The IDEAS Programme is supposed to improve financial management across the organisation however it has resulted in civil servants criticising the programme stating that it undermines the role of specialists within the civil service and leads to greater inefficiencies.

Ed Townsend Newport East Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Candidate said:

“Since the initiation of this computer project, £14.2 million pounds has been spent and it is difficult to see where this programme has made significant savings to warrant this great expense.

“When senior Welsh Assembly Government civil servants criticise a project stating that it is a ‘total waste of money’, government ministers need to listen .

“During the Welsh General Election Campaign the Welsh Liberal Democrats will expose examples of waste and inefficiency of the Labour-Plaid government during their four years in government.

“When every family, charity and business is having to make every pound stretch that little bit further, Wales needs a government that does the same. Labour and Plaid Cymru have turned waste, incompetence and inefficiency into an art form.”

Related posts:

1. WASTE WATCHERS – Day 21
2. WASTE WATCHERS – Day 7
3. WASTE WATCHERS – Day 12

Over the last two years, an outrageous 80,404 hours (3350 days or 9 years) have been wasted while ambulances are waiting to discharge their patients.

Guidelines set by the Health Minister currently state that the wait to hand over responsibility of a patient to nursing staff should be no longer than 20 minutes, but the target is clearly not being met.

Across Wales, the Royal Gwent Hospital was the worst performer amassing a staggering 15,909 lost hours with Morriston Hospital following with 11,962 lost hours and UHW wasting 9,986 hours. The Welsh Ambulance Service calculates that the cost of a ‘lost unit hour’ is £76 which means that time wasted in A&E hospitals cost the NHS over £6,000,000 over past two years.

Apart from causing distress to the patient waiting to be transferred to the A&E department, pressure is put on ambulance crews to respond to other emergency calls in the area.

Ed Townsend, Welsh Liberal Democrat candidate for Newport East said:

““These figures are absolutely shocking. This proves that there is inbuilt failure in the way the Welsh NHS handles emergency situations. Month after month, we see that patients in Wales have to wait an unacceptable amount of time for ambulances to respond to emergency call-outs and now we see that ambulances have to wait an unacceptable amount of time to transfer patients and get back on the road to respond to emergency calls.

“On top of the staggering wasted ambulances hours across Wales, it is estimated that over £6 million was lost to the Welsh NHS over the last two years because of queuing ambulances. We should be looking for savings in the NHS not wasting money.

“During the Welsh General Election campaign the Welsh Liberal Democrats will expose examples of waste and inefficiency of the Labour-Plaid government during their four years in government.

“When every family, charity and business is having to make every pound stretch that little bit further, Wales needs a government that does the same. Labour and Plaid Cymru have made waste, incompetence and inefficiency into an art form.”

“It is unacceptable that money is being wasted like this.”

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1. Outrageous scandal of 80,000 ‘lost ambulance hours’ in Welsh NHS
2. WASTE WATCHERS – Day 25
3. WASTE WATCHERS – Day 12

Commenting, the Welsh Liberal Democrat Leader said:

“This election is the most important one that Wales has seen since devolution. The Welsh people voted to strengthen devolution in the referendum but they also want it to work better. A new era of devolution must now begin. This election is about the kind of government that Wales needs.

“Labour and Plaid have left us with a weak economy, underfunded schools, and an NHS that costs more but delivers less. It is no wonder that Labour and Plaid are so desperate to avoid talking about their record. And they have turned waste and incompetence into an art form.

“No more excuses. The Welsh Liberal Democrats believe that Wales deserves better. That is why we will use this election campaign to set out positive policies to

• Create jobs and improve our economy by offering companies £2,000 for staff training if they provide jobs to unemployed young people.
• Tackle the spending gap, providing more money for schools by targeting additional money at the 80,000 pupils who need it the most so that schools can afford to invest in the things that really matter, such as smaller class sizes or one-on-one teaching.
• Cut waiting times by cutting waste. We will improve healthcare by switching ineffective spending in the NHS to the frontline.
• Radically overhaul the energy efficiency of an extra 12,000 homes by doubling the money available for tackling fuel poverty.
• Make sure your council can deliver for you by cutting restrictions that stop them innovating and acting in the best interest of local communities.”

