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Editors Rhys David Geraint Talfan Davies John Osmond

Administration Helen Sims-Coomber and Clare Johnson spring 2006

Design WOOD&WOOD Design Consultants. wood2.com

To advertise Telephone 029 2066 6606 mourning the quangos Institute of Welsh Affairs St Andrew’s House 24 St Andrew’s Crescent rose-tinted glow seems to have settled over the Welsh Development Cardiff CF10 3DD Agency now that it has been absorbed, together with the Wales Tourist Board and Elwa into the Welsh Assembly Government’s new Enterprise, Telephone 029 2066 6606 a Innovation and Networks Department. Often the butt of criticism in the past, E-mail [email protected] friends and detractors alike have queued up to rue a feared loss of flexibility and Web www.iwa.org.uk fleet-footedness, and to express concern at the possibility of a civil service The IWA is a non-aligned mentality prevailing in decision-making. independent think-tank and research institute, based in Cardiff There are, of course, issues involved in the new structure, and, in particular, the with branches in north and danger that industrial policy decisions could now be influenced by political and west Wales, Gwent, Swansea Bay electoral considerations. Such a development would, indeed, be highly damaging and London. Members (annual subscription £30) receive agenda three to Wales and to the reputation of Welsh government and will need to be times a year, the Gregynog Papers, and scrupulously guarded against. On reflection, however, it has to be said that the can purchase reports at half price. WDA’s record over the past decades has been mixed.

branches In some areas, notably land reclamation, it had some outstanding achievements. Nonetheless, the Welsh economy still remains very much a work in progress and North Wales Secretariat over the years the WDA made a number of wrong calls. Having successfully c/o Andrew Parry persuaded a number of overseas investors to move to Wales it failed to anticipate North East Wales Institute (NEWI) Plas Goch Mold Wrexham LL11 2AW the ending of this era, as one of its largest and most grandiose projects – the LG Telephone 01792 354243 schemes at Newport – monumentally reminds us. Gwent Secretariat c/o Geoff Edge Nor has the WDA been notably successful in persuading some of our biggest University of Wales Newport Caerleon Campus P O Box 179 investors such as Sony and Panasonic to upgrade plant and staff skills to ensure Newport NP18 3YG newer more sophisticated product lines replace those lost to cheaper competitors. Telephone 01633 432005 Another big idea – Techniums – has also enjoyed only mixed success and West Wales Secretariat arguably was rolled out across too many sectors where there was little chance c/o Robin Lewis they would work before the concept had been properly proved. Sometimes the The MAGSTIM Co. Ltd Spring Gardens Whitland WDA has appeared a highly bureaucratic organisation with far too many people Carmarthenshire SA4 0HR involved in creating and administering an alphabet soup of programmes. Telephone 01792 354243

Swansea Bay Secretariat Some of the same criticism can be levelled at the Wales Tourist Board. Standards c/o Marc Clement have undoubtedly risen enormously over the years, and Wales does have lots of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department visitors, these days, including growing numbers of overseas tourists. But, given its University of Wales Swansea Singleton Park Swansea SA2 8PP outstanding natural beauty and the public money invested in attractions like the Telephone 01792 295489 National Botanic Gardens and the Millennium Centre, so it should. As for ElWa and its record in improving the key supply side of skills and further education, Wales in London c/o Welsh Development Agency perhaps the least said the better. 1 6th Floor Tower 42 25 Old Broad Street London EC2M 1HY The Quangos are dead. Some will mourn them but at best they represented more Telephone 020 7222 2822 of a silver gilt than a golden age for Wales. 2177AgendaPagesDJW 5/5/06 5:10 pm Page 2

spring 2006

opinion police 4 a pier with too few 17 i) £77m merger supports Y rhobert lewis discusses R john cadogan argues that O the arguments for an all- T S the Assembly Government Wales police force R should base its science policy E

V on scientific rather than O 20 ii) nation builder C economic principles richard brunstrom says an all-Wales force should 8 news be part of the devolution process

22 iii) north wales politics and policy voice needed dylan jones-evans 10 poles apart questions the centralisation jonathan adams of power in Cardiff Bay recommends how Cardiff Bay can be connected with the 25 making politics city centre breathe ferdinand mount says everything in Britain has been modernised except its politics

economy 28 safe haven gillian bristow asks whether enough is being done to involve the local community in the LNG development in Pembrokeshire

economic strategy 38 footing the bill brian morgan says the 31 i) government 34 ii) carbon cutting Assembly Government should business morgan parry argues produce a Welsh model for PFI 13 barnett squeeze james foreman-peck that the Assembly eurfyl ap gwilym estimates argues that economic Government’s new 41 cherished heartland 2 that Wales has been denied policy should address a economic development peter davies relates how the more than £1billion by the worrying private sector strategy needs a radically Prince of Wales’ charities are Treasury over the past five deficit different approach engaging with the problems years of the rural hinterland 2177AgendaPagesDJW 5/5/06 5:10 pm Page 3

newsflash

coming up…

• Cardiff Lunch: Economic Development After the Merger with guest speaker Gareth Hall, Chief Executive, Department of Enterprise, Innovation and Networks, Welsh Assembly Government Thistle Hotel, Cardiff, 12 noon Monday 8 June social policy 54 crossing borders 68 welsh cinema 2006, £27.50 for IWA david hughes underlines the steve blandford finds that members; £30.00 for 43 a £3 billion opportunity importance of cultural two recent films open up new non members; Table for tamsin stirling looks at the projects in promoting possibilities for identity in ten £275. IWA’s new report on the Future European cohesion 21st Century Wales of Social Housing in Wales • Newport Unleashed Breakfast Meeting, 7.45am environment Hilton Hotel, Newport 9 underclass June 2006. Chris Freegard, 57 shadow boxing Chief Executive, Newport 45 i) below the gordon james argues that City Council; John Burrows, threshold the Assembly needs greater Development Director, james stewart introduces powers over energy policy if Newport Unlimited. £16.50 a major new study on it is to lead the way on for IWA members; £17.50 poverty and social Climate Change for non members; Table exclusion in Wales for ten £165 62 nantgwynant 48 ii) educating for ruth williams, john • Museums in a social justice pritchard, and neil caldwell Broken World david egan declares we advocate investing in the Monday 17 July 2006, cannot go on tolerating environment Reardon Smith Lecture the waste that results from Theatre, National low levels of educational Museums Wales, Cathays achievement at 16 Park, Cardiff, 6.30pm Lecture in the IWA series 50 ii) to those that have on Myths, Memories mark drakeford argues that 70 ystradgynlais and Futures, marking health policy should focus epiphany the centenary of the on equality of outcome nigel jenkins praises a new National Library and assessment of the artist Museum. Speaker: Josef Herman Dr Gaynor Kavanagh, europe Head of Cardiff School culture and last word of Art and Design, UWIC, 52 not just money Cardiff. Followed by andy klom says Wales should communications wine reception. Contact look beyond trade and funding 72 peter stead IWA for free ticket. See in its engagement with the EU 64 governing culture www.iwa.org.uk for details. geraint talfan davies says the arts funding review is a just published… chance to get away from policy-making on the hoof • Future of Social Housing in Wales 66 daffodil meets the Culmination of 18 3 big apple month IWA research peter stead joins in with project, 200 pages, £40 Wales Week in New York more information: All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher, Institute of Welsh Affairs. ISSN 1464-7613 www.iwa.org.uk 2177AgendaPagesDJW 5/5/06 5:10 pm Page 4

opinion a pier with too few supports

john cadogan argues that the Assembly Government should base its science policy on scientific rather than economic principles

he most important • Without a strong Science and Engineering base, real aspect of this consultation economic progress, far from being achieved, will go into t paper is the light it throws reverse. This is because (i) new technologically based on the Welsh Assembly business will not start up; and (ii) established high tech Government’s thinking on what businesses will see no point in being located in a Wales far constitutes a Science Policy for from the scientific and engineering nourishment provide Wales. The outcome is disturbing by universities elsewhere. and ominous for anyone who really understands and cares about the It should be said at the outset that important though social role of Science and Technology in sciences or studies are and are seen to be by members of creating wealth, without the Assembly Cabinet and their advisors, we are here which there can be no referring to the hard sciences, including medical science and social services and engineering. It should also be borne in mind that the concomitant definition of a scientific advance is that it is based on advances in health, experimentation or calculation which is repeatable by any the environment, feeding the world and in energy. competent scientist anywhere in the world. Science policy must be about how to create a truly world class science and Solutions to all of these problems can only stem from a engineering base. There is no mention of this at all in this strong science and engineering base in turn derived from a document. Instead we have a wish list of economic targets. robust science policy – the virtuous circle. On the evidence We do not quarrel with these targets. Who can disagree with of this document there appears to be confusion in the motherhood? Assembly Government between what is Economic Policy and Science Policy. This document is overwhelmingly about Of course the two hard science based topics chosen – health the former and it is well covered but it has little to offer on and low carbon energy systems – are vitally important, but a the subject of the consultation paper. This is worrying to say catalogue of mainly small businesses or university groups the least because as Lord Porter, Nobel Laureate said: active in these areas is not a Science Policy. A Science Policy must be about how the Assembly Government will generate “Economics is the theory of wealth creation. Science and lots of world class new science and engineering in the Engineering are the practice of wealth creation.” Universities in the almost complete absence of UK government funded research institutes in Wales. Without an underpinning Science Policy any Economic Policy will be built on sand. Perhaps it is not surprising that this document is Crucially, short term targets must not be imposed. Rather, so flavoured because its authors come from the Ministry of support must go to the underlying hard disciplines of Economic Affairs rather than from the Ministry of Science. But there strategic importance from which discoveries for the future is no Minister for Science in the Assembly Government (more on and support for the present will come. These disciplines this later) so we must be thankful that someone there has at last must be strengthened in Wales and it is important, for raised the question. Let us remind ourselves of some truisms: example, to realise that ’Health’, ’Energy Research’ or ’the • Economic and Social Policy is about applying the nation’s Hydrogen Economy’ are not disciplines, whereas, genomics, resources in the best and most cost effective way for the molecular biology, physiology, nuclear engineering, 4 benefit of the people. optoelectronics, electrochemistry and chemical catalysis, • All economic and social progress of humankind have been say, are. Without underlying strength in disciplines such as rooted in advances in technology, remembering that the latter, the former become part of a meaningless and Science + Engineering = Technology (SET). unrealisable wish list.

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opinion

a science policy for wales?

The Assembly Government’s consultation document, • Enhancement of the financial prepared by its Chief Technology Officer Dr Ron Loveland services sector in our business and downloadable from www.wales.gov.uk, defines three schools main strands for a future science policy for Wales: • Production of a stronger • Health, including public health, tele-medicine and links to environmental goods and demographic change and epidemiology. services sector. • Low-carbon energy systems. • Promotion of Wales’s private • Enabling sustained economic and social renewal, and public sector agricultural utilising both natural and social sciences expertise. and aquaculture expertise • Building on the Assembly Government’s creative health industries and software initiatives. The paper suggests a number of opportunities, including: First Minister Rhodri Morgan: • A need to build critical mass since there is no major “What therefore is Wales’s multi-national pharmaceutical company based in Wales, future except in the know- The consultation paper asks for ledge economy, enriched responses to whether these three and only a small number of health science research and by science and technology?” development centres. fields offer the best opportunities • The emergence of the Wales Institute of Neuroscience, a for Wales to work with the grain of global drivers to partnership between Cardiff, Bangor and Swansea Universities. achieve greater success: • Drawing on the strengths of companies working in Wales on drug discovery systems, diagnostics and medical devices. “If the Welsh Assembly Government were to focus more • Creation of the Gene Park at Cardiff University. of its attention and resources on these three fields, • The Swansea University Institute of Life Sciences should this be to the exclusion of seizing other initiative. opportunities? Are there indicators of the level of catalytic resources which might be needed in each of the proposed priority fields to ensure world-class local carbon energy systems excellence?”

Opportunities in this field include formation of a Wales In his introduction to the consultation paper First Minister Energy Research Centre to: Rhodri Morgan, who has taken responsibility for Science • Bring together technology strengths across the Welsh within the Cabinet, queries whether Wales should have a universities “which, if they could be applied in a more co- science policy given that it is not a devolved matter. ordinated fashion, could offer opportunities for a However, he concludes: substantial growth of the science base.” The result could produce a focus for developing technologies for low- “The other side of the coin is that we in Wales carbon initiatives and a “design for a long lasting but cannot compete in the global economy on the basis efficient and reasonable cost Severn barrage.” of low wages. Whereas thirty years ago, when the UK • Promote the take-up of energy conservation, biomass joined the Common Market, Wales could legitimately crops, and production of vehicle energy-efficient vehicles. claim to be the lowest cost location for Japanese • Explore renewable micro-generation of electricity multinationals to assemble television sets and • Develop supply chain opportunities from wind energy microwave ovens inside the EEC tariff barriers, it and opportunities for wave-technology systems. certainly is not true now. The Far East tiger economies are industrialising and developing fast sustained economic and social renewal with the aim that in thirty years time, China will be the world’s factory and India will be the world’s Opportunities include: office. What therefore is Wales’s future except in the • Creation of an Institute of life cycle assessment, eco- knowledge economy, enriched by science and design and brand management; a next generation technology in the higher education sector and able to 5 broadband-services centre of excellence; and an Institute develop specialist niches in products and services of Sustainable Construction that are ahead of the game?

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opinion

signatories to the response

Professor Sir John Cadogan’s response to the Assembly Government’s January 2006 consultation paper A Science Policy for Wales? has been endorsed by the following Welsh scientists who, like him, are all Fellows of the Royal Society:

• Professor Dianne Edwards • Sir Dai Rees From Swansea, a research fellow in palaeobotany and Head From Hawarden, a chemist and former Head of Research of the School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences at Cardiff with Unilever. Former Chairman of the Medical Research University. Member of the Countryside Council for Wales. Council. • Professor Sir Sam Edwards • Professor Sir Gareth Roberts From Swansea, Former Cavendish Professor of Physics at From Bangor, President of Wolfson College, Oxford, Cambridge University and Chair of the Science Research Council. and President of the Institute of Physics. Former Vice • Sir John Houghton Chancellor of the University of Sheffield. From Aberdovey, former Head of the Meteorological Office Chairman of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council and Chairman of the International Committee on Climate 1993-97. Change. Chairman of the Royal Commission on • Professor Dame Jean Thomas Environmental Pollution 1992-98. From Swansea, is professor of macromolecular biology • Sir John Maddox and Head of the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge From Gorseinon, a Physicist writer and broadcaster. Editor University. President of the Bio-Chemical Society. of the scientific journal, Nature 1966-73 and 1980-1995. • Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas • Professor Sir Ronald Mason From Tumble, former Professor of Physical Chemistry at From Aberfan, was professor of chemistry at the University Cambridge University. Former Master of Peterhouse, of Sussex, 1971-1988. Recently retired as Chairman of Cambridge and Director of the Royal Institution. University College of London. Former Chief Scientific • Professor Kenneth Walters Adviser to the Ministry of Defence. From Swansea, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the • Professor Sir Keith Peters University of Wales, Aberystwyth. From Port Talbot, President of the Academy of Medicine, • Professor Robin Williams Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge University and Former Professor of Physics at Cardiff University and an Chairman of the Council of Cardiff University. Former expert in solid state physics. Recently retired as Vice chairman of the Council for Science and Technology. Chancellor of the University of Swansea.

To achieve progress in health and energy matters we have to researchers would most likely have gone on trying to look to contributions from many scientific and engineering improve cathode ray technology. disciplines first. Just as importantly, however, a really world class science base is the essential prerequisite for attracting high tech This is what happened in computer development. The first research-based businesses anxious to get close to the action. computers were huge and, based on the thermionic valve, This is already the case in the rest of the UK and Ireland. In this generated massive amounts of heat. All research to produce a respect Scotland and the Republic of Ireland are way ahead of better computer, which was a clear imposed economic target, Wales. The appointment of an independent Chief Scientific was directed at improvements in the valves. “There will be a Adviser in Scotland has been very well received and there are need for four or five super computers in the world,” said the important lessons to be learned too from the Irish example. Dr head of IBM, “and they will weigh no more than a ton.” But William Harris, the retiring Director General of Science elsewhere the transistor was being invented and the resulting Foundation, Ireland has informed us that he would be glad to super computers were not in the inventors’ minds at the start. In share his experiences via a visit to the Assembly Government. both instances specialist scientists and engineers with peripheral vision saw the opportunities for really new technologies arising Let us take just two examples of the pathway to technico- out of their hitherto unforeseen discoveries. economic success. Strategic research in Chemistry years ago led to the discovery of liquid crystals while strategic research So, give big support to the hard science and engineering into the Physics and Chemistry of the solid state led to the base and don’t be too prescriptive. As the the research 6 transistor. Out of these eventually came the flat screen TV director of Astra Zeneca once said: after some ingenious engineering (S+E=T). No Minister, civil servant or committee said at the outset, “Flat screen TV is “We don’t much care what exactly the university researchers do important so go and find a way to do it.” Indeed, if they had, as long as they are producing excellent young researchers trained

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opinion

by experienced and original people working in fields of strategic grant aid (£) per fundable interest to us. We will produce the drugs but Universities should full-time equivalent student produce the basic discoveries in chemistry, pharmacology, immunology and so on which we do not even know are there to 2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 +% 04/00 be discovered. Most of all we want to be close to these people.” Wales 4520 4795 4701 4933 9.1 England 4717 5027 5410 5826 23.5 The fact is that there is a big scientific and engineering deficit in Scotland 5220 5403 5637 5957 14.2 Wales. The consultation paper often uses the term ’world class’ in describing activities in Wales. However, the last Research because the last Comprehensive Spending Review allocated Assessment Exercise does not make encouraging reading. In large extra funds to the Research Councils rather than to the Science, Engineering and Medicine, the whole of Wales’s Higher Funding Council sector, to provide 80 per cent of the true Education Institutions had only five departments out of 45 that economic costs for research in the Universities. were awarded 5* international status. Two of these were in Psychology. There were also ten 5s and ten 4s. Compare this The resulting vicious circle is that low infrastructure support with Bristol alone which has ten 5*, eight 5s and three 4s out of from the Assembly Government leads to lower chances of a total of 25 science, medical and engineering departments. recruiting and keeping excellent people. Hence lower research council success and resulting loss of the extra Whilst acknowledging the difficulty in obtaining comparisons, the support money which will go instead to the best wherever Higher Education Funding Council for Wales’s paper on the funding they are in the UK outside Wales. gap (Nov 2005) states that “there is a funding gap between England and Wales with the Welsh sector receiving proportionately a A significant and sustained uplift in Assembly funding is significantly lower amount of grant in aid.” It goes on to say that required now. Otherwise the pier will collapse and Wales will be matters are even worse because “the overall costs to Wales are left with nothing but fine words about unattainable economic relatively higher than to England.” Even allowing for uncertainties, targets. The under-funding of Science and Engineering in Wales the wealth of statistics makes it quite clear that not only are is a damaging policy decision by the Assembly Government Universities in Wales seriously under-funded compared with which, if not abandoned, will make it impossible to attain the Scotland and England, but that it has been going on for some years economic targets proclaimed. The Universities need much and the gap is getting bigger. Table 1 is revealing: more money, particularly in hard Science and Engineering.

Thus, not only was Scottish funding 15.5 per cent higher in This leads us to comment on an absence of a science policy making absolute terms compared with Wales in 2000-01 but Wales function in Wales that is unparalleled in the UK and elsewhere in had slipped further behind in 2003-04 when Scottish funding Europe. As it is, there is no apparent champion for Science in the was 20 per cent higher than in Wales. The corresponding Assembly Government. Although there is a Minister for Culture figures for England are 4.3 per cent higher than Wales in there is no designated Minister for Science. Further there is no Chief 2000-01 and 18 per cent higher in 2003-04. The integrated Scientific Adviser. We observe that the scientific culture vital for a negative difference per capita over the first four years of forward looking country is absent from the Assembly Government. devolution is huge. The Higher Education Funding Council The words science and research do not appear in the portfolios of for Wales also point out that “capital allocations in England any member of the cabinet or their special advisers, although we have been increasing in recent years while those in Wales understand that the First Minister has taken Science and Research have fluctuated but have been broadly static.” under his wing. May we therefore hope for better times?

Nevertheless, it is to the credit of the scientific and engineering These deficiencies should be rectified urgently and in so doing community that there are potential, as well as real, centres of the Minister should be properly supported by a Chief Scientific excellence in Wales. However, the poor funding is inhibiting Adviser. He or she should be a scientist of international them, leading even to the closure of some hard science standing and independence brought in for a five year term, departments. Welsh Science and Engineering is like a pier with reporting to the First Minister. It will not do to appoint a career too few supports. There are too few pinnacles of excellence. If civil servant, however able, or make do with yet another the funding from Government is poor then the ability of committee. Now is the time for action not analysis. Universities to keep, let alone attract, the best is undermined. • Professor Sir John Cadogan is former Professor of Chemistry Without a strong infrastructure in which to work, scientists in at St Andrews and Edinburgh Universities, former Chief Wales will always be at a disadvantage when it comes to Scientist and Director of Research with BP, and former Head 7 competition for funds from the Research Councils. As a of the UK Science Research Councils with an annual budget of result they will slide slowly down a dismal spiral of failure. £1.5 billion. Originally from Swansea, he now lives in The position is now made seriously worrying for Wales Bishopston in the Gower.

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news

call for finance company to raise £3 billion for social housing

A new housing finance housing in this way, to the benefits for the wider company should be Valleys to Coast Housing community. It is estimated established to raise the £3 Association. This will be that maintaining the Welsh billion that is needed to bring spending £290 million on Housing Quality Standard in Welsh council housing up to improving housing over the the 160,000 council standard, recommends a new next 30 years with major properties across Wales IWA report on The Future of economic benefits for the (excluding Bridgend) will cost Social Housing in Wales. local economy. £3.3 billion over 30 years.

The new company could At present only a few other Public sector funding will not raise the money at authorities are contemplating be able to meet this favourable interest rates following Bridgend’s example. investment which, instead, from the UK and European Commissioned by the Welsh will require a major injection capital markets, using the Assembly Government and of private sector finance. The asset-based financing market the Principality Building only way local authorities route already pioneered in Society, the 200-page IWA can access this money is by Wales by Welsh Water. Its report says that most transferring their stock to not-for-profit parent authorities in Wales should do housing associations which company Glas Cymru has so. It says: “If stock transfer are not subject to Treasury secured some £3 billion for was widely pursued the result borrowing rules. the water sector on would be the transformation extremely attractive terms. If of the condition of local The Future of Social Housing in this precedent were followed authority housing.” Wales is available from the for current council housing IWA at £40 (half-price to stock, using the property as There would also be a major members). Tamsin Stirling the asset guarantee, the economic and environmental writes on the report, page 43. potential for economic regeneration in Wales would be enormous, the report concludes: • It would produce more than twice the impact of the current £1.5 billion Objective 1 programme for west Wales and the Valleys. • It would focus investment in the poorest areas of Wales where social housing is concentrated.

