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Home , Adamsdown, Barry Morgan, Economy of Wales, Joe Calzaghe, M4 corridor, M4 relief road

Editor John Osmond

Assistant Editor Nick Morris

Associate Editors Geraint Talfan Davies Rhys David winter 2008/09

Administration Helen Sims-Coomber and Clare Johnson

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rbitrary though the counting of anniversaries may be, they are often helpful in forcing some useful reflection. 1987, the year that the IWA was formed to create a forum for wider debate aboutWelsh conditions and public policy, Institute of Welsh Affairs a was a year when many bells were rung that still sound today: the first Palestinian 1 Radnor Court 256 Cowbridge Road East intifada in Gaza and theWest Bank, Ronald Reagan’s challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev CF5 3GZ to bring down the Berlin wall, the signing of the Single European Act, and the publication of the Brundtland Commission’s seminal report on sustainable Telephone 029 2066 6606 E-mail @iwa.org.uk development for the UN. www.iwa.org.uk Closer to home, 1987 was the year of Black Monday when, on 19 October, the UK stock market lost 11 per cent in a single day. It was the year Ron Davies, shocked The IWA is a non-aligned independent by Labour’s third successive defeat, was converted to , and when Rhodri think-tank and research institute, based in Cardiff with branches in north and Morgan was elected to Parliament. To cap our blessings, it was also the year in which , Gwent, Bay and John Humphrys became the regular presenter of the Today programme. . Members (annual subscription Now, 21 years later, the unsolved Palestinian crisis is thought to have been the £40) receive agenda three times a year, can purchase reports at a 25 per cent root cause of a wider terror, stock markets are in even greater disarray on the back of reduction, and receive invitations to a banking crisis unprecedented since 1929, and sustainable development and climate IWA events. change are matters of world wide concern, including for a National Assembly and its government that has, to some people’s surprise, now been in existence for the best part of a decade. branches Wales’s problems can seem small beer when set against the global scale of some Secretariat of these other issues, but they are directly related, as our sad connection to failed c/o Huw Lewis 6 Maes yr Haul Mold Flintshire CH7 1NS Icelandic banks has clearly illustrated. The silver lining on current clouds is that this Telephone 01352 758311 may be a moment in our history when a whole series of fundamental re-assessments

Gwent Secretariat converge to alter our world and our lives for the better. c/o Chris O’Malley The scale and sources of the banking crisis, as well as the automating Newport Campus P O Box 179 Newport NP18 3YG technology of financial markets, raise questions about the contemporary ethics of Telephone 01633 432005 capitalism that demand reform and a rebalancing of public and private interest. That West Wales Secretariat will impact – hopefully, beneficially – on our politics, on our public services and, very c/o Margaret Davies directly, on the development of our towns and cities. Perhaps we will also become less Principal’s Office Trinity College 1 SA31 3EP tolerant of an inequality at home, that destroys our own society’s cohesion, and of an Telephone 01267 237971 international inequality that threatens the security of people and planet. Secretariat This is a debate that needs to happen at every level of society and every level c/o Beti Williams of governance. Over the last 21 years, the IWA has tried to encourage debate inWales Department of Computer Science University of Wales Swansea Swansea SA2 8PP about our economy, environment, education, culture, politics and government. It has, Telephone 01792 295625 in turn, been encouraged by an enthusiastic response from a rapidly growing Wales in London membership of individuals and organisations representing all manner of interests and c/o Robert John opinions. The IWA will continue with that task, more than ever conscious of the First Base 22 Ganton Street London W1F 7BY Telephone 020 7851 5521 formidable agenda that now stares the whole world in the face. Cover Picture: Wales’s record try scorer beats French full-back Anthony Floch in the Six Nations championship decider in March 2008. Wales won 29-12 to secure their second Grand Slam in four seasons.

opinion 19 creative regeneration 4 mercurial, anne carlile says culture

Y magical, elusive is a bridge to Newport’s R

O Welsh rugby is a brand

T economic future S

R that can capture the E

V imagination of a global O

C audience says roger lewis politics 21 idealists and pragmatists peter stead casts an eye over some prognostications for politics in 21st Century Wales

23 opinion finder 8 news aled edwards assesses the role of the outlook all-Wales convention 10 coping with 25 just say yes the crunch mike german argues that supporters of key figures in the more powers for the Welsh financial world Assembly should start respond to the global 29 devolving buses education campaigning now financial meltdown huw lewis outlines his proposals for applying 35 glynd wˆr 27 14 liberal democrat a franchise system to university government leadership bus routes in Wales michael scott paul griffiths discusses contest explains why Wales’s the progressive ideas Jenny Randerson vs. newest university underpinning the environment has named itself Labour-Plaid coalition 2 31 newport bypass after a 15th century economy Julian branscombe put s rebel leader the case against the 16 surviving the projected M4 relief road 38 critical mass crunch huw beynon outlines rhys david and nick 33 light rail a new collaboration morris survey how neil anderson advocates that strengthens Wales is coping with a radical alternative to Welsh social science the economic downturn new road projects research

winter 2008/09 newsflash

coming up…

• West Wales Branch Dinner winter 2008/09 Thursday 5 February, 7.00 pm Halliwell Centre Trinity College Carmarthen Guest speaker: Kirsty Williams, AM for and Radnor

• Funding, Risk and Innovation Conference 46 genetic culture Wales’s Engagement with doublethink Science Policy dafydd huws argues 64 real wales Cardiff, mid-February 2009 that a sustainable peter finch on Details – see IWA website Welsh agriculture discovering his country cannot afford to be • Policing West Wales without GM technology West Wales branch Seminar 24th February 2009, 5.30 pm social policy Dyfedd Police HQ Llangunor, Carmarthen 49 wicked issues Keynote Speaker: Chief Constable steve martin reflects on 66 northern icon Ian Arundal progress since publication derek jones introduces of the Beecham review • Putting Women in their Place the craft centre in July 2006 Level Up Glass Ceiling Conference 66 life’s diary 6 March 2009 53 vicious circle Angel Hotel, Cardiff john morgans describes adrian roper calls for Keynote speaker: Katy Chamberlain , how he reduced five courageous action to Chief , Chwarae Teg million words to 160,000 tackle bed blocking in our hospitals 70 disarming • North Wales branch archbishop Celebrating Women’s Day 56 light in housing 6th March 2009 david williams on the gloom Details: see IWA website incense, wine and fudge sue essex reflects on the at the heart of the lessons from her review • Living with Our Landscape science Anglican debates over of affordable housing Conference sexuality 40 science business provision in Wales Cardiff, end March 2009 Details: see IWA website john osmond last word examines the way science is being put 72 taking Wales just published… at the centre of 58 euro speak with you des clifford on howWelsh the Assembly peter stead • Creating a Bilingual Wales: Government’s has followed Catalan The role of Welsh in Education 3 economic policy into European discourse Edited by John Osmond. £15