Ed Townsend, the Welsh Liberal Democrat candidate in Newport East added:

“Areas like ours, in Newport East, have been let down by Labour. They have already showed their arroganice by listing seats they are already counting as ‘gains’ even before we go to the polls. This proves that they are taking the people of Wales for granted, like they have done for decades.

“But Labour will not be able to run away from their record in Newport. In the key areas of health, education and the economy, Labour simply hasnt’t delivered. In contrast, the Welsh Liberal Democrats have positive policies that will help close the schools funding gap, boost our economy and root out waste and inefficincy in the health service.”

Related posts:

1. Kirsty Williams’ speech to Welsh Liberal Democrat Conference
2. Kirsty Williams speech to Welsh Liberal Democrat Conference Rally
3. Kirsty Williams Speech to Liberal Democrat Local Government Conference

The Local Government Boundary Commission for Wales this week published a report on electoral arrangements in Newport in which changes to ward boundaries were recommended, as well as a reduction in the number of councillors from 60 to 56.

But submissions from local Conservatives and Liberal Democrats went astray and were not considered by the team of Commissioners.

Ed Townsend said: “This is incompetence and we believe the report should be scrapped. We strongly oppose the changes because they take no account of community identity and are simply concerned with numbers.”

Veronica German added: “I find it deeply disturbing that this review has been allowed to be published without having considered the official submission of one of the groups on Newport council.

“I have therefore written to the minister urging him to re-open the review into the boundary commission for Newport City Council so that all views can be considered.”

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3. Welsh Liberal Democrats submit proposals to Silk Commission

A thoughtful speech from Welsh Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and Brecon and Radnorshire MP, Roger Williams:

A barnstormer from Ceredigion MP, Mark Williams:

And an outstanding contribution from the future MP for Newport East, Ed Townsend:

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The Council has been told by the Welsh Government that instead of helping 1,607 children from the poorer parts of Newport it must spend more per child and help only 1,122 of them. The Education Minister has ordered the Council to spend £2,100 on each child in the scheme rather than following its current policy of reducing the amount to £1,600 so as to spread the benefit to more children.

Flying Start provides support for children up to the age of three and includes part time childcare, extra levels of involvement from health visitors, parenting programmes and help with basic schemes.

As this is a pilot scheme it seems perfectly sensible that Newport Council should be given some leeway to deliver it in a slightly different way and get maximum value from the available resource, however the Labour Plaid Cymru Government seem to be obsessed with inputs rather than outcomes, to the detriment of local children some of whom will now be excluded from the scheme.

It is not a good advert for good governance when a Government concerned with getting value for each Welsh pound spent acts in such an inflexible and jobsworth way.

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2. Thirteen years of Labour and nothing has changed for our poorest children
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And So, With Tears In Either Eye

In fairness to him, Rhodri Morgan pretty much kept to his end of the bargain in announcing that he would stand down as First Minister after the Assembly budget was agreed on December 8th (but since the promise was that he’d announce his intentions on or around September 29th, his end of the bargain wasn’t that hard to keep up). The inevitable political and journalistic encomium followed and you can’t begrudge it him; whatever his political failings, his personal popularity is unmatched in recent memory.

With the flag dropped, Larry, Moe and Curly were soon off and running to succeed him (not that they hadn’t been before, unofficially).
First to show was Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney AM Huw Lewis, of whom it’s difficult to report much new as he’s basically been running for the leadership since July 2007, when he was moved aside (read: sacked) to make way for a Plaid minister as part of the coalition agreement (read: because he opposed it).

The campaign launch reflected the manifesto he’s been hawking around the country ever since, namely that Llafur should break with history and have their traditional post-defeat lurch into communism before they’ve actually lost. It’s a bold strategy, and he certainly found the right face to help him launch it; Jessica Morden, the virtually anonymous MP for Newport East whose upcoming electoral arse-kicking at the hands of our very own Ed Townsend looks likely to mirror Huw’s own over the next eight weeks.

