On the Institute of Welsh Affairs blog John Osmond reports on a speech given by Rhodri Morgan to a Cardiff seminar:
First Minister Rhodri Morgan signalled today that bringing Wales’s economic output per head up to the UK average, a major objective at the start of devolution a decade ago, is permanently off the radar.
He declared that measuring Wales prosperity on the basis of comparative average GVA (gross value added) across the UK was a meaningless exercise, because it did not compare like with like. It did not take into account difference in population structures, such as numbers of retired and older people, children, the economically inactive, and cost of living differences from one region and another.
Speaking at a Cardiff seminar to launch a Rowntree Foundation report on Understanding attitudes to tackling economic inequality the First Minister said the fact was that, despite its GVA declining in relative terms compared with the UK as a whole, Wales was 50 per cent better off than ten years ago.
“GVA is not a good measure” he said. “We only cling on to it because it is the standard used across the European Union to calculate eligibility for Convergence Funding, and of course we in Wales benefit from that.”
Of course during the first term of the Assembly Labour had as its declared aim to increase the Welsh GVA from 77 per cent to 90 per cent of the UK average within a decade. However, that never materialised. Instead our GVA has actually declined to 75 per cent in 2007 – a full 25 per cent below the UK average. It is a failure that must be felt personally by Rhodri Morgan, who for the whole period has been either Economic Development Minister or First Minister.
To argue now that we have been using the wrong measurement all along just smacks of displacement activity. As the First Minister acknowledges, the assertion that Wales is 50 per cent better off than in 1999 is impossible to measure and cannot therefore be scrutinised. It is the sort of anecdotal and subjective statement that his evidence-based government has consistently rejected. So why should we accept it now?
The fact is that the opportunities offered by Objective One funding appear to have been missed whilst the present period of Convergence funding looks to be sinking into a mire of red tape and unacceptable delays. Perhaps the One Wales Government should be concentrating on getting that right rather than moving the goalposts on targets they have failed to achieve.
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