• Politics in 21st Century Wales 43 creatures great communications and small £10 penri james makes the 61 news blackout • Unpacking the case for a Welsh ned thomas reflects Progressive Consensus veterinary school at on the future of the £10 Welsh press and media 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 opinion mercurial, magical, elusive

“’s journey from theVale of to the GreatWall of China started 14 years ago with an 11 year old’s dream. It ended with 3 hr, 32 min and 24 sec of thigh bursting effort that brought her a spectacular, minutely planned, hard-earned gold medal. One more second and it would have been bronze, but on the day that she set out from Beijing to Badaling in the women’s Olympic road race, everything came right. Her team-mates, and Sharon Laws, sacrificed their medal chances to act as pacemakers for Cooke.The conditions were too cold for the Dutch favourite but reassuringly familiar to any Swansea cyclist: steep hills and driving rain. And the venue? Another country working hard to wean itself off coal and on to renewables.Wales and China have something else in common at the moment: winning. Did it start with ’s coronation as undisputed world champion in two weights at the same time, or the Grand Slam-winning national rugby team? Rhidian’s moral victory in the x Factor. Duffy’s effortless eclipse of AmyWinehouse as Princess of Soul, or evenTom Jones’s conquest of LasVegas? It started earlier, of course. Much earlier.Wales’s tenacity has often been disguised by song and softened by the green, green grass of home. But its monuments are legion, from ’s dry-stone walls to the deep pits now filled with the sound of silence beneath theValleys. Nicole Cooke’s smile is the latest.Team GB gave her a bottle of champagne last night, but she won’t be drinking it until she has ridden the time trial onWednesday, forWales .”

hese are the words of the leader column of following Nicole Cooke’s unforgettable Olympic t triumph this year. I get a tingling sensation every time I read them. I have kept the cutting in my wallet. Our First Minister recently said, “Small nations need sporting or cultural success to help them gain self-confidence. Never having had much in the way of political institutions before 1999,Wales has needed sporting success to express its identity.” I believe thatWelsh rugby has a role to play in Welsh rugby is a brand that Wales plc globally, and also a responsibility.That is why, as chief executive of the Welsh I have stated that our can capture the imagination vision is to take Wales to the world, welcome the world to Wales and help defineWales as a nation.That certainly gets me of a global audience, out of bed in the morning. Our mission is threefold: • Firstly to place Welsh rugby at the forefront of the global says roger lewis game in reputation and standing by maintaining a top five position, so as to have regular shot at the top and we are, remember, the 2008 Northern Hemisphere rugby champions. • Secondly to maximise engagement and participation in grass roots rugby and so help build communities. • Thirdly, to ensure our , owned and operated by theWRU is a must play, must visit, multi event venue for epic activity, so as to drive our revenues upwards.

Rugby is part of the glue which holds many of 4 our communities together. The game has captured the hearts and minds of our nation for over 127 years. It is quite simply, part of our DNA, our psyche. It is one of our great escapes from the stresses of modern life. For many people in and outside ofWales it helps them define themselves in the world. It helps us to defineWales in the world. Rugby is the national sport of Wales played on the ultimate field of dreams, our Millennium Stadium. The

winter 2008/09 opinion

The Welsh , founded in 1881, with well over 300 clubs we can be ecstatic in our agony. Such emotion, such team, led by affiliated to it, is one of the greatWelsh institutions. However, we complexity, such reputation risk for some political brand Captain do not consider the WRU as a great Welsh institution in a managers is too hot and too hard to handle. They prefer to Ryan Jones, celebrate political or economic sense. We have come nowhere near disregard these words as clichéd, stereotypical images of a their 2008 leveraging and harnessing the power of Welsh rugby fully to bygone age which need to be shed in our brave new world Grand Slam benefit Wales in Wales, and Wales in the world to help create and consigned to the marketeers dustbin. in the wealth and jobs – to be a driver of economic regeneration. I could not disagree more. This stuff of Welsh National That said, we are now addressing this with the rugby is so powerful, so relevant, so engaging it can and should Stadium. Welsh Assembly Government with a regular standing meeting and play a significant role in projectingWales to the world. It should we are planning to align our strategies for the benefit of all inWales. be part of the armory of a smart, strategic thinking Wales plc. For some, Welsh rugby has always lived in the The WRU is a major player in a global sport which now past, and the names, always first names, of Gareth, Barry, Gerald, delivers after the Olympics and the Fifa World Cup the third Mervyn, and Phil still encourage nostalgic tears to run down biggest sporting event in the world. the cheeks of grown men. Many are still are, stuck in the In October Deloitte published their analysis of Seventies and cannot move on, see a future, or even want to the economic benefit of the 2007 rugby world cup on . look forward. Some are stuck further back and talk of the It showed that there was a net additional gain of more than Fifties, and the golden age of Welsh rugby at the start of the £360million into the French economy for the seven week 20th Century. Moreover, the image of rugby was and is one of duration of the tournament: 2.2m tickets were sold, stadium cloth caps and beer and men doing an honest day’s work in capacity hit 94 per cent and there were 350,000 international 5 hard physical environments defined either by the mine, the visitors to France of whom 275,000 attended matches. The farm or the steel works. cumulative TV audience over the 44 days was 4 billion. The But all that is the stuff of the past. Added to sponsors of rugby globally are dominated by blue chip brands this is the paradox of sport. In life we all seek certainty. In sport, targeting an influential and wealthy demography. uncertainty is a prerequisite. For every winner there has to be In the RFU have profiled their rugby a loser and everyone must believe they can, on their day, defy fans and players. While 24 per cent of the English population the odds and win. And inWales it gets even more complex.We is from the AB social group, English fans and players constitute are either in agony or ecstasy. We agonise over our ecstasy and 54 per cent. That may not be the profile of Welsh rugby, or

winter 2008/09 opinion

Wales for that matter, but that is the commercial arena in which coaches, and Craig White and Rhys Long in the back room international Welsh rugby plays. staff along with, most probably, a significant list ofWelsh players. InWales we spend too much time looking into Quite simply, Wales and Welsh rugby are the mirror and not looking through the window. Our view of leading players in a leading world sport, which is, most the game is framed by our own experiences and perceptions. importantly, in growth. Great rugby, like all great sport now Even for the most focused Welsh business man and woman, or carries a premium price for broadcasters and sponsors alike. politician for that matter, a day at the game in Cardiff is a day International rugby delivers time sensitive, ‘must watch’ content out. It is not an opportunity to drive business strategically which captures the hearts, minds and the imagination of a forward beyond one’s circle of corporate hospitality. powerful group of people. Such content is the antidote to Over the past two years I have sat next to some time-shifted, watch when you like stuff, which fills the digital of the most powerful chief executive officers and chairmen TV channels day in, day out. InWales we have and are creating from the worlds of telecoms, finance, aerospace, and consumer fantastic premium content – great rugby which captures the goods watching the game, from Sydney to Dubai and from imagination of a global Audience. Hong Kong to Paris and Cape Town. The game attracts white Brands build nations; nations do not build collar opinion-formers and decision-makers. The opportunity brands. Great watches come from ; great wine comes to develop intimate and meaningful relationships based around from France; great cars come from ; great electronics a shared passion is very special. It presentsWales with a unique come from ; and great suits come from Italy. What great opportunity. things come from Wales? Sheep, coal, male voice choirs and The WRU is a founding member of rugby’s rugby the cynics shout. But let’s consider the values of those global governing body, the IRB. We play a key role in its brands which are so intrinsically linked with their nations: governance with significant representation on its board. The • Watches? Are they dull and predictable, or are they elegant WRU chair, David Pickering is the chair of the Six Nations and glamorous – Swiss? Rolex? committee. The Six Nations is one of the top commercial • Wines? Are they complex and intimidating, or are they sporting properties in Europe. In 2009 the British Lions tour sophisticated and romantic – French? Chateau Lafitte? will be dominated by the WRU – Gerald Davies as team • Cars? Are they reliable and functional, or are they prestigious manager, Warren Gatland, Rob Howley, Shaun Edwards as and hi-tech chic – German? Mercedes? opinion