First, however, local authorities must transfer their housing stock to Catrin Finch playing with the leading Slovak cellist Josef Luptak at the IWA’s housing associations which Creu Cyfle / Cultural Explosion gala concert at the Galeri, Caernarfon on the 19th February. The concert, the culmination of a year-long programme of 8 are able to borrow against activity, was a sell-out, with more than 400 tickets sold. The Creu Cyfle / the equity of the property. So Cultural Explosion Conference the following day was also a great success far in Wales only Bridgend with 200 delegates attending. The keynote address, delivered by David Hughes of the European Commission, is featured on page 54. has transferred its council

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news

fellows scheme launched iwa fellows

In a remarkable tribute to the society – all those movements • Nigel Annett, Brecon • Dr David Lloyd Owen, work of the Institute, 62 of its and organisations that stand • John Antoniazzi, Cardiff Llangoedmor, Ceredigion members have accepted an outside the governmental • Dr John Ball, Swansea • Elfyn Llwyd MP, Llanuwchllyn invitation – recently extended process, but keep a sharp eye • Simon Baynes, Llanfechain, • Wilf Marshall, Dinas to all IWA members – to on government’s actions and Powys Mawddwy • Sioned Bowen, Wrexham • Mr John Wyn Owen, become IWA Fellows. Of the effectiveness. I have seen the • Noreen Bray, Cardiff Cowbridge 62 who have signed up so far, Institute mature and develop • Richard Brunstrom, Colwyn Bay • Professor Keith Patchett, 28 have agreed to become considerable self-confidence • John Bryant, Bridgend Cardiff Life Fellows of the Institute. over the last decade. It is • George Crabb, Cowbridge • Steve Penny, Swansea Fellows are listed in the now in an ideal position to be • Dr Daniel Cunliffe, Cardiff • Dr Eurwen Price, Swansea • Carole-Anne Davies, Cardiff • William R. Price, Cwmbran accompanying panel, with a powerful influence behind • Ceri Doyle, Cardiff • Lord Gwilym Prys Davies, more detailed biographies on the stage, pricking the • Keith Dye, Cardiff Pontypridd the IWA website political consciousness. But • Rev. Aled Edwards, Cardiff • Diane Quinton-Adams, www.iwa.org.uk the greatest pleasure is an • Alison Forster, Swindon Defynnog, Powys opportunity to help the • Dr Heather Graham, Cardiff • Professor Richard Rawlings, • Rosemarie Griffith, East Twickenham Among the responses Institute retain its Haverfordwest • David Stevens, Llancarfan received the Labour peer, Lord independence.” • Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach • Wiard Sterk, Cardiff Gwilym Prys Davies, said: “I • Jeffrey C. Harris, Cardiff • Jeremy Thomas, London appreciate the immense This last observation was the • Gerald Holtham, London • Roger G. Thomas, Penarth • Dr H G A Hughes, Corwen • Dr Neil Thompson, Wrexham contribution that the Institute basis for the invitation to the • Dr Dafydd Huws, Caerffili • Martin Tinney, Cardiff has made and is making to membership extended by the • Judith Isherwood, Penarth • W. Tudor John, Wilian, the life of Wales. We would be IWA’s Chairman, Geraint • Keith James, Hertfordshire. much poorer without it.” Talfan Davies. “It is important Peterston-Super-Ely • Paul Twamley, Penarth for the Institute to sustain its • Dyfrig James, • Gill Wade, Newport Wheathampstead, Herts • Dafydd Wigley, Bontnewydd The Liberal Democrat Peer, reputation for independent • D. Huw John, Caerfyrddin • Lord Williams of Elvel Lord Livesey of Talgarth, research, commentary and • Dr Gareth Jones, Segonzac, • Merfyn Williams, declared, “I am an admirer of policy ideas,” he said. “This France Penrhyndeudraeth the quality of the work is not easy for a voluntary • Dr Geraint Stanley Jones, • Cllr Rhiannon Wyn Hughes, produced by the IWA. Its and charitable organisation Caerdydd Meliden, Denbighshire • Tom Jones, Trallwng, Powys • Sasha Wynn Davies, research and publications are that has no reliable source of • Henry J. Kroch, Penarth Llangefni of inestimable value to Wales income other than its own • Huw M. Lewis, Yr Wyddgrug • Dr Hilary Lloyd Yewlett, and its people.” Plaid Cymru’s members. At present that • Roger Lewis, St Hilary Cardiff Dafydd Wigley, stated, “It is a membership income covers • Lord Richard Livesey of Talgarth • R. G. A. Youard, pleasure to be involved with only one third of the IWA’s • Sir Richard Lloyd Jones, Cardiff Eaton Bishop, Herefordshire the Institute in this way.” costs, while the remainder is hard won through independence highly and • Be invited to two special Professor Keith Patchett, increasingly intense wish to ensure that both are functions each year. Emeritus Professor of Law at competition for research sustained through their • Have access to the IWA for Cardiff University, said, “I funding, a route that can support. We are very grateful policy advice and research feel privileged to be invited sometimes draw us away to them all, and hope that briefing. to establish a continuing link from the most pressing many other members will • Be able, if they wish, to with an organisation that issues for Wales.” follow their example.” become involved in performs a valuable role in shaping the IWA’s work Welsh public life.” Geraint Talfan Davies added, IWA Fellows subscribe a programmes. “We have all been hugely minimum annual payment of The former headmaster of encouraged by the warm and £200 to the Fellows Fund. • For more information on Ysgol Maes Garmon in Mold, substantial response to our Life fellowship is bestowed becoming an IWA Fellow Huw Lewis, wrote, “For me invitation to IWA members to for a single payment of contact the central office: 9 the Institute has for years subscribe as Fellows. It is £1,000. These donations 24 St Andrews Crescent, shown great leadership clear that they value the qualify under gift aid. IWA Cardiff, CF10 3DD. amongst those key ’others’ in Institute’s role and its Fellows will: E-mail [email protected]

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politics and policy poles apart

ardiff is a small capital city city centre. It should be just the one with a compact grain. In parts City, fully connected, contiguous, and c it has charm and vitality. In metropolitan. One day there will be no other parts, however, it is severely more reason to complain about the dysfunctional. The problems start to journey from City to Bay, because there the north of the Inner Harbour of will no longer be a gap to traverse. Cardiff Bay. There is approximately a square mile of the city, mid-Cardiff if A cursory inspection of any map of the you will, that contributes little to the city quickly reveals the causes of the quality of the city. For most people who problem. The area between the bay and know Cardiff, the journey between the the centre is characterised by a series Bay and the City Centre is a of major linear north-south structures, conundrum. “Why is it so difficult to each one a formidable obstacle. The get from the city centre to the Bay?” first is the River Taff. Inland from the The question is asked, rhetorically, river and parallel to it are the Butetown almost as if there is an acceptance that estate and its recreation ground. there will never be a lucid answer. However, these are only linear because Bute Street itself is bounded by the first Actually, it is not that difficult. Certainly really difficult obstacle, the long, high not more difficult than getting from, retaining wall that runs along the east say, Museum Place to Western Avenue, edge of Bute Street in a dead-straight or Newport Road to Albany Road. The line, from the city centre to the bay. jonathan adams problem is not the journey itself, it is just that the area you pass through has This wall does not appear on most recommends how all the appeal of purgatory. Because of maps because it only has vertical that there is no consideration other dimensions. But what the map does Cardiff Bay can be than getting from Centre to Bay (or show, ludicrously, is two long, straight vice versa) so rapidly and with so little boulevards running the mile from connected with the perception of the area around you that south to north, and apparently only a it seems instantaneous. Bute Street, few yards apart. There is nothing city centre once considered the most unhappy of between, and no way of getting from those routes, now appears to be the the one road to the other. It is a shelf, a most appealing. The newest route, barricade, a fault line and immensely Lloyd George Avenue which is also destructive to the city. bizarrely the southernmost leg of the A470, is easily the grimmest. Before the docks were made the ground level of mid-Cardiff sloped As there is no way of removing mid- gently down towards the river, from Cardiff and dragging Centre and Bay east to west. The wall is the together, the solution to the consequence of that slope being made inadequacies of the journey from into two flat plateaux, presumably for Centre to Bay has to be to change the the convenience of the dock area that we pass through. We need to operations. Though one cannot help a produce a fully functioning but wonder if there was always connecting corridor as a vibrant and someone who thought it no bad idea to 10 active part of the city. keep the proletariat penned in below the wall. All the more reason, belatedly, There should be no northern edge to to break through it comprehensively, or the Bay, and no southern edge to the ideally to remove it altogether.

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politics and policy

Map 1 The Barriers This may not be as onerous as it 1 River Taff – note only one bridge sounds at first. If you have ever taken crossing between Centre and Bay that right turn, just beyond BayArt, the 2 The embankment wall on Bute Street: one point where you can go from Bute unbroken between Centre and Bay Street onto Lloyd George Avenue, you 3 Atlantic Wharf 4 Central Link – an elevated dual might just have noticed that you were carriageway going up a slight hill. In cities slight 5 The ’blue shed’ industrial building hills tend not to be noticeable.

Map 2 The Ghettoes One of the justifications for maintaining the great wall of Bute All are single-use because none is able to connect effectively into neighbouring Street is that it has the railway tracks areas. running across its top edge, and that 1 Riverside – west of the Taff – is a they might someday provide the basis relatively vibrant, predominantly for a new public transport link between residential district, but with a good centre and bay. Be that as it may, it is mix of amenities. It benefits from unlikely that any link will need tracks of Map 1 being unconstrained, unlike the ghettoes across the river to the east that gauge. After all, it won’t be a train 2 Industrial concentration off upper and the need for a ‘link’ just prolongs Dumballs Road the situation where there is a gap that 3 New private residential pocket off needs to be crossed. Fill the gap, and lower Dumballs Road the need for a link is no greater than 4 The Bute Town estate – isolated for three decades for one up Park Place or North Road. 5 Private residential ghetto between Perhaps a bus will do after all. Lloyd George Avenue and Atlantic Wharf Moving east from the A470, you soon 6 Exclusive industrial area, sprawls into come to the next daunting obstacle, Ocean Park industrial zone Atlantic Wharf. Full of maritime resonance, no doubt, and even Map 3 The Alternative picturesque from some angles, it is, • Increasing the number of north-south nonetheless, a serious constraint routes upon the city’s scope to develop. To • Overlaying multiple east-west routes the east of the water, adding to the • Producing a grid plan of the sort found in many capital cities of the old and problem, is the ‘central link’ dual new worlds, such as Barcelona, carriageway and the mysterious, vast Map 2 superimposed at the same scale here. blue shed of the Tremorfa steel works. 1 Adding five new bridges between the Each again presents an impenetrable Centre and the Bay fully connects the linear wall. I was once almost city to the east and west of the river.This persuaded that the blue shed had is still not as many bridges as cross the unintentional aesthetic qualities that Liffey in the same area of central Dublin. could be regarded as an asset to the 2 Inhabited bridges and a bit of land reclamation to overcome the obstacle city. More significantly, it still serves of Atlantic Wharf whilst retaining the an industrial purpose. waterfront ambience. More Venetian in scale perhaps? Each of these north-south barriers 3 The need for the dual carriageway is stretches the full mile from the bay to gone, as there are now many ways of the centre. Each of them strangulates making the same connection. 4 The grain of the city merges gradually north-south movement into channels into the industrial zone of Ocean Park so restricted that the routes struggle to 5 A strong diagonal north-west to be places in themselves. These barriers south-east route would provide a have to be broken. The north-south welcome new dynamic to the city, routes must be punctuated with east- replacing the century old bi-polarity of 11 the city with a more complex and west links, cutting through the whole Map 3 more sophisticated plurality of urban way from Riverside and Grangetown to movement. Ocean Park and beyond.

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The linearity of the north-south amazement at how much of the working in a ‘Futures Forum’ to discuss the way connections almost demand that the population of the capital was engaged the Welsh capital should develop. future east-west routes cross at in creative business. He spoke of a perpendiculars. The result will be to minor epiphany: he now saw his city as Among the first initiatives to be give mid-Cardiff a grid pattern, like truly a city of creativity. Perhaps as a considered might be an idea that first Glasgow, Barcelona, New York and result of that the next real step change surfaced a few years ago at the time of Splott. This is a vigorous form for a in the future of Cardiff might not come the Capital of Culture debate. This is city. It would work well in mid-Cardiff. with the ‘sports village’ (isolated beyond that the strip of city between Dumballs It is just a question of time, and that the southern peripherique) or ‘St David’s Road and the Taff could indeed be being the case, what prevents the 2’ (more of what works already), but developed into a new ‘creative quarter’, nettle being grasped right away? alongside the one north-south link that a locus for ‘Creative Cardiff’. This is an is often forgotten, the winding back- area of valuable blue collar Even as you draw a single east-west line route of Dumballs Road. employment, which should not quickly across the map of Cardiff you slice be displaced. It might, after all, just through homes and businesses. Each line In the year since the Goodway disappear. But, nonetheless, the idea drawn implies political, social and administration was replaced by that of that the re-imagining of mid-Cardiff engineering bravado. But none of it Rodney Berman, there have been signs might begin with a new, lively, should be out of the ordinary for the of a positive change in the notoriously complex, engaging creative quarter in capital city of a sophisticated country. The cagey behaviour of the City Council. the west is really compelling. A proper Bute Street wall will be taken out into a Where major decisions on planning creative quarter would have space for gentle slope, but nothing too steep to be have for years been made behind the most useful of the small industries built upon, and to the east, there will be closed doors, there are indications that alongside new homes, civic spaces, causeways across Atlantic Wharf allowing they may soon be shared with the schools, shops studios and so on. building to cross the water, defining people of Cardiff. There is even an smaller pools, perhaps further modulated initiative underway in which Eyes have been turned towards with pontoons and houseboats. representatives from the city’s Dumballs Road because of the commercial and academic development of Callaghan Square and By setting out a grid of city streets you communities are being invited to the Central Station at the north end, and, define a swathe of new, valuable participate with senior city executives perhaps because, quietly, for the time development plots. Definition and clarity being at least, the city has given up on are the key to effective preparation of the the hope that Lloyd George Avenue can ground. It would follow, by virtue of their be the elegant metropolitan boulevard, improved access and proper definition, the attractive link between centre and that the value of these acres would bay, that we all hoped it could be. increase significantly. With increased value comes the imperative to develop A new route from bay to centre efficiently, and as a consequence the following the strangely twisting course building lines will come close to the of Dumballs Road, and hopefully pavements, and the streets will take on retaining its quirky original name, the proper texture of a city. might not be a grand boulevard, but it could at least be a proper part of our Some of the new axes will need to be city, and properly Cardiff. If we get that of larger dimensions than others to right, and the creative quarter to bring concentrate movement into discrete city life to it, then, in due course, from neighbourhoods, to provide zones for north to south and east to west, we will local retail, public spaces and civic get our grand boulevards too. amenities. Above all mid-Cardiff needs the richest mixture of property uses, as you would find in any square mile of mature city. • Jonathan Adams is President of the Royal Society of Architects in Wales. 12 There was a point in the build up to the He was architect of the Wales announcement of the Capital of Culture Millennium Centre and is Special TheThe southern end of a newnew routeroute that wouldwould bid when Russell Goodway, then the connect the baybay with the city centrecentre via Projects Director with the firm Capita leader of the Council, shared his Dumballs Road.Road. Percy Thomas.

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eurfyl ap gwilym estimates that Wales has been denied more than £1billion by the Treasury over the past five years barnett squeeze

Given that such spending per capita is • There was frequent use of the higher in Wales, the percentage increase ‘Barnett by-pass’ whereby monies is lower and in the longer term will tend over and above the Barnett to converge to the same level as in increases were added to the block England. Relative expenditure per capita grants for Wales, Scotland and on devolved services in Wales compared Northern Ireland. An example of with the corresponding expenditure in such a case was when the England declined from 115 per cent in devolved administrations were 1999-00 to 112 in 2004-05. compensated for an above inflation UK-wide pay increase awarded to The second reason for the reduced public nurses. expenditure in Wales was the requirement for the Welsh Assembly Government to Indeed, if it had not been for Barnett fund its share of match funding for by-passes the convergent effect of Objective 1 from within the block grant. the Barnett formula over the years Inevitably expenditure on health and would have been considerably more education, the two big spending severe than proved to be the case. A programmes funded from the block grant, number of academic studies have ver the five years between had to be ’raided’ for this purpose. noted the comparative absence of 1999 and 2005 spending on evidence of such a squeeze because services such as health and Since the Barnett formula was of the frequent use of the Barnett by- o introduced in the late 1970s it has pass. It is fair to comment that the education grew more strongly in England compared with Wales, Scotland and operated over two distinct periods: 1979 Conservative government adopted a Northern Ireland. This was due to the to 1997 when the Conservatives were in fairly flexible and pragmatic operation of the Treasury’s Barnett funding power at Westminster, and from 1997 to approach to funding devolved formula, which determines changes in the the present when Labour has been in services. value of the annual block grant allocated government. During the period when the to the devolved administrations. So far as Barnett formula was administered by the However, since Labour was returned Wales is concerned the result was that we Conservatives the convergence effect to power in 1997 the effect of the lost approximately £1 billion during this was ameliorated for three main reasons: Barnett squeeze has been much more period. • During the early years, between 1979 serious because, with two significant and 1985, the Formula operated on exceptions, the formula has been There were two main reasons. The first real rather than nominal increase in applied with its full rigour in every was because of what has become public expenditure. Between 1979 Comprehensive Spending Review. The known as the Barnett ‘squeeze’. This has and 1982 inflation was very high, one exception in the case of Wales both the intent and effect of increasing peaking at 18.0 per cent in 1980. was the addition of funds in public expenditure on devolved services However, by using real increases the recognition of the EU element of in Wales at a lower percentage rate impact of inflation was not a factor funding the Objective 1 programme, compared with the growth rate for forcing convergence. conceded only after vigorous corresponding services in England. This • Between 1984-85 and 1990-91 total lobbying. In the meantime Scotland convergence with England is brought managed public expenditure did not has suffered the full impact of the 13 about by increasing devolved spending increase in real terms and Barnett squeeze although it started per capita in Wales by the same convergence only takes effect when from a much more favourable position monetary amount as England. there is an increase in spending. established in 1978.

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Paradoxically, a second reason for the formula with critics citing such devolved. In the case of Wales the Barnett squeeze becoming more independent studies as that of Iain Treasury’s Public Expenditure significant since 1999 is because the McLean of Nuffield College, Oxford, in Statistical Analyses reports do not fully effect is greater when there are high support of the claim that a needs-based differentiate between those elements of nominal increases in public formula would be fairer and result in spending which are devolved and expenditure on services in England considerable additional funding for those which are funded directly from which, in the case of Wales, are Wales. One of the most vocal critics Whitehall. devolved: the higher the increase the has been Joel Barnett, Chief Secretary greater the squeeze. Under Labour to the Treasury when the formula was For the purposes of this exercise it was spending on education and health in adopted. Speaking in the Lords in decided to estimate the Barnett England has enjoyed high increases November 2001 he declared, “I had Squeeze over the period 1999-2000 to with a consequent strong squeeze on always assumed that the arrangements 2004-05 using 1999-00 as the base line devolved spending in Wales. would be temporary until a more year. The reasons for selecting this sophisticated method could be devised period were: Governments have consistently which took account of needs.” And in • In 1997 Labour inherited the opposed changing or replacing the January 2004 he added, “It is a great spending plans of the outgoing Barnett formula despite the fact that it embarrassment to have my name Conservative government and ignores both differences and changes in attached to so unfair a system.” decided to adhere to them for the relative need across the UK. One first two years. probable reason is the perceived Most critics have concentrated on the • Labour changed the way the Barnett favourable treatment that the formula need for a needs-based formula rather formula was employed by updating affords Scotland and the sensitivity of than on the convergent effect of the the population figures annually with making a change. At the outset in the population-based Barnett formula. This effect from 1999. 1970s the population ratios employed is perhaps understandable given the • Public expenditure planning was and the initial spending levels were lack of such convergence from 1979 to changed in 1998 with the skewed in Scotland’s favour and to 1997. It could be argued that, under introduction of the Comprehensive Wales’s disadvantage. In 1976-7 the today’s more rigorous funding regime, Spending Review, with effect from Treasury Needs Assessment estimated it is now time to focus more attention 1999, whereby expenditure is that need in Wales relative to England on the Barnett squeeze. planned three years ahead and was 109 per cent whilst the actual updated every two years. spending level was 106 per cent. In the Given the change in Treasury practice • The National Assembly and the case of Scotland relative need was 116 since 1997, a key question that arises is Scottish Parliament were established per cent but spending was 122 per cent. whether the Assembly Government in 1999. This anomalous position formed the should seek, as a first step, a modification shaky foundation of the Barnett edifice. to the Barnett formula whereby the Two approaches were employed to increase in the block grant is the same as estimate the impact of the Barnett It is also probable that the Treasury the percentage increase in the squeeze since 1999-2000. In the first favours the continuation of the formula corresponding spending programmes for approach actual changes in the block because: England. This would at least eliminate grant, which are determined by the • After more than twenty five years the further Barnett convergence. The change Barnett formula, were calculated and Treasury has a well honed to the workings of the Formula would be then the additional sums that would be mechanism for applying the Formula. minimal and the other concerns of the required to increase the block grant by • The Formula avoids detailed Treasury already noted would be the same percentage per head as the negotiations with the devolved addressed. corresponding expenditure administrations which would be in programmes in the UK as a whole addition to those with the It needs to be borne in mind that were estimated. Allowance was made departments of state in Whitehall. monies lost due to the Barnett squeeze for the above Barnett increases in the • Barnett avoids having to come up are substantial and build up block grant due to the EU Objective 1 with a new, needs based approach cumulatively over future years. funds. This approach showed that, which could be contentious both Estimating the impact of the Barnett using 1999-2000 as the base year, in between the nations of the UK and squeeze is not very straightforward due 2004-2005 the block grant was £344 14 within the regions of England. to the way the Treasury publishes million lower than it would have been public expenditure information. This is if there were no Barnett squeeze. However, there have been repeated especially the case with respect to Cumulatively over the five years if calls for a review of the funding expenditure on programmes which are there had been no squeeze the block

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grants would have been £1,014 million higher.

In the second approach actual increases in spending in England on become an IWA fellow the two largest programmes which are devolved to Wales, health and and support our work education, were taken. From the increases in spending in England the “I appreciate the immense “The IWA fulfils a vital role corresponding increases to the block contribution that the in Welsh civic society. If it grant for each year from 1999-2000 to Institute has made and is were not there it would have 2004-05 using the Barnett formula making to the life of Wales. to be invented.” were calculated and compared with We would be much poorer IWA Fellow, Rt. Hon. Dafydd the increases required if Wales were without it.” Wigley Honorary President, Plaid Cymru to receive the same percentage IWA Fellow, Labour Peer “As someone who has been increases as England. This approach Lord Gwilym Prys Davies did not take into account any squeeze involved all my of my experienced on other spending lines “I am an admirer of the professional career in think- which, while showing real growth in quality of the work produced tanks, research bodies and England, grew significantly less than by the IWA. Its research and policy units, I would like to health and education. In 2004-2005 publications are of pay tribute to the way in which the the block grant was £376 million inestimable value to Wales Institute of Welsh Affairs has clearly lower due to the Barnett squeeze and its people.” established itself as a leading forum for corresponding to health and IWA Fellow, Liberal Democrat Peer debate in Welsh political life.” education spending increases in Lord Livesey of Talgarth IWA Fellow, Conservative Peer England and over the five year period Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach the squeeze was £1,100 million. Fellows of the IWA are able, if they so wish, to I wish to become a Fellow / Life Fellow Despite the two different approaches to become involved in shaping the work and enclose a cheque for £200 / £1000. the problem the estimates are programmes of the IWA. In addition Fellows will: I wish to become a Fellow / Life Fellow consistent. Thus it is fair to estimate • Receive special recognition in the IWA’s and pay by credit/debit card the sum of that the Barnett squeeze cost Wales at regular journal Agenda (unless they have £_ _ , _ _ _ . _ _ least £344 million in 2004-2005 and chosen to give their support anonymously). approximately £1,000 million over the • Be invited to special Fellows events each year. Account No. _ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ five years from 1999-2000 to 2004-2005. • Have access to the IWA for policy advice Expiry date _ _ /_ _ and briefing. To put these estimates in perspective I wish to pay by Direct Debit (This will We ask that Fellows subscribe a minimum the loss in 2004-2005 represented 3 per help us keep our costs down) Please send annual payment of £200 to the Fellows Fund. cent of the block grant in that year and me a Direct Debit application form. cumulatively over the five years the Life fellowship will be bestowed for a single loss was 2.1 per cent. Over the period payment of £1,000. These donations will Please send me more information about the squeeze was some 0.6 per cent per qualify under Gift Aid. becoming an IWA Fellow. year. It is also consistent with the estimate that for the five years, devolved public expenditure per head Name Title in Wales was, on average, 109 per cent Address of that for the corresponding services for the UK as whole. Post Code Would advocating such a change to the Telephone Facsimile Barnett formula as a first step put E-mail effective pressure on the UK Government? Certainly, since Scotland would also benefit, it would remove Return to: Freepost RLTT-RBYS-JUUX the First Minister’s argument regarding IWA, St. Andrew’s House, 24 St. Andrew’s Crescent, Cardiff, CF10 3DD 2177AgendaPagesDJW 5/5/06 5:11 pm Page 16

politics and policy

Gordon Brown blocking any change Thus the two budget areas that will be The recent news that Wales is to be a due its sensitive position. Of course, it squeezed the most after 2008 will be recipient of Convergence Funding from would mean that England would lose non-devolved, UK-wide sectors such as the EU means that two key questions out. However, given the weighting of defence, together with health and arise once again. Will the Treasury pass England’s population the monies it education in Wales, Scotland and on to Wales those funds allocated by would lose per head would be modest. Northern Ireland. Health and education the EU? This was done in part under England represents 84 per cent of the will not be under comparable pressure in the current Objective 1 programme UK population. Under this proposal for England because increases will be the after a lot of pressure from within every £1 per head that Wales, Scotland direct outcome of UK Government policy Wales. It appears that the new EU and Northern Ireland gained, at most and not subject to any Barnett squeeze. funds will indeed come to Wales. England would lose 19p. The interaction of the Barnett squeeze The second question is whether the On the other hand, the more and match funding was acknowledged National Assembly will have to find its fundamental objection of the lack of a by the First Minister in an interview with share of match funding from within the needs base for the Barnett formula John Humphreys on the BBC Radio 4 existing block grant. At the time of would not be addressed by this Today programme on 19 March 2000: writing it appears that once again the approach. Moreover, it might make the Welsh Assembly Government will have chances of eventual replacement of the “The Barnett Formula is now putting to do so. As a result key public services formula even more remote. However, if a lot of pressure on expenditure in such as health and education will be the First Minister is right in believing that Wales. We now cannot keep up with subject yet again to a double squeeze: it will not be replaced as long as Gordon the percentage increases in health Barnett convergence plus the need to Brown is Chancellor of the Exchequer (or and education that the Department find match funding. Prime Minister) then alternative of Health and the Department of approaches need to be considered. Education and Employment are doing The effect of the squeeze is apparent in England. Convergence is crippling from the Treasury’s latest Public A second objection to seeking removal us at the moment and that is before Expenditure Statistical Analysis. of the Barnett squeeze is that, in its the Objective One factor kicks in Spending per head on health in Wales latest Pre-Budget Report in December from April.” has declined from 109 per cent of the UK 2005, the Government projects much average in 1999-00 to 103 per cent in lower, real increases in total public These comments are an interesting 2004-05. In the case of education the spending, just 1.9 per cent a year from contrast to those of Finance Minister relative spend has declined from 105 per 2008 onwards for the UK as a whole. Sue Essex on 18 January 2006 when cent in 1999-00 to 100 per cent in 2004-05. Consequently the Barnett squeeze will she claimed in the Assembly: be quite small since the lower the Due to the double squeeze Wales can growth in devolved public expenditure “The Barnett mechanism and expect a continuation of this downward the lower the squeeze. The main focus statement of funding policy have trend in relative spending and it may well of debate will then turn to the overall provided a clear context for fair be that spending in Wales on key services lower, real growth in public spending financial settlements for Wales.” such as education will dip below the level across the UK. in England. The cumulative effect of the The First Minister understood that even if Barnett squeeze and the need to find However, it should be noted that in the the EU funds for Objective 1 were passed match funding from within the existing case of England growth in public on to Wales by the Treasury, the block grant is already apparent and will expenditure after 2008 will be Assembly Government would still have continue in the coming years unless the concentrated on health and education to find hundreds of millions of pounds of Barnett Formula is replaced or, at a (services that are devolved in the case of match funding from within the existing minimum, modified to stop the squeeze. Wales) and the real squeeze will come in block grant. In the event a proportion, other areas, many of which are not highly but not all, of the EU funds were passed devolved, for example defence and social on to Wales. However, the need to find protection. Given the high proportion of match funding meant reducing other the block grant represented by health and spending programmes covered by the education it follows that the block grant block grant, and in particular health and 16 should grow by significantly more than education. Thus Wales is subject to a • Eurfyl ap Gwilym sits on the boards of 1.9 per cent in real terms. Non-devolved double squeeze – the Barnett squeeze a number of public companies and is a public spending will grow by significantly and the need to find match funding from member of Plaid Cymru’s Economic less (or even contract). within the block grant. Policy Commission.

