent politics

2009-09-17T01:35:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My truth on 17 September

Not content with inviting David Melding to join Plaid, now Adam Price has extended the offer to Carwyn Jones: "We know you love us really".

I think the re-alingnment of the left in Wales is an intriguing medium term prospect, but is this taking big tent politics too far?

There may be trouble ahead

2009-09-13T10:28:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 13 September

So Gordon Brown will tell the TUC this week that we are "on the road to recovery".

I think not.
Even if the economy does pick up the impact on public spending over the next ten years is going to be profound. And last time I looked at the figures on the reliance of the Welsh economy on the public sector they left an impression on me that it was kind of important.

The point doesn't seem to have been lost on the TUC. And clearly Brown is road testing his election strategy by painting the Tories as the slash and burn agents who will put the recovery at risk.

But putting all that aside, let me be parochial for a moment. The impact of the cuts are going to have far reaching consequences for the Assembly Government, and indeed the future of the Assembly.

For all the manoeuvring going on to replace Rhodri Morgan the overriding issue is how the WAG manages the huge reduction in public finances this Autumn and next following the Westminster election. As an old sage reminded me this week, this more than anything else will determine the shape of things post-Rhodri.

As the Holtham report found, the Assembly's finances are already under strain. Even in times of plenty the Welsh bank account was not getting a fair share from our Treasury masters. But it is about to get a lot worse. "Unmanageable", according to my friendly sage.

So what could the political fallout be?

How will the new Labour leader navigate the massive cuts, laden down with promissory notes made to Trade Unions others made during the leadership election?

How it will play out within Plaid? Will the coalition survive this Autumn's budget round? My friendly sage thinks it will survive this autumn's negotiations but is clear that it "definitely" won't survive next Autumn's. It could be a messy divorce. And this in turn raises very interesting questions about the All-Wales Convention and the timing of any referendum. Do we really want to be making the case of moving from Part Three to Part Four of the Government of Wales Act against the backdrop of eye-watering public spending cuts and the lingering smell over MPs expenses? And if not how will the inevitable disappointment be manged within Plaid (in other words can Ieuan Wyn get Adam Price on board)?

The Tories in Wales are already worried about how the new crop of MPs will react to the LCO process, added to that they will have some difficulty navigating between a kind of the "one nation" approach in Wales and what is bound to be a savage attack on public expenditure and services should the Tories win the UK election. Phrases like "now that we have really been able to look at the books the situation...etc", will help Nick Bourne and his group for a while but it wont cut it for long. All of that points to the Tories in the Assembly having already reached their high water mark for the foreseeable future.

But someone somewhere has to come up with a model of public service delivery in Wales that will be truly responsive to people's needs, fairer in terms of accessibility and affordable - especially in the next five to ten years. There is little sign of anyone engaging in such thinking.

Harsh realities

2009-09-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 6th September

An interesting essay over on WalesHome.

Former Welsh Labour Press Officer Owain Jones criticises his party for putting too much responsibility on the shoulders of Rhodri Morgan. He argues that just as Plaid Cymru established a talented leadership team from the across the party, so Labour should share the burden:

The Labour Party, as much as any organisation, can be caught up in the cult of the individual, and its component parts rarely pause to consider what they might do to contribute to good leadership. Responsibility for change needs to be pushed out to where it can most profitably flourish.

But the central control that was essential in achieving the discipline that helped Labour into Government, has now stymied its ability to develop as a party. Owain Jones is right to stress the need for a culture of self-criticism to develop within the Labour Party, but the defensive tone evident in parts of his essay illustrate there is a long way to go before the party creates an environment which encourages 'critical friendship'.

His experience as a party official ineviatbly colurs his analysis, but he makes strong points:

There is no doubt that in many seats lacklustre, tired and unimaginative local campaigns, as much the responsibility of local representatives as members, have become too common. These electoral runs are no more than displacement activity. Local parties are too reliant on a slimline party staff. In turn, perhaps our Welsh party HQ should do more to push the real work out to where it belongs – in the field. This is a difficult reality to face but a redefinition of the role of the party bureaucracy is needed. It ought to be a hub of innovation and ideas, not a centralised institution of control.

It is hard to disagree with his analysis. After 12 years in office Labour has lost its hunger for power. The difficult choices of Government allied with a deliberate strategy of triangulation has alienated many the Party has taken for granted. Furthermore Labour has long lost any culture of empowerment. Disagreement with the 'line' decided upon by a very small group at the centre has long been seen as 'unhelpful'. Perhaps that is inevitable in modern politics?

His most pointed message is aimed at the Unions. "Vested interest [sic] is a powerful and stifling force", he writes:

Trade unions are rarely criticised by Labour politicians in Wales. And yet, despite recent record employment and favourable legislation, they have continued to lose members and failed to sufficiently modernise. While union officials undoubtedly work hard for the causes they represent, they too must change.

He is right to warn putative leadership candidates of the dangers of cosying up to interest groups. But with a shriking and dispersed membership and an internal electoral system which embeds the influnce of 'vested interests', where else are the candidates to turn?

To my mind, Labour's biggest problem is that too many in the party have not adopted to the realities of post-devolution competitive politics. The Labour Party is no longer the dominating force in Welsh politics. That is an unpalatable truth for those who have grown up with their party having a powerful sense of ownership of the nation's politics.

Labour's domination is over. And though it is heracy to say it, I think that is a good thing.

It is in Welsh Labour's long-term interests to face up to this stark reality and start coming to terms with the new Wales it has helped create.

Though I don't agree with all parts of his analysis Owain Jones' essay shows that there is a younger generation within Labour that 'get it'. Maybe the changing of the guard that will accompany Rhodri Morgan's retirement will allow that generation a stronger voice.

I remain to be convinced.

The end is near?

2009-09-01T01:07:00.000-07:00

Posted on this is My Truth on 1 September

Is the long goodbye about to enter its final phase?

On 29th September Rhodri Morgan is 70 years old and it may well be the time the First Minister decides to trigger the much anticipated contest for the leadership of the Assembly's Labour group.

I understand the Prime Minister has been pressurising Rhodri to stay on, but the First Minister now feels he's done his bit.

With an autumn General Election no longer a possibility, no sign of a leadership challenge to Gordon Brown at the Party conference and the swine flu epidemic not yet reaching the 'pestulance' stage that could have required all hands on deck, there seems little reason to justify Rhodri Morgan delaying his retirement further.

He's shown remarkable stamina for a man of his age and now deserves to spend time with his grandchildren.

Who knows he may even decide to trigger a by-election in Cardiff West to coincide with next spring's General Election?

If he did, nobody could accuse him of not having had an honourable innings.

