Freedom Central » Peter Hain

Memory Lane

Peter Black — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 10:39:54 +0000

As I have been too busy to go to Conference this weekend I have been left holding the fort here in the virtual Freedom Central. I am grateful therefore to Matt Withers’ Spin Doctor column in this morning’s Wales on Sunday for providing with me some material. There is nothing like a bit of plagiarism to start off another busy day.

Matt reminds us that Peter Hain has not always been so hard on the wealthiest in our society or even those in the financial sector who pay themselves big bonuses:

“Rumours of £6.5m bonus for Bob Diamond shows how empty and dishonest Cameron and Osborne rhetoric is,” fumed Shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain on Twitter last week as the Barclays boss pocketed a whopping bonus.

Not that he’s always been against those flush with cash, as those who recall his doomed bid for the Labour deputy leadership will recall.

Then he was happy to take £5,000 from the likes of Bill Bottriell, then Britain’s 798th richest man with an estimated value of £85m, whose IT recruitment firm SThree was still paying huge bonuses to senior staff in 2008.

Oh, and a further donation from Neville Allport, then chief executive of finance company Picture Financial Services, whose firm’s site boasted “you can even borrow up to 125 per cent of the value of your home (less your outstanding mortgage), something that traditionally lenders won’t consider” – precisely the kind of lending that contributed to the financial crash in the first place!

Meanwhile, Matt has also given those with time on their hands something to do every day, monitor how much money the BNP are raising towards their Assembly campaign. He tells us that they have set a target of £100,000, so they are asking for donations via their website, where you can keep a track on how much they have raised. However, so far they have only cobbled together £20.

The downside to this activity of course is that you may have to look at the BNP website. I think I will pass.

Welsh Labour – left outside alone

Peter Black — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 06:05:57 +0000

Yesterday’s Western Mail carries an article querying Labour’s commitment to reforming the Barnett Formula (which decides how money is allocated across the UK and leads to Wales losing out to the tune of £300m a year).

Peter Hain’s response shows just how far outside the loop he and Welsh Labour were. He is simply wrong, when he says: “we never got into detailed policy-by-policy negotiations with the Liberal Democrats.”

For there exists a document detailing the many individual policies that were discussed. It can be read in 22 Days in May.

I can only believe that Welsh Labour and Peter Hain were outside the loop so that they were not aware that on 8th May a list of many headline policies, including those on which there were agreement was taken to Liberal Democrat negotiators. For example it committed to a referendum on more powers for the Welsh Assembly.

Not long after the election of Ed Miliband as Labour leader, all the Welsh candidates for the shadow cabinet missed election. Having failed to be informed about the substance of the coalition talks or to have any role in them, the marginalisation of Peter Hain was completed by his fellow Labour MPs.

It is no wonder he is trying to claw his way back with a series of outrageous and misleading claims about his previous role, the coalition government and events he had no direct part in.

The Peter Hain enigma

Freedom Central — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 11:24:22 +0000

The recent pronouncements by Peter Hain on the Assembly powers referendum has puzzled a lot of politicians and commentators. The Shadow Secretary of State for Wales poured out his thoughts earlier this week, suggesting that the referendum should not be held in March and arguing that Labour were backed into a corner by Plaid Cymru.

In today’s Wales on Sunday, Matt Withers offers three possible reasons why Mr. Hain may have chosen to speak out:

1) Mr Hain is playing to his own party’s MPs.

In this theory, Mr Hain is seeking to comfort Labour MPs still not happy with what’s going on. These are the members who weren’t comfortable with the party going into coalition with Plaid, and see an inexorable march towards greater powers at the expense of their own.

Coupled with the UK coalition’s plans for a reduction in the number of Welsh MPs – which is set to go ahead anyway, regardless of whether there’s a Yes vote – Labour MPs are increasingly going to look like the junior branch of legislators.

As their de facto leader, Mr Hain is effectively their shop steward, and so launched his verbal volley as a reminder they’re still relevant.

2) It’s part of a wider strategy to blame Plaid if the vote is lost.

This is the theory doing the rounds among some in Plaid who tend to assume the worst with Mr Hain anyway.

The thinking goes: the Shadow Welsh Secretary thinks that the referendum is going to be lost, for exactly the same reason he did prior to his sudden post-election conversion – that the public don’t much like or trust politicians.

So he has decided to start the blame game already, casting Plaid as the too-eager nationalists who forced Labour into holding an early referendum.