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police 1 £77m merger

he debate over creating a services’: counter terrorism, serious national Welsh police force organised and cross force crime, t through a merger of the four critical incident management, murder existing regional forces was largely investigations, public order events and pre-empted last December when the strategic road policing. He came to the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, closely conclusion that many existing forces followed by Welsh Secretary Peter were not fit for purpose: Hain, declared in favour of the creation of strategic forces across England and “The organisation of service delivery Wales. must be on a scale large enough to respond dynamically, but local Clarke set a very challenging deadline enough to understand the diverse for police authorities to submit content within which it operates.” business cases for change. However, as the 23rd December deadline O’Connor’s study suggests that forces approached, no police authority had over 4,000 officers are more likely to submitted a full business case despite reach the required standard. For Clarke’s offer of financial incentives to example, large forces have Major rhobert lewis agree to mergers. Investigation Teams. Without such teams, major investigations might discusses the The case for change had been made by abstract too many officers from patrol HM Inspector of Constabulary Denis duties, starving local policing of arguments for O’Connor in a landmark report Closing resources. the Gap a few months earlier. The ’gap’ an all-Wales in question was identified as the However, there appears to be no real delivery of effective police services at significance in the figure of 4,000 police force the level of Wales and the English officers, other than a belief that regions. medium-sized forces are more capable of rapidly dealing with a wider range of O’Connor examined the preparedness incidents than smaller forces. Certainly, of the 43 English and Welsh forces to the Association of Police Authorities deal with the so-called ’protective does not accept the case made by

welsh police force vital statistics

Police Authority Population Area Number of Number of Number of Av. Police (million) (million) Police Officers Police Staff Authority payment for hectares Members Band D Council Tax Dyfed Powys 0.47 1.08 1,183 566 19 £143 Gwent 0.55 0.12 1,438 786 17 £145 North Wales 0.65 0.29 1,679 930 17 £158 South Wales 1.22 0.10 3,316 1,699 19 £120 17 Totals 2.89 1.59 7,616 3,981 72 – Source: Dyfed-Powys Police Authority website

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O’Connor for the creation of strategic by a joint-police project team as £77 forces, voicing concerns about the million. Who will pay for this? For the funding, local accountability and moment, many local politicians regard timescales of mergers. Nevertheless, this question as a massive obstacle to some authorities have indicated their change. preferences to amalgamate or to stand alone and some chief constables have In such a short consultation period, the made their views known independently financial concerns of merger have of their authorities. overshadowed other reservations about an all-Wales force. One is that In their oral evidence to the Welsh Affairs Wales is unlike any proposed English Committee last December, the four Chief ‘super-force’. In England Constables of the Welsh forces, amalgamations are likely to be based principally through their chair Terence on relatively close groups of police Grange, discussed options for change forces, something precluded in Wales based only on the Welsh forces. The because of the overriding need to keep restriction of options to ‘within Wales’ is the Welsh forces together. partly pragmatic because of the different way that Welsh forces are funded. Quite apart from its cultural diversity, Wales is much bigger than any However, since much serious crime in proposed English force area and its north and south Wales originates from north-south communications are Merseyside and Bristol, it might be appalling. The Chief Constable of North considered surprising that Wales, Richard Brunstrom, reminds us amalgamations across the English of one of the issues that plague the border had not been seriously administration of Wales at all levels, by considered. The absence of such an noting that it takes longer to get from option was eloquently explained by north Wales to Cardiff than from north Chief Constable Grange in a way that Wales to London. For him, the demonstrates how the National transport infrastructure is a national Assembly has begun to alter mindsets: characteristic which needs to be factored in when coming up with ideas “We have a geographic and cultural for policing Wales. One way or another construct and the country is called an all-Wales force is a compromise for ’Wales’. It seems to me that there all four forces, but it is perhaps the is no real argument for creating a North Wales force that would police force that was part in England compromise the most. and part in Wales. We have a country. It seems to me we should Richard Brunstrom has also ably police our country.” dissected government strategy. By restricting the criteria for change to All Welsh police authorities and forces measurements of a force’s capability to acknowledge that the only option that deliver protective services and by the meets the Home Office’s criteria on very tight timescales imposed on protective services is an all-Wales force. ‘consultation’, the other consequences With some reservations the three Chief of re-structuring are getting ignored. Constables leading the Gwent, Dyfed- Powys and South Wales forces, have One consequence of re-structuring supported the formation of an all-Wales might be a weakening of the force. At the same time, all four police accountability of the police within an authorities agree that re-organisation all-Wales force. Many citizens echo the 18 will be expensive. Economies of scale, views of local political representatives if they do exist, would lie in the longer in valuing the accountability that term and the cost of re-organisation to smaller forces bring. My own view is form such a force has been estimated that while re-structuring will reduce the

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number of representatives on an all- In fact, the 16 basic command units in cultural sensibilities which have Wales police authority, this will not the existing Welsh forces generally contributed to a distinctive Welsh necessarily cause serious damage to have better detection rates than educational system. Would the the relationships between the police similarly-sized units in England. At first devolution of police control to the services and the people they serve. sight, it might appear than an all-Wales Welsh Assembly Government would force would simply operate above the produce either greater resources or a Part of the accountability argument is local command units which might distinctive structure? With policing allied with a pride of local identity. On the continue roughly as now. However, increasingly super-regional and heavily other hand the identity of police forces there are fears that an all-Wales force influenced by developments in England has already been weakened by previous will slowly drain resources from rural to and the Home Office, the answer re-organisations as is the case of the urban areas. In the long-term it is depends upon the precise nature and geographically vast Dyfed-Powys and the difficult to see how the Chief Constable extent of the devolution and upon culturally diverse North Wales force areas. of an all-Wales force could resist such a whether or not the current complex In both these cases, the police authorities transfer of resources in the light of very and piecemeal funding formula is are already regional in composition. As different crime levels throughout Wales. revised. Nonetheless, Minister for one resident of Powys put it: Social Justice and Regeneration Despite all the discussion, it is Minister Edwina Hart gave an “I feel no more affinity to Dyfed- becoming increasingly clear that there unequivocal statement on likely policy Powys than I would to a combined will be change and the most likely differences to the Richard Commission: Wales force. If I have any affinity at outcome will be an all-Wales force. The all, it is for my local police division Home Secretary has the power to “When we look at the priorities in (basic command unit) and it enforce mergers but would it seriously terms of the Home Office and top is how it performs that inflame matters if he used them? For slicing of police funding for matters most to me.” Welsh observers, there is another big priorities, those priorities are not question to be answered. Will the all- Welsh priorities in terms of the Such observations serve Wales force come under the agenda. They are very much a to emphasise though, jurisdiction of the National metropolitan and city agenda’.” that in deciding police Assembly? structures local policing For Wales’s Chief Constables, ready is at least as important Comparisons with the transfer access to Welsh Ministers is a real as regional or of the responsibilities for the advantage that is not available to their national policing. Fire and Ambulance and Education English colleagues. Devolution of the Perhaps more significant services from Westminster to police to the Assembly Government is the public perception of Cardiff are unproductive. The would simplify lines of communication the way that their Fire and Ambulance Services further and there does appear to be an police forces deal are relatively small with expectation that in the long-term police with low-level crime little or no UK services will be devolved. and anti-social infrastructure. behaviour. Education has However, at present the Westminster government is in no mood to devolve policing, with successive Westminster Ministers rejecting such a change for the foreseeable future. Even so, here may yet be an ironic twist to the subject. The creation of an all-Wales police force, partly by imposition of the Home Office, is likely to strengthen such demands for devolution and one can expect this subject to resurface regularly in the coming years.

19 • Rhobert Lewis is Director for the Centre for Police Sciences at the University of Glamorgan.

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police 2 nation builder

But an insignificant backwater the process of kindling a true spirit of And a bit of a pain to those who nationhood. Who can help but feel an believe in order. upwelling pride when standing in our iconic new Senedd, looking down into As part of the ‘mewnlifiad’, the flood of the debating chamber or out beyond incomers to Wales, I find that I the steel, slate, glass and wood to the empathise with Parry-Williams’ evident Bay glittering in the new dawn? The frustration, perhaps the more so as a Government of Wales Bill can only migrant to north Wales in particular. The strengthen this renaissance, and the continuing mutual suspicion between second referendum seems both the ‘Gogs’ and the ‘Hwntws’, between inevitable and winnable. But the most Cymro and Sais, is as irritating and important reason for a nation state to unnecessary on a daily basis as it is exist is to protect the lives, and then unhelpful to the nascence of Wales as a the way of life, of its citizens. In the modern European country on a longer words of Jeremy Bentham the aim of timescale. Why do we spend so much government must be to provide for the time and effort on trying to prove that “greatest good of the greatest the others, whomever they may be, have number”. I concur. What then, of police deceived or robbed us, and so little on restructuring? richard brunstrom says striving to achieve our true potential as a unified whole, a single country? As Rhobert Lewis points out in his an all-Wales force accompanying article, plans to create a The geography, demography and single police force in Wales are well should be part of the feeble transport infrastructure of advanced. Following the Home contemporary Wales undoubtedly Secretary’s public endorsement of the devolution process assist those who wish to expend their case for change set out by HM Inspector energies in that ancient Celtic tradition of Constabulary Denis O’Connor in his of fighting amongst ourselves. But report Closing the Gap, things have n his famous 1949 poem Hon surely we can and must now rise moved rapidly, with Charles Clarke Professor Sir TH Parry-Williams above this. Wales, as Sir Jeremy making a formal statement on 3 March i railed against our notorious Beecham will shortly announce, truly of his intention to merge the four Welsh tendency to squabble: does have the potential for excellence existing Welsh forces into one with at the European level. Our size (‘pawb effect from 1 April 2007. A four month Beth yw’r ots gennyf i am Gymru? yn nabod pawb’) offers real benefits period for objections commenced Damwain a hap yw fy mod yn ei that are simply unattainable on the immediately and is expected to be libart yn byw other side of the border. However, to followed by the necessary Order being Nid yw hon ar fap yn ddim byd achieve that of which we are capable confirmed, after Parliamentary scrutiny, Ond cilcyn o ddaear mewn cilfach the old internal animosities will have to on 25 July this year. gefn be consigned to history. We are one Ac yn dipyn o boendod i’r rhai sy’n real country for the first time in O’Connor claims that only so-called credu mewn trefn. hundreds of years (the first time ever, ‘strategic forces’ of 4,000 officers or more perhaps), and in my opinion we simply (we have 7,500 in Wales) have the 20 What do I care about Wales? must stand together as a nation united. resilience and flexibility to deliver the It’s nothing but chance that I live in seven essential protective services that her backyard Of course, the inception of the he identifies, including homicide This place on a map is nothing Assembly has helped enormously in investigation, counter-terrorism, and

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emergency planning, to the enhanced O’Connor’s work also lacks a credible country whose outlook and values are level deemed necessary while financial plan. His naïve and blithe strongly based in our network of local simultaneously ensuring that local assumption that most of the communities, but a nation nonetheless: neighbourhood policing can continue (substantial) costs of enhancing the uninterrupted. He dismisses all other protective services can be met from Mi glywaf grafangau Cymru’n options, such as forms of partnership economy of scale savings based upon dirdynnu fy mron and collaboration, out of hand. Instead, the simplistic tenet that ’big is beautiful’ Duw a’m gwaredo ni allaf ddianc he plumps for large-scale reorganisation ignores the lessons from history to a rhag hon. across England and Wales as the only degree that is worrying. More new method likely to deliver the goods. money from London is required if the I feel the talons of Wales tearing my gap is to be satisfactorily closed. breast The O’Connor report has not received Negotiations continue. God help me I can’t escape from her. academic acclaim. In fact it has been deservedly, comprehensively and widely ridiculed. But O’Connor is not an academic, and the Home Secretary is clearly quite entitled to say (as he has) that he prefers the professional advice of the Inspectorate of Constabulary to that of O’Connor’s professorial critics. All four existing Chief Constables in Wales agree with O’Connor’s basic thesis. That is to say, there is indeed an identifiable gap in the provision of these vital protective services. Something must therefore be done, and quickly.

O’Connor’s original work, and the Home Secretary’s initial plans, took no account of the self-evident (to us Welsh) fact that Wales is different. Our geography, demography and transport infrastructure demand that Wales be governed as a The National Assemblies new debating chamber, pictured during the opening ceremony on 1st March 2006: country of regions. It is an unalterable “The inception of the Assembly has helped enormously in the process of kindling a true spirit of nationhood.” fact that it takes more or less the same time to travel by train from London to But there are additional reasons, specific to Whatever their background, almost all Edinburgh as it does from Llandudno to Wales, for supporting the creation of the those I have met in Wales share a Cardiff. Governance of an all-Wales police Heddlu Cymru/Police Service of Wales. The passionate belief in our country, a belief service will require regional and local delivery of domestic peace and tranquillity is we should exploit. Building a locally structures if the service is not to become another justification for the existence of based national police force will help us do unacceptably remote from the people. governments. Wales, as a small to medium- so. This is a big step, but if done properly, sized self-governing country, will benefit it will be the right one. As Lloyd George A decision making process that is a five enormously from one national police force, once memorably said: “Don’t be afraid to hour journey away will not even be working closely with both government and take a big step if one is indicated. You workable, let alone acceptable. A people. This is possible in Wales to an can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps”. regional police committee to provide extent unimaginable in England. democratic oversight (all the more important in light of the substantial The creation of the new force has the potential, centralisation of police governance perhaps beyond any other public service, to contained in the Police and Justice Bill act as a force for good in binding the nation • Richard Brunstrom is Chief Constable currently in Parliament) and a together. It has the potential to banish the of North Wales Police. This article is regionally accountable ’top cop’ are residues of our fractious past and to assist in based on an address he gave to an IWA 21 both necessary. Each requires a the development of the new, confident future. North Wales Branch dinner at the Plas specific amendment to primary As Parry-Williams recognised in Hon, having Maenan Hotel near Llanwrst at the end legislation. gone back to his roots in Rhyd Ddu, Wales is a of March 2006.

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politics and policy north wales voice needed

he decisions to merge the WDA, This flew in the face of any logic or, ELWa and the Wales Tourist more importantly, the strategic t Board into the Assembly imperative of having a relative degree Government will mean that there is of self-determination in terms of now one body responsible for many dealing with many sensitive local issues aspects of economic development for which executives 180 miles away in within north Wales, albeit split across their offices overlooking Cardiff Castle departments. The parallel decision to would have little concern. It also base the Assembly Government’s showed little appreciation of the northern headquarters at Llandudno excellent work that the WDA’s North Junction, equidistant from the furthest Wales Division, working in partnership reaches of the region, could be with other bodies, had undertaken considered political genius, if one were within the region over a relatively short not cynical enough to ask whether this space of time. In fact, my view at the location would have been chosen if the time was that the whole concept of old Hotpoint site had not been devolution within Wales amongst its available. public bodies was being undermined at a crucial period in the economic future Of course, 18 months ago many of the nation. would never have envisaged that the management of economic Whether the timing of the dylan jones-evans development in north Wales would announcement to light the flame under have taken this turn. In 2004, under the bonfire of the Quangos was a questions the the guidance of its chief executive planned strategic decision, a sop to Graham Hawker, the WDA had done Labour MPs worrying about further centralisation what many of us had feared through powers for the Assembly, or a result of our dealings with the Cardiff office, the power struggle between the of power in namely developed a strategy whereby Minister for Economic Development the regional offices would be and the chief executive of the WDA, is Cardiff Bay downgraded and eventually something we will have to await in abolished. Rhodri Morgan’s memoirs.

north wales economic profile

• Flintshire and Wrexham had the highest gross value added (GVA) per head within the region in 2003 of £15,834, although in relative terms, this declined from 101 per cent of the UK level in 1999 to 95 per cent in 2003. • The lowest level of prosperity within north Wales is to be found in Anglesey, at £8,747 per head, which equates to just 54 per cent of the UK level. Coincidentally, Anglesey is also the poorest region in the whole of the UK. • Gwynedd experienced one of the largest increases in GVA in Wales in the period 1999-2003 with a growth of 33.2 per cent, 50 per cent higher than the average Welsh growth rate and the same growth rate as Cardiff. Only five other regions out of 131 NUTs 3 regions in the UK have shown a higher growth rate since 1999. 22 • Prosperity in Conwy and Denbighshire has grown at the same rate as that of the Welsh economy, although the level of prosperity remains at 80 per cent of the Welsh average at £10,071 per head.

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However, the immediate side-effect for the regional governance of the north Wales economy is that Graham Hawker’s grand centralisation strategy was immediately abolished. Inadvertently, and probably accidentally, the concept of a localised strategic approach to the economic development of the four regions of Wales was saved, for the time being at least.

Therefore, the merger of the Sponsored Public Bodies into the Welsh Assembly Government has potentially given north Wales an opportunity to recast itself economically. Whether this opportunity will now be grasped is in the hands of those appointed to manage the process. Certainly, they will need to resist the urge for centralisation of control, despite the dispersed geographical location of Assembly Government offices.

The creation of an ‘economic powerhouse’ in Llandudno Junction has meant that much of the focus has been taken away from the vital role A stretch of the A470 pictured to the north of Dolgellau. It is still very much a rural road and one of the major difficulties in making the voters of north Wales “aware of the Assembly’s powers and influence over that local authorities play in economic their daily lives”. development, education, planning and transport infrastructure. This is an issue that cannot, and should the main economic bodies? Does this not, be taken lightly. In 2003, I mean that, over time, the economic Top down strategies need to be undertook an exercise for the WDA governance of north Wales will be relevant to organisations operating on which examined the links between the dominated by the Assembly the ground. An Assembly Government individual economic development Government, with scant regard for the official said recently that he welcomed plans of the four local authorities in other public and private bodies the proposal to commission research north west Wales and various other strategies and imperatives? On the to explore how the existing North national strategies. Not surprisingly, other hand, will local authorities Wales Development Strategy and the there was very little connectivity develop their own strategies whilst Wales Spatial Plan “could between what was happening at a local paying lip service to the national interconnect”. Surely, this exercise level, and other national strategies strategy? should already have been undertaken such as Pathways to Prosperity or, for prior to the publication of the Spatial the four counties, any strong reflection Of course, north Wales already has a Plan, especially given that the North of key priorities between the work of body that is batting for it. Founded in Wales Development Plan has been the local economic partnerships and 1996, the North Wales Economic Forum developed and agreed by all the main the Single Programming Document – currently comprises representation public and private bodies in the region? the main strategy for the Objective 1 from all of the key agencies in the More importantly, there is little programme. region, as well as business evidence that the Wales Spatial Plan representative organisations. Its five has considered the different economic Therefore, in terms of the economic key aims are to promote investment in development strategies of the six north governance of north Wales, could one business, people and communities, 23 Wales local authorities prior to its argue that there is suddenly an infrastructure, the image of north publication, although there has been imposition of a strategy that has been Wales; and in intellectual capital. It consultation afterwards. developed outside with little input from does this through:

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politics and policy

• Lobbying the Government of the organisation, and the other three worst turnout of any constituency in United Kingdom, the Welsh economic forums in southern Wales, to Wales, with only a quarter of the Assembly Government, EU bodies slowly fade away without having any electorate going to the ballot box. and others, as the strategic voice for direct responsibility for their demise. Contrast this with the general election, north Wales. That may well come to pass, but over where over 60 per cent of the north • Developing and securing the next year there is certainly a rare Wales electorate voted, including those commitments to pan-north Wales opportunity for other parts of the in Alun and Deeside. strategies. public sector, along with • Facilitating joint thinking and representatives of the private sector, to Do we know why more people vote in working. establish an independent body to UK elections when important issues • Exchanging examples of best advise the Minister and the Assembly such as health and education are practice, securing synergies and Government offices in north Wales. devolved issues? Surely one of the key minimising duplication of activity. challenges for all political parties is to • Researching and monitoring the One change would be to give greater convince people across north Wales economy and generally promoting representation to the private sector in that it makes a positive difference to north Wales. north Wales. The private sector, or its their families and their communities. A representative bodies, is not as far greater effort is needed to ensure Whilst it is generally recognised that strong as you would find in south that voters are aware of the the current activities of the Forum are Wales and, probably because of the Assembly’s powers and influence over key to the future of North Wales and industrial strength of Flintshire and their daily lives. that such a partnership is an effective Wrexham, tends to be concentrated way of identifying and addressing in the north east. major issues, there have been concerns about its future now the WDA, Wales The success of the Forum in bringing Tourist Board and ELWa have been together different bodies across north absorbed into the civil service. Wales suggests that there should be Although the Assembly Government greater co-operation amongst the has stated that it will continue to public and private sectors. Despite the provide the same level of funding as changes to the economic development those three bodies, it has also said it function of the Assembly Government, will review the arrangement within the there is still a requirement for a body next year. that brings together all organisations in north Wales to ensure it has This does not indicate that there is a distinctive voice within the corridors of guarantee of continuing financial Cardiff Bay. support for the Forum at the same level, especially as the Assembly There will continue to be changes to Government is not a full member but the governance of north Wales as the instead has taken observer status. National Assembly matures and, after There would not be much common 2007, gains new powers and sense for a government to support a responsibilities. North Wales needs to body that may wish to criticise its have a powerful voice in Cardiff Bay, policies. In this respect, perhaps the either through individual Assembly real question for the remaining Members or through the creation of • Professor Dylan Jones-Evans is Deputy members of the Forum is whether institutions that will represent it. Director of the Centre for Advanced they wish to continue funding its role Indeed, the legitimacy of the Assembly Studies at Cardiff University and as the main consultative body for pan itself will depend on north Wales prospective Conservative Assembly north Wales economic development voters believing it can make a candidate for Aberconwy. This article is when the main economic difference to their daily lives, rather an extract from the keynote development organisation has taken a than being an expensive talking shop a presentation he gave to the IWA peripheral role? four hour drive or train journey away. conference The Future Governance of 24 North Wales held in Caernarfon in Removing the Assembly Government In 2003, only 37.4 per cent of the February 2006. The full text can be from the forum, is perhaps the population bothered to turn out to found on the IWA website Minister’s way of allowing this vote, and Alun and Deeside had the www.iwa.org.uk

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ferdinand mount says everything in Britain has been modernised except its politics making politics breathe