What are the ingredients, emotions, and perceptions, above all the values and beliefs which defineWales and which can capture the hearts and minds of a global audience?Welsh rugby and theWRU can be a key component in a strategy to project Wales plc to the world. That is the opportunity. Let me distill one element, a brand icon, Shane Williams. He is today’s personification of Wales and Welsh rugby. He is the essence of brand Wales from a nation of three million people: height 5’ 7”; weight 12 stone 13 lb; a Welsh speaker from the Amman valley; nominated as the IRB player of the year; nominated as the greatest rugby player in 2008 anywhere in the world; mercurial, magical, elusive. And he is part of a lineage of such Welsh wizards. This is a brand language which can capture the imagination of a global audience which has no interest in rugby. These words define Wales as a nation, as a country, its landscape, celebrating its past and shaping its future. And if you want modern and relevant, think of Gavin Henson and James The Welsh Hook. They have the same brand qualities which England tournament world-wide after the rugby world cup, it was coaching leveraged with in projecting the London money well spent. Positive images of Wales were beamed into squad: Rob Olympic bid to the world. But let’s pursue the brand values of the homes of 70 countries. Howley, Warren Welsh rugby: Welsh rugby is already the most structured, and Gatland and • Success – winning. the most organised international brand builder of Wales. Shaun • Team – family. However, this position is not fully recognised or leveraged as Edwards - • Integrity – there is nowhere to hide on a rugby pitch. such by Wales. That is the opportunity. The WRU is prepared ‘They saw • Passion, pride, and drama. to align its strategies with Wales. But, if it doesn’t happen, we the vision, and shared • Welsh humour at its best. will continue to takeWales to the world, and we will welcome the dream’. • Over 300 tribes are in the WRU. the world to Wales. However, I do lie awake at night at times and This is the Mabinogi in the 21st Century, a think Wales does not seize all of its opportunities. Welsh rugby marketeers dream landscape, because don’t forget rugby is is one of those. We are a nation, of poets, actors, musicians… also big business. Remember the Deloitte numbers and ask and rugby players. But not only do we need to express our whether the WRU can project these images and values to creativity, we need to be creative in turning our talent into real the world? The answer is that we have secured a value-added activity.We need to grow entrepreneurs as well as £14million deal with the American firm Underarmour, outside halves and tenors. And they need to work alongside we have developed a £multi-million deal with Invesco, each other. The dragon’s den must create light as well as heat and we are now negotiating a multi-million pound deal and smoke. The WRU wants to play its part in projecting the with the broadcasters. best possible images ofWales to the world to ensure our nation It is also why we secured Warren Gatland and thrives and prospers. then Shaun Edwards and the other talented teams now working in the WRU. They saw the vision, and shared the dream. Moreover, they shaped the dream, developed the vision, and helped us build the values. In 2008 the Welsh rugby team toured South . In 2009, we tour and the USA. In 2010, its New 7 Zealand. In 2009 the Wales under 20s team tours Japan. The Welsh Sevens team will play all over the world in 2009 and, for that matter, in 2010, 2011 and 2012. In 2008 the WRU welcomed 16 nations to Wales in the inaugural IRB under 20 world tournament, • Roger Lewis is Chief Executive of theWelsh Rugby Union. broadcast to more than 70 countries. This was spotted by the This article is based on his presentation to the IWA conference Welsh Assembly Government which invested £250,000 in the Wales in the World, held in Cardiff in October 2008. £3 million event. In support of the biggest televised rugby

winter 2008/09 news creating a bilingual Wales

The Assembly • Newport carried out a survey local authorities for the IWA Government should in 2002 and as a result the report, commented, “The enforce its requirement city’s second Welsh- greatest potential for gaining that Welsh local medium primary school, newWelsh speakers lies in the authorities should Ysgol Ifor Hael, opened in latent demand within these undertake parental September 2008. counties and this is substantiated surveys to assess demand • A survey in Wrexham, by the growth ofWelsh for Welsh medium published in October 2007, medium education acrossWales. education. This is a major revealed that 43 per cent of However, although several years recommendation in a parents would choose Welsh have elapsed since they were new IWA report, Creating medium education if there first required to assess the a BilingualWales:The Role was a school reasonably close demand forWelsh-medium ofWelsh in Education. It to their homes. As a result school places, most of the local says that despite an a plan for the expansion of authorities have made little Assembly Government Welsh-medium education progress.” requirement, now more is now under discussion. Under the terms of than five years old, so far • Swansea has also carried out the OneWales coalition only three authorities a parental survey revealing agreement the Assembly have carried out that 28 per cent of parents Government is due to systematic surveys. who responded wanted a produce a strategy for The report, Welsh-medium education developing Welsh-medium produced bilingually, surveys for their children regardless education early in 2009. the 14 Welsh counties with of its proximity to their fewer than 20 per cent Welsh homes. If it was available Creating a BilingualWales: speakers, those identified by within reasonable reach the The Role ofWelsh in the Assembly Government as demand rose to 38 per cent. Education is available from requiring surveys, and finds the IWA at £15 (£12.50 that where they have been Former SouthWales to IWA members) plus undertaken advances have AM Owen JohnThomas, who £1.50 P&P. been made: carried out the survey of the 14