Where's there's a will, there's a way

2009-08-31T11:23:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 28 August

Thirty years ago Copenhagen had the same levels of cycling at Cardiff - around 1 / 2%. Now over a third of commuting journeys there are made by bike.

For a generation the Danish capital has prioritised investment and planning to make cycling around the area the easiest and most convineint way to get about. Here's what it looks like.

Barter anyone?

2009-08-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on August 24th

It's hard to know, isn't it?

Are these the rantings of a fringe group, or prescient warnings?

Is our current slump one of capitalism's regular crises or the harbinger of a collapse in our economy and society caused by over consumption?

There is a compelling logic to the analysis of Peak Oil. Finite resources will inevitably run out and an economic system based on the assumption that this will not happen is clearly flawed.

No mainstream politician will face up to this, because people do not want to hear it.

So how should we respond? Inevitably many will seek a technological solution which enables us to carry on living as we are - irrespective of the harmful environmental consequences. Others see the trend as an opportunity for positive change. Both seek to impose their worldview under the cloak of responding to a crisis.

Sadly I am as deskilled as the rest of my generation. I can't hunt, cook, garden or come to mention it sew. It is a grim prospect.

But we should at least face up to it. If is it possible to avoid it then it will only happen if we confront the possibility, If even only following the precautionary principle we should surely do something?

Would you vote for Tesco?

2009-08-12T05:46:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 11 August

Am I a hypocrite?

I shop in Tesco. I'd rather not. I get my meat from the local butcher and veg from an organic box scheme. But a chunk of my salary goes towards Tesco's £1 Billion annual turnover.

There are several large supermarkets in my town. The arrival of the last one finally put pay to the local fishmonger. I lamented, but often buy fish from the supermarket. The nearest fishmonger is seven miles away in central Cardiff.

Though supermarkets promise choice, the impact they have is to reduce choice. Opponents of a new supermarket in Machyneth know this. Local celebrity protestor George Mombiot writes about it in this morning's Guardian:

In 1998, the government commissioned a study of the impact of big stores on market towns. It found that when a large supermarket is built on the edge of the centre, other food shops lose between 13 and 50% of their trade. The result is “the closure of some town centre food retailers; increases in vacancy levels; and a general decline in the quality of the environment of the centre”

But if a supermarket giant is determined to come to town, there’s a limited amount that can be done about it.

So is it time to overhaul planning laws the rebalance the relationship. Should towns have to hold a referendum before supermarkets are allowed to move in? And would it make a difference?

Making news

2009-08-05T11:55:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 5th August 2009

What is news? And who decides?

The thought arises after BBC Wales decided to lead with this story across their outlets today three weeks late.

The recommendation of a WAG advisory panel to review the future of press bus passes for pensioners was first published on 15th July. In a deft piece of news management Ieuan Wyn Jones eventually released the report at the same time as the National Transport Plan. It was much anticipated and was only published after a lengthy tussle with the Assembly's Finance Committee to make the advice public.

But WAG snuck it out at the same time as the announcment that the proposed new M4 around Newport was being ditched. It was a good day to bury bad news. And predictably enough the contentious report was duly buried.

Journalists went for the bigger story and did not pick up on the series of other stories in the report - for example the recommendations that the rail franchise with Arriva be re-negotiated, and the advice that WAG should take power for transport away from Local Government.

Six days later the Western Mail ran a story on some aspects of the report but not the recommendation on the future of bus passes. The story was covered on this blog.

And then yesterday, on a very slow news day, the BBC decided to make it this morning's lead story after reading the post.

Now I'm not criticising the journalists - been there, done that. But it strikes me as an interesting case study of the way the media now works. And why blogs matter.

As has been much discussed on this blog and elsewhere, the media is gradually being emasculated. Journalists are being laid off or not replaced when they leave (often to become press officers). As a result the remaining reporters become more dependent on press officers and PR agencies to come up with the stories - well written press releases are now routinely being cut and pasted straight into newspapers.

And blogs are also helping to fill that void. As far back as 2004 a study of the American Presidential election concluded that blogs were of growing importance, despite their relatively tiny readership, because of their ability to shape the agenda and influence opinion formers.

Cheaper than hiring proper journalists after all. And the more dangerous for it.

End of free bus passes for the elderly?

2009-07-30T01:21:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 30 July

After all the fuss to get it published little attention has been paid to the report of the Ministerial Advisory Group on transport.

The Western Mail picks up on some of the recommendations today but there is much that has yet to be highlighted. It is an intellectually self-confident report and among its bold recommendations is the abolition of the new Regional Transport Consortia and the seizing by WAG of transport responsibilities from Local Authorities. Ieuan Wyn Jones had already rejected this.

But one suggestion that is being taken seriously is the ending of the free bus pass scheme for all pensioners in Wales.

Though popular with politicians the concessionary fares scheme worries civil servants. At a cost of more than £60 Million in revenue funding last year, the demand led scheme is thought to be unaffordable in its current form.

Officials are particularly worried at the poor controls in place to keep spending under control. For example, pensioners report that they are not able to buy return tickets with their free pass, only the more expensive single tickets; and some say they cannot get a ticket for just one stop but the taxpayer is charged for the whole journey made by the bus.

The Ministerial Advisory Group say this is "rapidly becoming unaffordable and should be reviewed as a matter of urgency". They want free fares to be available "only to those that need it".

In response the Assembly Government have told their advisers that they are "currently reviewing the reimbursement arrangements for the concessionary fares scheme"; and bus operators are up in arms that they are being kept in the dark about the review.

The Advisory Group are instead urging WAG to use new Smartcard technology to target free bus passes "on certain groups of people (for example, jobseekers) or people living in a particular area (for example, through the fares structure for the Valleys Lines network)".

With sharp spending cuts pending this is, perhaps, inevitable. But with the concessionary fares scheme widely seen by politicians as one of the Assembly's notable successes they will be reluctant to interfere too much with this much loved subsidy.

Churn in the Bay

2009-07-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 25 July

Another Labour AM has announced that they will be retiring at the next Assembly election.

Swansea East AM Val Lloyd has become the latest to respond to Labour's summer deadline to make their intentions for 2011 clear.

This comes on top of the retirements of Rhodri Morgan, Jane Davidson, Brian Gibbons, Lorraine Barrett and Irene James on the Labour benches.

Also standing down is Mick Bates from the Liberal Democrats and Janet Ryder from Plaid - she has in effect signaled her intention to leave the Assembly by standing in Clwyd South rather than sticking with the north Wales regional list.

That's seven AM's leaving the Assembly - more than 10% of the total. Of course of top of this will be those who lose their seats.

