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Carelessness in the Welsh Government

By Freedom Central – September 3, 2010

This morning’s Western Mail reports that laptop computers and mobile devices worth £21,000 have been lost or stolen from the Assembly Government in the past two years, a Freedom of Information request has revealed. A total of 24 laptops which cost £800 each and 30 mobile devices, mainly phones, went missing:

Defending the Assembly Government’s record, the spokesman said: “Of the 5,250 laptops and mobile phones in use across the Assembly Government, less than 1% have been stolen or misplaced over the past two years despite our highly mobile workforce. We take information security very seriously.

“Equipment is password protected and encrypted as part of the UK-wide Government Secure Information Network. In addition, information is stored centrally on secure and encrypted databases, not on individual devices.”

The Assembly Government stated in its response to the Freedom of Information request that in some cases “it has not been possible to determine whether a laptop was lost as opposed to stolen”. However, three laptops and four mobiles devices have been found and returned since June 2008.

Peter Black, the Liberal Democrat finance spokesman, said: “While some thefts and losses may be unavoidable, the Labour-Plaid Government now needs to put in place much firmer systems to ensure that the cost to the taxpayer is kept to a bare minimum.”

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Electoral Commission advice brings referendum closer

By Freedom Central – September 2, 2010

According to the BBC the Electoral Commission will give its verdict later today on the proposed question for the referendum on whether the Welsh Assembly will be able to pass laws in the 20 areas of policy it is allowed to administer.

The Commission has spent the past 10 weeks trying out the question with members of the public. It will reveal if it believes the wording is suitable, or if it needs rewriting. Only when the question has been formally agreed can legal moves begin to call the referendum vote.

The BBC say that it is understood that the rest of the process for calling the referendum is close to completion, so this is seen as a major hurdle to be overcome before the vote goes ahead next year.

Update: The Electoral Commission say:

We conclude that the preamble to the question and the wording of the question itself are not easy to understand and are ambiguous.

6.6 For these reasons, the question and preamble have the potential to mislead voters. In our view, this is because of a lack of clarity and some ambiguity in the language used rather than any intention to mislead.

6.7 Overall, people thought the preamble was densely worded. This is offputting and some people will not read the preamble because of the density of words presented to them. Without reading the preamble, they are unable to understand the question. This means the question and preamble are not accessible to all voters.

6.8 Nevertheless, people do want an explanation of what they are being asked to vote for and prefer to have a preamble. Our public opinion research showed that people would prefer to have an easier to read format, rather than what appear as long paragraphs, and with bullet points. They would prefer to have shorter paragraphs. Young people especially would prefer an easier to read format.

Their suggested redraft is:

The National Assembly for Wales: what happens at the moment

The Assembly has powers to make laws on 20 subject areas, such as:

• agriculture
• the environment
• housing
• education
• health
• local government

In each subject area, the Assembly can make laws on some matters, but not others. To make laws on any of these other matters, the Assembly must ask the UK Parliament for its agreement. The UK Parliament then decides each time whether or not the Assembly can make these laws.

The Assembly cannot make laws on subject areas such as defence, tax or welfare benefits, whatever the result of this vote.

If most voters vote ‘yes’

The Assembly will be able to make laws on all matters in the 20 subject areas it has powers for, without needing the UK Parliament’s agreement.

If most voters vote ‘no’

What happens at the moment will continue.

Question

Do you want the Assembly now to be able to make laws on all matters in the 20
subject areas it has powers for?

Yes
No

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Young Lib Dems’ fury at Welsh Assembly’s neglect on homophobic bullying

By Freedom Central – September 1, 2010

Liberal Youth Wales today announced they are relaunching their campaign for homophobic bullying guidance, revealing that the Welsh Assembly Government had promised everything and done nothing towards stamping it out.