And when it’s lost, Labour can go into the Assembly election, saying: “Why vote for Plaid? They only had one big aim going into government and they blew it.” At least, that’s how many in Plaid see it.

3) It’s just a sense of frustration from Mr Hain.

This is the third, most personal and cruellest of theories – but it’s actually one being circulated by some Labour figures disappointed by the former Welsh Secretary’s intervention.

A sense of that came through from Ogmore MP Huw Irranca-Davies saying last week that “Peter speaks for Peter”. Privately even those previously loyal to Mr Hain wonder if it stems from frustration.

In 1997 Mr Hain was a leading figure on the Yes side. Now he’s a fringe character. Not too long ago he was a senior cabinet minister with serious pretensions of being deputy leader. Now he’s back in his old job after failing even to be elected to the shadow cabinet. And last month a poll of grassroots activists ranked him the least effective member of Ed Miliband’s team.

What came out in his interview, goes this theory, was just a certain dissatisfaction with where he is now. Why he chose to make his intervention remains unclear.

Actually, the third reason should worry Peter Hain the most. If he really is just speaking out to draw attention to himself, to underline his relevance and to remind his own party that he still exists then Mr. Hain has already embarked on the chosen route of Lembit Opik before the Montgomeryshire MP’s final fall from grace.

Hain the least effective member of Milband’s team

Freedom Central — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 15:08:28 +0000

The Tory Welsh Secretary is rarely out of the news and has been accused of being weak and lacking influence but spare a thought for Labour’s Shadow Secretary of State for Wales, Peter Hain MP, who surely challenges even Cheryl in the ‘ineffective’ stakes.

Hain was forced to resign from Gordon Brown’s Cabinet after problems over the declaration of his expenses during his doomed bid for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. We saw just how far his star had fallen when he failed to be elected in the annual shadow cabinet elections last year. Desperate to have at least one member of the shadow cabinet representing a Welsh seat, Ed Miliband made Hain Shadow Secretary of State for Wales. Having previously been Secretary of State for Wales and with most powers now residing in Cardiff, few commentators thought he was enthusiastic about the job

That lack of enthusiasm is now clear for all to see. Labour activists have ranked Peter Hain the least effective all the Shadow cabinet. The website Labour Uncut has compiled a ranking of Labour shadow ministers according to their activity and effectiveness in holding the Government to account.

It makes uncomfortable reading for Hain. They say he hasn’t proactively generated a single press story since he was appointed nor issued any form of press comment or statement at all. He has tabled only a single written parliamentary question and made no speeches in parliament at all.

It seems that Labour doesn’t stand up for Wales after all.

The media game

Freedom Central — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:48:35 +0000

We can do not better this morning that reporduce part of the Wales on Sunday’s Spin Doctor column as evidence of how it is really hard to believe anything that politicians say on live radio interviews:

SO how was the relationship between Mr Tony Blair and Mr Gordon Brown during New Labour’s time in government?

April 2006: The then Welsh Secretary Peter Hain hits out at the media for running invented stories about a rift between the pair – a rift, he says, which is entirely invented by journalists.

“A lot of the media obsession in this seems in a different world from the one I operate in around the cabinet table and in Government,” he fumes.

June 2007: Former MP for Islwyn Don Touhig is asked on Radio Wales about reports of antagonism between Mr Blair and Mr Brown. He says that MPs in the Commons tearoom “laugh off” reports of a feud between the pair as the media-invented nonsense it is.
Click here to find out more!

September 2010: Mr Blair publishes his autobiography. He reveals a long-running and poisonous dysfunctional relationship with his Chancellor which saw the latter repeatedly use his “cronies” to undermine him, and culminated in him trying to blackmail the Prime Minister in a row over pensions.

Chief legal advisor casts doubt on autumn referendum date

Freedom Central — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 10:02:31 +0000

The BBC reports that a document produced by the Assembly Commission’s chief legal advisor, Keith Bush has backed the Secretary of State for Wales’ contention that an autumn referendum date on giving law-making powers to the Assembly would be very difficult to achieve.

In the document Mr. Bush outlines the difficulties for completing the process in time for the referendum this year. He says that the summer recess of parliament, as well as the time needed to agree wording of the referendum, are key obstacles for an autumn referendum.

He also sounds a note of caution over speeding up the process. He writes: “Inadequate consultation would be a potential ground of legal challenge to the Order. Consultation which did not meet the requirements of the Electoral Commission would be an area of particular vulnerability.”