Irrespective of whether the Assembly has new powers in 2011, it is going to be all-change in Cardiff Bay come 2011.

There's a pattern emerging...

2009-07-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on July 20th

The slow death of ITV Wales, cuts at BBC Wales and the emasculation of the Western Mail have been much discussed. But the weakening of the Welsh media is only part of the story. The decline of civil society has been going on under the radar.

The Ramblers have dispensed with the post of Director for Wales, leaving the highly experienced Beverley Penney without a job. Oxfam Cymru have downgraded the role of Welsh Director - making clear they didn't want a 'spokesman' when they recently filled a vacancy. And the WWF have made redundant the well respected Morgan Parry as their Director for Wales.

Add to this the fact that the CBI Director for Wales, David Rosser, has widened his responsibility to take on the west of England, and a pattern begins to emerge.

There is no doubt that the NGO sector is far from immune from the general economic downturn. I'm sure we haven't heard the last of the redundancies. But when cuts have to be made it seems that the post of Director for Wales is among the first to be sacrificed.

Add to this the view in the higher echelons of the Welsh Civil Service that when cuts begin to bite WAG's funding for a number of Welsh charities is likely to be seen as 'low hanging fruit', and therefore easy pickings.

It is generally agreed that we are in for a grim few years. But the implications go beyond jobs.

A few less members of the chattering classes, you might think - no bad thing.

Wales already has an immature and underdeveloped media and civil society. Though there was a blooming in the sectors following the establishment of the Assembly, it now appears to be being pruned.

In my view the issue of 'capacity' is going to be one of the dominant themes of Welsh Government over the coming years. Capacity of AMs to cope with a bigger role and workload; capacity of the Civil Service to meet the challenge of greater scrutiny and greater demands; capacity of the media to adequately report on it all; and capacity of our civil society to inform a divergent policy agenda without a resource base to meet the demands.

Just as we need to be preparing to meet the challenges of a new chapter of the devolution story, we are losing some of the charecters we need to make it a compelling tale.

BBC ends live Assembly coverage

2009-07-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 17th July

Ok, it's a niche market but the decision to axe live Assembly coverage on S4C2 is a retrograde step.

As well as inevitably leading to redundancies in the BBC's Political Unit in Cardiff Bay, the move compounds the trend of reducing the amount of coverage of the changing policy agenda in Wales at a time when politicians are contemplating holding a referendum.

It may not be mourned in the pubs of Wales, but it is part of a piece - and it is not a pretty piece.

Polishing the turd

2009-07-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 16th July

"My message to businesses and the wider community is that this Government is committed to reducing congestion and restoring capacity and reliability to this absolutely vital east-west corridor", Transport Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones said yesterday.

A series of measures were announced by the Assembly Government to reduce demand on the M4 to compensate for the decision to abandon plans for a 'relief' road.

And yet today, outline planning permission was granted for a massive new 'International Business Park' four junctions along.

A 300 acre site - bigger than the Cribbs Causeway shopping centre in Bristol - will be built in countryside next to Junction 33 of the M4. Creating extra pressure on the M4 at the same time as new measures are announced to try and reduce it a few miles down the road.

It was driven by the old WDA and when that was merged into WAG the liabilities for the site and the commitments were taken into WAG. The economic development side pointed to the 'need' for a prestigious business park attracting HQs of major firms. The transport side pointed out the enormous traffic generation potential from a car-centric development on an already congested section of the motorway.

Local Authorities in the valleys fear investment will be sucked away from them, and the Vale of Glamorgan see the risk of repeating the errors plain to see at Culverhouse Cross.

Of course, there have been keen attempts to polish the turd.

A new "airport style regional transport hub" will result in up to 10 bus services an hour running through the site to Cardiff, with links to local railway stations.

Of course Park and Ride linked to a major bus interchange will be of value. But you don't need a massive business park with some 1,500 car parking spaces to achieve that.

A turd is still a turd.

Time for a u-turn in transport policy?

2009-07-16T14:11:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 15 July

The Bevan Foundation has joined an alliance of 20 other Welsh organisations today to call on the Assembly Government to perform a U-turn on transport policy.

This afternoon the long-awaited National Transport Plan is put out to consultation. And we can expect genuflections in the direction of sustainable transport, but what meaning do they have when some half of the transport budget is tied up in road schemes?

WAG will have to start cutting Welsh greenhouse gas emissions by 3% every year from 2011. And with a quarter of our emissions coming from transport a new approach is needed.

For the first time public transport operators have joined passenger watchdogs, health groups and NGOs to press for greater priority to be given to a range of initiatives that promote green transport.

Here’s the list of demnads that command the support of this broad alliance:

•Measures to promote integrated transport, for example, multi-modal ticketing, bus / rail interchanges, Smart Cards and secure cycle parking.
•A range of ‘Smarter Choices’ measures. For example, Travel planning, Car Clubs, Car sharing, Bus Real Time information systems, Park & Ride, showers and lockers in workplaces.
•Traffic calming and speed restraint in residential areas to encourage walking and cycling
•An extensive network of shared paths for walking and cycling (segregated from traffic)
•Congestion charging allied with extra investment in public transport
•Parking control (including low parking standards for new developments, charging, use of workplace parking levies, re-development of parking space for more productive uses);
•An extension of safe routes to schools (for example, by using traffic-calming measures near schools and by creating or improving walking and cycle routes to schools).
•Reallocation of road space towards sustainable modes of transport
•An integrated marketing strategy to target information on those who are susceptible to change the way they travel;
•Demand responsive services, including community transport, to tackle social exclusion in rural areas and other areas of transport poverty.
•A wide reaching awareness raising campaign educating the public in the techniques involved in more efficient driving, for journeys where sustainable modes of transport are not an option.
These measures to reduce car dependency should be funded by a shift away from road building.

The price of a free press?

2009-07-10T00:45:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on July 10th

What if the hacking of mobiles phones and personal information had resulted in a serious abuse of power being uncovered?

As it happens the rather unsurpising revelation that tabloid newspapers pay private investigators to blag personal data and hack into voicemail accounts relates chiefly to celebrity gossip.

But what if these same methods were used to reveal major corruption or a serious crime, would they be justified then?

The test of freedom is not when it is used in pursuit of ends you approve of, but when it used to do something you deeply object to.

I find the amorality of tabloid journalsim repugnant. The hypocricy of journalists turning a blind eye to the theft of personal information and then moralising about the private behaviour of their targets in print turn my stomach.

But would I feel differently if these same methods were used in the pursuit of a higher purpose?

Time to get back round the table?

2009-07-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

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.

The death of the Welsh media - the pace quickens

2009-07-06T00:20:00.000-07:00

Posted on This is My Truth on 6th July

The Welsh edition of the Times Educational Supplement is under threat.