After eighteen months of investigation, politician Lord Hailsham more rudely the final report of the Power Inquiry, described in 1976 as “elective published in February 2006, was a dictatorship”. devastating critique of the state of formal democracy in Britain. The And if the political parties attract only a Inquiry, chaired by Helena Kennedy QC tiny fraction of the members they used with myself as a member, was an to, then the pool from which our independent investigation into the political leaders are recruited shrinks to condition of democracy in Britain, a puddle. Our representatives cease to funded by the Joseph Rowntree be representative. Look how the Charitable and Reform Trusts. The working classes have largely central question it faced was why disappeared both from the political parties and elections have constituency parties and from the been a growing turn-off for years while House of Commons. many of us actively support campaigns such as Greenpeace or the Countryside For this political withering away is not Alliance. And millions more take part in inflicted equally across the nation. The charity or community work. most striking declines are to be found in the voting patterns of the young, the The cause is not apathy. The problem poor and some of the ethnic minorities. oes it really matter if people is that we don’t feel we have real The worst off are beginning to don’t vote? Why should we influence over the decisions made in disappear from the political radar. worry if some of us prefer to our name. The need for a solution is Apathy entrenches political inequality. d urgent. And that solution is radical. Those who have most to complain of sink into a sudoku or watch the sushi bar go round rather than turn out on a Nothing less than a major programme tend to complain the least. Resentment wet Thursday night to choose between of reform to give power back to the and despair drain out of conventional two candidates we have never heard people of Britain..." politics to well up in less manageable, of? Could it even be a signal of general more dangerous forms of social action. contentment that joining political When little more than 20% of the parties has become such an esoteric electorate has voted for the winning In any case, the contentment alibi just hobby? Perhaps there is even an old party, as in the United Kingdom does not wash. Every opinion poll on Chinese proverb which says “Happy is general election of May 2005, the subject shows that the non-voters the country with a low turnout”. legitimacy begins to drain away. If only do not stay away because they are just over half of us bother to vote at all happy with their lot. They stay away There have been times when I shared in national elections and scarcely a because they believe that voting won’t this indulgence towards political third in local elections, the bureaucracy make a blind bit of difference. apathy. I even had a soft spot for that begins to think of elections as a anarchist slogan of the 1960s “Don’t tiresome and increasingly insignificant Over the past few months even vote, it only encourages them”. But interruption in its continuous exercise Britain’s politicians have woken up to increasingly I have been driven, rather of power. What develops is something the fact that something is badly wrong. reluctantly, to the conclusion that that Britain’s foreign secretary Jack Reforming the political system may be 25 political apathy is not such an innocent Straw calls (approvingly, I am a subject for political anoraks, but phenomenon. It has consequences – astonished to say) “executive when it is raining this hard, anoraks are and victims. democracy” and the Conservative what you need. The department of

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constitutional affairs an extra penny, then your contains a whole section £3 would stay in the public under Harriet Harman trying treasury to be spent on to devise ways of making hospitals and tanks. politics attractive again. The new Conservative Party Fifth, people may still be leader David Cameron has deterred from voting if set up one of his task forces they feel that their vote under Kenneth Clarke with does not make any much the same remit. difference, which in safe seats it doesn’t. (Nothing The guts of our was more off-putting at the Commission’s diagnosis is 2005 general election than that British politics remains the spectacle of designed for an age that Conservative and Labour has gone, and gone for strategists boasting that ever: an age of fixed and they needed only to all-encompassing social canvass the 2% of voters in allegiances and marginal seats who were organisations, an age when going to make the voters having made their difference and whose choice were content to names they had locked leave the government to get away in their “voter on with it, expecting no further voice in Helena Kennedy QC, Chair of the Power Inquiry. vaults”.) The only answer is to affairs for the next four or five years. introduce some form of responsive Today disillusion has seeped so far into are amazed that our electoral registers electoral system in which every vote the whole process that it is hard to see are so incomplete and out of date. cast goes towards helping a candidate how the old mutual trust and public to get elected. I have spouted all the acceptance could be revived without Third, the political system has to make arguments against proportional reform right across the system. sure that you can have a real say in who representation myself in the past. Tinkering with one bit at a time, is to represent you. Every party needs to David Cameron and Ken Clarke are however ingenious, will only open up its procedures for candidate spouting them still. But I have been exacerbate the sense of frustration selection to non-party members. converted to reform, not so much when it becomes obvious that the rest because it is fairer than first-past-the- of the system has not changed at all. Fourth, party funding has to be post but because it is the only way to cleaned up. We suggest limits on galvanise the parties to canvass every To start at the beginning: if you fail to individual donations of £10,000 and ward in every seat. catch the interest of the young as they on group donations of £100 per grow up, you are unlikely to excite member. Millionaires could still give But we cannot stop there. The sweep them later on. So our first proposal is large sums to a pressure group of of reform has to go beyond the ballot- that all young people must be actively their fancy but the pressure group box. For the voting system can be as introduced to their rights and duties as would need to have any political democratic as you like, but it still won’t citizens at the earliest opportunity. We donations authorised by a vote of its draw the disenchanted to the polling think this means before they leave members. British politics is also station if the House of Commons school. So, votes at 16, preceded by a generally underfunded by continues to be popularly regarded as practical and serious course in the comparison both with its own past a rubberstamp and a house of history and workings of the British and with other social activities today. correction for the independently political system. So we propose an ingenious but minded in which the whips always modest wheeze for public funding, have the last word. We have to Second, voters need to be registered, especially designed to help parties rebalance power at the centre too. individually and automatically, not as without sugar daddies. At each 26 members of a household (and thus, so election, every voter would be able to After Charlie Falconer and Tony Blair often, only if Dad bothers to fill in the nominate a local political party to made such a hopeless mess of form). Britain’s opposite numbers in receive, say, £3. If you do not vote or reforming the law lords, the former (as countries like Germany and Sweden you do not want the bastards to have the reluctant lord chancellor) and Harry

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politics and policy

Woolf (the lord chief justice) signed which would set precise limits on the all over the world – from Brazil to what they called a “concordat” – a kiss- EU’s powers – as the rejected British Columbia to Estonia – and-make-up agreement reached in European constitution so signally nations are experimenting with new January 2004 setting out the duties and failed to do – and give national forms of decision-making. rights of judges and entrenching their parliaments the right to question and independence. even reject proposals from the The thought of letting ordinary voters European Commission before they this close to the levers of power makes We need two more such concordats. become set in concrete.) the most high-minded liberals a little The first would be between parliament queasy. Won’t the great unwashed start and government, to give members of Concordats of this sort can, I think, give voting to string up undesirables? parliament much greater powers to clear voice to the proper division of Extensive research, carried out for the introduce legislation and hold the powers without the whole weary Power commission by Graham Smith government to account through business of trying to put together and of Southampton University, is genuinely independent select pass a comprehensive written reassuring. The experience of all these committees. It beggars description, for constitution. But even a better devices is that people vote soberly and example, that we have never had a full balanced system with more real after careful reflection. Most politicians independent inquiry into the foot-and- powers for MPs and local councillors are glad to embrace the outcomes, mouth fiasco in 2001 or the decision to will still leave voters without much of a realising that their authority is go to war in Iraq in 2003. direct voice between elections. There strengthened rather than undermined needs to be another channel. by listening directly to the voice of the The second concordat would set out people. the division of powers between Representative democracy will only central and local government. There benefit from juicing up by a This may seem an ambitious is no other country I can think of measure of direct participation. In programme, spread as it is over three where government can so casually places like Switzerland and fronts: reviving elections and parties, bully and emasculate local councils. California, holding referenda on rebalancing our institutions, and giving (Personally, I would like to see a third controversial issues, especially voters a direct say in national and local concordat, between the United those that cut across party lines, has decisions. But we should reflect that Kingdom and the European Union, long been part of the furniture. Now, over the past twenty-five years we have reformed almost everything in The full report of the Power Inquiry can be downloaded from its website www.powerinquiry.org Britain from the trade unions to soccer’s offside rule. The one area that remains more or less just as it was is the political system, which has become shabby, vandalised and unloved like a bus shelter where the buses don’t stop any more. Time, I think, to take pity on a set of British institutions which used to be so widely envied and imitated and could be made a source of pride again.

• Ferdinand Mount is a former Editor of The Spectator and author of The British Constitution Now. This article originally appeared on the 27 international news magazine website www.OpenDemocracy.net in February 2006.

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economy safe haven

he construction of two and their operation have provided much terminals at Milford Haven for of the focus for local residents and t the receipt of Liquefied Natural campaign groups, concerns which have Gas (LNG) towards the end of 2007 will inevitably heightened since the fire at have massive implications for the local the Buncefield oil depot in Hertfordshire economy and its communities. Their in December 2005. construction at South Hook and Waterston will make the town the largest LNG LNG is natural gas that has been receiving terminal complex in Europe. processed to remove impurities and heavy hydrocarbons and then cooled The two terminals are separately and condensed into liquid form. LNG operated. The South Hook is approximately 1/640th the volume development on the western side of of natural gas at standard Milford Haven, which will be temperature and pressure, making it completed by the end of 2009 at a cost much more cost-efficient to transport. of £580 million, is being developed by Specially designed double-hulled Exxon Mobil and Qatargas. At tankers carrying LNG will start gillian bristow Waterston, on the eastern side of the arriving in Milford Haven by the end town, £279 million will be spent on the of 2007 where it will be turned back asks whether enough Dragon LNG terminal, by BG and into natural gas before being fed into Petronas. The scale of these projects the UK gas supply through the is being done to cannot be underestimated. Running at pipeline network. full capacity, Milford Haven will involve the local ultimately provide in excess of 20 per A release of LNG presents a number of cent of the UK’s natural gas needs and hazards. Although it cannot explode like will import up to £4 billion’s worth of natural gas, it can create an intensely community in the LNG over the next 15 years. hot flame that rapidly evaporates more gas to create a ’pool fire’. The heat LNG development in The investment is seen as an answer to generated can burn people and many of Pembrokeshire’s economic buildings some considerable distance Pembrokeshire problems with the potential for away. A particularly big fear at Milford improved local employment concerns the jetty being renovated at opportunities, long-term spin-offs for the South Hook LNG terminal on the local suppliers and cheaper gas former oil refinery site. Some pilots fear supplies for industry both locally and a major accident could happen because indeed the rest of Wales. However, tankers coming into the haven have to serious questions surround both the pass within a few hundred metres of immediate and long-term economic, the jetty and at one point head directly social and environmental implications towards it. of the LNG industrial development in Milford. The development is clearly To date, however, there have been very contentious and potentially risky yet to few major LNG incidents globally. In date there is limited evidence that the part, this may reflect the small size of local community has been properly the industry. As the demand for LNG informed about and involved in grows, so statistically will the number of 28 relevant discussions around it. accidents that take place each year. Perhaps more importantly, the UK has There are a number of areas of concern. limited experience of operating and The safety issues around the terminals regulating LNG facilities. LNG expertise

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in the UK is still developing with only five sites holding more than 200 tonnes.

The key issue for Milford is whether appropriate risk assessments have The Jetty for the South Hook LNG terminal. been undertaken for the marine side of Some pilots fear a major accident could happen the operations and whether the results because tankers coming into the haven have to of those assessments have been pass within a few hundred metres of the jetty and at one point head directly towards it. factored into the planning process. Safety in the UK gas industry is usually assessed and controlled by the Health and Safety Executive which examined the shoreside operation during the planning process. However, because the Dragon and South Hook facilities form part of the administrative area of the Milford Haven Port Authority, the Health and Safety Executive did not carry out an assessment of the likelihood of an accident at sea.

This has created the somewhat incongruous situation whereby the Port Authority, acting as both regulator and financial beneficiary from the development of these facilities, has overall responsibility for assessing their safety. Moreover, the Port Authority has not released any details of their deliberations on the safety of these sites. This has raised concerns that safety issues have been glossed over in the pressure to develop the terminals and the desire to ensure the future security of the UK’s dwindling gas supply.

The economic and social impacts of the developments are also a cause for much local concern. On a positive note, the development of the LNG facilities and associated infrastructure constitutes a significant investment for the small Milford Haven and Pembrokeshire economies. Approximately 1,500 workers are already employed in the construction of the two terminals and the Council expect this figure to rise to 3,500 this year. This will generate additional expenditure for the local economy. Furthermore, Transco will be constructing a 72-mile pipeline from 29 Milford to Aberdulais, near Neath which is likely to employ in excess of 1,000 workers over the next three years.

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This aerial view shows how close the LNG facility is to the town of Milford Haven.

What is not clear, however, is the There is anecdotal evidence that evidence on the precise current and extent to which the local population is private sector tenants are losing their longer-term impacts of LNG. But the benefiting from these job homes as landlords terminate concerns and fears of the local opportunities. Unemployment in tenancies to switch to letting to LNG community are unlikely to be assuaged Pembrokeshire has fallen in the past workers because of the higher rents if they do not feel they are being year, bucking a trend which has seen that can be achieved. Pembrokeshire adequately consulted upon and much of the rest of Wales enduring a Council has reported a 25 per cent involved in relevant discussions around rise in the jobless total. increase in the number of the developments and their impacts. homelessness applications caused by Of course, it is difficult to isolate the LNG people losing private sector Certainly, the limited compensation for effect within this. While the corporations accommodation for reasons other than local communities living within the involved have stated their commitment to rent arrears. Pembrokeshire College shadow of these terminals secured by recruit locally and have placed some has closed its halls of residence to let the planning authorities from the contracts with local companies, they have out rooms to LNG workers. Meanwhile, developers represents a missed also acknowledged the skills gap in the rising costs in the purchase market opportunity. The development is still at local area and recruited an unknown have worsened the already an early phase and there is number of workers from outside and considerable difficulties faced by the considerable scope for trusting the indeed across Europe. Furthermore, the county’s first-time buyers. community with greater understanding long-term direct job opportunities at the of the relevant safety risks around LNG terminals will be fairly limited since they The lack of affordable housing caused and putting in place key skills, training are inevitably capital-intensive operations. by the LNG development is also and other policy packages to help It has also become clear that the gas will regarded as having other detrimental ensure there is maximum potential for be pumped out of Wales so the extent to effects including the creation of local economic and social benefit. which Welsh industry will benefit from additional strain on the transport cheaper energy as a result remains unclear. infrastructure, an increased incidence Nonetheless, thus far not enough has of crime, and difficulties in recruiting in been done to develop an equitable, just The influx of migrant workers is the health service as medical staff, approach to decision-making where creating other pressures in the faced with the prospect of having some of the power for governing the community with the already pressured nowhere to live in the county, are industrial development is given to the housing market appearing to take the being forced to seek employment stakeholders that are affected by it. brunt of the strain. During 2004, before elsewhere. Without this, the long-term community work had even begun on the LNG benefits from LNG in Milford must developments, Pembrokeshire had the Some of these effects may reflect the remain in question. 30 second highest house price to income consequences of an increased level of ratio in Wales with prices increasing by anxiety amongst local communities, • Dr Gillian Bristow, is an IWA Trustee 20 per cent. Since then they will have some of which may perhaps be undue. and lectures at School of City and risen higher still. There is a need for more robust Regional Planning, Cardiff University.

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economic strategy 1 government business

james foreman-peck argues that economic policy should address a worrying private sector deficit

n its latest economic strategy Welsh economy. Wages and Wales: A Vibrant Economy, productivity are relatively low in i published in November 2005, Wales primarily because of the mix of the Welsh Assembly Government jobs and industries. Output per head offers us processes, intentions and would be higher if 50,000 more aspirations. However, there is rather people entered the workforce to bring less emphasis on the policies that will inactivity rates down to the UK produce desired outcomes. average. Net migration into Wales of workers with children means more Areas are to be prioritized, indicators persons under 16s are added to the are to be tracked, and support is to be Welsh population than are lost by focused “where it can make most migration of the 16-24 age group, an difference.” The merger of the Welsh unremarked opportunity for the wider Development Agency, Wales Tourist diffusion of Welsh culture. Board and ELWa with the Welsh Assembly Government will “simplify Understandably less impressive is the Ministerial accountability; and provide chapter ‘Delivering on the framework’. opportunities to improve services to Leaving aside whether it is the users, creating a single, strong, framework we want delivering, the marketing hub to improve our reach question is what can the Assembly and impact.” Government do to encourage economic development? What economists look But Ministerial accountability is a legal for in such cases is a model of how a and political concept with little to do process works, to guide and assure the with economics. It is about allocating effectiveness of intervention. The responsibility for ensuring that public implied model behind the Assembly money is spent in the way the Government’s new strategy involves appropriate institutions have ‘coordination’ and ‘working with’ determined. What it does not do is various parties. Does this make sense? guarantee that the money will achieve the objectives intended. The merger One of the few genuinely witty will also provide opportunities for economics jokes in circulation is a deterioration in services to users, as variant of “how many Chicago has been the experience of so many economists does it take to change a reorganizations, at least temporarily. light bulb?” The answer is “None, because if the bulb needed changing, Much of the strategy displays fruit of the market would have done it the Assembly Government’s already.” The butt of the joke is the 31 Economic Policy Unit research view of markets as autonomous, self- programme. As a consequence it sufficient, and complete institutions for provides valuable insights into the organizing all social activity.

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A weaker version of this view, that markets are generally good ways to deliver most things, has become far more acceptable than a generation ago. The collapse of the Soviet empire was proof of the superiority of the market-based economies at supplying what people want, compared with central planning. Yet a substantial portion of our economy is still centrally planned. The National Health Service is the largest organisation in the UK allocating resources in this manner. Conceivably such institutions continue to exist because of recognition that even where markets could work they may not exist, particularly markets in information. Prices may not exist for certain products and services – they may be specific to a particular case – and people may be unaware of what they need to do to get what they want. We do not know what we do not know.

The extreme market position is that if it is in your interests to know something you will find it out, or at least you have a better chance of finding what you need than anybody else. Hours spent in coordinating meetings with public bodies, and filling out forms to apply for grants from them, are hours wasted on this view. Yet it is plausible that some coordination, cooperation and information exchange could be helpful, for such networking is one basis for certain successful activities clustering.

Anyway this seems to be the thinking behind the Knowledge Bank for Business unveiled with £14 million funding by Andrew Davies, Minister for Economic Development and two firms need to be really successful open the £30 million Institute of Transport at the end of September . for the policy to prove itself. Even so, if Advanced Telecommunication at The Knowledge Bank has identified 50 you ran a firm in competition with one University College, Swansea last smallish firms with rapid growth of those selected, you might object to December. This was a collaboration potential for which it will provide paying taxes to undermine your with many large telecom companies, “tailored support.” Each of them will profitability. as well as the Assembly Government, be provided with a commercial Traffic Wales and Lang O’Rourke. manager who will ensure they receive Universities fit naturally into this Reputedly, planning is already well the best support services available knowledge networking framework, at advanced for three spin-out companies. 32 from the public and private sectors. least in principle. As Assembly If they are launched successfully, Member for Swansea West, and a Jaafar Elmirghani, Professor of Optical This is different from the old policy of Swansea graduate, Andrew Davies Communications and the head of the ‘picking winners’ because only one or must have been especially gratified to Institute, will have shown that

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entrepreneurship can flourish figure 1: government spending as a % of GVA the research shows that jobs in Welsh Universities. 1992 – 2004 in public administration, health and education expanded by Much of the new strategy is some 12,000 (see Figure 2). concerned with financial support such as Objective So, insofar as education and One, and its replacement. health are all public sector The Chancellor’s Pre-Budget and there are no other public announcement of another sector organisations, private £28 million for Wales sector employment grew by through the operation of the one third less – a 7,000 Barnett formula might difference. There are two therefore seem timely. alternative interpretations, However, the extra money neither of which is amounts to about one fifth particularly comforting. The of one percent of the entire first is that without the public Welsh Assembly sector expansion, we would Government budget, and only have gained 7,000 jobs. will hardly be noticed. figure 2: sectoral changes in Welsh employment The second is that in the 2001-04 (’000) absence of the increase in the Quite independently of share of government financial support provided to spending in Welsh output, various organizations, Welsh private sector employment government is big business. would have increased by So much so that it raises more than 7,000 jobs. questions about any GDP (GVA) target. Government Why worry? Some private spending on services in sector market activity Wales is more than one half involves exporting and of GDP and the latest therefore contributes to a statistics show that the three more autonomous and public sectors of dynamic Welsh economy. At administration, education and best most public sector health, were producing more employment only does so ‘output’ than manufacturing by 2001. Even more important than the impact indirectly – for example, some sections And, of course they also employ far upon a GVA target is the of Welsh Higher Education are more people. consequence for the growth and substantial exporters, in the sense of sustainability of the economy. With selling to non-Welsh residents. A Yet the services of these sectors are this level of demand for public sector vibrant economy needs a prosperous not sold. They are not valued at employment and other resources, the export sector as well as good public market prices but at cost. So they state could be squeezing out the services. The indications are that the could be worth more or less than private sector. Perhaps not Welsh public-private balance is not yet the figures that are added in to surprisingly, this possibility receives right. calculate Gross Value Added. If no discussion in the Assembly people value these services at more Government’s latest economic than their cost then Welsh GVA is strategy, but it should. understated, and conversely. If these sectors were small the point would A helpful study from the Welsh not matter, but they are large and Statistical directorate, Gross employment expanding. Real government flows (or employment churn) for Wales’ spending per head in Wales rose by Economic and Labour Market (A. Nuaimi, • Professor James Foreman-Peck is one quarter between 1999 and 2004 November 2005) highlights what is at Director of the Welsh Institute for 33 and as a proportion of apparent stake. Between 2001 and 2004 there was Research in Economics and Welsh output exceeded one half (see an excess of 19,000 job gains over Development at the Cardiff Figure 1). losses. When broken down by sectors, Business School.

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economic strategy 2 carbon cutting

systems. Last year the UN’s Millennium competitive, growth-driven world of Ecosystem Assessment identified 14 Assembly Government thinking, this is other ecosystem services that, like nigh on impossible. atmospheric climate regulation, are being degraded or used unsustainably. If you’re about to turn the page, believing The UK Government’s 2005 Sustainable that nothing should stand in the way of Development Strategy Taking It On economic growth, answer this question accepted that: first. Which technologies will deliver the required 60 per cent decrease in CO2 “Increasing prosperity, in the UK emissions if, as predicted, economic and across the world, has allowed growth drives increasing consumption of many people to enjoy the benefits energy and resources? of goods and services which were once available to just a few. Remember, there are no examples Nevertheless, the environmental anywhere in the world of economic impacts of our consumption and growth being decoupled absolutely production patterns remain severe.” from resource use. Equally, there is no model, even from the most optimistic For many in the low-lying regions of advocates in the automobile or morgan parry argues the world, our prosperity leaves them aerospace industries, of how increased drowning as sea levels rise. Given the energy and resource efficiency will that the Assembly Assembly Government’s claimed keep up with increased consumption. leadership in matters of sustainable Government’s new development, it would be reasonable to On the electricity supply front, a expect its new economic development doubling of the nuclear capacity (the economic development strategy to address this paradigm shift, ultimate technological fix) would only and go further in proposing solutions. result in an eight per cent decrease in strategy needs a radically Yet despite a sound analysis of some of CO2 emissions. That is according to the the causes of economic inactivity and UK Sustainable Development different approach the benefits of community development Commission’s The Role of Nuclear and social enterprise, the Assembly Power in a Low-Carbon Economy, Government’s latest policy document published in 2006. Therefore a e’ve learned a great deal Wales: a Vibrant Economy is based on ’business as usual’ economic model since the Assembly’s the same economic philosophy as A will produce catastrophic climate w Government’s economic Winning Wales. change impacts and resource depletion development strategy A Winning Wales at a cost which will dwarf any short- was published in 2002. It fails to challenge any of the term economic gain. economic drivers of climate change. Climate change, has been established Instead the word ‘sustainable’ is bolted In constructing Wales a Vibrant as the most serious manifestation of on to the word ‘growth’ over thirty Economy, the Assembly Government unsustainable human activity, and the times, as if merely repeating the phrase has embraced a ‘competitive regions’ prognosis is worsening with every will make it meaningful. The document philosophy. This requires the month that passes. ignores the fact that to be sustainable development of a large city region in 34 the Welsh economy would need to the south east of Wales to But climate change is only one reduce its resource throughputs by a ‘agglomerate’ economic mass, with example of our dysfunctional factor of three, and its carbon intensity high-growth business sectors and new relationship with our life support by at least a factor of five. In the transport infrastructures.