Oliver Townsend, Campaigns Officer for Liberal Youth Wales, said “It’s plain wrong. Almost half of those who suffer homophobic bullying at school consider suicide as a result. The neglect Labour and Plaid Cymru have shown is despicable. There are young teenagers suffering every single hour of every single day. The weight of the statistics is a story of pain for hundreds of vulnerable teenagers across Wales, yet they are just ignoring the issue. It’s unforgivable. It’s just plain wrong.”

Last year, Liberal Youth Wales appealed directly to the previous Education Minister Jane Hutt. In what aimed to be a cross-party campaign, gaining support from teaching unions and the Church in Wales, they called for compulsory homophobic bullying guidance to be given to all Welsh secondary schools.

They were prompted to take action by what they describe as terrible statistics released by Stonewall showing the brutal extent of homophobic bullying in schools, which can lead to self-harm, physical and sexual abuse, truancy, lack of achievement and other traumatic effects.

Matt Smith, Chair of Liberal Youth Wales, said, “We were told the guidance would be released in the spring and thought we’d succeeded. But the spring passed, and we were told the summer. The summer is now here and we’ve heard nothing. We’ve gone through two Education Ministers and neither of them has done anything.”

“They’ve got the power to do it, they’ve got the support to do it, so we have to ask ourselves: why aren’t they doing it? We’re not talking abstract here. We’re talking about abuse, bullying and potential suicide. Lives are at risk. So waiting nearly a year for guidance is completely unacceptable. We hope that the new Education Minister Leighton Andrews will finally take action.”

The new campaign will be called Homophobia is Still Gay, and the petition to introduce compulsory homophobic bullying guidance will be available to sign at Welsh Liberal Democrat stall at the Cardiff Mardi Gras, at Liberal Youth Wales stalls at Fresher’s Fayres in Welsh Universities throughout over the next month.

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Changing perceptions of mental health

By Veronica German – September 1, 2010

“What will my friends say, I can’t tell them, they won’t understand. What would my parents think? They’d be so ashamed if they knew. And my partner, what if they leave me? I can’t tell the kids, they’re too young and won’t get it. I can’t tell anyone, people will laugh. I might lose my job, I can’t come out, the risk is just too high.”

This person has a mental health condition, just like millions across the UK and hundreds of thousands of people in Wales. In fact a quarter of people in the UK will experience mental ill health at some point in their lives. Nearly 750,000 of them live in Wales.

Statistically we all know someone with a mental health condition. However according to a the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s ‘Who Do You See?’ research, people with mental health conditions are one of the most discriminated against groups in Wales.
The study found that 37per cent of people would be unhappy if a close relative married or formed a long term relationship with someone with a mental health condition and only 40per cent of people think that people with a mental health condition are suitable to be Primary School teachers.
The problem is lack of awareness. We generally know what we need to do if there is something physically wrong either with ourselves or our loved ones. It should be the same with mental health, but we just don’t know what to do, we all need some help.

Mind Cymru is training trainers to deliver Mental Health First Aid courses across Wales so that people can deal with mental distress in the work place and elsewhere. But we need to go further.

Perhaps it is time that Wales had its own anti-stigma campaign such as ‘Time to Change’ in England and ‘See Me’ in Scotland. Both these campaigns have been operating in their respective countries to change the way people think about mental health conditions. Through effective media campaigns, working locally and regionally and holding the media to account over negative press, they have begun to address and change the way people perceive mental health conditions.

Lindsay Foyster, Director of Mind Cymru, said “…An effective campaign will make a real difference to the 1 in 4 of us who will experience mental distress in our lifetimes.

“For maximum impact, any campaign needs to work on local, regional and national levels. In today’s economic climate, an anti-stigma campaign is more important than ever and would help focus attention on the health and wellbeing of the population of Wales more widely”.

I believe strongly that as a society we need to change the way we treat those with mental health conditions. We need to work towards a society where people are not afraid to talk about their mental health.