The highly respected specialist title is the only remaining Welsh edition of a quality UK title, and I understand its private equity owners want to effectively shut the Welsh edition down.

The owners are consulting with their three Welsh staff on closing the Cardiff office and making the editor and a journalist redundant. I understand they want to keep one reporter to feed in Welsh copy to the London newsroom and maintain the Welsh masthead to give the impression the paper is still committed to Wales.

Understandably the eduction sector is not happy. I hear that senior WAG officials and Union reps have united to ‘make representations’ to the TES.

The Welsh edition has been a good paper, and an important voice in communicating the increasingly divergent education agenda between Wales and England.

Its demise is another indicator that things are going the wrong way. Just as the pressure for greater constitutional autonomy steps up a gear, another of the vehicles for informing the electorate that things are done differently in Wales falls by the wayside.

Dai bananas?

2009-06-27T04:06:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan Blog on 27 June 2009

The de-contamination strategy continues. David Cameron says the Conservatives were 'wrong' on Scottish devolution.

Mr Cameron says that the Major Government:

should have spent more time in government thinking, how do we give legitimate help to those people within our United Kingdom who want to have a greater expression of self-government?

It is worth noting that he doesn't necessarily think that a democratic answer was the correct one. Finding "a greater expression of self-government" could easily have meant a symbolic solution.

Looking ahead, the man who is on course to be our Prime Minister said he would respect the right of the Scottish Parliament to rule on domestic matters in Scotland if he became Prime Minister.

Why then do David Jones and Cheryl Gillian (the Welsh Tory frontbench) want to veto a request from the National Assembly for a referendum on further powers?

We don't yet know Mr Cameron's view on that. Until we do the rest is just mood music.

Is the Welsh language prolonging the recession?

2009-06-18T04:10:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan blog on 18th June

That seems to be the suggestion made by two leading Welsh economists.

Writing in the latest Bevan Foundation review Professor David Blackaby and Professor Philip Murphy of Swansea University assess what actions the Assembly Government could take to deal with the recession. Not many, seems to be the conclusion.

Education is one area where they suggest WAG could do more to up-skill the Welsh workforce. So what’s stopping them? That damned obsession with the language…

Does the schooling system provide sufficient business and economic skills to its pupils? Evidence suggests these skills are highly rewarded in the labour market but they are not a mainstay of the curriculum. Similarly other features of the current curriculum may need to be reviewed. For example is the amount of time given to learning Welsh in schools an efficient use of resources? If it should remain compulsory should it be compulsory up to the age of 16?

Having planted that idea the authors go on discuss what can be done to make Wales a more business friendly environment. And then, up it pops again…

Should the Welsh Assembly Government consider the business costs of additional legislation in relation to the Welsh Language?

It is long article – long on analysis, short on solutions – and I don’t want to unfairly seize on one element, but it seems odd to me that they keep coming back to the cost of language policy. What of the costs of other policies deemed to have a social benefit?

What is their vision – a nation of English speaking entrepreneurs?

Thinking new thoughts?

2009-06-13T08:09:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan blog on 13 June

After marching his troops half way up the hill, he marched them down again.

On reflection Jonthan Morgan realised he didn't have the firepower to follow through with his assault on Nick Bourne, so in this week's speech to Cardiff University he pledged loyalty to his 'culturally English' Leader. There were plenty of coded digs, but nothing quite as overt as his last speech.

There were though some interesting ideas. A more independent Welsh Conservative Party, directly elected Mayors for the big urban authorities and positive discrimination - reserving vacant list seats for women. Nothing particularly original, but bold for a Tory.

The truly radical idea though was to hold a 'US style open primary' to chose the next leader of the Welsh Conservative Party.

Clearly Mr Morgan thinks he has greater mass appeal than Darren Miller or Andrew RT Davies. But though there are difficulties with the idea, and the parallel with the US is less than exact (our voters don't register their Party affiliation), it is imaginative, refreshing and worth considering.

This is what he said:

What have we got to be afraid of?

If we are to stretch our horizons, then we have to stretch our imaginations.

If we are to convince the people of Wales to embrace the Party and make it theirs then we have to make it a Party they are openly proud to support and vote for. There’s no better place to start than with the selection of the person at the top.

It looks at though at least one leadership election will be debating new ideas.

What's he up to?

2009-06-07T02:57:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on June 7th

Huw Lewis is a cleverer politician that most of the cabinet give him credit for.

On Friday night he urged Rhodri Morgan to stay on until the expenses row blows over "for the sake of the party and the country" - and of course to help those caught up in it.

By association he allied himself with his popular outgoing leader, while also distancing himself from him.

In a cleverly crafted section of his speech, Huw Lewis followed up his priase for the First Minister by drawing a contrast with the man who sacked him twice:

"We come from different generations, with very different backgrounds - it would be completely bizarre to think that we could agree on every issue under the sun. Indeed on some issues we are on a different page altogether".

While supposedly praising his leader he portrayed himself as loyal, young, rooted in the Labour movement and with a new agenda. Clever, eh?

Huw Lewis has demonstrated how politics is an art not a science.

His putative opponents have been slow in waking up to his strength as a candidate, they should no longer be in any doubt.

Michael Moore

2009-06-02T03:39:00.001-07:00

Posted on Bevan blog on June 2

Twenty years after his documentary Roger & Me, about the destruction of car manufacturing in his home Town of Flint, Michigan. Filmmaker Michael Moore says the bankruptcy of General Motors should provoke a re-think about the future of car production:

Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.

We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.

In other news...oil prices are climbing up again

Changing of the guard?

2009-05-31T10:16:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan blog on 31 May 2009

Not content with stretching his goodbye by six months, it seems that the ground is being prepared for Rhodri Morgan to stay on even longer and fulfill his wish to be First Minister to greet the Ryder Cup when it comes to Wales next summer.

Leaders do hate to leave.

The Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly is similarly digging his heals in. Nick Bourne’s critics in his own group are numerous, but there is no consensus on an alternative candidate.

Soundings have been underway for some time. Darren Millar, Andrew RT Davies and Jonathan Morgan have all been canvassed as alternatives, but the rules for bringing about a leadership challenge are unclear. And more importantly no single candidate has enough support to launch a credible bid.

So it seems the favoured tactic is to destabilise Nick Bourne.

In an extraordinary speech last week Jonathan Morgan accused his one-time ally of losing “the moral, ethical and political capacity to show leadership”.

The convention of coded attacks seems to have been suspended by the restless AM for Cardiff North. His sweeping denouncement was aimed at “Politicians who have claimed inappropriately or illegitimately, whether it be phantom mortgages, iPods, plasma televisions, trouser-presses or duck islands for their ponds”.