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Yet the climate-change impacts of this Wales a Vibrant Economy acknowledges Assembly Government has prioritised model, arising from the infrastructure that “developing a low carbon support for new technologies which is an alone, would be astronomical. In a economy in all its aspects, including important component of a low-carbon paper A Sustainable Economy for Wales transport, will become of increasing future. Yet by investing public money in produced for Cynnal Cymru, the importance”. In the same breath, the climate-busting M4 Relief Road and Sustainable Development Forum for however, it implies that we can defer into the proposed intra-Wales air service, Wales, Dr Calvin Jones, of the Cardiff action to some point in the future. it is taking us in the opposite direction. Business School, notes that the competitive region model has little Since the climate impacts being felt A second possible strategy would play theoretical justification. He says it is today are the result of emissions made to Wales’s core strengths of what Wales inherently inefficient, encourages 20 years ago, and in those 20 years a Vibrant Economy describes as “strong development of derivative and adopted emissions have increased substantially, communities, a stunning natural policies rather than true policy we cannot afford that delay. True, the environment, and an exceptional innovation, and does not take proper account of the allocation of economic rents. He concludes that such a regional economic policy is “not just flawed, but potentially actively damaging to sustainable actions.”

Wales a Vibrant Economy admits that “the consequences of agglomeration for policy making are not straightforward, since it is difficult to change economic mass in a positive direction in the short or medium term.” In other words, it is difficult and even undesirable to change Wales in order to fit the chosen economic philosophy, and would negate any effort to plan spatially or support community development.

Since Wales will never achieve the ‘agglomeration factor’ of regions such as South-East England, then logic suggests it should develop its economy in a different direction. It is surprising therefore, and not a little alarming, that no such alternative model is offered. If Wales a Vibrant Economy was subjected to a Strategic Environmental Assessment (as may be required by EU Directive 2001/42/EC) alternatives would have to be considered.

A number alternative strategies suggest themselves. The Carbon Trust has described the path towards a low- carbon economy. In 2003 the Department of Trade and Industry published a White Paper Our energy future -creating a low carbon economy 35 on the same topic, although it was recently undermined by the Prime Cefyn Croes windfarm in mid Wales: “The Assembly Government should develop an alternative strategy based on a re-localised low-carbon model. ” Minister’s Energy Review.

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quality of life.” By re-localising some National Assembly has a duty to set out were fought and won because our aspects of our economic life, we would how it intends to produce a Scheme to technologies were developed faster automatically reinforce local promote Sustainable Development in than our opponents’ and our factories communities, reinvigorate local all its functions. There is no ambiguity were more productive. democracy and reduce environmental in the injunction that Sustainable impacts. Development must be the framework In all of this growth was an imperative: within which all Assembly Government more throughput, externalised costs, and Re-localisation is also the model that policy should be developed: with the ends justifying the means. This anticipates the future. At present is no longer possible. Henceforth, the energy costs are low (but rising) and “… the Scheme is the National means must be appropriate to the ends. labour is cheaper in south East Asia. As Assembly’s overarching strategic Development and renewal must replace a result production is ‘globalised’ and framework and sets out the vision growth as the economic objective. driven eastwards. However, as raw of a sustainable future for all of materials and energy become globally Wales where action for social, Climate change, resource depletion and scarcer, and labour costs in the economic and environmental species extinctions (all clear examples developing world rise, it will become improvement work together to of our breaching our environmental more efficient to produce goods locally, create positive change … all other limits) have replaced revolution, using local renewable energy and strategies sit beneath this empire and war as the challenge of the recycled materials. Wales is also well framework, their role being to age, together with the continuing provided with fresh water resources, underpin the delivery of a existence of absolute poverty in Africa. which globally will become a sustainable Wales.” All require a change in mind-sets significantly limiting economic factor. across the developed world. They will In March 2005, the Assembly not be addressed by the self-regarding At a recent Cynnal Cymru seminar, Government signed up to the Strategic competitive attitude exemplified by leading Welsh academics and Framework for Sustainable Wales a Vibrant Economy. practitioners from a range of economic Development, including the following disciplines came up with the following five principles: And in case there is any doubt that the principles for a sustainable economy. It • Living within environmental limits. evidence on environmental limits is should be one that: • Ensuring a strong, healthy and just less than compelling, or that it is an • Understands that society and its society. economic issue for us in Wales, economy are wholly dependent upon • Promoting good governance. consider the Millennium Ecosystem natural capital and ecosystem • Using sound science responsibly. Assessment. Published in March 2005, services. • Achieving a sustainable economy. this gives us a new understanding of • Accepts both the intrinsic and the basis of our economic wealth. It economic importance of those The new Framework definition of a was produced by 1,360 experts from 95 natural resources. sustainable economy has no mention countries. Guided by a board that • Does not rely solely on markets to of growth, acknowledging that it is a included representatives of five attach long-term value to concept (in the UK at least) whose time international conventions, five UN irreplaceable resources. has passed. Yet despite the rhetorical agencies, international scientific • Is mainly local and community-led in use of the word ‘sustainable’ in Wales a organizations, governments, and production, consumption work and Vibrant Economy, the underlying model leaders from the private sector, NGOs leisure. is deeply unsustainable. It is clear that and indigenous groups, the work took • Actively plans and regulates current the authors have not understood or four years to complete. It establishes socio-economic activity for a low- accepted that we live in a very different clearly that the human species, while carbon future. age, demanding a radical new buffered against environmental • Values improvements in welfare for economic philosophy. changes by culture and technology, is lower income groups more than fundamentally dependent on the flow increases in overall wealth. The industrial revolution was possible of ecosystem services, the value of because energy and raw materials could which far exceeds the total global GDP. Of course if Wales a Vibrant Economy be exploited for the first time without was located in its rightful place in the regard to the consequences. The British Fifteen of the 24 ecosystem services 36 Assembly Government’s hierarchy of Empire was possible because our examined by the Assessment are being plans and strategies, it would follow all economy grew faster than anyone degraded or used unsustainably. They these principles. Under section 121 of else’s, on the back of limitless resources include fresh water, capture fisheries, air the Government of Wales Act 1998 the plundered from foreign lands. Wars and water purification, and the

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regulation of climate, natural hazards, In Wales we have an opportunity to and pests. Many have been degraded as break the mould and make some of a consequence of actions taken to those changes in policies, institutions increase the supply of other services, and practices suggested by the such as food. These tradeoffs often shift Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. the costs of degradation from one There would be ‘first-mover’ advantage group of people to another or defer in the medium term, and we could attract costs to future generations. In effect, the visionary individuals and businesses. benefits reaped from our engineering of the planet have been achieved by Using the additional powers contained running down natural capital assets. within the Government of Wales Bill 2006, we could give competitive The Assessment reports that the advantage to companies that use degradation of ecosystem services natural resources sustainably, and could grow significantly worse during “By 2050, global energy demand could double as populations rise and developing countries expand drive through radical changes in our the first half of this century. The their economies.” public infrastructures. Reduction of harmful effects of the degradation of CO2 emissions should be a non- ecosystem services are being borne growth by any means that increase negotiable precondition for everything disproportionately by the poor, are CO2 emissions, it will result in a else in our economic development contributing to growing inequities and reduction, rather than an increase in strategy. disparities across groups of people, our economic wealth. That is because and are sometimes the principal factor our wealth ultimately depends on the But we need to acknowledge the risks causing poverty and social conflict. In protection and enhancement of involved. Jumping off the competitive all regions, and particularly in sub- ecosystem services, not on their growth economy’s speeding train Saharan Africa, the condition and destruction. According to the would expose us to short term management of ecosystem services is Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: opportunity costs as well as medium- a dominant factor influencing term advantages. During the prospects for reducing poverty. “The natural balance sheet we Sustainable Development bequeath to future generations Commission’s visit to Cardiff in March, Technology is not solving the problem. The depends on choices made at every its chair Jonathan Porritt suggested absolute level of consumption of ecosystem level and in every corner of the that the Assembly Government should services continues to grow, as does the planet. The degradation of develop an alternative strategy based growth in consumption of energy and ecosystems can be reversed, but on a re-localised low-carbon model. materials, outpacing increases in efficiency. this involves significant changes in By 2050, global energy demand could policies, institutions and practices, Operating to a clear timetable, and double as populations rise and developing that are not currently under way.” working with our partners in the countries expand their economies. Since Network of Regional Governments for 1950, global water use has more than tripled. Of course, many of the factors Sustainable Development, we could Within 25 years, half the world’s population determining the macro-economic make the transition from one model to could have trouble finding enough framework within which the Welsh the other, and so achieve a truly freshwater for drinking and irrigation. economy operates are beyond the sustainable economy. We are not control of the Assembly Government, condemned forever to be chasing our GDP growth and energy/resource use are and pressure for change will need to be neighbours in a race we cannot win, directly correlated in every country where sustained at the UK and the EU level. for a prize we do not need. this has been measured. The link is not The UK Government’s Sustainable being broken anywhere in the world and Development Strategy Taking it On has the conclusion is unavoidable. Since our responded by identifying the need for a current technology cannot enable us to ‘One Planet Economy’. grow our economies without increasing further our impacts, we must stop growing However, current fiscal frameworks • Morgan Parry is Head of WWF Cymru our economies in the way we are. encourage regions and countries to and a Board Member of Cynnal Cymru compete for resources and to – the Sustainable Forum for Wales. 37 This is of direct relevance to Wales’ externalise social and environmental This article is based on the Forum’s economic development strategy. If costs and the Lisbon agenda response to the Assembly Government ‘Winning Wales’ seeks to increase GDP institutionalises this at the EU level. consultation.

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brian morgan says the Assembly Government should produce a Welsh model for the Private Finance Initiative footing the bill

nder the Private Finance • Private sector project management Initiative (PFI) the skills reduce the cost of delivering u Government gets the private the service to customers. sector to raise the cash, design and build some structure and then operate One indisputable fact is that UK and maintain it. The main attraction is politicians are extremely reluctant to that it allows the Government to finance big projects compared with our undertake additional investment in continental partners. For example, how public sector assets without coming up many readers remember the 2005 World against the troublesome constraints of Athletics Championships in London? Of the budget deficit, known as the public course, the games didn’t actually take sector borrowing requirement (PSBR). place in London because after a number of disastrous attempts to build a However, it is important to emphasise stadium, the organisers cancelled the that with or without PFI the taxpayer award and gave it to the Finns. still foots the bill. The only difference is that under PFI the costs of capital Consider the state of the UK transport projects can be pushed onto future network. In ten years time both east and generations. For some critics this is west Europe will be covered with high tantamount to ‘mortgaging the speed railways, moving freight and future’. Others say quite simply that if passengers seamlessly across the future generations will enjoy most of continent via inter-modal transport links. the benefits, why shouldn’t they pay In ten years time in the UK we’ll have just towards it? Sounds logical but if the the 70 miles of track currently being built Victorians, or more importantly the to the Channel Tunnel. So we certainly Romans, had taken that view then we could do with some bright new ideas in might never have been bequeathed the area of public sector investment. our urban infrastructure or enjoyed that classic comedy sketch in the Life However, the recent UK transport White of Brian – what have the Romans done Paper painted a bleak picture – traffic for us? levels increasing by 25 per cent by 2015 with more congestion and more delays The key question to pose is “Does PFI extending across an unexpanded road offer value for money?” The most network. Inevitably the only option on damning feature of private finance is the horizon is more motorway tolling that borrowing costs are undeniably and pay-per-mile schemes. higher for the private sector than for the government. However, PFI might This is unfortunate because there is a still offer value for money if: wealth of research, for example by the • The project is built on time and on OECD, confirming that infrastructure budget – compared with overruns investment promotes regional growth. 38 and delays which affect 80 per cent Similarly, bad infrastructure has been of government funded projects identified as a major cause of the UK’s compared with only 20 per cent of low productivity compared with our PFI projects. main competitors – France and

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Germany. Moreover, the quantity and of this ambitious programme is “national obsession with arse covering quality of transport options affect the £400m [over five years].” by civil servants” (quoted in the location and inward investment decisions Economist). Administrators are of firms because congestion has a However, expenditure of £400m over five reluctant to take even moderate risks. significant impact on their efficiency. years amounts to less than 0.666 per cent of the Assembly Government’s Budget. Of course, it is unrealistic to expect PFI Just to remain competitive, regions Now the usual reason why economists to address all these issues. Nor can PFI and cities require skills, new schools calculate figures to the nearest 0.1 circumvent the planning nightmare. and colleges, and a healthy workforce percentage point is to prove that we have However, to make headway in Wales

The Second Severn Crossing – in future such major capital projects will be unlikely to proceed without PFI.

aided by new primary care centres and a sense of humour, However, in this case we need to rise above the ‘public good’ hospitals. Provision of all of these can one needs such a calculation to make it versus ‘private bad’ level of debate and be significantly influenced by PFI. significantly different from zero. Surely look seriously at the alternatives. We PFI could boost this figure? And what need to re-evaluate PFI and undertake a It is not just about productivity. For about north-south road links? The SWOT analysis of current schemes to instance, transport infrastructure also document continues: ascertain how they might be improved. has a big influence on the quality of life. It is not surprising then that in “The extent to which improvements Undoubtedly, there are problems with England the new business-led Regional are needed to road links between PFI that can be considered under the Development Authorities are seeking to north and south Wales was one of headings inflexibility and quality: significantly influence infrastructure the key issues raised for • Inflexibility Some claim that PFI is investment in their regions. consideration in our strategic review perpetuating the current expensive of the Welsh trunk roads programme model of hospital-based health care. Are things improving in Wales? Some … and we will be dealing with that Original PFI schemes assumed the recent publications might lead us to issue in our separate report on the healthcare model would last for the think so. The Assembly Government’s outcome of that review.” next 30 years and ignored the switch recent Transport Framework Policy to primary care and specialist Document insisted that And so it goes on. Like the rest of UK centres. Upfront negotiating costs of politicians, Welsh politicians are simply PFI contracts are also high and time “… policy is being implemented by reluctant to finance big projects. The consuming and need to be 39 sustained investment in the strategic main culprit according to Marco streamlined to reduce costs. It now road network. This includes 31 major Goldshmeid, Managing Director of the looks as if many current projects are road schemes … The estimated cost Richard Rogers Partnership is a too inflexible and based on long term

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Welsh companies. A Welsh PFI should be based on best international practice for the type and scale of projects that are appropriate for Wales.

The challenge is to structure a Welsh PFI so that it addresses potential weaknesses. The tendering process should be managed to: • Reduce borrowing and upfront contractual costs. • Insist on green design techniques to force contractors to focus on longer term issues that improve the quality of PFI projects and reduce life cycle costs. Open in December 2002, the new 70-bed, £66m Neath/Port Talbot Hospital at Baglan was built under a PFI Scheme by Baglan Moor Health Care Limited for Bro Morgannwg Health Trust. Complete with a 24 hour accident and emergency service, it will revert to public ownership after 30 years and repayments totalling £275m. Within the Welsh hinterland the built environment can be a significant • contracts that are too long and too market for PFI projects encouraged by constraint on growth. Yet investment in rigid. Similarly, borrowing costs are bundling a number of projects together the road and rail network, schools and inevitably higher under PFI and these for resale and then recycling the hospitals also offers competitive need to be brought down through proceeds back into new projects. advantage. Infrastructure investment new ways of raising finance. In other can be an important engine of growth words PFI needs to be updated. A key question for Wales is: will greater and there are a number of potential • Quality The build quality of some PFI use of PFI boost our relative GDP? projects such as the Severn Barrage projects has been very poor. Some Research suggests that more crying out for funds. The Barrage PFI structures have been perfect infrastructure investment will stimulate would make Wales self sufficient in examples of low energy efficiency, economic growth. So will PFI allow energy and create an economic power poor architectural design, and high more infrastructure investment? Those house by constructing new road and life cycle costs. This is perhaps the worried about the political correctness rail links that integrated the economies most damning criticism of PFI. Low of PFI ought to take note of the of Wales and South West England. quality buildings are expensive to following equation: maintain in the long term even if PFI could also be incorporated into borrowing costs can be reduced and PFI = Design + Build + Finance + projects providing improved north- construction efficiencies taken into Operate south links and better access to Ireland account. It seems that in the past PFI and Europe. Getting these investment projects have inevitably gone for the The Assembly Government could decisions right is an important route to ‘low risk, low cost’ option. This will develop and organise a Welsh PFI economic regeneration. A new PFI, one have to change if PFI is to become which replaced some of the above plus redefined for specific Welsh needs, is an more accepted. signs with a negative. For example: exciting option and that’s why we need an open debate about the contribution it These are the some of the negative Welsh PFI = Design + Build – could make to our future prosperity. arguments against PFI. But they are not (minus) Finance – (or minus) Operate necessarily terminal arguments against the Private Financing concept, because That is to say, the private sector could the negatives can be corrected. Low design, build and operate without architectural merit and high negotiating financing or design, build, finance and • Brian Morgan is Director, of the costs can all be addressed at the tender NOT operate, or any other combination Leadership, Enterprise and Economic stage. It is also possible to look at that the Assembly Government felt Development Unit at Cardiff Business innovative ways of using Treasury attractive and deliverable. Another School. This article is based on the 40 guarantees to reduce borrowing costs innovation would be for Wales to re- keynote presentation he gave to the and some pioneering developments are package PFI projects into smaller IWA conference Financing Large already going on in the capital markets. bundles that would be more attractive Scale Public Sector Projects in Wales An example is a liquid secondary and more manageable for smaller in November 2005.

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economy cherished heartland

Foundation for the Built Environment. areas it may be that we can also draw The Prince’s charities are engaged in a inspiration from two initiatives led by number of innovative programmes that The Prince of Wales in Caithness and closely relate to the main Sutherland and the Peak District. A recommendations of the Cherished ‘Seeing is Believing’ visit, led by The Heartland report. These include: Prince of Wales in 2004, took business • Improving returns through local leaders to meet farmers and crofters in value-addition. Caithness and Sutherland as part of his • Developing information and campaign to aid the local economy in promotion campaigns to secure one of Britain’s most remote areas. The product identity appeal to consumers. visit stemmed from a study undertaken • Restoring and enriching a sense of by the Castle of Mey Trust which called purpose through collaborative action. for more co-operations between • Engaging with the National Parks. development agencies, local farmers and the business community. Prince’s Trust Cymru has responded to the need to retain young people in Wales’ A full-time secondee from the United rural communities through the ‘Get Into Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has peter davies relates Land’ initiative delivered in collaboration managed the three planks of the with Coleg Sir Gar, Carmarthenshire. The initiative – agricultural products, how the Prince of structure of the course also recognises tourism and the built environment – that the hardest to reach young people which The Prince launched in August Wales’ charities are do not automatically see a future for 2005. In the first six months since its themselves in agricultural employment. launch, approximately £60,000 of engaging with the Some classroom based work and additional income has gone straight to shadowing of established students on local farmers and businesses who are problems of the rural courses, as well as job placements, give members of the scheme. A new course members experience of stock and company, North Highland Products, hinterland mechanical skills, small animal currently markets beef, lamb, and soft husbandry, and equine work as well as cheese, with more products in the on-farm diversification. pipeline. They are marketed under the he IWA and the Brecknockshire Mey Selections brand which has as its Agricultural Society hoped that Since its launch in 2001 Prime Cymru, centrepiece an original watercolour of t their report Cherished Heartland the charity dedicated to supporting the the Castle of Mey given by The Prince. would concentrate the minds of key over 50s in establishing new policy makers in recognising that enterprises, has supported over 375 The North Highland Tourism Operators’ farming is the key management tool for start-up companies in rural areas. Group was formed earlier in the year. It preserving the heritage and long term Prime Cymru advisers have worked has 130 members from Caithness and environmental integrity of the hills and within Powys, Ceredigion and Sutherland representing all aspects of uplands of Wales. Pembrokeshire to develop business accommodation providers and visitor ideas that have become successful attractions. The intention is to work It certainly had the desired effect in rural enterprises, creating a more with VisitScotland to ‘brand’ the North terms of focusing the minds of those diverse economy that is based on the Highlands area as unique within the concerned with managing the Welsh skills and experiences of the Scottish Highlands in an effort to lift interests of The Prince of Wales’ increasingly mature population of our the profile of the area. charities in Wales, including The Prince’s rural communities. 41 Trust, Business in the Community, Arts In terms of the built environment, and Business, Prime Cymru, The Prince’s However, in considering ways in which discussions are underway with a number Regeneration Trust and Princes we can increase the impact in rural of agencies and charities to obtain funding

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The Prince and the Duchess of Cornwall visiting Gelli Aur College near Llandeilo in the summer of 2005 to inspect the Get into Land initiative sponsored by the Prince’s Trust Cymru.

to carry out an inventory of vernacular The Peak District Initiative is being This will be central to a process being buildings in the North Highlands to managed through Business in the initiated by the Welsh Assembly determine the number, location and type. Community as part of its Rural Action Government’s programme Sustainable The inventory will begin to prioritise those campaign. This campaign has been at Farming and Environment: Action buildings which may be found to have a the leading edge of The Prince’s Towards 2020. This is promoting policy sustainable future use in partnership with Charities work in rural communities, options for sustainable farming and owners who are interested in restoration. focused on four practical initiatives: land use in Wales, taking into account One of the main targets of this work is • Food farming and local sourcing. “both upland and lowland farming, the unused and run-down farm buildings • Strengthening trading conditions in needs of the environment, rural which could be restored to a high standard market towns. communities and the general public.” for farm or country holidays. • Provision of affordable housing. • Business support for rural enterprise. Such initiatives can make a real difference. In the Peak District a visit by The Prince of The scale and importance of the challenge Wales, arranged by Business in the Business in the Community has used its is described in the IWA’s report Cherished Community, was the catalyst for an capacity to engage senior levels in the Heartland. It will require leadership and a initiative between local farmers to develop food and drink industry to create the commitment to greater collaboration the means to add value to their primary ‘Plough to Plate’ project, where one of across the public, private and community produce. The visit brought together over the key objectives is to address issues sector to protect and secure our rural 30 local farming families from within the of sustainable food and farming across heritage. Peak District National Park with members the food chain. Farmers are helped to of the business community. The result is a respond to new market opportunities demonstration project that aims to create and to reconnect them to consumers, added value markets and diversification and consumers to the countryside. opportunities to ensure the sustainability • Peter Davies is Chair of the IWA West of hill farming within an environmentally The experience of the Castle of Mey, the Wales Branch and Co-Chair of the co- sustainable, attractive and protected Peak District and the Rural Action ordinating committee of the Prince’s landscape. The project is now being campaign reinforces the findings of the Charities in Wales. Formerly Managing managed by Business in the Community Cherished Heartland report and provides Director of Business in the Community through a senior business manager some pointers for the way forward in UK (1995-2005), he is now based in 42 funded through Compass Group plc, with connecting the knowledge and expertise Pembrokeshire as a project consultant. the aim of developing models of practice of the farming community with partners For further information on the work of that could be applied within other in the rural economy and the food and The Princes Charities visit National Park areas. drink industry. www.princeofwales.gov.uk/trusts

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social policy a £3 billion opportunity

tamsin stirling looks at the IWA’s new report on the Future of Social Housing in Wales

regarded as merely a step towards • Housing associations should take on home-ownership? Can future provision an enhanced community be a response to evidence-based needs regeneration role. rather than be inevitably determined by demand pressures? And to what extent The first of these conclusions has is current provision creating or proved controversial within the reinforcing a dependency culture? social housing sector itself. Based on the premise of ‘constructive In seeking to answer these questions, residualisation’, it is seen by many as the report covers a lot of territory – a view of the future that simply accepts history, trends, changing context and much of the status quo, rather than nature of supply, the Welsh Housing challenging it. Quality Standard and the transfer of local authority stock to housing The proposal that there could be associations, housing market areas, significant advantages in establishing future trends and policy implications. an all-Wales housing finance company The report brings together in one place to borrow money across the social material from a wide range of sector is interesting and worth published reports and interviews with exploring. Whether such a vehicle people working within housing and would be able to achieve significantly related areas. It also offers a guide to better borrowing rates than those some of the key current issues and secured by existing housing debates on social housing in Wales. associations needs further ith unprecedented examination. numbers of Welsh The report’s overall conclusions are w households not able to straightforward: The report is welcome as a starting get on the home-ownership ladder and • Social housing needs to be point to a debate about what the future recently published homelessness rebranded as providing subsidised of social housing could be in Wales. Its statistics showing that 2005 will be the affordable homes for specific focus on achieving the Welsh Housing second highest year for homelessness population groups – those needing Quality Standard is understandable since records began, the timing couldn’t help on the housing ladder, those given that this is one of the major be better for an examination of the needing sheltered housing and current housing concerns of the future of social housing in Wales. homeless households. Assembly Government. However, • Most Welsh local authorities will housing markets are interconnected. The publication of The Future of Social have to transfer their housing in What we do and don’t do in the social Housing in Wales is therefore to be order to meet the Welsh Housing housing sector is affected by, and welcomed, not least because the IWA Quality Standard. impacts on, the other tenures. has been able to look at the social • There will be significant regenerative housing sector from a non-housing impact of investing the around Those on long waiting lists are paying specialist perspective. In the £3billion that is needed to reach the the price for low levels of investment in 43 introduction the report asks whether quality standard. new social housing in Wales over social housing can be seen as a choice • Local authorities need a stronger recent years which have failed to take or a tenancy of last resort. Should it be strategic role. account of changes in housing