Ewan Hilton, Executive Director of Gofal Cymru, said: “I want to be part of a society in which everyone feels able to ‘come out’ and discuss their mental health openly, without fear of uncomfortable reactions from friends and family or discrimination from employers if they explain that they’re unwell. I want to be part of a society where no-one feels ashamed to seek support or treatment for a period of mental ill health and where there are role models from all professions and in all communities who stand as reminders that people can and do recover. This will require a real step change; we need to challenge the way we all think about, talk about and respond to mental health and wellbeing”.

We are all affected by mental health conditions in some way but we may not even know it, it shouldn’t be this way. Mental health has been described as ‘The last taboo’; I want Wales to be a part of changing this, then maybe ‘coming out’ will be a thing of the past.

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Ed Miliband invites Liberal Democrat voters under his blanket

By Frank Little – August 31, 2010

The Independent newspaper’s Bank Holiday edition gives blanket coverage to Ed Miliband’s Labour leadership campaign.

This is not the place to discuss Ed Miliband’s pitch to the core Labour membership, nor even to wonder why the Indy is giving so much space to this particular candidate. What is worth looking at is his contention that Labour, under him, would appeal to Liberal Democrat voters.

Political editor Andrew Grice quotes him as offering “a home to former Liberal Democrats and bring together a social democratic economic policy, redistribution, greater equality and putting individual liberty at the centre of who we are.”

“Why is he so well qualified?,” asks Grice: “Because I share the Liberal Democrats’ agenda on civil liberties, ID cards, the detention of terrorist suspects without charge and university tuition fees,” replies Miliband. “The Liberal Democrats are on a journey. Clegg is taking them in a direction a lot of Lib Dem supporters are deeply dismayed about. I offer a home for Liberal Democrat voters in which they don’t have to trade abolition of ID cards for a reactionary assault on the welfare state, and they can be true to their values on both civil liberties and economic policy.”

Note that there is no appeal to Liberal Democrat members to join the Labour Party. The average Liberal Democrat would not be welcomed by the average member of the Labour Party, which has a different ethos. Moreover, a defector would soon be put off by the “spin, triangulation and internecine warfare” identified by Diane Abbott in an interview with Ed Stourton on Radio 4.

Nor would Ed Miliband’s pitch work currently. We already lost most of our waverers at the last general election, scared by the press campaign against the dangers of a coalition. If anything, we would gain votes if there were to be another general election soon, as those doubters would have been reassured by the solidity of the coalition and would return.

No, Ed Miliband is relying on short memories. Now, we can ask where he was between 1997 and 2009 when Blair and Brown were pushing their agenda “on civil liberties, ID cards, the detention of terrorist suspects without charge and university tuition fees”, not to mention the invasion of Iraq, the refusal to restore the earnings link to state pensions and the encouragement of “build now, pay over the odds later” PFI schemes in English education and health. In five years time, we will have to remind voters of these things, as well as pointing out that, under Labour, we will never have real voting reform, proper engagement with the EU nor a serious look at our “independent” nuclear deterrent.

Frank Little is a Liberal Democrat member of Neath Port Talbot council and blogs at ffranc sais

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Early Down’s syndrome screening not available here

By Freedom Central – August 30, 2010

The BBC reports that pregnant women in Wales are still waiting for access to a screening test two years after it was recommended.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) said in its revised guidelines in June 2008 that all pregnant women should be offered, on the NHS, a combined scan and blood tests for foetal chromosomal problems. But currently, women are only offered a different blood test after 15 weeks.

The recommended test is a specialised ultrasound scan checking for raised levels of fluid at the back of the foetus’ neck, which can indicate chromosomal abnormalities such as Down’s or Edward’s syndromes. It is done alongside a blood test which looks for raised levels of certain proteins and hormones, which can also suggest a problem. It has to be carried out between 11 weeks and 13 weeks plus six days of a pregnancy.

The Welsh Government say that subject to the development of the plans and availability of funding, they aim to deliver the screening from April 2011.

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