WalesWatch

A collective, edited blog, University of Glamorgan on Finch, chief executive of the that the blog is one of the known as WalesWatch, the reorganisation of the Welsh Academi on Cardiff most visited pages. has been launched on the health trusts; Charlotte Council’s threat to auction • Ensure that the IWA is part IWA’s website. The aim is Williams, Professor of Social off some rare books from the of the on-line journalism to post a regular Justice at the University of capital’s library. and commentary that has commentary on Welsh Keele on her reaction to WalesWatch aims to: been developing exponen- 8 policy and public affairs Barack Obama’s victory in • Contribute to theWelsh tially on the internet over by a wide range of the US presidential election; current affairs debate. the past few years. contributors. Denis Balsom, Editor of the Already a number of blogs In the short period WalesYearbook , looking ahead on the site have been since the blog was launched to the 2011 Assembly reported in theWelsh media. in September, contributors election; James • Achieve a stronger profile have included Marcus Foreman-Peck, a Professor in for the IWA and, in Longley, Professor of Applied Cardiff’s Business School, on particular, the IWA’s website. Health Policy at the the credit crunch; and Peter Our website statistics show

winter 2008/09 news partnership sharpens focus on Wales

The Institute of Welsh The first in the Centre for Advances Studies economists and geographers Affairs and Cardiff series, Unpacking the and the Regeneration Institute from north America, Europe University have signed a Progressive Consensus, an in a conference on Regional and Asia to debate their Memorandum of analysis of the philosophy Economies in a Globalising experiences in mobilising Understanding to take underpinning the OneWales World.This event, organised in intellectual resources to forward greater Labour-Plaid coalition association with the British promote innovative approaches collaboration in research government, was published Council Cymru, brought to economic and social and publication. earlier in November. The together eight world-renowned development. It was signed by aim will be to publish two Professor IWA Chair, Geraint Talfan more papers in this series Woodhouse Davies, and Professor Ken during the academic year. and IWA Woodhouse, Cardiff This collaboration is Chair Geraint University’s ProVice being undertaken by the Talfan Davies sign on the Chancellor for Engagement in IWA in association with the line. Cardiff the , , at an , a University’s event to mark publication of research unit sponsored by Development Politics in 21st CenturyWales, Cardiff Law School and the Director the second in the Cardiff Bay School of European Studies Louise Cassella and Papers series being published in the university. IWA Director jointly by the two institutions, In November the John Osmond reviewed on pages 21-22. IWA collaborated with the look on.

IWA appoints deputy director

Kirsty ran a our programme of research members – and by making successful direct marketing and publications, through the membership more business in Cardiff for several work of our branches across representative of wider years before embarking on a Wales, and through fully society – the IWA’s degree in philosophy as a exploiting our online influence will increase. mature student at the resources. This development • Make the IWA more University of Glamorgan. has been made possible accessible with a new Active in her local through the generous support website that will be one community, she is a member of the Waterloo Foundation”. stop shop on Wales, an of Cardiff’s Community Kirsty Davies said, unparalleled information Health Council and in May “As theWelsh Assembly gets resource. The IWA needs 2008 was elected a Liberal more powers, and more to find new ways of The IWA has appointed Democrat county councillor opportunities to change and communicating to Kirsty Davies as Deputy for the Llandaf ward. improveWales, I look forward to continue to provoke Director. The new post IWA Chairman, helping the IWA bring its debate while being has been created in order Geraint Talfan Davies, said: progressive ideas and proposals receptive to what its 9 to professionalise the “This is a very significant to a wider audience”. She said members want. marketing of the IWA and appointment for the IWA, her priorities were to: • Develop the branch to grow its individual and a positive way to mark • Diversify the membership network and continue to membership and our 21st anniversary year. It base, especially through a promote Wales at home corporate support. The demonstrates that we intend ‘level up’ campaign to and abroad. The IWA aims IWA was established in to continue growing the achieve gender parity in to be the ‘first point of 1987, so is celebrating its contribution of the IWA to our membership. By contact’ on matters 21st year. civil society in Wales, through recruiting more IWA concerning Welsh affairs.

winter 2008/09 outlook coping with the crunch

key figures in the Welsh financial world respond to the global financial meltdown

two years to achieve normality

Bill Tudor John, will also be a consolidation of the banks. and the . However, the Deputy We have already seen Lloyds taking over Bank has been emasculated, and while the Chairman of HBOS and other banks around the FSA is well-intentioned it has seen its best the Nationwide world have been wholly or partly people lured away by higher salaries nationalised. However, the downside is elsewhere in the City. and former this creates a concentration of risk. State-owned banks are not the Director (Europe) Although this is the worst situation long-term answer. They have always been of Lehman we’ve faced since the 1930s, things will get badly run. Their managements are Brothers back to normal, though it will take up to two inevitably leaned on to make decisions for years. We won¹t see the boom of the last ten political rather than commercial reasons. The present crisis in the financial years for a long time. We’ve already seen the new Business markets has no one cause. Some I think we’ve seen the worst of Secretary, Lord Mandelson, banging the blame the sub-prime lending in the crisis. The Government, finally, did table, saying that the banks should be America but the amounts there are the right thing in bailing out the banks, lending more money to businesses. relatively small compared with the but they should have done it much Ultimately the banks will be re-privatised. market overall. Others blame reckless earlier. For instance, they should have But that won’t happen until the markets lending by banks and while there is helped Northern Rock when the have returned to normality and, as I say, that some truth in that, the majority of problems first began to surface in the will take around two years. loans made by financial institutions are summer of 2007. It will be a slow-burn to perfectly sound. Some criticise the However, a cultural change in recovery. As far as Wales is concerned we regulators and it is correct that the US the banking system is already underway. should not think in terms of relying on Federal Reserve under Greenspan in Independent investment banks of the size manufacturing to get us out of our the U.S.A. kept interest rates too low of Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs difficulties, taking advantage of favourable for far too long encouraging a will simply no longer exist. The larger exchange rates with our foreign markets. borrowing spree, while our Financial banks will absorb the old investment The real economy in Wales, as with the Services Authority failed to monitor banks because they won’t be able to raise rest of the UK, is not manufacturing but liquidity levels in banks. funds on their own account and smaller services. So far as manufacturing is The truth is that all these factors, houses like Rothschilds, with their concerned we are never going to be able and others, brought about a complete trusted advisers, will survive and prosper. to compete with China or India. Wales 10 lack of confidence in the money markets A problem with banking regulation has got to continue to attract investment which is the real cause of the present in the UK is that it has been a tripartite from big business.There aren’t that many troubles. When banks are scared to lend system, split three ways between theTreasury, home-grown companies like Admiral, to each other, an unprecedented the Bank of England, and the Financial but we can persuade companies to move situation, the markets grind to a halt Our Services Authority. Where does the buck their back offices to Wales. Now is the world requires money constantly to stop? Inevitably it will be with the Treasury, time for theWelsh Assembly Government circulate to keep things going. but I’m not sure that the Government is to be pointing out that Wales is a The regulators will not regulate experienced enough.They’ll need to depend relatively cheap place to operate and has as lightly as they have in the past. There heavily on the Authority many lifestyle advantages as well.