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markets. For this reason, if for no other, • care accommodation can be offered on and address at least some of the we need a broader debate about the a part-rent, part-buy basis, addressing reasons why renting is not seen as future role of social housing. public concerns about the ability to attractive by many people. pass on assets to the next generation. Although tenures are distinct, in And we must not ignore the important particular the division between buying In addition, the emerging debate on voice of existing social housing tenants and renting, social housing equity shares for social housing and those who would like, or need, to organisations already undertake a tenants offers an opportunity to blur live in the sector, whether for part, or variety of roles that cross traditional boundaries between tenures all of their life. We owe it tenures. Such roles can be to all these households to built upon, for example by: ensure that the sector is • Offering a range of low- not residualised nor cost home ownership stigmatised. products, including part buy-part rent and equity Personally, I am sure that loan schemes. Given the social housing sector recent changes in in Wales has sufficient housing markets, the energy, commitment and demand for such skills to ensure that it schemes has increased doesn’t go down the route markedly and there is of ‘constructive clearly scope for residualisation’. We significantly increasing definitely need a noisier the output of ‘affordable’ debate on the issue, one housing delivered in which goes beyond the partnership with housing social housing sector to associations. include other disciplines, • Providing services to the general public and our private sector tenants politicians. and owner-occupiers such as repair and The report is a good start. handyperson schemes. With increasing numbers This is currently largely of Welsh citizens worried done through Care and about where their children Repair agencies which and grandchildren will live are part of a number of when they want to leave housing association home and the 2007 group structures. For Assembly elections on the the future, making links horizon, a next logical step with local training and is to take the debate into work placement the public domain and schemes and quickly. community regeneration initiatives, The cover photograph of the IWA’s report shows Plas Y Mor Integrated Care such services could be scheme for the elderly at Burry Port which has 38 one and two bedroom flats for people over 55. A joint venture between the Gwalia Housing Group and offered to much larger Carmarthenshire County Council, around half of the tenants are provided with numbers of people. extra care by an in-house care team. Part of the building includes a day centre • Developing expertise in for older people from the local community, a kitchen delivering hot meals, hairdressing, chiropody and guest bedrooms. In 2005 the complex won both the • Tamsin Stirling is an providing accommodation Royal Society of Architects in Wales design award and the Western Mail / that helps deliver on non- Principality Building Society awards for best residential development and most independent housing housing agendas, for sustainable development. Assessors praised the complex’s clear design principles consultant and editor of and its commitment to sustainability. Created in conjunction with PCKO Wales’ housing and 44 example the role of ‘extra- architects, the complex utilises natural lighting, recycled insulation and a timber care’ accommodation in frame made with wood from sustainable forests. It also features solar hot water regeneration magazine, relation to the Wanless panels and photo-voltaic roof tiles which reduce the cost of heating and Welsh Housing Quarterly electricity for residents. agenda on health. Extra- www.whq.org.uk

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underclass 1 below the threshold

f you were looking for the right launched in November 2005, presents location to launch a hard-hitting a snapshot at a particular moment. He i report on poverty and social cautioned against a knee-jerk reaction exclusion, you couldn’t do better than which ignored the statistical trends. Cardiff Bay which contains the local But however you look at them, many government ward with the most deprived of the bald facts which make up the community in Wales. It was somewhat ‘snapshot’ are shocking. ironic therefore that the magnificent, £100 million copper-topped Millennium Centre Out of a population of around three provided the venue for the launch of the million, there are 650,000 people living Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s first in ‘income poverty’. That is more than report focussing on poverty in Wales. 20 per cent. The number in ‘deep poverty’ (surviving on less than 40 The centre along with the rest of the percent of average income) has not Cardiff Bay regeneration have been fallen in the last decade. They are a hailed as symbols of a new Wales. The quarter of a million strong, almost a remains of what was once the world’s tenth of the population. Nearly 100,000 greatest coal-shipping port have been people are classed as ‘economically transformed by the construction of inactive, but wanting work’ due to james stewart hotels, restaurants, offices and luxury sickness, disability or lone parenthood. flats together with the new home of the There are 170,000 children living in introduces a major National Assembly. Yet the indigenous homes below the poverty threshold, a multi-ethnic population of the old Docks third of them in the south Wales Valleys. new study on poverty area has been largely untouched by this new prosperity. According to the Welsh On the other hand, there is some good and social exclusion Assembly Government’s Index of news about the direction in which things Multiple Deprivation 2005, child poverty are moving. In the past decade, Welsh in Wales in Butetown stands at 74 per cent, poverty rates have fallen faster than ‘income deprivation’ at 54 per cent, and those in England or Scotland and are ‘employment deprivation’ at 26 per cent. now no worse than the average for Britain as a whole. Unemployment has This particular patch of poverty and almost halved in the same period, to social exclusion is only the most blatant around 3.5 per cent of the working age example of a widespread malaise. As population. The fall in the level of child one might expect, the problems are poverty from 37 per cent in 1995-96 to 27 worst in the south Wales Valleys, but per cent in 2003-04 was bigger than in the booming capital city is not immune. any English region or Scotland. A quarter of its wards have high levels of dependency on state benefits. The The Assembly Government’s aim is that report’s authors led by Peter Kenway, no child should be living in poverty by Director of the New Policy Institute, say: 2020. However, Peter Kenway told the “Cardiff, more than anywhere else, is conference that, despite real progress, marked by inequality of income.” the rates of child poverty were still only 45 comparable with the late 1980s and not First Minister Rhodri Morgan told the as good as the 1970s. It would be 2040 conference that a report like this one, at the earliest before the target would

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be reached. In view of the priority the per cent higher than anywhere else. with next door but that has come across Assembly Government has given to this Valley areas account for the highest as one of the hardest things to achieve,” subject, it was perhaps surprising that proportion of low birth weight babies he said. the First Minister did not address this (along with Cardiff and Newport). predicted failure. Children in the Valleys have more Poverty and social exclusion are decayed or missing teeth by the age of intimately related to educational Although poverty and social exclusion are five. In Merthyr Tydfil 79 per cent of achievement. More than half the working- problems for the whole of Wales, time and doctors’ practices did not qualify for age population of Wales lack basic again, the statistics brought the spotlight ’quality service’ payments. numeracy skills (the average for England onto the Valleys. Their rates of is 46 per cent); 25 per cent lack basic unemployment are only slightly worse Yet even within the Valleys there are great literacy skills (16 per cent in England). than the Welsh average, but the proportion inequalities in the provision of basic Wales has the highest proportion in Great

Views of Butetown, a stones throw from the Millennium Centre where the Rowntree report on poverty was launched.

of those classed as economically inactive health services. Along with Flintshire, Britain of 16-year-olds getting no GCSEs and wanting work is much higher. Half the they have the highest proportion of at all. One in four 19-year-olds lacks basic areas with the highest levels of limiting single-handed GP practices. In Rhondda qualifications and there has been no real long-term illness are in the Valleys, rising Cynon Taf the figure is 10 per cent. In improvement in this area since 1997-98. as high as 27 percent in Merthyr Tydfil. At Blaenau Gwent, 25 per cent of family Those with fewer than five good GCSEs almost a fifth of the working age doctors work alone, yet in neighbouring at the age of 17 are very unlikely to get population, long-term limiting illness is Torfaen, the figure is just 2 per cent. Mark any further qualifications or to benefit higher in Wales than in Northern Ireland, Drakeford, Assembly Government special from job-related training. 46 Scotland or any English region. adviser on social policy and health, spoke with evident frustration about the failure Peter Kenway painted a bleak picture of In Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent to provide good services across the the prospects for many young people in the rate of under-16 pregnancies is 50 board. “We need to share good practice Wales. “The bottom third are stagnating at

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a level where the future risk of low pay or integral to an underlying structural private employers. Overall, between 2001 unemployment is high or very high,” he problem of the Welsh economy. The and 2004 three times as many people said. “They are going to be tomorrow’s implication was that if the economy can were in ‘in-work’ poverty as in poverty poor adults and the parents of tomorrow’s be normalised, the benefits will reach arising from unemployment. Yet in the poor children. In this case it is impossible those parts of the population who have, mid-90s the two groups were similar. to see how poverty and social exclusion until now, been excluded from potential can be got rid of in the foreseeable future.” prosperity. “We’re not a normal No-one could accuse the First Minister of economy,” he declared. “We never have complacency. However, if one was Professor David Egan, special adviser been a normal economy. There has looking for a passionate spokesman on on education, stressed the Assembly always been a very narrow segment of behalf of the people the report was Government’s initiatives. Reforming work in Wales. It’s been a monoculture about, Professor David Adamson of the education for ages 14-19 is a priority. unlike anywhere else in Europe, perhaps University of Glamorgan came closest. He had chaired community discussion groups as part of the research process and spoke with evident frustration. As he said, “The quality of life in Wales can range from very comfortable First World, to degraded, almost Third World. It is unforgivable.” Describing the Assembly Government’s response, he added, “The engine is running, but the handbrake is still on. And Rhodri is asking whether to take his foot off the accelerator!’

Sitting in the Millennium Centre, one could not help wondering what we would have heard if one of the poor and socially excluded citizens of nearby Butetown had been able to stand at the podium and describe life at the bottom of the pile. The Assembly Government’s own Task Group report on child poverty in 2004 quoted children who are living that reality. The words of just one of them say it all:

“If you’re poor, you’re bullied, which means you don’t try your best in school. You give up. If you don’t do well in school, you’ll end up with a crap job and no money.”

There are plans to give the youngest in the world. We are trying to normalise children aged 0-3 a ‘flying start’ while an abnormal economy.’ a new curriculum is on the way for 3-7 year olds. As he put it, “The best place The First Minister did not address one to spend money is with the youngest surprising finding of the report, one that children.” The imminent appointment lies directly within the Assembly of an education ‘tsar’ would give a Government’s sphere of influence. The new impetus to the government’s second biggest employer of low-paid policies. workers in Wales is the public sector, 47 coming after retail and before tourism. Rhodri Morgan’s message seemed to be The figures exclude people whose public • James Stewart is a freelance journalist that poverty and social exclusion were sector jobs have been contracted out to living in Pembrokeshire.

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underclass 2 educating for social justice

Government and the educational point when progress begins to slow. community at large, it is the concise Welsh results are better than England and focused use and presentation of at age 11, but the obverse is the case statistical data relating to educational by the age of 14. performance that is so striking. National Curriculum reforms, due by In relation to schools, its main 2008, will introduce a more skills-based messages are that whilst the overall approach designed to engage young performance of pupils at 11 and 16 has people more fully in their learning improved considerably, there continues during the early years of secondary to be a chasm in levels of performance schooling. The major reform underway between young people in deprived and for 14-19 education and training is more affluent areas and, compared to strongly driven by the need to offer the other UK nations. We have a longer young people a more flexible and tail of minimal or no achievement. personalised curriculum. The intention is to also to offer a greater range of The evidence presented draws upon qualifications, capturing within the earlier work undertaken by the Welsh Baccalaureate a much wider Assembly Government in partnership range of attainment. This is in contrast david egan declares with the Welsh Local Government to the current obsession with 5*A-C at Association, during the ’Narrowing the GCSE as the sole benchmark of success. we cannot go on Gap’ project. The findings have also more recently been confirmed by Estyn, However, it might be reasonably tolerating the waste the Office of the Chief Inspector of argued that because they are aimed at Education and Training in Wales. Whilst all schools, these policies will not that results from low there are schools that do buck the address the issue of social deprivation association between low performance and low performance. The Assembly levels of educational and deprivation, in general the Government is currently giving much correlation is a strong one. In the main thought to this issue. Any major policy achievement at 16 these schools are to be found in the initiative aimed at supporting schools Heads of the Valleys area and parts of in our most deprived communities that the large conurbations of Swansea, does emerge is unlikely to introduce a t can be argued that there is a Cardiff, Newport and Wrexham. Among ‘command and control’ model, focused consensus that education has the factors that characterise their low solely upon improvements in 5*A-C i been one of the most notable levels of attainment are the relatively GCSEs. Evidence points to the need for successes of the Welsh devolution low levels of performance of boys far more sophisticated approaches, experience thus far. compared to girls and particular including: problems with literacy. • Greater engagement of a range of Nonetheless, the Rowntree report’s professionals in supporting young coverage of education and lifelong The Assembly Government has a people. learning provides a timely and salutary number of policies designed to • Active involvement of the community reminder of how much more still needs improve overall levels of performance including links with employers and 48 to be achieved. in our schools. They include Wales- other education/training only powers to improve the transition organisations. Whilst there is nothing in the report from primary to secondary schools. • A curriculum that involves young that will be new to the Assembly There is evidence that this is often the people in more authentic learning.

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As a nation we very few 17-year-olds without either five good GCSE’s or NVQ2 at age 17 have simply cannot go acquired further qualifications by the age of 24 on tolerating the short and long term waste that results from low levels of educational achievement at 16. One of the most stark facts presented by the report is that very few of those young people who feel themselves to be failures as a result of not achieving The graph, taken from the Monitoring Poverty and Social Exclusion in Wales 2005 report, shows how the proportion of young adults 5*A-C GCSEs with various levels of highest qualification varies by age. The levels of qualification shown are a mixture of academic and at sixteen, ever vocational qualifications. The ages shown are 17 and 24. To improve statistical reliability, the figures are the averages for the years acquire any 1997/1998 to 2004/2005. further qualifications. This represents a qualification since 2001. Over the same by the potential creation of learning criminal waste of talent and period there was a 5 per cent fall in the campuses with the linking of school, potential. number with no qualifications. further and higher education provision in Merthyr Tydfil and Ebbw Vale are all The report’s evidence on adult In the medium to long term real progress encouraging signs in this direction. qualifications represents the is only likely to be achieved if we change accumulative effect of many years of attitudes towards the value of vocational Devolution has enabled Wales to build low achievement in our schools. One in learning. This has to begin in schooling upon the existing distinctiveness of its four of our 19 year olds have no basic and is central to the 14-19 reforms. The educational system. That has always qualifications. There continues to be mindset of pupils, teachers, parents and, contained a strong tradition of using major differences in levels of most importantly of all, employers, has education to further social justice. participation in higher education to be changed so that we can offer Examples include the ‘pennies of the between our most deprived and most young people progression through poor’ that built our first university college affluent communities. We continue to vocational learning to employment, at Aberystwyth, the passion for have high numbers of unskilled workers further and higher education. independent working-class education that who do not participate in adult learning. infused the activities of the miners union, Again, they are often concentrated in For too long the UK has lagged behind and the ability of seriously depressed our most deprived areas. Western Europe in this respect and there areas such as the Rhondda in the inter- are clear signs that the Accession States war years to pioneer nursery education. The Assembly Government has a of Eastern Europe are now fast catching As the devolution process moves number of major policies that are up. Can Wales use devolution to become forward, the need to target deprivation in focused upon improving this deficit in the first truly vocational learning country our small nation, with its limited adult skills. The Skills and Employment in the UK? We should note that Northern resources but immense, socially driven, Action Plan and the Basic Skills Ireland is looking to do the same. aspirations will become compelling. Strategy, both of which were re- launched in 2005, can be seen to be The appointment of a Vocational Skills achieving slow but steady success. For Champion by the Assembly • Professor David Egan is special adviser 49 example, the most recent figures on Government, the work being done to to the Minister for Education and adult qualifications point to real improve the quality of work-based Lifelong Learning in the Assembly progress in average levels of learning, and the opportunities provided Government.

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underclass 3 to those that have

different lessons from the raw better thought of as a movie. Efforts to materials so presented. But without counteract it are not conducted against a that raw material, any lessons are likely static pattern, but one in which the tide to be at best partial and, at worst, is always flowing in the wrong direction. directly misleading. Left to itself, the service pattern is There is much in the Rowntree Report always likely to add to the strength of which casts new light on emerging existing advantage, and to neglect the trends. The conclusion that child poverty needs of disadvantaged areas. The in Wales has fallen further and faster policy portfolio needed to deal with than in any other part of the United such an adverse dynamic needs to be Kingdom comes as a surprise, despite both more extensive and more the work of the Assembly Government’s continuous than previously appreciated. Child Poverty Task Group. However, in the field of health the picture painted by This sharper understanding of the the report is one which essentially challenge faced in addressing health reinforces rather than recasts the inequalities in Wales can be read from analysis which has emerged increasingly the Report because of the Beveridge-like mark drakeford argues clearly over the past ten years. way in which it demonstrates the continuing interplay between the five that health policy Thus it records the substantial legacy of giants which welfare services have to ill health which makes Wales stand out tackle: ignorance, idleness, squalor, want should focus on so strikingly from other parts of the and disease. The relationship between United Kingdom. It records, again, the health status and other key dimensions equality of outcome spatial and social concentration of that of poverty and social exclusion emerges ill health, delineating it by class and by throughout the Report – the ability to geography. It draws out the impact seek employment or pursue education, n the seventh year of devolution, which health inequalities produce right the relationship between housing, we are still in the process of through the life course, from the womb environment and health and so on. i creating the raw material from to the tomb. Finally, it reminds us of the which the sort of Welsh-specific policy- persistent challenge of the inverse care What other policy conclusions flow from making which the Assembly offers can law which sees the least strong services the Report’s health findings? From my be translated into practice. In the last in those areas of greatest needs. admittedly partisan viewpoint, it seems quarter of 2005, we saw the publication that, to any fair minded reader, they must of the latest, most sophisticated, Indeed, if there is a fresh insight to be surely reinforce the Wanless contention iteration of the unique Welsh Health drawn from the Report’s conclusions, it that a strategy based solely on ratcheting Survey, the second major report of the is to advance our understanding of that up supply of services to meet the never Townsend Standing Committee and the inverse care law. Policy makers have ending demand of illness is one, in Rowntree document Monitoring Poverty tended to regard the Tudor Hart analysis Wales particularly, which is doomed to and Social Exclusion in Wales 2005. as a snapshot in which an existing go on repeating the patterns and pattern of service distribution has to be inequalities which lie behind the 50 Policy making in Wales depends on the tackled and remedied. In fact, the inter- circumstances which the Report outlines. quality of information on which it is relatedness of health with other social Responding to those circumstances, able to draw. Different perspectives factors, vividly traced in the Report, points us again to the redistributive and different political parties will read suggests that the inverse care law is agenda of the Townsend reforms, to the

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work of the Health Inequalities Fund, to the co-terminosity of local health boards and local authorities in dealing with the determinants of ill health and with the work of Health Challenge Wales in harnessing individual and collective effort behind this agenda.

This effort has proved controversial, and has come under attack for two main reasons: • Firstly, and wrongly, it has been interpreted as implying a lack of attention to the services which are required for people with health needs in the here-and-now. • Secondly, and correctly, it has been viewed as embodying a radical shift from the politics of equality of opportunity, to the far more fundamental politics of equality of outcome.

As far as the first of these criticisms is concerned, the Report reinforces the policy prescription that where treatment is concerned, it is primary health care services which need to be the focus of our attention, rather than the media- obsession with hospitals and acute care. Location of long term illness – although most centred in te valleys, neighbourhoods with a high Nine out of ten contacts with the health proportion of working age people reporting a limiting long-term illness are found across Wales. service take place at primary care. Much identification of the shift from hospital- In the sometimes harsh world of which requires the patient to visit a based care for those chronic conditions practice, this does mean being willing hospital can, and will in future, be which are concentrated in Valley to make investment decisions today – available closer to home, with primary communities, and amongst less well off such as those in medical education – care in the driving seat because, here, too, populations, will become a reality. which will only see their return in future the picture is changing rapidly. Who would political lifetimes. It means harnessing have believed, even a short while ago, that As to the second area of controversy, the enormous affection which people the Rhondda and Cynon Valleys would be any rich, advanced country which has, have for the health service as an asset served by a new cadre of salaried GPs and as the Report confirms, a rate of in the process of change, rather than as other primary care professionals? premature death in two local authorities an enemy to it. It means spending which is 50 per cent higher than a local money where need is greatest, and The Report rightly records the difficulties authority barely two hours travel distant, tackling some substantial vested which are still to be found on the ground has to be one in which narrowing interests for whom the status quo will in some Valley communities, although its inequalities of outcome commands always be preferable to change. In my conflation of single-handed practices with priority in public purpose. The wider reading of the Report, nothing poor service is not one which patients policy agenda of the Assembly undermines this set of conclusions. appear to share. What it does not capture, Government, with its emphasis on Rather, the information it sets out about perhaps, is the sense of change for which collaboration between the citizen and health in Wales can only reinforce it. Local Health Boards are responsible. the State, with its belief in the capacity They are renewing and reinvigorating of Government to be a force for good, their services in an area where there are but one which acts alongside, rather • Mark Drakeford is Cabinet health and 51 some of the greatest concentrations of than simply on the user of services, social policy adviser at the Welsh difficulty, as described in the Report. As provides the positive backdrop against Assembly Government and a professor this process rolls forward, so the Report’s which efforts in health can be directed. of social policy at Cardiff University.

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europe not just money

andy klom says Wales should look beyond trade and funding in its engagement with the EU

of the Lisbon Agenda: growth and jobs. on employment and maritime policies. The core challenge in today’s Europe is Others will follow in other parts of Wales to provide sustainable economic during the rest of the year on research, growth to generate quality jobs. education and culture, agriculture, Success will allow the EU to share in business, environment, globalisation, the solidarity brought by spending on labour migration, and schools. structural funds at home and promote development aid abroad. This is where Wales currently enjoys EU financial the EU’s money should be going. solidarity through the structural funds, paid for by European taxpayers, often Then there is the issue of the EU from countries much less prosperous Constitution. Many thought it was than Britain and often paying much dead. However, 13 EU members more into the EU budget than Britain approved it and several others only postponed ratification. The year of SwSwansea’sansea’s second TTechnium,echnium, reflection and consultation, launched parpartt of the city’city’ss wwaterfrontaterfront by Tony Blair and the 24 other EU dedevelopment,velopment, r receivedeceived £3.2m ObjectivObjectivee 1 fundingfunding,, heads of government in June 2005, half the project cost. It is seems too short for many. In fact, designed to cater fforor companies growing out consultations in Britain have not even companies growing out of Swansea’s first started. Voices in the European he EU agenda for the current Technium to house Parliament and European Council, as knowledgeknowledge based period is overflowing. The businesses. well as the Austrian Presidency, are businesses. Barroso Commission is single- t asking for a longer period to consult. mindedly focussing on the Lisbon Reform Agenda. It is pushing, pulling, However, last year’s decision foresaw and cajoling members to reform, adapt the process culminating in a report on and gear up to greater global the future of Europe being presented to competition. Like a concerned parent in the EU Summit in June 2006. a family, the Commission is trying to help members meet the challenges of In Wales the European Commission is the future. trying to focus on three main activities: meetings with civil society An underlying issue is money. The organisations; holding information future EU budget has just been surgeries; and organising public or ’town approved by the Council of Ministers, hall’ meetings in different corners of the but the European Parliament is still to country to discuss various EU topics. All have its say. No one knows how long it this is based on the EC initiative Plan D might take. As discussions start for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate, focussing on detail, all will be looking which was presented to the National 52 at where the money is going. Assembly for Wales in November 2005. The first two ‘town hall’ meetings in For the European Commission the Wales were held during March in Llanelli budget aims at realising the main focus on the structural funds, and in Llangefni

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The new Opto-electronics Technology and Incubation Centre in the St Asaph Business Park in north Wales. Known as OpTIC it received a £5.75m Objective 1 grant towards the total project cost of £16.2m. The objective is to facilitate the growth of high technology Opto-electronic companies in north Wales.

does. This solidarity amounted to information provided through a major stake in the Single Market. around £1.5 billion during the 2000- information centres in their own Ireland is a great example. In Wales the 2006 period. Following the recent EU countries, often supported by their European Commission will be the main budget decision in December, these authorities in collaboration with the provider, together with its local partners funds are expected to continue until European Commission. in the different regions of Wales. 2014. The exact amount is still unclear, but it will be the maximum available. But where is this information in Wales? As a country that benefits so much Is their any debate about the EU? It is from EU membership, through trade Wales seems mostly related to the clear that national authorities and and by funding, one would expect to European Union through this funding. representatives bear a huge find a strong desire in Wales to know But is it really? Being part of the EU responsibility in explaining the EU and more about European opportunities Single Market of 25 countries and 450 informing their people about the basics, and where they are coming from. Tax- million consumers, Wales earns around giving them facts and figures. For its payers have a right to know what is £5.5 billion yearly as a result of trade part the European Commission Office in happening with their money and a right within the Single Market. Six years of Wales provides information with a to debate the future for which they are Structural Funds represent around £1.5 limited number of staff. However, the paying. This is presently happening in billion, six years of Single Market Commission is now introducing the various countries throughout the EU. represent some £33 billion. This Europe Direct network to Wales, with EU People in Wales also pay taxes, so that indicates that Europe is significantly information centres being established is why the European Commission Office more important to Wales as a in various areas by May 2006. These in Wales is continuing to organize ’town marketplace than as a funding agency. centres will provide EU information on hall’ meetings in different corners of Does anyone know this? Have you read EU programmes, and be focal points Wales, to discuss EU funding, but to about it in the newspapers? for debate and activities regarding the also look beyond the funding and European Union. discuss the future of Europe. This The EU is essential to the functioning strengthens debate and the debate of modern Wales. EU investment is At long last, EU information will be strengthens democracy. being used to regenerate a country that coming closer to the people of Wales. In has coped with so many economic and many countries the government, the social challenges, to help it move parliament and the schooling system forward and tackle the challenges of provide basic information about the EU 53 the future. And it is paid for by and what it means for them. In other European taxpayers who know what countries private foundations do so, • Andy Klom is Head of the European they are paying for, thanks to EU often backed by businesses which have Commission Office in Wales.