In the current environment it would be hard for anyone to disagree. Except perhaps his own leader and his old friend the Parliamentary candidate for the Vale of Glamorgan. As John Dixon points out attacking a third of the group you hope to lead may not be the cleverest politics.

But it is a bold move. I argued at the time of his departure from the Opposition frontbench that having opted against going to Westminster it was unlikely that he would content himself for long with Chairing the Audit Committee. And so it has proved.

However, it does beg the question that if the leadership of his own party is so fundamentally weakened, what’s he going to do about it?

Well, he going to give another speech that much we do know. Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre is hosting a lecture from him on June 15th modestly titled "Welsh Conservatism and how the 2015 Assembly election was won."

It’ll be an interesting speech. But talk is cheap. His peroration last week was: “We must seize the initiative”.

Lets see if he does.

Mr Speaker?

2009-05-24T12:50:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan blog

The game

2009-05-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

Posted on the Bevan blog on 17th May 2009

The expenses revelations over the last week have been grim. Even old Westminster operators have winced at the claims for maintaining moats and helipads.

But the spirit of the practice is no surprise.

It has long been an open secret to those with a working knowledge of Parliament that the system of allowances was regarded as a top-up of their salary by MPs. It's another wheeze.

Just as MPs hide free foreign trips (if they are on official business they don't have to be declared), so a free London flat to sell-on at profit when you stand down is just another perk of the job.

In lieu of a 'proper' salary most MPs feel entitled to make claims up to the limit of their allowances, regardless of how much they actually spend.

Gerald Kaufman, for example, is reported to have made regular claims for “odd jobs” which he submitted without receipts at a rate of £245 every month — £5 below the then limit for unreceipted expenses. When these were challenged by officials he replied: “Why are you querying these expenses?”, and threatened to make official complaints against them.

After all, who would find out?

Journalists would be unlikely to probe. It simply would not be cricket. As a Lobby Corespondent myself for three years I was complicit. I knew about some of the wheezes but wouldn't have dreamed of offering it as a story to my newsdesk - it would have broken the code, and more importantly, it would have resulted in me being frozen out from polite political society (and sources of intelligence). Of course I didn't know the details of the excesses, but I didn't ask either. Where would I start?

"It's systemic", the veteran Lobby Correspondent Mike White blogged this week, "and those of us who routinely explain or defend the political class – including me – are damaged by it, too. Rightly so".

The Telegraph's chequebook journalism has been lauded. But the revelations surely serve as testimony of the failure of journalism not it's high point. The credit belongs to Freedom of Information campaigner Heather Brooke, who has hitherto been regarded by many in the world of political journalism as naive and unhelpful for seeking disclosure of expenses.

There's no shortage of people saying sorry, but most are simply sorry the details have been published. They still don't get it.

Another Lobby Correspondent, the BBC's Nick Robinson, reports that some Tory MPs regard the forced repayments by the shadow cabinet of claims for furniture and gardening as "the price of David Cameron's press release". Simply the cost of getting the Leader of the Opposition on the right side of the story.

The saga goes to the heart of our system of politics and journalism. The unwritten rules which govern them have been exposed. That's what has been so traumatic for inhabitants of the Westminster village this week - the dark nooks of the Palace have had light shone into them. The game is up.

Devolution’s dirty little secret

2009-05-05T02:27:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan blog on 5 May 2009

Happy 10th anniversary to the National Assembly. To mark this occasion the man who lead the non-Party 'Yes for Wales' campaign, Prof Kevin Morgan, has written a sober piece to remind us that the promises made have not been delivered.

"We had over-inflated ambitions in 1999 about the ability of government to improve economic performance" he laments.

It is worth reading the entire piece, but here is a damming reminder of the state we are in:

The Welsh Valleys remain stubbornly at the bottom end of all statistics. Of the top 10 Parliamentary constituencies with the highest incapacity benefit claimants in the UK, the Valleys contain five – Merthyr, Rhondda, Cynon Valley, Blaenau Gwent, and Aberavon. For Wales as a whole there is a steady stream of negative statistics:

Only the West Midlands has had slower growth since 1999;

Lowest private sector R&D spend in the UK;

lowest full-time weekly wages in the UK;

bottom of UK rankings for tests for 15-year-olds;

we spend 8% per child less than England in schools;

we have a spending gap of £55m with England in higher education;

fewer graduates remain in Wales for employment than other UK nations.

And now make a wish...

The very long goodbye

2009-04-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

Posted on the Bevan Foundation blog on 25 April 2009

Rhodri Morgan this morning gave his last speech as First Minister to the Welsh Labour Party conference. "There will be a vacancy for my job before the year is out", he told the audience in Swansea.

The wording is significant. The assumption has always been that he would trigger a leadership election over the summer to enable his successor to take over around the time of his 70th birthday in September. But I understand Rhodri Morgan intends to delay his departure until the turn of the year.

It is thought that the First Minister intends spending the summer taking a Grand Tour around Wales, bidding his people farewell. A contest would not then take place until the autumn and he may not stand down as First Minister until January.

Some members of the Cabinet are not pleased. Contenders have been holding back from launching their campaigns until Rhodri Morgan had triggered the contest, but some are now getting restless. It is likely that after June's Euro elections their patience will break and they will begin to set out their positions more directly.

In the meantime, in the midst of an economic and political crisis, Labour is in limbo.

Fascinating fact

2009-04-11T10:55:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on 11 April 2009

Interesting piece in The Telegraph on Tory preparations for the General Election; buried within it is the following nugget:

A private poll of Unite members – the biggest private sector union in the country with more than of two million members and a major contributor to Labour funds – showed that 34 per cent favoured Labour and 31 per cent the Conservatives.

A sign of the times?

Why don't people 'get it'?

2009-04-08T03:42:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on April 8th

I'm not an 'environmentalist', whatever that means. I think I'm fairly ordinary. Until two years ago I was reasonably content living in the Cardiff Bay bubble, gossiping, pontificating and lunching politicians.

But two years on, trying to do 'my bit', I'm growing increasingly alarmed about the way our politics works and the way we live.

I was never any good at science, I always used to muck around in lessons. So I make no claim to understand the complexities of global warming. But I do know that those who do understand it are shouting at the top of their voices to warn us about a growing crisis.

And every week the emerging evidence grows more alarming. Here's this week's: "A lot of the impacts we're seeing are running ahead of our expectations," said William Hare of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

However, all the experts seem to agree that it still not yet too late to turn it round. But it is urgent.