The document undermines Labour and Plaid Cymru efforts to embarrass the coalition government into holding the referendum before due process has been followed. The implication is that even though the new Secretary of State for Wales made the referendum her number one priority, previous stages had happened too late to make an autumn timetable possible.

In particular, the lateness of the Assembly’s vote on the issue and the significant delay posed by the All-Wales Convention left no time at all for the Secretary of State, no matter which party he or she represents, to get everything done before Parliament adjourns for the summer.

Y Barcud Oren #14

Gareth Aubrey — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:10:26 +0000

Well the lawyers have released me (the academic ones, things haven’t got that bad!) to fill you in on how things are developing in Wales. After all, there’s only an election on…

I Want You To Pull My Trigger

Whatever the result at Westminster, the first item in the new Secretary of State for Wales’s in-tray will be the referendum on extending the powers of the Welsh Assembly. With the final potential roadblock to a referendum removed when David Cameron announced that a Tory government in London wouldn’t block it, all should have been set fair for the Assembly to kick the process off, but as ever the One Wales government couldn’t even manage something that simple.

It started with the idea that there would be a vote, but not necessarily the formal trigger vote to send a request for a referendum to the Secretary of State. That lack of definitive commitment was a bad signal to send out to start with, but the row that followed was far, far worse.

Throughout the process, the Lib Dems (endorsed by the Tories) had been making one simple point; whatever happens, the referendum must not be held on the same day as the Assembly elections in May 2011. The reasons for that should be self-evident; the difficulty of running a cross-party Yes campaign during a partisan election, the conflation of the referendum issue and the political issues… Self-evident or not, the coalition refused to be drawn on whether such a guarantee would be provided, despite the need for cross-party support to even pass the vote, let alone demonstrate the unity needed to win the referendum.

Still, with Plaid remaining unwilling to throw their weight around the coalition (and seemingly unable to understand that, while the One Wales goal is only to have a referendum, their goal as a party is to win it) the row dragged on past the announcement of the trigger vote and almost into the weekend before agreement was reached.

In the end the vote was unanimous, and now that the letter is finally on the Secretary of State’s desk the real dogfight should be about to begin.

A Belated Letter To Santa

With an Easter election announcement, you’d think there were plenty of metaphors to go around, but Plaid Cymru clearly felt the need to bring Christmas into the mix by treating it as if all theirs had come at once. Indeed, after months of trailing this election as the next step in the nationalist march of destiny, there’s barely a religious festival they wouldn’t want to treat it as.

Mind you, when everyone’s favourite comedy double act, Salmond and Jones, came together to announce the great nationalist wish list, their approach to it was pretty odd. Ruling out a formal coalition is all well and good, but when you’ve spent the previous month complaining of being left out of the leaders debates, announcing that you won’t take a job in government under any circumstances is a pretty good way to confirm your irrelevance.

And as letters to Santa go, this one is pretty badly written. The headline “achievable objective” is fair funding for Scotland and Wales, which is fine, except that while the Barnett Formula for devolved funding does penalise Wales, it actively advantages Scotland. Quite what would happen to the nationalist love-in if they ever were offered fair funding remains to be seen; I mean, I suppose the SNP might push for a funding deal that hurt Scotland and then portray it as evidence of anti-Scottishness in Westminster and thus of the importance of independence, but you’d need some serious hubris to try and pull that off… erm…

The Government’s, What For Want Of A Better Word We’ll Call Policy…

Not that the rest of “4Wales4Scotland” (following “7 for 07” and “innov8” in its commitment to originality and lack of gimmickry…) is much better. Ieuan Wyn had already announced one of its central elements, a 30% (no, that’s not a typo) increase in the state pension. Any criticism of that policy was immediately denounced as proof that “the London parties” don’t care about the vulnerable. Which is fine, except that all the ideas for paying for it come from that heinous London party, the Liberal Democrats (PDF), and that the main things proposed to pay for a £20billion annual commitment are… scrapping ID cards and Trident, those notable one-off items. Parties of all stripes felt fairly comfortable with their conclusions on that one…

But of course, if Plaid are saying stupid things about policy, Labour have to chip in under their mutually assured incompetence pact. And while we’re used to the Tories not understanding how devolution works (the appearance of the airbrushed Cameron NHS poster in Wales, where the NHS is devolved, being a case in point) it’s odd for Labour to cock it up. Nevertheless, there was Peter Hain parroting the central party line that a Tory government in Westminster would threaten free bus passes for the elderly. Because the free bus passes aren’t something the devolved government in Wales pioneered and have always operated independently, oh no…

Echoes of past Tory Imperialism

Peter Black — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:40:08 +0000

Peter Hain set the tone for the forthcoming General Election today when he referred back to the time of Tory Secretary of States from England running Wales from afar with a side-swipe at his existing Conservative Shadow that suggested that she would be more of the same:

Mr Hain suggested that if the Conservatives win the election Ms Gillan would not be able to spend enough time in Wales while still carrying out her constituency duties.

