Freedom Central » One Wales Government

The Labour-Plaid government: One record of failure

Kirsty Williams — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:25:37 +0000

As Labour and Plaid Cymru approach the end of their joint administration, it is appropriate that we review the record of both parties in the areas of health, education and the economy.

The joint leadership of Labour and Plaid Cymru has left Wales with a weak economy, underfunded and underperforming schools and an NHS that costs more but delivers less. It is a truly dismal record of failure in the most important areas for the people of Wales.

They spent more money on economic development than any other part of the UK, but Wales is now the poorest part of Britain and we’re getting relatively poorer.

Welsh schools were once the envy of the world. Now, Wales’ results have fallen behind England and Scotland. Little wonder when children in Wales get six hundred pounds less spent on their education.

Labour and Plaid have spent more of our money on the NHS than England, but we put up with longer waiting times.

The Welsh Liberal Democrats believe that Wales can do better. Our costed election manifesto will focus relentlessly on these three priorities to create the boost our economy, improve our health service and provide the first class education that Welsh children deserve.

£40 million computer scheme slated as a ‘waste of money’

Freedom Central — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 08:46:47 +0000

This morning’s Western Mail contains a report that senior civil servants working for the Welsh Government have criticised a £40m computer project as “a total waste of money”.

They say that the project, which is being implemented over a number of years, is known as the IDEAS programme. Its aim is to assist the development of policy and its delivery, but sources who have spoken to the paper claim that it is actually slowing the process down.

One senior source told us: “What this programme does is enable people who are not specialists in a particular policy field to chip in their ideas for consideration by those who are.

“On something like the badger cull, for example, you could have people like health and safety specialists chipping in with some views that may not be strictly relevant.

“But the expectation is that full consideration will be given to all the points made. As a result, time is spent with people chewing the fat over what could be minor issues instead of pushing forward to get the policy implemented. This is leading to greater inefficiencies and is undermining the role of specialists within the Civil Service.”

The source added: “The cost of the programme is huge. In the first year around £15m or £16m has been spent, with about 60 people working on it from the finance group. Over a number of years the cost will rise to around £40m in total, and more staff will be drafted in to work on the programme.

“From my point of view – and I am not alone – this is a total waste of money.

A Welsh Government spokesperson defended the project: “The IDEAS programme is a major business improvement programme that underpins everything we do.

“Any modern organisation needs to have the right systems and skills in place to function efficiently and effectively, especially when you are spending taxpayers’ money and delivering essential public services.

“The programme has been developed and progressed via a robust business case and benefits plan. The Wales Audit Office have been observers at programme board meetings, and in keeping with best practice, the programme has been the subject of, and successfully passed, a number of OGC (Office of Government Commerce) Gateway Reviews [independent ‘peer reviews’].”

A modern day fable about WAG budgets. Yeah, you did read that right.

Glass Half Empty — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:06:34 +0000

Once upon a time, in the Magical Gumdrop forest…or something, there were two families of hardworking Field Mice. Why Field Mice chose to live in the Magical Gumdrop forest I’m unsure, but regardless, that is how this story goes. If such rash assumptions annoy you, you may wish to reconsider your decision to read this article.

One family of Field Mice was very very large and headed by a big red mouse known as Mr Westminster. The other family was smaller, with about 5-6% of the total number of Field Mice according to the most recent census. This family was headed by a red mouse with green spots, known as Mr Waggy.

But all mice worked together to harvest their corn, nuts and generic branded mice food, and the results were all shared amongst the mice by a complex magical formula devised by the great Wizard Barnett. Although his spell was sort of crap and no-one really liked it.

Both of these red mice were hardly great at spending their corn and nuts. Both liked to give it away to members of their families that didn’t really need it so they would be popular and sometimes this meant that people who really needed it didn’t get enough nuts and corn.

But Mr Westminster did use a little of his corn wisely, improving waiting times for little mice operations and creating new little mice schools and investing in new harvesting equipment. Yes, Mr Westminster did use some of his nuts on silly things, such as bits of parchment which detailed needless information on all the mice and let those who harvested lots of corn keep far too much of it, if they sent it out of the Gumdrop Forest and to a kingdom far far away.

But he did make sure that some of the corn went to building for the future, just in case.

However Mr Waggy didn’t spend use his corn effectively. He spent his corn on giving mice with lots of free medicine, free parking and he didn’t mind that his cousin he’d put in charge of the mice hospitals hadn’t wasted 1/5 of her corn. He assumed that if he ran out of corn, he’d just ask for more.

But everyone was generally content, as there was enough corn to go around and it didn’t matter if Mr Westminster squandered some of his corn, and Mr Waggy squandered even more.

When the harsh winter came, and much of the corn disappeared, eaten by some Pigeons they thought were looking after it, there was a lot of panic in the Gumdrop Forest. Eventually Mr Westminster, the big red mouse, disappeared and was replaced by a new mouse, Mr Coalition. He was blue with yellow spots. (I’m trying to keep it whimsical, but we all know what happened to Mr Westminster, it involved an Owl and an unhappy ending) Mr Coalition knew that they needed to use all of the corn better to make sure they didn’t end up in the same situation.

Mr Coalition (God this is such a subtle analogy. Can you feel me hitting you in the face with obvious metaphors. Are these even metaphors? I don’t really know if I’m honest. I don’t even like mice. Where was I? Oh yeah…) Mr Coalition started to find out where corn was being wasted, and decided that they should give out less corn. They decided to stop wasting corn on nice things and tried to increase the amount of corn given to the mice who had the least.