I don't believe it will happen though. I'm fairly pessimistic. All my experience over the last two years is that when presented with practical things that must be done now to help bring about the change, politicians and officials at all levels of Government don't want to leave their comfort zone.

In fairness to them, they don't want to get too far ahead of public opinion. The fate of Ken Livingstone and the outcome of the Congestion Charge Referendum in Manchester is alive in their minds.

The Sustainable Development Commission (hardly a radical outfit) has just published a report which said that 2009 will be a defining year. They say “this is a moment that demands unprecedented leadership, robust policy, and decisive action…The economic crisis of 2009 has the potential to seed the economic opportunities of tomorrow. But it demands courage and vision today”

We need not be too concerned though, WAG are working on another new strategy.

...perhaps I'll book a holiday in New Zealand.

Contest, what contest?

2009-04-03T02:39:00.000-07:00

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on April 3rd 2009

The Western Mail reports that Health Minister Edwina Hart is "secretly seeking support for a Welsh Labour leadership bid among her union contacts". The BBC's Dragons Eye reports that Education Minister Jane Hutt is canvassing support to stand.

Avid readers of this blog will know that I think this is healthy and long-overdue.

But, simply in the interests of context you'll understand, here are some figures to reflect on:

Labour majorities in the 2007 Assembly election :

Vale of Glamorgan: 83 (0.2%)
Swansea West: 1,511 (6.6%)
Gower: 1,192 (4.3%)
Bridgend: 2, 556 (10.4%)
Merthyr: 4, 581 (21.8%)

Oh dear.

If only can only afford one paper...

2009-03-08T06:07:00.000-07:00

...see what your opponents are saying. On a Sunday morning rather than turning to Andrew Rawnsley or Will Hutton to reinforce your prejudices, perhaps you should have a look at what most people are reading. Never a bad philosophy, but this morning more apt than ever.

Over in the News of the World the well connected and respected Fraser Nelson lets rip on the Welfare State. "No civilised country should rely on immigrants to do the work, while paying its own people to claim dole in council estates" Mr Nelson writes.

Today's op-ed is based on a report by the Centre for Social Justice (Iain Duncan Smith's deceptively titled outfit) which called for £100 Billion worth of spending cuts.

It is a familiar right-wing populist assault on single mothers. Here's what he says:

A girl who does 30 hours hard graft on the minimum wage has a disposable income of just £61 a week.

With one child on benefits, she gets a house and £131 a week. With two kids: £186 a week. Three: £236 a week. This is more than a receptionist, lab technician or post office worker. With five kids it’s £22,000 a year—the average wage. It’s a no-brainer. Do you slog your guts out for a low-pay, low-prestige job? Or take the easier route and start breeding?

And to top it off there's one more selectively chosen fact:

Since Labour came to power MOST new UK jobs have been filled by workers born outside of Europe.

There's no doubt this stuff resonates. Added to the rhetoric from Gordon Brown and many Trade Unions about 'British jobs for British workers', it all contributes to a fertile atmosphere for a backlash against progressive values.

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on March 8th 2009

A question of leadership

2009-03-02T01:00:00.000-08:00

Posted on the Bevan Foundation blog on March 2nd 209

Ever since he bumped his head in the shower on holiday things haven't been going Nick Bourne's way. The latest mis-step is perhaps the most serious though.

Having opted against going to Westminster it is unlikely that Jonathan Morgan will content himself for long with Chairing the Audit Committee and being a 'mate' on the backbenches.

As the messy reshuffle unfolded Mr Morgan was attending an awards lunch in Cardiff's Hilton to celebrate emerging Welsh Leaders. The ambitious AM listened as the guest speaker offered the following characerisation of leadership: "A good leader is someone who surrounds themselves with people who are better than they are at certain things and does not feel threatened".

From where I was sitting I couldn't see if he was smiling.

No way to run a railroad

2009-02-22T02:23:00.000-08:00

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on 22 February 2009

We need to cut car journeys, right?

So why aren't we making the alternatives more attractive?

Not only are our rail fares 50% higher than the rest of Europe, but train companies aren't investing in improving the experience of travelling by rail.

In this week's Ponty Observer former UK Transport Minister Kim Howells reveals a plan to close town the ticket office in Pontyrpidd train station and replace it with a machine.

As the local MP puts it: "Pontypridd and Treforest are two of Wales’s busiest railway stations and the rise in passenger numbers has been huge over the past five years or so, yet the condition of the stations has improved very little".

A leaky roof, drafty platform and unreliable lift are all features of the town's busy main station.

On the front page of his local paper Kim Howells tells of filing past the brightly lit waiting room on Platform One in icy weather: "we look with incredulity through the glass doors of a room that has comfortable seats and interesting framed photographs on the walls, but which is locked to the travelling public. This is a kind of torture when the wind is blowing straight in from Siberia! Does it take managerial genius to give somebody the responsibility for opening and locking the waiting room and keeping an eye on it occasionally? After all, the Pontypridd station is now also the HQ of the British Transport Police".

It's a familiar tale to regular users of public transport. Buses that don’t connect with train times, insecure cycle parking and poorly-lit footpaths are all barriers to using the train, according to a survey by the Campaign for Better Transport.

Performance on the Valleys Lines has improved. The trains are pretty reliable, and a much better alternative than being stuck on the congested roads. But if we are serious about achieving 'modal shift', then we need to make travelling by train a much more attractive option.

Couldn't give an LCO

2009-01-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

Posted on IWA blog on 23 January

An "open, responsive, effective" system, that’s how the Assembly’s petitions system was sold by the Presiding Officer at its inception.

Welsh Civil Society was urged to come forward with new ideas on how AMs could use their new powers. The call went out for embryonic LCOs and Assembly to come flooding into the Senedd.

When an MP succeeds in the ballot for Private Members Bills, we were told, backbenchers are showered pleas from campaigners to take forward ready-made Bills. Now was the time for Welsh organisations to step up to the plate.

In October 2007 the green transport charity Sustrans did just that. We assembled an impressive coalition of civil society organisations, not just environmental groups but seemingly unlikely allies in the battle for sustainable transport like BT, Royal Mail and the BMA. On the steps of the Senedd Dafydd Elis Thomas accepted the petition from a postman and we were on our way to discovering a new delivery route.

Quiet deliberately we set about forging an alliance that could not be easily dismissed. Age Concern, the NUT and the RSPB added their names to a list of respected NGOs who supported a practical proposal to help cut carbon emissions and address the growing obesity epidemic at the same time.

But a lesson quickly learned was that it is no good conducting a text book campaign to influence a law making procedure that is far from a text book.

By early summer 2008 our proposal had reached the Enterprise Committee and for the first time they agreed to take forward an LCO in their own name.

