Peter Black is currently posting on his blog about some of the broken promises in the One Wales Government. Abandoning the commitment to a Welsh Language Daily newspaper, giving up their opposition to private finance and introducing Top-up fees are pretty big u-turns for most Plaid activists, however when you throw in the rest then it is surprising that any Plaid activist can see a reason to support them anymore.
These include the inevitable failure to secure a referendum on additional powers for the Assembly by 2011, the constant undermining and underfunding of local government, the failure to make any progress on closing the Higher Education funding gap between England and Wales or even to get additional capital money for schools and the promotion of expensive road schemes through environmentally sensitive areas.
Now we have one more to add to the list, the abandonment of grants for first time homebuyers. This is promised in Plaid Cymru’s 2007 Assembly election manifesto which promised “to help first time buyers get a foothold on the property ladder” and to “offer grants of up to £5,000, on a pound for pound match funded basis, to all first time buyers who save for three years in a government-supported scheme.” and it was replicated in the One Wales programme.
When it was first mooted the Welsh Liberal Democrats were critical. In September 2006 Peter Black wrote on his blog: “the Plaid Cymru policy of offering a cash payment of £5,000 towards the cost of a home would be meaningless. It would have little or no impact on my constituent’s ability to buy a home. In fact with a price tag of £75 million a year across the whole of Wales it would tie up a lot of resource with little effect, money that might be better spent on providing affordable homes to buy and for rent.” Our other criticism was that it would distort the market and we stick by that.
How interesting then to see on page nine of the draft housing strategy, published by a Plaid Cymru Deputy Minister, the following judgement:
Although we have developed a pilot first time buyers scheme which is supporting energy efficiency improvements to first time buyer properties in renewal areas, we are not presently persuaded that direct subsidy to home purchase is a sustainable option for the intermediate market. Direct public subsidy for buyers is likely to contribute to higher house prices once markets pick up.
Yet another One Wales and Plaid Cymru policy that has been abandoned by their own Ministers.
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