winter 2008/09 outlook

of the economy: it is disastrous when it no return to becomes the heartbeat. future belongs to We will come out of recession, business as usual we will recover from the disastrous the public sector mistakes that have been made, but the cost to the real economy, to jobs and to Ross Mackay, the community will be substantial. We Tim Williams, Emeritus cannot return to business as usual. There Adviser to Professor of has to be recognition of a wider social Regeneration Economics, and civic responsibility by those who Minister Bangor control finance, money and power. Leighton University Given severe decline, it takes Andrews time and capital to provide a new This is a direction for industry. The next step In comparison fascinating but forward is likely to be difficult, but the with other countries local alarming time. We are witnessing the financial system is important in finding government in the UK simply financial system’s astonishing new direction. Unfortunately, UK hasn’t been trusted and its fiscal and volatility and how it is underpinned finance recognises no responsibility for a operational autonomy has been by animal spirits. At present, the new sense of direction, for the economy steadily and hugely eroded. This economy and the community have and for the regions. UK financial services must be reversed if we are to achieve lost trust and confidence in finance. generally refuse to recognise any wider more: top down solutions have failed. The key question is how we restore role in its nations and regions. It regards This is the key message of OECD report trust, without losing the energy and itself as international, but does not accept after report studying why less positive drive of capitalism? any responsibility for regional balance. regeneration and economic outcomes One way in which financial Demand and growth has occur in the UK over, say, EU states or institutions build income and add to concentrated on the most heavily the USA. The answer is that other share value is to accept excessive risk. populated parts of the most crowded countries have strong fiscally That is what happened in Northern country within Europe – the south east independent local government in charge Rock and other finance companies in of England. They have added to of its territory. I suggest that if Wales serious trouble. Loans were made to congestion, to commuting, to housing really wants to use devolution radically it people who could not repay. problems and to inflation. They have needs to depart from the traditions of Toxic debt followed from created severe problems for those who centralisation of the British state and go doubtful practices, including teaser rates: work in the capital and its zone of back to the future. I was once a citizen of mortgages offered at artificially low influence. Glamorgan County Council, and boy interest, but at a later date. New Labour has been negligent did that feel like a member state of the Lending became reckless with when it comes to the growing regional UN rather than a supplicant going cap securitisation – loans bundled together divide within the UK. It has protested that in hand to central government. and sold to other institutions. This had inequality within regions is at least as great However, the ask of local the effect of making the initial lender as inequality between regions. This is a government in regeneration and indifferent as to loan repayment. The naïve claim. First, because the two forms development is as serious as the offer.You incentive for financial institutions to of inequality cannot be compared and have to step up to the plate in terms of take excessive risk was enhanced by a second, because inter and intra regional vision, capacity, partnership working, bonus culture that emphasised inequality grow together. They are both planning approach, unifying your short-term returns and immediate products of an increasingly unequal bureaucracies behind a single strategy, growth – without recognising economy and society. Regional imbalance being user friendly to business. All these long-term risks. has particular pertinence to Wales, one of are necessary at this time of real crisis in 11 Financial instability is a direct the poorest regions within the UK. regeneration and housing delivery, when consequence of a period of growth and In Wales, as elsewhere, we need the public sector really has to get its act stability. Over confidence encourages to restore the links with localities and together because the private sector is in excessive optimism, financial experiment, people. Economic development is not some disarray and because the old financial innovation and excessive risk just about money or goods and services. business models are bust. taking. Speculation – gambling on the The other side of the development coin I am clear that the old models, the turn of the market – does little harm is the need to play closer attention to house-builder model which led to the when it merely operates on the surface human development. surfeit of flats but the under supply of

winter 2008/09 outlook

housing overall, was never going to deliver than developers or as partners who – has begun falling, albeit slowly. This is a on housing need. The numbers of houses cannot take an equity risk now though positive indicator for the return to normality delivered by the private sector was may do so when markets recover and of the interbank lending market. dropping rapidly before the crisis – the deferred receipts can become payable.We There are other unresolved issues. crunch has just exposed the severe are on the cusp of the public led phase of Fair value (or mark to market) accounting – bankruptcy of a model which became regeneration and housing development where assets are regularly marked against dependent on severe leverage and absurd their contemporary market value – has borrowings. It was also dependent on driven large write-downs in the market creating a typology – the high density city value of some asset classes. This in turn has centre flats which turn out not to be really wales has unique led to some criticism and challenges for fair in demand by real people as opposed to off value’s use going forward. Some pundits plan investors. I like what Warren Buffet opportunity suggest that this has contributed to the recent says about what happens when tides go out problems. I would expect this policy to be – you find out who has been swimming further challenged in the months ahead. naked. The list of naturists includes City Peter Griffiths, Wales has a unique opportunity bankers with the ethics of ally cats, and Chief Executive, to stimulate its own economy.The public house-builders, but also, let’s be frank, Principality sector pound will be a critical component much of British regeneration policy which Building in containing the pace of the economic bought heavily into the high density Society decline. As one example there is currently brownfield residential bubble now burst. a shortfall in the funding needed to meet How burst? The numbers are The financial the requirements of the Welsh Housing stark. In England in 2006 they built turmoil we have Quality Standard. Redoubling efforts – under 200,000 homes which was already experienced this past year has been and introducing extra funding – to meet inadequate. This dropped to 170,000 in unique. Now that the initial storm has the WHQS will give the construction 2007. It will be 80,000 this year and passed the main worry is the extent sector a much needed boost and helping next. There are 220,000 households of the spillover into the economy. to avoid redundancies. forming and 1.5 million people on social Confidence throughout the economy 2009 will be a difficult year. housing waiting lists – 4 million by 2011 has taken a battering and it will be key Confidence is a fragile flower but the unless we do something different. to resolving the problems brought re-introduction of a fully functioning The residential engine of about the financial system’s troubles. banking sector suggests that spring may regeneration lies silent. Where do we go The UK Government’s be in the air. next? As a long-term supporter of the interventions are welcome but it is still a campaign for real regeneration – which little early to tell what impact they will must be about the economy and jobs have. People are taking stock and waiting rather than the flatted bubble and badly to see what becomes of the actions by power shift from designed homes and places – I see one authorities across the world. In essence the thing clearly. The next phase belongs to crisis has been driven by a lack of cash and west to east the public sector, both at the UK/ confidence. I would expect to see both Assembly Government and local slowly return in the short term but government levels. confidence will lag. , There will be no development As a mutual building society, the chairman of unless a new mixed economy is created, Principality is involved in the financial Standard and unless new terms of trade are markets so we have not been immune from Chartered Bank negotiated between the public, private the turmoil. We have no exposures to the and not-for-profit sectors. New models troubled US subprime mortgage market or If you had asked 12 which take the risk in land off the private to the Icelandic banks. Our business model any of us six sector need to be developed and fast. A is heavily geared to retail deposits, with 88 months ago, I model which relies on the private sector per cent of our loan books funded from doubt anyone would have predicted or even RSLs taking all the development those deposits.We do not rely heavily on the that the largest insurer in the world risk will deliver very little in my view wholesale funding markets which have and that some of the largest banks over the next five years and perhaps struggled for the last few months. We are in UK and Switzerland would be longer. Development needs to be seeing early signs that – the rate that partly nationalised, or that three of de-risked for the private sector to take indicates the cost of banks lending the Wall Street’s biggest investment part at all, and then more as contractors unsecured funds to other banks in London banking brands would disappear.