The autumn brought a round of pre-legislative scrutiny and the evidence piled in. Even Richard Brunstrom and the Children’s Commissioner added their support to the proposals to force Councils to treat pedestrians, disabled people and cyclists with the same priority as they accord to cars. It we are serious about climate change then new thinking is needed.

Though Committees are able to sponsor LCOs Ministers found they had already allocated a fifth of their legislative time to backbenchers and any more initiatives would threaten to overwhelm the goodwill of the new system. “Taking forward this LCO would divert resources away from taking forward the Assembly Government’s legislative programme” Ieuan Wyn Jones told the committee.

The draft LCO is effectively dead. The Committee have put it on hold hoping to win WAG round and may even decide to put it forward to the full Assembly to vote on as a point of principle. But without Government backing it is going nowhere.

Far from being an "open, responsive, effective" system it would seem that our new law-making mechanisms are entirely dominated by Ministers.

Doubts have been expressed about whether AMs have ideas for new legislation. But why should anyone come forward with any further proposals for extras powers to be passed down to the Assembly before the next election when the Government have said there is no more capacity?

And why should any organisation invest the time and resources in developing proposals that have very little chance of success?

Who pays the price for censorship?

2009-01-23T02:42:00.000-08:00

Posted on Bevan blog on 23 January

The Times reports this morning that the BBC have blocked a televised appeal for aid to Gaza "to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story".

Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB took the same stance.

The Times reports that this breaks a 45 year-old agreement with overseas aid charities to broadcast their fundraising appeals and arises from nervousness at the BBC that the appeal could result in the corporation having to compromise its coverage of the Gaza story.

In a statement the corporation admitted it did not want to risk compromising confidence in BBC impartiality. "The BBC has decided not to broadcast the DEC’s public appeal to raise funds for Gaza. The BBC decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of an ongoing news story. However the BBC will, of course, continue to report the humanitarian story in Gaza," it said.

Speaking to The Times, Brendan Gormley, chief executive of the DEC, questioned the BBC’s suggestion that it may not be possible to deliver much aid because the situation remained volatile. British charities were already on the ground and delivering aid. "Agencies are already providing food, drugs and blankets as well as delivering clean water. But we will soon reach the limit of what we can do, without more money," he said.

Poor arguments

2009-01-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

Posted on the Bevan Foundation blog on 14th January 2009

George Monbiot has written a typically sparky piece on class and the environment. I'm not an avid reader of his but I think this post is worth quoting liberally from.

He compares the campaign against patio heaters with the silence on the ownership of Aga's.

Patio heaters are a powerful symbol: heating the atmosphere is not a side-effect, it's their purpose. But to match the fuel consumption of an Aga, a large domestic patio heater would have to run continuously at maximum output for three months a year.
So where is the campaign against Agas? There isn't one. I've lost count of the number of aspirational middle-class greens I know who own one of these monsters and believe that they are somehow compatible (perhaps because they look good in a country kitchen) with a green lifestyle*

It's a fair point. But more importantly the issue of class is a live one in the debate over airport expansion. It seems likely that Geoff Hoon will give the go-ahead to a large new airport in London - otherwise known as the Heathrow Third runway.

A public transport hub is expected to be announced at the same time in the vain hope it will mitigate the emissions rises. Despite signing up to carbon cuts of their own the Assembly Government seem concerned only to secure a high speed link to south Wales from the new Heathrow rail terminal.

Even though there is sizable Cabinet and backbench scepticism of the predicted economic benefits claimed by BAA, the airport is seen as essential for the economy.

And again class creeps into the debate. It is often claimed that opponents of the growth of aviation and cheap flights are doing down the common man. The working classes now have the same opportunity to travel the world and broaden their mind - the greenies would deny them the chance to see the world. Monbiot again:

the Civil Aviation Authority's surveys show, the average gross household income of leisure passengers using Heathrow is £59,000 (the national average is £34,660); the average individual income of the airport's business passengers (36% of its traffic) is £83,000. The wealthiest 18% of the population buy 54% of all tickets, the poorest 18% buy 5%.

Ryanair, Britain's biggest low-cost carrier, champion themselves as the hero of the working classes. So where would you expect this airline to place most of its advertising? I have the estimated figures for its spending on newspaper ads in 2007. They show that it placed nothing in the Sun, the News of the World, the Mirror, the Star or the Express, but 52% of its press spending went to the Daily Telegraph. Ryanair knows who its main customers are: second-home owners and people who take foreign holidays several times a year.

Who, in the age of the one-penny ticket, is being prevented from flying? It's not because they can't afford the flights that the poor fly less than the rich; it's because they can't afford the second homes in Tuscany, the skiing holidays at Klosters or the scuba diving in the Bahamas. British people already fly twice as much as citizens of the United States, and one fifth of the world's flights use the UK's airports. If people here don't travel, it's not because of a shortage of runways.

The poor are often prayed in aid of schemes will are contributing to catastrophic climate change. And yet it is the poorest - especially those in developing countries - who are those who often suffer the most from environmentally damaging developments.

* The picture appears in honour of David Cornock who is taking a break from bloggng. I feel sure that if was blogging at the moment he'd have taken the opportunity to share the photo again. This one's for you Dave.

What is the role of the State?

2009-01-10T06:48:00.000-08:00

Posted on the Bevan Foundation blog on 10th January 2009

We tackle the big uns on this blog.

Polly Toynbee piles into the debate in this morning's Guardian with an attack on the idea that charities should play a greater role in delivering public services. Charity is mostly a social good in itself, she says, but it is no substitute for the State:

The voluntary sector has only become more important by taking welfare state contracts to do things a democratically elected government chooses. The money is accountable - whereas random funds from philanthropists take a taxpayers' subsidy unaccountably.

Her piece is an attack on the increasingly fashionable view, especially in Conservative circles, that voluntary efforts are a more effective way to tackle complex social problems. As you'd expect from Polly Toynbee she's particular sensitive to any attempts to denude the capacity of the State to be marshaled for progressive causes. And she's right to sound the alarm, there is good reason to be cautious.

In Wales we have taken the threat to heart. The One Wales accord embraces Statism. It sets its face against PFI. The philosophy of 'progressive universalism' , which is cited as the ideological underpinning of Rhodri Morgan's Government, sets great store in accountability and co-operation in the delivery of public services. In practice this means seeing Local Government as the principal delivery agents. Taken with the challenge to the arms length principle under the bonfire of the Quangos, the attachment of WAG to the primacy of State bodies becomes clear. No mixed economy here.

That is not to say that charities and NGOs aren't funded to deliver public services in Wales, they are (to declare an interest, I run one them). But the relationship is often a hesitant one.