The trouble with Huw from a blogger’s standpoint is that, despite being the outsider, as the candidate who’s been out there the longest he’s the easiest one to write about. On the funny side, there’s his insistence on implicit comparisons to that heroic liberal American President, Josiah Bartlet, as his campaign slogan, “Let Labour Be Labour”, demonstrates. Less humorously, there’s the question of whether in his courting of the Jon Cruddases of this world he doth protest too much.

The key exhibit for the champagne socialist prosecution, particularly in this time of expenses scandals, is the question of where exactly he lives. The Mythbusters section of his website claims that he lives in Merthyr and that his house in Cardiff Bay is not for profit, but that’s not the point; Huw’s wife is the AM for Torfaen, so which residence is most likely to be his main one for them and their children? One of their respective constituency homes in the Valleys, or the second home they share in middle-class Penarth? On that issue, comment comes there none.

Next up was in many ways the wild card, Edwina Hart, the AM for Gower. Long considered a contender, the Health Minister had generally stayed out of the preliminaries only to leap straight into the race and establish an early lead, at least among her Assembly colleagues.

Nevertheless, that lack of preliminary business makes Edwina’s campaign the most intriguing, not least because of the fundamental dichotomy she represents. Her appeal is clearly based on her record as a decisive and/or divisive Health Minister, but while it’s easy to imagine her being an excellent leader of the Welsh Labour Party, you get the feeling she’d be an absolutely dreadful First Minister (not that that logic stopped Gordon Brown, of course).

Last in, however, was the theoretical heir apparent, Carwyn Jones, the AM for Bridgend. A cabinet veteran, Carwyn has spent the last two years in the highly important role of Minister For Not Doing Anything Anyone Might Notice And Thus Be Annoyed By. His campaign launch also captured the fundamental essence of his offer, namely that while he’s meant to be the next Rhodri Morgan, he looks and sounds rather like the next Tony Blair (or in the dullness stakes, the next Iain Gray). Nevertheless, as the only fluent Welsh speaker of the contenders, Carwyn embodies the issue likely to be at the heart of the campaign, namely how a party that after the next General Election will have been wiped out west of the Loughor and the Clwyd can speak for all of Wales. If any of them realise that the first step in that would be to speak for any of Wales, things might get interesting …

Charles The Verb

For a moment, however, it looked as if Rhodri’s departure, pre-announced as it was, might be overshadowed by a somewhat more surprising leap from the ship of state.

Adam Price’s speech to Plaid conference was widely seen as his coming out party, the moment his accomplishments caught up with his ego in which he has always been The Next Leader Of Plaid Cymru™. Admittedly it wasn’t clear whether that was because it was so good or because, by comparison, Ieuan Wyn Jones’s speech was so utterly atrocious (and if you haven’t time for Freedom Central’s excellent coverage of that, let me suggest that the level of IWJ’s speech may be described as follows; low, lower than low, hades low, spinning iron core of the planet low, low …).

It turned out, however, that he’d passed up the chance to make his performance even bigger, as the draft speech included the announcement he made a week later, namely that he was stepping down as MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. That much was unsurprising, since to be leader of Plaid he needs to be in the Assembly and even if Rhodri Glyn Thomas had been willing to step aside, he wouldn’t have been able to sustain the dual mandate for three to four years.

The surprise was that he’d found a better excuse than “I want to be leader of Plaid” which, while true, might not have endeared him to wherever he ends up parachuting himself. Instead, he announced that he would spend a year studying in America on a Fulbright scholarship, thus inventing the political verb, “to do a Kennedy” (as any fule kno, Charles was a Fulbright scholar at Indiana in 1983 when he came back to stand for Parliament).

Whether the excuse helps at all remains unclear; Plaid’s top targets seem fairly settled for candidates, including the pundits’ favourite to receive him, Neath. He could be hoping that there’ll be a wave of unexpected Plaid wins that clears the way for him in a raft of seats, but you’d have to be pretty delusional to expect that … Ah …

* Gareth Aubrey is a councillor in Cardiff and blogs at Long Despairing Young Something. Barcud Oren appears (theoretically) regularly at Liberal Democrat Voice and is cross-posted at Freedom Central.

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