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crossing borders

ne of the most pervasive Ireland. But even these figures fears associated with the overstate the reality because many o recent enlargement of the EU work or resident permits are issued for was that it would produce a flood of a short period. The result is that the cheap migrant labour which would figures do not take account of people threaten job security and levels of pay returning home. in the ‘old’ Member States, otherwise known as the EU 15. If we look instead at the net inflows and outflows, we get a better picture of No less than 12 of the 15 old Member the number of EU 10 nationals who States have placed restrictions on have settled in the old EU 15. This david hughes access to their labour markets by EU figure ranges from 0.1 per cent in 10 workers. Two Member States – France to 1.4 per cent in Austria and 2 underlines the Sweden and Ireland – decided not to per cent in Ireland. The figure for the place any restrictions at all, whilst the UK is 0.4 per cent. These are very small importance of cultural UK has no restrictions either but has proportions, but they still require some implemented a Workers Registration interpretation. Is it true, for example, projects in promoting Scheme. that there was a higher influx to the UK and Ireland simply because there were European cohesion Two years following the 1 May 2004 no restrictions? Or was it also due to enlargement we are now in possession the fact that in these countries’ of a few facts about workers’ unemployment rates are low and movements. There has been an labour is in demand? increase in the number of EU10 workers in the old EU 15, but the Some of the EU 15 have impact has been limited. This is also unemployment rates close to 10 per the case in those three countries which cent, despite restrictions on incoming did not maintain restrictions. workers. In Ireland and the UK, unemployment stands at less than half If we look at the numbers of work or that. More importantly, there is no residence permits issued to citizens evidence that the arrival of workers 54 from the EU 10, we get the impression from the new Member States has led that their part of the working age to any increase in unemployment in population ranges from close to zero in either Ireland or the UK (or, for that, France to 3.8 per cent – the highest – in matter, in any other Member State).

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europe

In reality, these facts should surprise problems at all. There have been “Values such as freedom, fairness no-one: labour markets are not simply specific situations where the and responsibility form part of a a matter of dividing up a fixed amount conditions of workers in specific common core of values all European of work between workers. Growth and sectors have been affected. Union nations hold dear. They are jobs are created by flexible labour Nonetheless, overall labour flows vital to our European way of life -- markets, by removing obstacles to job have been too small to affect either based on parliamentary democracy, creation and mobility, not by job security or wages in the EU. the rule of law, freedom of opinion protectionist measures. and of faith, a free press, and a However, dry facts like these do not broadly cohesive European social Indeed, the evidence would tend to always change people’s perceptions model.” show that migration flows following and anxieties. One of the best ways of enlargement have had a positive doing this is to bring people into We see cultural collaboration as key to effect on the economies of the EU15. contact with human realities, and this promoting these shared values. This The workers arriving are often skilled, can often best be done through cultural was behind our support of the IWA’s young or prepared to take jobs that exchanges. A function of the European Cultural explosion project which has nationals are not keen on. If Commission’s Department of brought cultural activists in the migration flows cause a problem, Education, Training, Culture and accession states into an engagement then it is probably for those Multilingualism is to promote with people in the creative industries in economies which are losing these awareness of the values our different Wales. Cultural operators play a key workers, rather than those who are countries share, despite their cultural role in the integration of our continent. gaining them. diversity. In a speech in London in February the Commissioner, Jan Figel For this reason, recent enlargements This is not to say that labour identified the core of what we hold in have always been preceded by the migration has not caused any common. As he put it: participation of the acceding countries

Delegates during a break at the Creu Cyfle / Cultural Explosion Conference at the Galeri, Caernarfon on 20th February 2006.

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europe

in the EU’s Culture Programmes. Seven The project received 50,000 Euros. The new Programme will run until of the new Member States (Czech • Conflicts and Cooperation: the Road 2013. The Commission proposed a Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, from the Past to the Future total budget of 408 million Euros, but Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia) joined Universities from various Northern under the budget deal reached by the the Culture 2000 programme already in countries (Estonia, Sweden, British Presidency, we will probably 2001. Slovenia joined in 2002, and Lithuania, Latvia and Finland) joined have to live with around 320 million Malta and Cyprus followed in 2003. forces to present their part of the Euros, which is about £220 million. world from a historical and cultural The tradition of cultural programmes point of view by creating an There are also other Community as first ports of call for candidate extensive encyclopaedia. This will programmes where cultural operators countries continues today. Since 2005 highlight and explain the areas of definitely should consider competing both Romania and Bulgaria are part of common heritage in the Baltic region. with other sectors. Perhaps the most the programme. Turkey joined in This multi-annual project received obvious of these is the MEDIA January this year and negotiations more than 575,000 Euros under programme in support of the have already started with Croatia. Culture 2000. audiovisual industry. With a likely • Translation of works in the budget of almost 650 million Euros, Cultural operators in all these countries languages of the new Member this supports key stages in the – except Croatia – take part in the States The programme supports audiovisual value chain, including Culture 2000 programme on the same this by providing funding for training, development and post- basis as their counterparts from the publishing houses. In 2005 out of 50 production. Moreover, the programme Member States. That is to say, they publishing houses supported, 26 offers extra support for co-operation participate both as project leaders and were from the enlargement or with the new Member States. as co–organisers or partners. And acceding countries. levels of participation by the new • European Capital of Culture Cultural projects can also play a key Member States have been impressive. Liverpool will be Capital of Culture in role in the field of education. For In 2001, 143 cultural operators from the 2008. As of 2009 there will be two example, under the vocational training then candidate countries took part in European Capitals of Culture each programme Leonardo da Vinci theatres, projects funded by Culture 2000: 10 as year, one from the 15 old Member performing arts centres and museums project leaders, 55 as co–organisers States and one from the 10 new work together to improve training and 78 as partners. This figure rose to ones. It is also proposed to triple the skills. The adult education programme 251 in 2002 and growth has continued funding for capitals of culture from Grundtvig supports radio stations while since then. Last year, for cultural 500,000 to 1.5 million Euros. the Comenius programme supports heritage projects alone, 28 projects, out transnational cooperation by teachers. of 43 in all, were presented by or with The new Programme Culture 2007 is And so on. new or acceding states. This is quite an currently being finalised by the achievement. Council of Ministers and the European For the next financial perspective, the Parliament with the final adoption current education and training Examples of the kind of projects which likely in the next few months. There programmes will be replaced by a the European Commission finances are two important points to note single Lifelong Learning programme include: about the new programme in with a budget of some 6 billion Euros • International Festival of the Deaf of comparison with the current one. (£4 billion pounds). We believe it has St. Francis of Sales This project Firstly, it will be open to all cultural enormous potential, not just for involves the organisation of a and artistic fields without, as is the boosting economic growth on this Festival in Nitra, Slovakia, by case now, predetermined categories. It continent, but also for promoting operators from the Czech Republic, will be open to a greater variety of mutual understanding. France, the Netherlands and the host cultural operators, ranging from country. Its goal is to increase the national or local administrations to accessibility of art and artistic networks and cultural sector • David Hughes is a Member of the creation for disabled people, companies. Secondly, it will focus on Cabinet of Mr Jan Figel, European especially the hearing impaired. The three main goals: Commissioner for Education, Training, activities include drama workshops, • Increasing transnational mobility of Culture, and Multilingualism. This article 56 painting workshops, a seminar on people working in the sector. is based on the opening presentation Deaf Culture, an art exhibition, • Supporting the transnational mobility he gave to the IWA’s Creu Cyfle / theatrical performances and Festival of works of art. Cultural Explosion Conference held in outputs such as books and a video. • Encouraging intercultural dialogue. Caernarfon in February 2006.

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environment shadow boxing

unleash billions of tonnes of methane, gordon james argues a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. A number of reports have that the Assembly warned of a record loss of sea ice in the Arctic and the break up of the needs greater powers Greenland ice cap. Nearer home we are informed that soils in Britain are no over energy policy if it longer acting as carbon sinks but, due to rising temperatures, are now is to lead the way on releasing huge quantities of carbon Climate Change dioxide into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, politicians in London and Cardiff proclaim success in achieving n October 2005 the Welsh Affairs a reduction in emissions of the basket Select Committee announced that of six greenhouse gases – carbon i they would conduct a broad dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ranging inquiry into the relationship three chemical compounds – in line between the UK and Welsh Assembly with the Kyoto agreement. This is a Governments on energy policy, and hollow claim that can only be made if energy needs and provision in Wales. emissions from aviation and shipping The inquiry’s immediate context was are ignored. Even under this scenario, rises in energy prices, the reductions have been achieved more decommissioning of ageing coal and by chance than judgement. The nuclear power stations, and concerns switch from coal to gas, partly an about the security of energy supplies. outcome of the Thatcher This last would inevitably dip into the government’s war with the miners, hot issues of nuclear power and and the decline in manufacturing are renewables, including wind energy. important factors.

However, the most important long-term Official figures show that Wales is context for the inquiry is climate performing worse than the other UK change. As greenhouse gas emissions countries Between 1990 and 2003 we continue to rise, scientific evidence is achieved an overall greenhouse gas demonstrating loudly and clearly that reduction of 3.6 per against a target the impacts of climate change are of 12.5 per cent by the end of the worse than predicted and happening decade. The battle is being lost in sooner than expected. Reports warn reducing the main greenhouse gas, that we are now on the edge of ’tipping carbon dioxide. Between 1990 and points’ beyond which dangerous 2003 Wales recorded a slight climate change is likely to be increase, compared to small unstoppable. reductions in the rest of the UK, thus falling far short of the Westminster One example is research undertaken Government’s target of a 20 per cent jointly by Oxford University and Tomsk reduction by 2010. In fact, since the State University in Russia that recorded Labour administration came to power 57 the melting of an area of Siberian bog, in 1997, carbon dioxide emissions in the size of Germany and France the UK have risen by an estimated combined. This is now threatening to five per cent.

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environment wave dragon

he Danish company Wave be laid from immediately below the Although the demonstrator unit is Dragon are proposing the device beneath the sea bed to the close to shore where the impact of world’s largest wave energy shore, pass underneath the beach and wave power is reduced, it should still t cliffs and then underground to connect be able to generate enough power for converter off either West Dale or Marloes beach in Pembrokeshire. This with the grid. 2,500 to 3,000 homes. If it proves demonstration site (see map) falls within the Pembrokeshire Marine Conservation Area and an Environmental Impact Assessment is being undertaken. Work is also ongoing on noise and wave modelling.

The device works by channelling waves into a reservoir above sea level. The water is then released through a number of turbines and generates electricity in the same way as hydro power plants. The technology has been developed and tested over the past eight years in tanks in Denmark and Ireland. The Danish prototype was believed to be the first offshore device in the world to deliver power to a national electricity grid.

The £11m project received a £5m grant under European Objective 1 funding in March 2006. The first stage involves the deployment of a 7 megawatt unit close to the shore off Dale or Marloes The Wave Dragon will be located within the square on the map. Skomer Island is at the top left hand by spring / summer 2007. A cable will corner of the map, Marloes to the north of the square, and West Dale to the south-east.

In its submission to the Welsh Select “We cannot wait for new The Assembly Government recognises Committee inquiry, Friends of the Earth technologies like capturing emissions that Wales has a role to play. As early Cymru argued that energy policy in from burning coal. We have to act as April 2000, the First Minister agreed Wales and elsewhere must now be with what we have. This decade, that to a strategic study into the potential driven primarily by the overriding need means focussing on energy efficiency for renewable energy developments. to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. This and renewable sources of energy. We The following year, the chair of the means weaning ourselves off our don’t have much time left.” Economic Development Committee addiction to fossil fuels, which are the recommended that it should undertake main source of carbon dioxide. The This amounts to nothing less than an a review of energy policy based on major effort must be to use energy much energy revolution in which Wales can “the Assembly’s responsibility to more efficiently and by developing take a lead role, as it did in the industrial promote sustainable development renewable sources of energy. As Jim revolution, with the possibility of reaping whilst facilitating economic growth and 58 Hansen, the leading American climate economic as well as environmental development.” Accordingly, two scientist whom the Bush administration benefits. We certainly possess sufficient reports were produced on renewable recently tried to gag, has warned (writing natural resources that could be harnessed energy in April 2002, and energy in the Independent, 17 February 2006): to produce low carbon energy. efficiency in April 2003.

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successful, the second stage during 2008-09 will comprise eleven units further offshore at a more energetic wave site. These will have a capacity of 77 megawatts providing enough electricity for the whole of Pembrokeshire, 60,000 homes.

The project has the potential to generate new jobs in a wide range of industries across Wales, including maritime services, engineering, and construction. If the second stage of the development is undertaken the The Wave Dragon device seen from a distance (above) and a close up with waves breaking (below). construction phase could create up to 1,000 jobs with around 20 permanent operational jobs. Swansea University is interested in becoming involved through the development of power electronics and participation in environmental studies.

Selecting the site was not a simple task. It had to be off the west coast of Britain with easy access to the grid. Because of the cost of undersea cabling the demonstrator project also had to be close to the shore. Access to a major port was necessary for construction and later service and maintenance. The project is based at nearby Pembroke Dock within Milford Haven. At the same time the generators had to be clear of major shipping lanes. All these requirements led to the choice of the Pembrokeshire Marloes site.

Both reports attempted to steer Wales Government has moved energy issues responsibility for key policy areas, such towards becoming “a global showcase forward by producing an Energy as the promotion of energy efficiency for clean energy developments and Efficiency Action Plan (February 2004), and renewable energy, building energy conservation”, a vision set out TAN 8: Planning for Renewable Energy regulations and consents for in the Assembly Government’s national (July 2005), and an Energy Route Map generating stations over 50 megawatts, economic development strategy, A consultation document (June 2005). A still resides with Westminster. Winning Wales in January 2002. number of energy actions are also referred to in the Sustainable Apparently Wales is incapable of In February 2003 Economic Development Action Plan (October 2004), managing energy issues with the same Development Minister Andrew Davies, the Wales Spatial Plan (2004) and the level of competence that we bring to outlined five priority policy areas that draft Environment Strategy (2005). areas such as economic development, included a commitment to ‘clean’ coal health, education, transport, culture, technology and the setting of a target However, the reality is that the the environment, planning and 59 to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in Assembly Government’s role in energy financial management. Or, it might, as Wales by 20 per cent between 2000 and matters is, in most respects, little more implied by the Richard Commission 2020. Since then, the Assembly than shadow boxing. This is because [Ch.9 Para.30], have more to do with

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environment

Wilfa Nuclear Power Station on Anglesey: “Besides the excessive cost and the risks of terrorist attack, proliferation, accidents and routine discharges to the environment, there remains the unsolved problem of what to do with waste that will remain hazardous for hundreds of years.”

preventing the Assembly having the With the National Assembly’s statutory offered. Already, the Scottish Labour powers to determine the future commitment to sustainable party has caved in to pressure. In a development of nuclear power in Wales. development, one would have preferred surprise move, it voted on the final day it to be ahead of the UK Government on of its conference in February to support A brief look at the Assembly a policy that so clearly embodies such a new nuclear build north of the Border. Government’s energy efficiency action combination of benefits – environmental plan gives an indication of the (reduced greenhouse gas emissions), In Wales, the Assembly Government is ineffectiveness of the current situation. social (less fuel poverty and ill health) coming under intense pressure While the UK Government’s plan sets and economic (lower fuel bills and more because of the threat to jobs on targets for reducing carbon dioxide jobs). Anglesey should Wylfa close, as emissions from households, planned, in 2010. This is despite the government buildings and the business The Assembly Government’s fact that a new nuclear power station sector by 2010, no targets or timetables impotence on energy issues is likely to would employ far less than at present for delivery are set in Assembly be most pronounced in the case of and electricity from renewable and gas Government’s Energy Saving Wales. And, nuclear power. Its admirable opposition resources could safeguard the 600 jobs according to the Sustainable Development to this costly, dangerous and at Anglesey Aluminium. Action Plan, “the Assembly Government, unnecessary form of electricity its agencies and the NHS in Wales” will generation risks being swept aside by Much of this pressure is coming from 60 only “report annually on the use of Westminster should the UK the CBI and the TUC. Both energy in its estates” rather than set a government’s energy review back this organisations have lobbied hard, target of cutting carbon emissions by 29 ineffective ‘quick-fix’, as now seems making the mistaken claim that nuclear per cent as stated in the UK plan. inevitable no matter what evidence is power provides thirty per cent of the

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environment

country’s energy. In fact, the Tidal lagoons off the Welsh coast could domestic combined heat and power contribution from this hazardous generate a similar amount as wind systems. Within forty years these could source is a mere five per cent of Wales’ while other technologies, such as provide a third of the UK’s electricity. overall energy needs as opposed to marine current turbines and wave around thirty per cent of its electricity. energy devices are being developed. In addition to cleaner forms of energy Ironically, one of the best locations in generation, there remains what the It is surprising that the CBI, which the UK for marine current turbines government once described as “the champions free enterprise, should would be off Wylfa head. cheapest, cleanest and safest way of support an energy system that has addressing our energy policy always relied on hefty state subsidies objectives.” The benefits of energy to survive. In addition to these, it is efficiency improvements have been now estimated that the cost to the recognised for years yet the average taxpayer of decommissioning existing house in the UK still only has a rating nuclear facilities will be in excess of of 51 out of a possible maximum of £56 billion. It is equally surprising to 120. A national energy efficiency see the TUC back something that is a programme that would “save millions poorer job creator than the alternatives of tonnes of carbon dioxide and create of energy efficiency and renewables. up to 50,000 new jobs,” as promised ten years ago by the Labour Party in its Besides the excessive cost and the environmental policy document In Trust risks of terrorist attack, proliferation, for Tomorrow, is still required. accidents and routine discharges to the environment, there remains the The likelihood of the Welsh Assembly unsolved problem of what to do with Government fulfilling its aspiration of waste that will remain hazardous for becoming a global showcase for clean hundreds of years. Why on earth are energy, and thereby playing its part in we even contemplating bequeathing the green energy revolution, remains such an unsolvable problem to future remote while Westminster retains generations simply to generate a responsibility for Welsh energy policy. portion of our electricity which could As we get diverted into another false be obtained from cleaner, safer and and costly nuclear dawn at the behest more cost-effective sources? There is considerable potential for micro-energy systems such as the solar panels seen here at the of Downing Street, rising carbon Machynlleth Alternative Technology Centre. dioxide emissions will continue to feed While the Assembly Government might a frightening black cloud hanging over find it difficult to resist the pressure to Energy crops and forestry and our children’s future. go for new nuclear, it deserves praise woodland residues provide a source of for resisting the misinformation of the low carbon energy that is widely anti-wind lobby that has had a tendency applied in some other European to doubt the science of climate change countries benefiting both the while glancing a sympathetic eye environment and the rural economy. towards nuclear power. These biomass sources could also be used to co-fire coal power stations to The Friends of the Earth Cymru’s reduce CO2 emissions. Further submission to the Welsh Affairs reductions could be achieved by retro- Committee provides figures to fitting these power stations with demonstrate that existing and proposed efficient technologies, such as onshore and offshore windfarms could advanced super-critical boilers, while generate 27 per cent of Wales’ electricity. cleaner coal gasification systems are Despite being maligned by landscapists, being developed. who seem much less upset by the scarring of opencast coalmining that A recent study by the Energy Saving feeds a carbon producing power station, Trust has demonstrated a considerable 61 wind energy remains the most cost- potential for micro-energy systems, • Gordon James is Welsh Assembly effective and technologically advanced such as solar panels, roof-mounted Campaigner with Friends of the of all the renewable options. wind generators, heat pumps and Earth Cymru.

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environment nantgwynant

antgwynant is located on the campaigning. This secured the Snowdon ruth williams, john southern side of Snowdon estates for £3.6 million leaving £1 million pritchard, and neil n and includes the communities to carry out valuable management work of Beddgelert, Nantgwynant and Nantmor. on the land. This was used as match The National Trust is a major landowner in funding to apply for the grants which have caldwell advocate the valley, owning about one-third of the since been used to fund the Nantgwynant land area. In 1994 it acquired the Craflwyn Integrated Land Management Project. investing in the Estate which had been neglected for some years, and embarked on a restoration This integrates environmental and environment programme for the house, gardens, heritage ideas into an action plan which woodland and parkland. includes the protection, conservation and rejuvenation of the countryside and The Trust was able to secure European built heritage. The project is also aimed Objective 5b project funding to repair at encouraging the local community to parts of the estate and to develop the develop a sustainable, diverse and workshops and education centre ‘Deilan integrated future for the area. Las’. A grant from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts allowed the local As part of the project we carried out a footpath network to be opened up. socio-economic evaluation of its impact. Phase 1 took place between In 1998 the Trust launched a major public 2000-1 when £350,000 was spent in the appeal to ‘Save Snowdon’ with Sir local area with 47 per cent of the Anthony Hopkins donating £1m. It raised money coming from a grant from £4.6 million within 100 days of European Objective 1 funds. In 2002 the nantgwynant local income impact 2000-01 (Phase 1) Trust Employment £410,000 62 Suppliers and Contractors £275,000 Volunteers £10,295 Visitors 0 Total £695,300

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Trust secured a further £2.22 million nantgwynant local income impact 2001-04 (Phase 2) from the European Objective 1 funds at 55.7 per cent grant level, plus £230,000 Trust Employment £955,710 Pathways to Prosperity funding from Suppliers and Contractors £1,075,000 the Welsh Assembly Government. Volunteers £60,703 During Phase 1 we found that: Visitors £168,302 • The local wage bill was over Total Impact Phase 2 £2,259,715 £333,000 deriving an income for the area around £410,000. • There were 15 long term local Skills development is key and there • Twenty-four working holiday groups volunteers and an increased number is huge job satisfaction amongst the and 14 volunteer groups from of working holidays at Craflwyn workforce.” outside the area generated an generating an expenditure of £96,000 income of over £10,000. (£46,000 when adjusted for leakage). The study shows how the Trust has • Expenditure by visitors is estimated • A total of £355,000 was sub- been able to integrate high value to be around £355,000 which converts conservation work while enhancing the contracted to 52 businesses, 40 of to local income of about £170,000. local visitor attraction product, attracting which were local – these secured a wide interest group to the area two-thirds of the Trust’s expenditure. The Trust has made strong efforts to through some innovative activities. The develop its relationship with the final phase, between 2004 to the present During the main restoration Phase 2 of community, although the response has will be fundamental in consolidating the the project, between 2001-04: been mixed. Contractors and nominated benefits and in continuing to deliver • The local wage bill was £777,000 community members have been sustainable rural regeneration. deriving an income for the area of generally – though not always – positive over £955,000; and supportive of the work. Positive • Over £1million was spent with 130 comments from businesses included: suppliers and contractors, 60 per cent • Dr Ruth Williams is Wales Policy of which were locally based. “They do many things well – five Manager with National Trust Wales, • Seventy per cent of local businesses years ago I thought the Trust was John Pritchard is an economist with indicated positive changes in codswallop but having had the KPMG Wales, and Dr Neil Caldwell is a turnover and profit since 2000 partly experience I think they do a community and environmental attributed to working with the Trust, tremendous job” consultant. A copy of the report on and 60 per cent said their business which this article is based is available would deteriorate in the absence of “They opened my eyes to a lot – from the National Trust Wales office in the Trust. heritage approach is to be admired. Cardiff, Tel. 029 2046 2281.

Volunteers clear rhododendrums during Phase 2 of the project.