The Neath MP told the Western Mail: “We now have seven Tory general election candidates who are English councillors, and the question for Cheryl Gillan is whether she is going to be an English Secretary of State.

“I don’t understand how she can be in touch when she represents leafy Buckinghamshire. How can she really fight for Wales?

“If I think about doing the job, as I have done and [Torfaen MP] Paul Murphy has done it – Paul and I are Welsh constituency MPs, we don’t just go back to Wales to fulfil our Secretary of State duties, we’re there every weekend in our surgeries, feeling the pulse of Welsh opinion. I don’t just catch the train to Wales every week, I’m living and breathing what’s going on in Wales,” said Mr Hain, who, like Mr Murphy, was for a time Secretary of State of both Northern Ireland and Wales.

“Her weekends are in Buckinghamshire surrounded by stockbrokers – it’s diametrically opposed, socially, to Wales. The question she has to answer is which constituency is she going to stand up for? She can’t satisfy both at the same time.”

Naturally, Cheryl Gillan took exception to the remark but essentially Peter Hain is correct, she may have been born and brought up in Wales but it is difficult to develop any sort of affinity for Welsh issues and problems when based in leafy Buckinghanshire, never mind an understanding of the priorities of the Welsh Government.

How difficult it is going to be for an English Minister to engage with the Assembly is evidenced by Tory posturing on the Housing LCO. If even the three Welsh Tory MPs we have now fail to understand the process of devolved decision making then what chance does a Secretary of State based the other side of the border have?

Peter Hain talks Wales down (and apologises)

Newswire — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:57:52 +0000

The black hole of Whitehall

Peter Black — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:04:49 +0000

The Welsh Affairs’ Select Committee has produced a report on the Legislative Competence Order system which correctly identifies one of the reason why it is unfit for purpose but bizarrely concludes that it can be made to work better.

The report identifies that requests from the Welsh Government for extra powers too often “disappear in the black hole of Whitehall”. They say that Whitehall departments’ sluggishness in clearing requests for additional devolution is creating long delays. They cited the plan to devolve extra responsibility for environmental policy, held up for nearly two years, and a bid to give the Assembly power to install fire sprinklers in new homes as examples of the slow progress.

In the report, MPs say: “We have identified some procedural problems, most notably long and unaccountable delays in the process of negotiation between the Welsh Assembly Government and the Whitehall department or departments that sometimes occurs before an LCO is referred to us.

“There is an unacceptable lack of transparency within the Whitehall clearance process. The Wales Office should provide this committee with a monthly update on the progress of all proposed LCOs together with an explanation of any delays.”

After numerous complaints about the jargon used in some LCOs, the MPs also note that, “it should not be beyond the reach of language to provide in addition a simple statement of what the LCO will enable the National Assembly for Wales to do”.

They also suggest fast-tracking the process for less controversial LCOs, and say there needs to be a comprehensive “Welsh statute book”, available on-line, so the public can access what is in an increasingly distinct body of Welsh law

However, the Peter Hain’s suggestion that the process is growing in “strength, effectiveness and transparency” is a classic piece of misdirection. He and the Committee are most probably right that the Whitehall bureaucracy can be trimmed back, in fact it will need to be if the latest LCOs on Housing and Transport are to get approval before Parliament rises for the General Election. However, that does not account for the time and money wasted in Cardiff Bay and Westminster drawing up and scrutinising these orders without any concrete benefit for the people of Wales, in terms of changes to the quality of their lives, coming out of the other end.

In addition to that of course is the sheer impracticality of elected politicians in the Welsh Assembly having to implement their manifesto pledges when there is a near-two year delay built into every legislative proposal, not to mention having to ask MPs for permission to deliver a democratically-endorsed programme for government. The process remains unfit for purpose and is far from the success story that some MPs suggest.