As Polly Toynbee acknowledges, charities can be "free-wheeling, often innovative, sometimes a beacon showing how to do things better, with ideas to lead the state sector".

Where public funds are concerned accountability is not unimportant, but we do not suffer a deficit in Wales. Some of the chief challenges we face over the coming period surround capacity and finance. We'll be expected to do more with less; to be more innovative and less bureaucratic. Here the Third Sector could help, but an overly defensive approach with a Tory bogeyman in mind could get in the way.

Don't switch off

2009-01-05T12:58:00.000-08:00

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on 5th January 2009
Later this year the first of the Welsh television transmitters will be switched off.

By March next year all seven analogue transmitters will be off line and without the ability to receive a digital signal you won't be able to watch telly.

The arrival of digital TV was heralded as the dawning of a new era of choice. But if it's programmes made in Wales about our communities your after, there's not much choice.

More than two-thirds of the people living in Wales don't consume Welsh daily news. And it's getting worse.

The obligation for ITV to provide Public Service Broadcasting is being gradually being wound down. Their Political Unit in Cardiff Bay has been shut down, with only one reporter dedicated to Welsh politics remaining. Further cuts in ITV's current affairs unit are expected this year.

If the prospects of winning a referendum on further powers look bleak now, wait a few more years and there'll be even fewer sources of information about Government in Wales.

In an excellent post on the IWA blog former BBC Wales Controller Geraint Talfarn Davies underlines the extent of the decline. "By the end of this year in English language television for Wales" he says, "sport will account for more hours than the combined total devoted to drama, music, arts, factual and light entertainment programmes".

But he suggests there are reasons to be optimistic:

The arrival of the first all-Wales commercial radio broadcaster is imminent with Real Radio about to complete its Welsh coverage by taking over the licence for north and west Wales;

The creation of the first local TV station covering Cardiff and Newport presages a new age of local news

ITV's coverage will be thrown a lifeline. "Almost every observer expects ITV’s news service for Wales to be rescued by some means or other"

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, no doubt. But it leaves significant challenges. Commercial radio has not yet shown an appetite to invest in original journalism. Local TV may well prove popular, though the quality is unlikely to be inspiring. But the decline of national coverage threatens the viability of a devolved tier of Government engaged with its communities.

As Geraint Talfarn concludes, Wales needs a complete television service in English as well as in Welsh. Achieving it without additional public subsidy is the tricky bit.

This is an updated version

A big turkey

2008-12-31T03:35:00.000-08:00

Posted on the Bevan Foundation blog on 31 January 2008

Just a few weeks left then before he potters off to Texas to build his library.

Amazingly it turns out he likes books. His former adviser Karl Rove says President Bush has read 95 books in the last three years. Just goes to show that knowledge and understanding are enirely different concepts.

The former Yale history graduate will be keen to shape the way he's portrayed in the annals of time. Typically when a leader steps down it is said that history will treat them kinder than their contemporaries. And with approval ratings of minus 45 you'd think that it would be said of President Bush.

But not so. A fascinating, and disturbing, oral history in the latest edition of Vanity Fair gives the candid accounts of some of the key players in his administration.

Taken together they form a damming indictment of the the 43rd President of the United States from the mouths of his own allies.

2008-12-28T11:33:00.000-08:00

Posted on the Bevan Foundation blog. Contribution to debate on what have been the most over-rated and under-rated issues of 2008

Over-rated: The establishment of the All-Wales Convention under Sir Emyr Jones Parry. It is a well used tactic, set up a committee to discuss a difficult issue of the day: take minutes, spend years - as Harold Wilson cynically said of the Royal Commission on the Constitution. Since then there have been several more on devolution. The Jones Parry Commission is likely to report so late that there won’t be time to hold a referendum before 2011 – even if there was the political will to do so.

Under-rated: An Assembly Committee this year called for an all-Wales independent advocacy body to be set up to give looked after children a voice. A child in the care of the state is more likely to go to prison than University. And yet where’s the outcry? These children get a crappy deal. If my child is bullied in school I'd be straight in to see the Head - who is there to stand up for a child in care?

The evidence presented to the committee was searing. One told the committee: "I’ve been in care long enough to tell the difference between a social worker and a so-called independent person, and the woman I had wasn’t independent. Her wages were paid by the same people as social workers and that is not right’. WAG rejected the report's recommendations. The author of the report into the North Wales abuse scandal, Sir Ronald Waterhouse, went on Dragon's Eye to say he was 'scandalised'. We should all be, but we're not.

Christmas number 1?

2008-12-19T01:43:00.000-08:00

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on 19th December

Bugger the X-factor, Tom Bodden has a Christmas cracker for your ipod - set to the tune of 'My favourite things':

iPods and web sites, and repairs in the kitchen,
Bright Dyson cleaners and warm woollen duvets,
Digital cameras, without any strings,
These are a few of my favourite things.

Cream coloured curtains and thousand pound sofas,
Food bills and gas bills, and kettles and toasters,
Sat navs, and Sky subs, and restaurant meals,
These are among my favourite deals.

Pays party rent for office and cleaning,
Interest on mortgage for second home pending,
Wide screen TV sets with surround sound and stand,
Throw in insurance, before it gets banned.

When the hacks bite, when the polls swing,
When I'm feeling sad,
I simply remember my favourite things,
And then I don't feel so bad.

The efficiency drive

2008-12-16T01:11:00.000-08:00

Posted on the Bevan Foundation blog on 16th December 2008

What a story! I'm tempted to say you couldn't make it up, but....

A GOVERNMENT initiative to save £57m was run so badly from its Welsh HQ it ended up costing the taxpayer £81m instead.

The project, to share back-office functions for the Department for Transport, went so disastrously wrong the IT system frequently sent messages to staff in German.

Today the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee publishes a scathing report into the fiasco, which the MPs describe as “one of the worst this committee has seen”.

Enjoy the optimism, while it lasts

2008-11-20T11:57:00.000-08:00

Posted on Bevan Foundation blog on 20th October

There's no doubt that the campaign saw moments of poetry, so now for the prose.

Barack Obama is a clever operator. As this interesting insider account of the campaign illustrates, the President elect seems temperamentally well-suited to the strains of governing.

But as Karl Rove, President Bush's evil genius, points out , the expectations generated in the campaign are going to be very hard to deliver.

The office of the Presidency was designed to disappoint. The Founding Fathers knew what they didn't want from a Chief Executive and they designed a system to keep him in his place. They were clever buggers.

As Simon Schama's excellent recent BBC series illustrated, to understand America's future you need to understand its past. And we're about to see it all again as the limits of the office of the Presidency are laid bare.

Sooner or later he'll disappoint.