winter 2008/09 outlook

The impact of the crisis was banks and stock markets collapse but the The economy is now correcting greatly underestimated and it is probably bounce back happened quickly. and a recession looks almost certain.What the worst of its kind that we have seen. Company boards will have to we can expect now is continued volatility The concerted action taken by take a closer look at the risk-reward in the markets and the wider economy as governments across the world is a good metric. There is no doubt that talent people work out the extent of the impact thing and we will now see confidence in needs to be awarded, and high of the credit crunch and financial the banking industry slowly returning. performers will need to be rewarded, but slowdown on the real economy. In the However, I would not rule out any more there should not be an irrational shorter term we have seen a construction surprises and we are yet to fully gauge the correlation between risk and reward. sector crash and the near collapse of second order consequences of this crisis. We should stick to what we are activity in the UK mortgages market. The shape of the industry has good at, work with the products in the The problems began in the USA fundamentally changed for the next ten markets that we fully understand. We with their subprime mortgage market, a to twenty years. There needs to be an should re-evaluate risk management and sector that we never developed in the international, co-ordinated response with stay vigilant in the way we do business. UK. However, during the past four or a thorough review of regulatory regimes We should respond quickly to changes five years we have had a housing bubble across the world.This will no doubt have and not take ill considered risks. At the that was always destined for a slowdown a lasting effect on us all. same time we should using the crisis to – and we will probably see house prices Banking is essentially about our advantage – it has created new falling for another year or so. A very taking measured risks, so risk taking will opportunities that should be grasped. pressing problem is the near collapse of remain but banks will begin to price risk mortgage activity, with the level of more effectively. Over-complicated mortgages issued a fraction of the level products, that few people understand, compared with even a few months ago. will disappear. But this will not dampen kick start social In the early 1990s we had similar financial innovation – it needs to problems and it took until 1996 for the continue as there is still demand for it, housing problems to resolve. especially in markets where banking is Unlike in the USA, housing is not as mature as in the West. There is still a good long-term investment here. already a debate raging whether banks Professor At the moment, however, there are will get smaller, shrink their balance Andrew Henley, psychological and economic barriers. sheets, focus on their core markets and Head of Buyers are holding out for the house business and internationalise less. Swansea prices to reach a trough before I think the overriding effect that University’s purchasing. Sellers, on the other hand, will be clear once the dust settles is the School of have seen their houses fall in market fundamental shift of power from the Business and value and are unwilling to sell at what West to the East. Asia is already being Economics they see as a loss-making price. It can affected by current events, but the region take time for sellers to adjust asking will recover more quickly than the West Not many observers foresaw the prices to realistic levels. and the pace of recovery will be much scale and depth of the problems Strangely enough, despite the faster. This is a time for us all to reflect that have come to light during the boom in city centre flat developments – on the lessons that have been learnt: past year. The seizing up of credit many of which are presently unoccupied • Banking is a cyclical industry. movements and the financial – we have a chronic long-term • Liquidity is as important as credit markets has revealed the results of undersupply in houses in the UK. This evaluation. remarkable growth in the financial owner-occupied sector is inextricably • Mis-pricing of risk can have fatal sector that has been accompanied linked to social housing, which is an consequences. by little regulation. Now that the important sector in Wales. Shortages in Banks may also need to reconsider UK Government has stepped in I social and affordable housing have 13 their compensation arrangements to ensure am hopeful that the taxpayer’s pushed people into taking mortgages. As the effective management of risk. The short-term investments in the we start to return to a sensible, more current circumstances show more than banks and financial institutions will stable housing market with less ever that we are part of a global industry eventually turn to profits. We have competition and short-termism, we and any response needs to be international. also seen the Assembly ought to start building more housing, When similar events happened in Asia a Government pledge to try to do its including social housing. However, to decade ago, we learnt the value of liquidity, bit to get the Welsh construction achieve this on a wide scale the planning we saw governments take ownership of sector moving again. system requires reform .

winter 2008/09 outlook Liberal Democrat leadership

jenny randerson

Politics has changed in Wales since the last but we need to address the democratic deficit which results from Assembly Elections. During the previous the north looking east to England for both its services and media. term of , all four To reinvigorate our economy we have to establish parties had lost their edge because of the a strong niche in an expanding international market. We have the need to create stable government through opportunity to do this by working towards environmental salvation consensus. The Welsh Lib Dems were as through becoming a world leader in environmental development guilty of this as the rest. Our 2007 manifesto and green energy and, in turn, creating thousands of green jobs along was long on detail but short on big ideas. the way. For too many, the environment conjures up an enduring The Liberal Democrats, long known as the party of ideas, image of rural pastures and green hills, all of which deserve our care seemed to have become frightened of original thought. and attention. But the urban environment is an even greater green Just over a year of Labour-Plaid coalition challenge and nowhere more essentially so than in theWelsh valleys. government has seen a sharpening of the edges in Welsh Wales must jettison the Labour-Plaid politics. Labour and Plaid have reinforced each other’s socialist commitment that rejects Public Private Partnerships. We must dogma, opting for centralising solutions based on identical harness all streams of legitimate funding through new mechanisms template models. The seven large new health bodies, based on that have a distinct‘Made inWales’ brand.These mechanisms must identical structures are a typical example of this approach. be based on a genuine partnership where the private sector does The challenge for the new leader of our party is not dictate the needs of government, but serves those needs. It is to define our place in this new politics.This will have to be done the job of the Assembly Government to provide the expertise and against the backdrop of the collapse of unregulated capitalism and devise efficient ways of developing such mechanisms so that they of massive financial upheavals which will have a major impact on can be used effectively by the public sector. Welsh prosperity. The years of big public spending increases, the Disillusionment with politics runs deep in our context in which the old socialist solutions flourish, are over. society and we should all worry about the current weakening I believe the answer lies in the empowerment of of democracy. Politicians are rightly concerned about the individuals and local communities. There are powerful forces at exclusion of young people from the political process, but too work inWelsh society and theWelsh Lib Dem vision of the future often the discussion centres only on modern campaigning has to identify and engage with these forces. techniques. Important as those are, there has to be substance The credit crunch has underlined the global behind them. It is ideas and ideals which inspire young people. interdependence of our economies. It should have clipped the My party needs to rise to the challenge of honing wings of the small minority who demand independence for our message so that it has clarity and resonance. Liberalism is easy to Wales but it must not be used as an excuse for easing up on understand when boldly expressed. It is a passionate tradition inWales progress towards greater devolution of powers. Since and we must reignite that passion now. The Liberal emphasis on 14 devolution, the strength ofWelsh identity has increased and this freedom has sometimes been difficult to articulate. In a democracy, will continue.The muddled settlement with which we struggle we have all taken too much for granted. Plans for ID Cards, proposals on a daily basis is inefficient and ineffective. If we are to win a to monitor all of our phone calls and emails and high profile cases of referendum, a ‘Yes’ campaign has to start now. personal data loss have again alerted us to the need to guard our Wales has always been a grouping of separate, yet personal freedoms. For the first time since the lastWorld war, we are distinct communities. However, since devolution the north/south all thinking seriously about the deeper meanings of freedom. divide has developed a worrying new perspective. Fixing that divide is about more than faster train services, much as they are needed. • Jenny Randerson is Liberal Democrat AM for Cardiff Central. We should not seek uniformity of vision between north and south