Mr Waggy was told that he would get a little less corn for his family. This meant that Mr Waggy would no longer be able to afford to give his family lots of free nice things they didn’t need to make him more popular.

But Mr Waggy was in a bad position. He had wasted all of his corn and hadn’t spent it on better harvesting infrastructure and more members of his family were reliant on getting corn from him rather than harvesting their own.

Now, this is where the fairy tale ends. In a normal fairy tale, Mr Waggy learns his lesson, and tells his family that they will be in for tough times because he didn’t equip them with the skills to harvest their own corn or save enough corn for an emergency. He learns his lesson and everyone hugs.

But in this story Mr Waggy came up with a new answer. Instead of cutting back on spending his corn, he’d blame Mr Coalition for not giving him enough corn. If he convinced enough members of his family that it was Mr Coalition’s fault instead of his own fault that he is in a worse situation than he could have been, then surely he’d still be popular.

And he lived ineffectively ever after.

The end.

A developing rift within One Wales

Peter Black — Sat, 29 May 2010 04:57:31 +0000

Whatever one might think about school reorganisation proposals in the west of Cardiff, there is no doubt that their rejection by the First Minister has exposed a growing rift around the Welsh language within the One Wales government.

The Welsh Local Government Association described the Assembly Government decision to reject plans to modernise English-language provision and expand Welsh-medium education as “retrograde and questionable”. It said the decision “yet again exposes the yawning gap between national rhetoric and local reality on the issue of surplus school places”.

However, the most damning criticism came from Labour’s coalition partners, Plaid Cymru. They branded the decision as a “direct contradiction” of Assembly Government policy which would deny children the right to a Welsh education.

Plaid Cymru education spokeswoman, Mid and West Wales AM Nerys Evans, said the decision was an outrage.“Cardiff council has identified an obvious need for more Welsh-medium education in the city. It is the council’s responsibility to answer that demand through provision which they planned to do through this reorganisation.

“The First Minister has stopped this from happening. This effectively denies parents in Cardiff the right to choose to educate their children through the medium of Welsh, which goes against one of the flagship policies of the Assembly Government’s Welsh-medium education.”

These are difficult times for the One Wales coalition. Plaid Cymru have already had to compromise on the Welsh Language Legislative Competence Order and now have produced a Welsh Language Measure that has disappointed and enraged many of their supporters, not least some of their MPs.

It is true that the Liberal Democrats have had to make compromises to enter the Westminster coalition but that is the norm for such arrangements. Labour and Plaid Cymru did it themselves in 2007 and now some of those compromises are coming home to bite them.

One Wales starts to unravel in heat of Labour leadership contest

Peter Black — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:32:52 +0000

With Peter Hain already fighting a rearguard action to forestall a referendum it seems that the Welsh Labour leadership election has caused a full scale retreat from the commitments in the One Wales agreement by at least two of the potential successors to Rhodri Morgan and some significant prefarication by the third.

In a debate between the three candidates on ITV last night Huw Lewis made it clear that he would not push for an early referendum on new powers if he wins the contest. The formula he has devised to frustrate his potential cabinet colleagues is one poll at a time:

‘It would be reckless and wrong for a Labour leader to take their eye off the ball, and the ball in play is ‘Let’s stop the Tories gaining power at the next general election,” he said.

But Plaid Cymru director of elections, Helen Mary Jones was not amused. She said Labour had committed to supporting a referendum before 2011 when the two parties agreed to share power in the One Wales pact, that there had already been enough consultation and that the Government now needed to get on with it:

‘This isn’t a matter for internal party politics. People like Huw Lewis need to remember that the deal was supported by the overwhelming majority of his party rank and file as it was by mine… The timing of the referendum should depend on the Convention’s advice and when the referendum is most likely to be won and not on an election to another place.’

Carwyn Jones also backtracked on the agreement he had signed up to as a Government Minister, keen not to lose the vote of the 15 MPs he has already signed up to support him. He told the programme´s viewers that it is essential there is ‘broad agreement within the Labour Party’ before the pre-referendum campaign begins:

‘It’s important that we actually talk to our colleagues in Westminster and talk to our party members and to the trade unions so they feel part of the process.

‘It would be a very bad move if it was simply Labour AMs who were seen as moving the process towards a referendum without consulting without anyone else in the party.’

Even Edwina Hart was cautious, saying that the decision to go ahead with a campaign would have to be discussed within the coalition cabinet and individual parties. She did though stress her own record as a supporter of new powers, saying: ‘I have been before the Assembly was even established back in 1999. It is about powers for a purpose – I believe it so we can get on with doing things.’

The timing of the Welsh Labour leadership election could not have come at a worst time for the One Wales Government. Rhodri Morgan will still be in place when the All Wales Convention reports next month, but the decision as to how to proceed with its conclusions will rest with his successor.

It is unlikely that any of the three candidates would want to upset the rank and file so early in their tenure and with a General Election looming, nor will the role of the Secretary of State for Wales be insignificant in this process.

Although the odds of a referendum taking place within the timescale allotted by the One Wales Agreement remain good, there appear to be significant factors at play that may well sabotage this happening. It is no wonder that Plaid Cymru are getting jittery.