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culture and communications

geraint talfan davies says the arts funding review is a chance to get away from policy-making on the hoof governing culture

he one good thing to emerge role of Government down to the from the depressingly professional indemnity arrangements t avoidable clash between the for young architects. Its very breadth Assembly Government and the Arts proved its undoing, since the scale and Council of Wales has been the setting scope of institutional change that it up of a public review of the contested proposed was indigestible by the issues by an independent panel. It is politicians. The Scottish Executive the sort of sensible process that one ended up proposing something not might have expected prior to the dissimilar to the Assembly determination of any policy, rather than Government’s proposals for Wales. have it imposed on a Government that This was to transfer five large national had failed to make its policy-by- companies from the Scottish Arts assertion approach prevail. But one Council to Government, though the must be thankful for small mercies. public digestion was aided by a £20m annual uplift in arts spending in a Wales is not alone in facing difficult country that already has the highest issues about the governance of the arts spending per head in the UK. arts. There has been some tension between the Arts Council of England Much will be expected of the and its sponsoring department the independent panel in Wales. Department of Culture, Media and Individually, its members have a Sport. However, a thorough review, considerable track record. conducted by six experts in their field – including the former Chief Executive of The Chair, Elan Clos Stephens, not only the Royal Opera House and the Chief successfully chaired S4C for eight Executive of Creative New Zealand (the years but has powerful and relevant country’s Arts Council) – has sought to academic credentials, as has Professor put the relationship on a better footing, Wynn Thomas, our leading expert on while endorsing the existence of the the English literature of Wales and Arts Council of England as an Chair of the Welsh Books Council. Paul expression of the arm’s length Loveluck, President of the National principle. Museum and Galleries of Wales, has the roundness and the sharpness of the In Northern Ireland Peter Hain, their better class of civil servant, having and our Secretary of State, has given worked within the old Welsh Office the province’s own Arts Council a before periods as Chief Executive of similar endorsement. the Wales Tourist Board and then the Countryside Council for Wales. The situation in Scotland has been more complicated. A hugely expensive Roger Lewis, Managing Director of ITV 64 Scottish Cultural Commission spent Wales, has immense musical £500,000 and nearly two years knowledge and was the man who reviewing the whole cultural scene, made Classic FM the most successful commenting on everything from the commercial radio station in the UK in

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recent decades. Vicky Macdonald, was that is often the key to the success of review of the Assembly Government’s the Curator at the Royal Cambrian reviews of this kind. It was certainly an cultural strategy. Academy for 12 years, and has been an asset to Lord Richard’s Commission on effective contributor as one of Arts the powers of the Assembly, while the So what should we be looking for Council of Wales’s National List of Peer Review of the Arts Council of when the panel reports later this year? Advisers. Alan Watkins, Wrexham’s England also had the benefit of First and foremost, any Officer for Leisure Libraries and Culture assistance from consultants recommendation for change should be brings to the table extensive experienced in the field. a justified response to a defined knowledge of local government’s problem, and offer a real prospect of contribution to the culture. Indeed, in both process and content the improvement on the status quo. That English review canvassed a list of seems obvious but in relation to the It is as well that these people are of an questions uncannily close to those at proposed transfer of responsibility of independent cast of mind for, issue in Wales and its report will be a six large arts organisations from the collectively, the make up of the panel useful starting point for the Welsh Arts Council to the Government, the demonstrates how difficult it is to panel’s researches. It exemplifies the two questions that the Minister and the establish true independence in Wales. fact that the debate about the Government failed conspicuously to The extent of the public sector is such – relationship between the arts and answer over an eighteen month period and, inevitably, not least in the arts – Government – particularly in England – were: that it is difficult to line up people who is being conducted at a much more • What is the problem that this is are not beholden in some way or sophisticated level than has been the designed to fix? another. So we have two leaders of case to date in Wales. • What benefit will flow from the new organisations that are themselves arrangements? funded by the Culture Department that In recent months the English Minister is commissioning the review and one for the Arts, David Lammy MP, has Any kind of answer to either of those current broadcaster, whose industry in delivered two speeches that, though questions would have made it easier to Wales is overseen, though not actually challenging for his own Arts Council, have a proper discussion. regulated, by the Culture Minister. In were extremely thoughtful and held these circumstances, it is surprising out a vision placing the arts at the Second, the panel should seek that at least one member of the panel centre of society with a degree of solutions that can command wide was not drawn from outside Wales. public and political acceptance akin to support not only in the arts sector, but that enjoyed by the BBC or the NHS. also across the political spectrum. In I hope that the Chair has demanded the foreseeable future Assembly proper servicing for her panel, since The panel in Wales will at least have Governments of whatever colour are the benefit of decently wide terms of only ever likely to have tiny majorities. reference. The Culture Committee This is a reality that sits uncomfortably knocked back the Minister’s first draft with the arts, a field that desperately which tried, rather too transparently, to needs long term planning and stability. turn the exercise into a performance review of the Arts Council. It even Third, there is one lesson from similar managed to omit the very question that reviews in Scotland and England that I had led to the review being imposed hope the panel will seize upon as a real upon him, namely the issue of the opportunity for Wales. That is the need relationship between the Arts Council to demonstrate that a fundamental and the Assembly Government. But solution to the place of the arts in sense prevailed. society, as well as to its effective governance, must engage the whole of Only in one regard might the panel Government and not just a Culture have a difficulty in creating a Department. manageable workload for itself. That is the inclusion in the terms of reference, on one reading, of some issues of policy as well as structure. In that • Geraint Talfan Davies is Chairman of 65 sense it will be interesting to see how the IWA and was Chairman of the Elan Clos Stephens – Chair of the Independent the review process, in both timing and Arts Council of Wales for three years Arts Funding Review panel. content, sits alongside the Minister’s until April 2006.

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culture and communications daffodil meets the big apple

ike every Welsh person who has battalion of Cardiff City fans could have peter stead joins in lived in the United States I have made any rival impact on that day. with Wales Week in l been both fascinated and tantalised by the general failure of The United States is vast, complex and Americans to come to terms with what self-absorbed. It was a week of New York Wales actually means. Mostly, of conversations with taxi-drivers from course, one wants to be accepted on Haiti, Bangladesh, Eritrea and the one’s own terms, but on those Dominican Republic. We had one occasions when the Welsh card is rather more traditional type, a played (the signatories of the brilliantly funny New Yorker straight Declaration of Independence, suburban out of the movies who had been in the names in Philadelphia, Jack Daniel, navy and who had visited the UK. He Richard Burton, a sudden rendering of enquired as to which side of England a hymn) one is rewarded with an Wales was to be found (he thought it amused acceptance of one’s exotic was an island) and asked whether it eccentricity. was winter there. All week one began one’s definitions with the Celts I was once a member of a talented (whoever they were) and then History Department in the American eliminated the Scots and the Irish South, half of whose members were before falling back on Messrs. Burton Jewish. A plethora of Jewish festivals and Thomas. meant that the Department Chair was finding it difficult to find a date for a And yet it was a highly satisfactory seminar. Finally March 1st seemed the week and undoubtedly our cause is in obvious choice. ‘I’m afraid’, I said, good hands. The Wales Office in the ‘that’s the National Day of my people’. prestigious and strategically located The facial responses of my colleagues Chrysler Building is a terrific resource, gave testimony to the hours or a base for all visitors from home as the volumes I would need just to explain visitors book testifies, and the centre Wales. from which Catrin Brace and a team of economists can establish contact with This year I was in New York for Welsh all the cultural, political and business Week and was well aware of the networks seeking to develop a Welsh difficulty of persuading locals to dimension. We were delighted to join envisage Wales. On St. David’s Day with a distinct Welsh community in itself one knew that the daffs had been New York and there was a real family ordered and one looked forward to feel to the splendid reception at the UN some kind of impact being made in the hosted by the Ambassador Sir Emyr designated centres of activity. However Jones Parry (who was eager for an it was also Ash Wednesday and, in this update on his beloved Swans) and to 66 most Catholic of cities, this meant the Annual Dinner of the St. David’s packed churches and almost every Society of New York at the Yale Club other person carrying a prominent which was very amusingly chaired by black cross on their foreheads. Only a the banker David Morgan.

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long stories as the snow fell outside the positively Dickensian setting of Dylan’s White Horse Tavern, and Rachel Tresize thrilled an audience at NYU as she graphically evoked the youth culture of the Valleys. Dai Smith gave a typically spirited and challenging promotion of his Library of Wales series, although some of the few New Yorkers in his audience were bemused by his sustained denunciation of everything to do with Richard Llewellyn and Dylan Thomas. After all they were the two Welsh authors to succeed in America and still remain in print without government sponsorship.

Undoubtedly it was a useful, profitable and culturally rewarding week. Of course lessons were learnt. Both displays and readings could best be organised in conjunction with specific stores such as Bloomingdales and Borders rather than in the open space at the Time Warner Center. The greatest impact I have ever seen Wales make in New York was a month after 9/11 when the Morriston Orpheus sang at Grand Central Station. That day Alwyn Humphries and his choir had a Culture Minister Alan Pugh in New York with Professor Dai Smith, Editor of the New Library of Wales, huge appreciative audience for songs formerly out-of-print English language Welsh classics. Here they are seen presenting the series in the New both Welsh and American. Music must be York Public Library to the Head Librarian Alan Pally. deployed, as must the stars. On another We were left in no doubt that the practice of Welsh writing in English. visit to the city I noticed that there were posters of Ioan Gruffudd as Hornblower infrastructure is in place. What had to be Inevitably, however, there were greater on every bus, huge portraits of Catherine determined was whether the week’s difficulties here than with any other Zeta on all the movie hoardings and visiting delegations would make any manifestation of Welsh culture. There excellent reviews for Kate Burton’s Hedda impact. Certainly there was quality on was always going to be the danger here Gabler on Broadway. A journalist was offer and it was thrilling to hear the of the Welsh visitors talking to needed to pull all that together. Similarly painter Kevin Sinott, the ceramicist Peter themselves. There was a prominent Wales Week should sign up some stars Wills, the jewellry designer Mari Thomas, advert for Parthian’s splendid new and let The New York Times do the rest. the photographer Moyrah Gall and others Library of Wales in the New York Review reporting not only a general interest in of Books (appropriately Culture Minister Usually when I am in New York I am on their displayed work but also on definite Alun Pugh was in town to promote that) my own or with my wife. This time I offers from galleries. A group of Welsh and Welsh writers appeared in a general was there with fellow-countrymen chefs made a major impact at the UN Barnes and Noble programme advertised consciously promoting Wales. I think with their lunches of Welsh dishes and in The New York Times. But my we laid some real foundations. ingredients and the Welsh Whisky impression was that audiences for some Meanwhile at the United Nations I Company chairman Brian Morgan of the readings were almost ‘family’ only. stood before a large and distinguished seemed to be in all the right places An exception was a reading by Owen audience and read Dylan’s Let Me convincing experts that the tradition of Sheers which attracted a large crowd. Escape. For me, at least, the big Apple Jack Daniel lived on and was now given will never be the same again. full expression in the Penderyn brand. Nevertheless there were magical 67 moments. Menna Elfyn was in sparkling Deliberately placed at the heart of Welsh and amusing form at the Yale Club, Joe • Professor Peter Stead is an historian week was the tradition and current Mazelis superbly narrated one of her and cultural commentator.

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culture and communications welsh cinema

steve blandford finds that two recent films open up new possibilities for identity in 21st Century Wales

s someone who has written firmly on traditional questions of Welsh fairly regularly about film and identity. However, it is recognisably a television in Wales I have from south Wales in the way it become used to the kind of jokes connects the Cardiff cityscape to the exemplified by Philip French’s remarks in 1990s club scene that is the world of The Observer back in June 1999, “If you Human Traffic. Of course this is no earth thought Welsh cinema was a suitable shattering discovery, except that in a subject for a book in the series of slim world where images of a vibrant, volumes that includes Dutch mountaineers youthful, contemporary Wales and Belgian Comedians, you should have remained scarce the significance of a a look at David Berry’s Wales and Cinema: film that asserted Wales’s membership The First Hundred Years.” of a wider contemporary culture had some measure of importance. French’s joke is ironically part of a highly complimentary review of one of Essentially Human Traffic follows five the key films in the patchy history of main characters, only one of them recent Welsh cinema, Justin Kerrigan’s Welsh, as they use their weekends Human Traffic made in 1999. It is a film around the club scene to rediscover that I would argue is also key to the themselves after the week spent in Welsh contribution to a rapidly alienating repetitive work. The concept changing sense of British identity, of identity is at the heart of the film. In something which French’s review also one of its fantasy sequences a parodic goes on to suggest: re-enactment of that potent symbol of traditional British nationalism – The “Just as Trainspotting makes a Last Night of the Proms – the national clean break with the traditional dimension to identity is explicitly Scotland of tartanry and kailyard, of included only for it to be seen as Scott and Barrie, so Human Traffic something profoundly alienating to the turns its back on the Wales of male generation portrayed here. voice choirs and the whimsical humour of The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain … It seems more like an American picture than a British one; the influences working on it are Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, John Simm leading actor Bob Rafelson’s Head and in ’Human Traffic’ which 68 early Scorsese.” “tries to do for Cardiff and Wales what ’Trainspotting’ had done As French suggests, Human for Edinborough and Traffic turns its back very Scotland.”

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This is a film that wears any politics very lightly, but there is little doubt that it looks at how the marginalised young seek new kinds of reality and identity in response to the distance they feel from the traditional markers of personal identity in work, family and country. In his 2001 essay Internal Decolonisation? British Cinema in the Celtic Fringe, a rare piece that includes any discussion of Welsh cinema, Martin McLoone makes an explicit comparison between Human Traffic and Trainspotting. He concludes that central to both films is a new questioning of old ways of discussing the relevance or otherwise of national identity:

“Human Traffic tries to do for Cardiff and Wales what Trainspotting had done for Edinburgh and Scotland. What is being questioned in both films, if not rejected outright, are traditional notions of Britishness, Welshness and Scottishness and the dominant regimes of imagery that the cinema has used to represent them.”

Film director Amma Asante – inspired to write and direct A Way of Life by what she saw as the complex In terms of a reconsideration of identity, identities of her brother’s children. the film A Way of Life, released in 2004 to great critical acclaim, usefully raises throughout the Valleys in order to cast that the film offered. Couldn’t she have the question of what constitutes a with the kind of authenticity that she shown more of the beautiful scenery or ‘Welsh’ film at all. It was directed by felt the project demanded. added some jokes? Amma Asante, a young black British woman raised in Streatham in south The film is powerful and controversial, I would argue that the contrary is true. London whose parents emigrated from both about the diversity of available A Way of Life is a welcome mark of a West Africa in the 1960s. The film is set Welsh identities and in its attempt to maturing culture, able to face its in the south Wales Valleys and received take an honest and sympathetic look at divisions and be critical of them. It a large proportion of its funding via the some of the underlying causes of opens up new possibilities for being Lottery in Wales as well as the now contemporary racism. At the heart of A Welsh in the twenty-first century. The defunct HTV. Way of Life is the murder of a Turkish- alternative is a complacent born man who has lived in the valleys sentimentality and a reductive resort to Asante has stated that she sees the film for much of his life. That one of the a worn out identity based only upon very firmly as Welsh and that she was perpetrators is a teenage woman with a self-congratulation and opposition to inspired to write and direct it by what young child adds to the horrifying the English. she saw as the complex identities of intensity of the act. her own brother’s children. They have a Welsh mother and a black father from Asante’s film presents powerful • Professor Steve Blandford is Head of Streatham, making them, in Asante’s challenges to reductive ideas about the Department of Arts and Media at own words, “half of everything you gender, race and ultimately nation as the University of Glamorgan. This could possibly imagine.” Asante’s components of contemporary identity article is taken from his professorial 69 commitment to the project being rooted in Wales. At the film’s premiere in inaugural lecture entitled Film, Drama in south Wales was extensive, trawling Cardiff, Asante was crassly questioned and the Break-Up of Britain, delivered youth drama groups and workshops about the ‘depressing’ picture of Wales in December 2005.

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culture and communications

nigel jenkins praises a new assessment of the artist Josef Herman ystradgynlais epiphany

most culturally alert and imaginative “He ached with a great internal void.” By painters. As a son of working-class, now a thoroughly practised artist, industrial Wales he is unusually well informed by experience of the major art equipped to take an insider’s view of movements of the day plus fructifying Herman’s achievement. friendships with some of Europe’s leading artists, Herman yearned to paint Josef Herman (1911–2000), whose ‘with dignity and humanity’. Yet he felt sojourn in Ystradgynlais (1944–55) was he lacked appropriate subject matter. of seminal importance in his development as a painter, was both the victim of the Ystradgynlais would prove both his most horrific ill-fortune that his times salvation and the making of him. could inflict, and also the beneficiary of Serendipity came into play once more exceptional good luck. He was born into when a friend who had taken a holiday poverty, suffered rampant anti-Semitism in Wales suggested that he might enjoy and was compelled to flee Poland in 1938, the dramatic landscape of the southern aged 27. Thus began a life of exile that coalfield. On what he intended would would see him managing to keep one be a short visit in 1944, Herman step ahead of the Nazis as they spread chanced in Brecon upon one Dai their tentacles across mainland Europe. Alexander Williams, a colliery carpenter, who invited Herman and his Initially Herman sought refuge in Brussels wife Catriona to visit his home village but, following the German invasion in of Ystradgynlais. Within two days of 1940, was forced to uproot himself again, his arrival he was being addressed as t is much to the credit of the this time to France. As occurred so often, ‘Joe Bach’ and it soon became Institute of Welsh Affairs, an happenstance combined with the apparent that in Ystradgynlais he had organisation devoted primarily to goodwill of individuals encountered found the home and inspiration for i along the way to see him safely to the which he had longed. consideration of the political and economic culture of Wales, that it has port of La Rochelle where apparently always insisted on paying serious there was a ship that would take him to The fortnight he had intended to spend attention to the role played in national Canada. However, Liverpool rather than in Wales would last eleven years. life by the arts. Carboniferous Collision, Canada was its destination, whence “Here I found ALL I required,” Herman Joseph Herman’s Epiphany in Herman soon found his way to a notably wrote in his Notes from a Welsh Diary Ystradgynlais is a short yet ground- hospitable Glasgow. Here, in 1942, he (1988). Famously, the decisive moment breaking study of one of the most married, and here, towards the end of for his art came as he observed a significant painters of twentieth- that year, he received a letter from the group of homecoming miners pausing century Wales. It is published as part of Red Cross informing him that his entire briefly on a bridge to exchange a few the IWA’s 2005–06 Creu Cyfle / Cultural family had been wiped out by the words, with the sun setting Explosion project, established, with Germans. This devastating news would spectacularly behind them.” Osi European Commission funding, to haunt him for the rest of his days. Osmond writes: promote links between the cultures of Wales and those of the ten states Soon after moving to London in 1943, he “In an instant all his anxious newly granted accession to the EU – of suffered a deep spiritual and creative musings on life, humanity and 70 which Poland, Josef Herman’s crisis, occasioned by the feeling that in subject matter seemed resolved in birthplace, is one. It is written, with producing pictorial representations of his an overwhelming but glorious passion and insight, by Osi Rhys Polish childhood he had painted himself revelation that here was a way Osmond, one of contemporary Wales’s out of his past. Osi Osmond writes that, forward for his practice as a painter

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Osi Rhys Osmond pictured at the launch of Carboniferous Collision at the Creu Cyfle / Cultural Explosion event at the Galeri, Caernarfon in February 2006. The slide shows one of Josef Herman’s Glasgow drawings from 1940-43: I Dream About My Sister.

… The large, enduring forms of the in a strong impasto, with thick layers of Herman’s ‘permissions’ include Will miners gave him the monumental vivid colour scumbled onto the surface, Roberts (1910–2000) and Maurice images for which he had been dragged and deposited with a Barnes (1911–71). Those of a younger searching. Simultaneously they sculptural flourish.” generation indebted to his example awakened within him a new belief include Ernest Zobole (1927–2000) and in man’s serenity.” Herman’s expressionist handling and Colin Jones (1928–67). inventive use of colour, he maintains, In his autobiography Related Twilights sets his art apart both from the In these times when, as Osi Osmond (1975), Herman recalls this epiphany in monochrome sombreness of the observes, “Irony and a studied Ystradgynlais – a “carboniferous visiting (and largely middle-class) humorous indifference rule”, the kind mixture of sunbeams, coal dust and documentarists of the time, and from of humanism represented by Herman’s humankind”, in Osi Osmond’s words – the imaging of the coalfield found in art has fallen somewhat out of favour. as the seminal event of his entire the work of writers and other artists. However, fashions, by definition, creative life. Charcoal and, later, ink Herman challenged the assumption cannot last. This absorbing account of were initially the media he chose for that the perceived deprivation of the first, decisive half of Josef rendering his newfound, coal-dusted working-class life could be expressed Herman’s life – with a foreword by his subjects, but he soon felt the need to only through a drab palette, insisting second wife, Nini Herman – is a timely introduce colour, using pastels at first on the vibrancy and colour that contribution to a long overdue and then experimenting with oils. lurked beneath the universal patina of reassessment of an artist whose coal dust. inspiring example still has much to Osi Osmond, being himself an offer contemporary Wales. impressive colourist, treats the reader to many painterly insights. He argues The influences on Herman’s art and, in that “the bright westerly light of the turn, the ways in which his art has anthracite coalfield with its shallower contributed to the development of and broader valleys added a zest to painting in Wales are comprehensively • Nigel Jenkins teaches Creative Writing Herman’s painting that was lacking in pursued. He infused a growing Welsh at the University of Wales, Swansea. the narrower, darker valleys of the art scene with ideas and practices he His latest collection of poetry is Hotel Eastern and Central coalfield.” He is had absorbed in mainland Europe, and Gwales (Gomer Press, 2006). illuminating on Herman’s artistic proposed to younger painters a means Carboniferous Collision, Joseph Herman’s 71 procedures, describing how key areas, of transcending academicism and the Epiphany in Ystradgynlais by Osi Rhys particularly of his single portraits of merely descriptive. Artists of his own Osmond is available from the IWA at miners and mothers, “are often applied generation who benefited from £10 (half price to members).

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last word canned singing

sparkle or seemed confused Quite understandably our his wife, and finally confronted on Question Time we would Welsh language culture has by a soloist marching with our all go around for days being been given every opportunity national flag as if we were unable to look people in the to fulfil and express itself in its some ancient tribe of Israel eye. On the other hand, if he new home, but things have desperately lost in the desert. were ever to make the Queen been far less straight forward One prays for this nonsense to and Duke of Edinburgh laugh for us English speakers. Not end as play commences but we would all congratulate only did we lose our then, as our lack of class ourselves on belonging to a occupational and economic forwards propels us to yet nation renowned for its wit identity, we were also another mediocre result, we and spontaneity. effectively distanced from our are subjected to canned traditional Britishness, a singing and a panicky and Of course, the whole matter of concept that was in any case in impudent instruction to ‘get peter stead our individual relationship crisis. behind the boys’. with the nation or polity of Wales has changed since the Given this vacuum it was Of course, the WRU is not massive and historic turning inevitable that there had to without allies. Who could aving read that if point that saw devolution be recourse to the Welsh ever have guessed that so Loughborough come hard on the heels of de- dimension. In the old days many brewers and University had h industrialisation. In the past there were only two forms of manufacturers of replica competed in the Melbourne committed Nationalists jerseys, clowns’ hats and Games as a nation it would Welshness: that of the Nats presumably lay awake every that perfectly dreadful flag of have come eighth in the and one you concocted for medal table I immediately night worrying about the state yourself. Today we have no Saint David would turn out went back to confirm that of their nation. Meanwhile it choice for Welshness is now to be such ardent Wales had finished thirteenth. was much easier for the rest thrown at us by all-and- nationalists? And of course, It then occurred to me that if of us. We could go about sundry. Any Tom, Dick and our journalists and my hometown of Barry had being British for most of the Harry can insist you associate broadcasters have jumped competed as a nation it time and just pull out our themselves with their own on this bandwagon, eager as would have finished twenty- Welshness for the odd win at homespun cobbled together ever to prove how much fourth, above Northern Twickenham or world boxing version of what being Welsh they are in tune with that Ireland and Bangladesh. title. But if there was a scandal means. And quite frankly, it is new and vital group, Welsh in the Sunday papers all too often these newly youth. There was a time These are superb Games for involving Bassey, Burton, manufactured, improvised when journalism involved us small nations. Think of how Dylan or some north Walian and opportunistic analysis and at its prompting proud Swaziland is of its one fanatics we could conveniently presentations of Wales that one went to a match wanting medal, and can there have forget about Wales and offends one’s small nation a good game, with victory been a greater moment in the remind ourselves that, in any sensitivity. certainly but also with a history of Nauru than the case, we had some Irish or hope that the best opposition winning of its two medals? English blood on at least one The worst offender by far is players would sparkle. Once side of the family. the WRU. International days we anticipated visiting sides; Belonging to a small nation, have become an eisteddfod of now we are urged to gird up however, is not all sweetness Those acts of self-deception are Welsh kitsch. A crowd that had our loins as we prepare for and light. We swell with no longer possible because, obviously thought it was going an enemy invasion. On some pleasure when the medal is quite frankly, Wales and to a fancy dress party is future match day I envisage won and the international Welshness is now very much in bawled at by a harsh a major war being declared 72 praise bestowed. Conversely our faces. Like it or not, we announcer on loan from some and President Bush being we suffer inwardly when the have been, in the words of Cole distant railway halt, subjected impeached, but the Western nation is humiliated or let Porter, ‘devolved, de- to a pop concert, urged to sing Mail headline will be “We down. If Rhodri ever failed to industrialised and de-Britished’. a ballad about a man killing can win, says Alfie.”

spring 2006