winter 2008/09 outlook contest

kirsty williams

I am incredibly proud that the Welsh being able to gain credit for our actions and to build political Liberal Democrats are on the verge of momentum, something that we failed to do during the last electing the first female party leader in coalition. Six Assembly seats cannot be the limit of our Wales. It is a significant point in Welsh ambitions. If we are to move forward we have to take the fight political history, and one that will follow to the other parties both in the Senedd and out onto the streets. a decade of immense change in how I passionately believe that the values of the our country is governed. Liberal Democrats – non-conformity, freedom, fairness, I have had the privilege of being community and internationalism – are shared by a majority of involved in that change, from the referendum campaign and the the people of Wales. However, too few people make the National Assembly Advisory group through to the rough and connection between those values and what we stand for as a tumble of three election victories in Brecon and Radnorshire. political force. That process of change is not about to stop and I want theWelsh We must create a new narrative that resonates Liberal Democrats to be at the front of it. with voters. We must play to our strength of localism but It is clear that our party in both UK and Scottish terms combine it with a new sense of professionalism in our have elected a new generation of political leaders in Nick Clegg organisation and activity. We have prided ourselves on and Tavish Scott. In Wales, too, a new generation of politicians campaigning abilities but many parties now copy those will emerge in the next few years and as a party we cannot techniques so we must keep ahead of the game. afford to be left behind. The next few years will be crucial. We must Yet, although the faces may change in the Bay build on the success of the councils we lead. There can be no many of the issues facing Wales remain the same. We sit at the no-go areas for us. We also have the opportunity to be at the bottom of too many league tables that measure prosperity and forefront of the debates and campaigns that others can’t or economic activity. Child poverty levels remain stubbornly high won’t take on. A great place to start would be the one that while educational attainment for too many remains finally settles the constitutional settlement for our country. unacceptably low. Many of our communities have failed to In the few short weeks since I announced my recover from previous recessions, let alone the one we face now. intention to stand for the leadership the size of the challenge I want to show the people ofWales that we are to take us to the next level of electoral success has become a party that is on their side, a party that resists at every turn the apparent, but so too has the determination of our members and centralising tendencies of the current Assembly Government. supporters to take on that challenge. We recognise that individual communities and not Cardiff Bay The demands that face us will require often know how to best solve the problems they face, if only ambition, energy and self-confidence. It will require a vision to politicians would stop talking and start listening. Wales may be succeed and a passion for conviction politics. I believe I can a small nation, but even here one size does not fit all. bring all of these qualities to the leadership of theWelsh Liberal 15 We must build on the platform left by Mike Democrats. German, one that has seen real success in recent Westminster and County Council elections. However, we must also be honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we can and must do better at the Assembly level and ensure that the Liberal Democrat flag is flown all over Wales. • KirstyWilliams is Liberal Democrat AM for Brecon Our goal must be to be back in government, and Radnor. but back in government from a position of strength.This means

winter 2008/09 economy surviving the crunch

David McLean, has gone into There is also another less visible rhys david administration. Other small Welsh potential threat to Welsh jobs. Scottish house-builders have also gone into pride has been hit by the loss of HBOS and nick morris liquidation and, as a symptom of the – which incorporated one of Britain’s sector’s woes, Bellway’s 17 storey oldest banks, the note-issuing Bank of survey how Wales apartment block in Cardiff Bay was – and by the weakening and halted at the first floor. probable majority nationalisation of the is coping with The effects are now reaching Royal Bank of Scotland, owner of further down the chain, and will claim National Westminster and other top the economic new victims for some time to come. financial services brands. Job losses in Castle Cement, in Flint, has experienced Scotland’s banking community seem downturn a 20 per cent drop in product demand inevitable as control is transferred to and is considering job cuts to adjust to London. Cardiff, Newport and Swansea lower demand. Similar announcements all host sizeable Lloyds TSB back office can be expected over the months ahead operations which could conceivably be from other suppliers of building targeted as part of any trade off to materials – such as stone, aggregates, sweeten the blow to the Scots, who will bricks and roofing products – a sector no doubt fight to maintain Scottish jobs. still of considerable importance toWales. Despite Wales’s small financial Other services supporting the services sector it has a niche housing construction sector have also been finance area. Hodge Equity Release, part making cuts and more can be expected. of Cardiff’s Julian Hodge Bank, claims to Wales’s three building societies – have pioneered the first equity release Principality, and product in 1965. The sector has grown Swansea – have come through the crisis substantially as more people have sought relatively unscathed. Principality, the to take a lump sum out from the urricane Credit Crunch has biggest of the three, has limited previously growing value of their homes traversed the Atlantic leaving dependence on money market funds to to spend in retirement.With the value of h a trail of destruction in the support lending but it has had curtail its properties having declined by 10 per before sweeping north Moneypilot mortgage advisory operation cent or more in recent months, demand to cripple some of Scotland’s leading with a small number of job losses. has plummeted. How this will affect financial institutions and then finishing The former building societies individual equity release providers with a violent storm over Iceland. With turned banks have had considerably larger remains to be seen. a much smaller financial sectorWales has problems, although Welsh savers’ deposits Tighter credit availability and not been directly caught up and might with them come under guarantee rising levels of unemployment –up to 5.9 even escape relatively lightly. However, as commitments from the UK Government. per cent inWales in October following a the clearing up begins in earnest The absorption of Halifax Bank of 10,000 jump in September – are also elsewhere the most difficult times for the Scotland (HBOS) into Lloyds, of Alliance bound to affect the high street. The Welsh economy and people could be still & Leicester into Santander, the £600 million St. David’s 2 retail-led 16 to come. nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley, and scheme, due to open in late 2009, will Wales has to date experienced the take-over of the building double Cardiff’s city centre shopping small squalls. Some of our big society by sector leader, Nationwide, are capacity, featuring 1 million square feet house-builders were registering certain to result in extensive branch itself. It is currently half let, including a discomfort shortly after the Northern rationalisation, particularly in towns with 200,000 square foot John Lewis store. Rock debacle began in August 2007. several of these institutions.This will bring If the UK economy contracts Redrow’s shares have plummeted from job losses, reduce local spending power, and over the next few years, retailers attracted 400p to below 200p in the past year and empty shops on high streets, itself further to the development cannot avoid taking one of Wales’s other house builders, depressing the retail property market. business from retailers elsewhere in

winter 2008/09 Symbol of the recession: Bellway’s 17-storey office block in a prime position facing the Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay has been mothballed, with building work halted at the first floor. and from other retail regions. Welsh output is largely for disturbingly, given the likely centres. In the short term St David’s 2 intermediate markets – products that are performance of the UK economy over will almost certainly lead to a loss of used in other manufactured goods rather the next few years, fewer than half of all business in shopping centres in the south than sold directly to consumers. Welsh Welsh businesses are involved in overseas Wales valleys neighbouring Cardiff and manufacturers may be less vulnerable, activity and fewer than a quarter of those perhaps in Swansea and Newport, which therefore, to a downturn in consumer surveyed said they were planning to also have their own new shopping spending. However, because of largely increase the number of countries they developments forthcoming. Some trade external ownership they also have less sell to or to adapt products or services to might also be attracted from further control over their own destiny. markets other than the UK. afield in counties bordering Wales and Recent surveys ofWelsh business One of the Welsh economy’s someWelsh spending may be repatriated sentiment have revealed a mixed picture. best hopes could be the more limited from Cribbs Causeway near . One study, the Purchasing Managers impact of the credit crunch, so far at any However, Bristol has itself added to its Index, found output, employment and rate, on the BRIC countries (Brazil, shopping offer with the new Cabot orders in the private sector economy had Russia, India and China), all of which Circus centre opened this autumn. all declined in September. It also have extensive investment requirements The impact on the industrial reported the fifteenth contraction in the and could provide continued strong is harder to predict, private sector workforce in the past 18 markets for industrial products from though the decline in world-wide car months, and continuing higher costs for Wales once the storm has subsided. But 17 sales has already affected two key raw materials, utilities and fuel. However, even these markets have cut back on component manufacturers, Ford at according to the Institute of Chartered their own heavy industrial output in and Calsonic in .Welsh Accountants, a smaller proportion recent months, including aluminium manufacturing output and jobs have expects the impact of financial instability production. recently declined, with the shift in on their organisations to last more than China’s caution has affected production to lower cost centres. The two years. Growth expectations among world markets, leading to heavy losses in sector is no longer significantly bigger in those businesses planning to expand are mining shares. Current uncertainty has many parts of Wales than in other UK higher than in the rest of the UK. More persuaded Tata, owner of UK-Dutch

winter 2008/09 economy

steel an aluminium producer, to make 20 corporation tax, which will fall as the decline in UK tourists’ trip frequency, per cent cuts in its projected output. sector contracts. ‘bed-nights’ and spending in Wales. The With its vast currency reserves China has What of the agricultural decline followed years of tourist growth strengthened its position. The world economy? Welsh farmers will have to in Wales while the rest of the UK was must hope China and the other new rethink some of the strategies adopted suffering. economies will compensate for lower over recent years to cope with likely The economic downturn’s effect demand from Western countries, with changes in consumer spending patterns. on potential visitors’ countries could also their own huge development and Much time and effort has gone into be a factor, in their ability and investment requirements, building the developing brandedWelsh lamb and beef confidence to organise trips to Wales. transport, educational, health and other and organic ranges of dairy and other , USA and Germany supplied the infrastructure needed to raise their products. While over the long term this most overseas visitors to Wales during people’s living standards and boosting the makes considerable sense, given the 2006-2007 and these nations have all world economy in the process. difficulties of competing with nations been hit by the credit crunch. The slowdown will also such as Brazil and the USA that can If there is any good to come challenge the public sector, which has practise industrial-scale agriculture, over from the crisis it is the opportunity to around a third of the Welsh workforce. the short term Welsh farmers are likely question some of the nostrums that have Financial problems have revealed the to suffer from a shift in consumer become current over recent years. width and depth of the interconnections purchasing back to cheaper imports and Successive governments have in the global economic system. It away from more expensive alternatives. unthinkingly embraced globalisation and exposed financial institutions that were As a result Welsh farmers and dismissed concerns about the over-reliant on credit, and organisations food processors will have to think about specialisation Britain has developed in a and individuals exposed to those supplying more of the premium lines few sectors, such as financial services, institutions’ assets and loans. The near offered by the established supermarkets, despite the damage this has caused in collapse of Iceland’s banking system as well as more expensive organic or poorer regions and nations. Wales has revealed that more than £70m of Welsh other niche products. Also, they will need been unable to participate fully in this public funds were frozen in Icelandic to forge links with budget supermarkets sector and has been forced to cede its banks. such as Aldi and Lidl that are currently own specialisms to other countries. Even last year – early in the building market share. Wales’s The importance of developing a financial turmoil – the Assembly agri-industry also needs to diversify away more balanced UK economy with Government was facing down local from its heavy dependence on meat greater emphasis on developing and authorities’ demands for improved towards other crops to spread risks. retaining manufacturing skills now needs budget settlements. Tighter council is important to the to be restated. Rather than the pursuit of budgets usually mean efficiencies, Welsh economy and could suffer in an more call centres and financial service cuts or council tax rises for the public. economic downturn. Visitors to Wales back offices this ought to be the new The Assembly Government had to draw spend about £3 billion a year, according goal of the , which on funding reserves in its latest draft to the Assembly Government.The effect also needs the full support of the Welsh budget. Inflation will eat into funds of higher fuel prices on travel and a university sector in producing the passed from Westminster to Cardiff Bay weaker pound could negatively affect graduates who can lead us into a more and into those distributed to Wales’s 22 tourist growth, particularly from beyond sustainable economic template. The local authorities. The draft budget from the UK. Indeed, before the economic Assembly Government’s first economic the Assembly Government was based on troubles started, the number of UK summit, held in October 2008, is an a 2.7 per cent inflation rate but the visitors arriving by plane, organised encouraging sign – but the summit’s Consumer Price Index reached 5.2 per coach trips and cars fell during 2006-7 action plan must be rigorously cent in August 2008. Higher costs for but the numbers arriving by train, coach implemented. energy and other goods will also affect and bus rose slightly. 18 budgets. The downturn’s effect on Wales receives its funding from might take some time block grants that are linked to increases to be quantified and overlaps to a great in UK andWales’s extent with a more recent decline in UK population share. UK tax receipts Welsh tourism.The winter is traditionally • Rhys David is a former Financial will fall and place pressure on UK a quieter time for Welsh tourism and the Times journalist and aTrustee of the Government expenditure. For example, unstable weather during Summer 2008 Institute ofWelsh Affairs. Nick Morris the UK financial services sector probably negatively impacted on visitors. is a Research Officer with the IWA. contributes about 27.5 per cent of Between 2006 and 2007 there was a

winter 2008/09 economy

Artist’s impression of the ‘hothouse’ – new home for University of Wales, Newport’s business and art schools, upriver from the Riverside Theatre. “Its design is deliberately constructed to act like a University without walls.”

anne carlile says culture is a bridge to Newport’s economic future creative regeneration

ritain has produced its fair they have not noticed the joined up The creative industries are one share of artistic strategy that culture in all its forms is of the fastest growing in the UK. We b embellishments scattered important to the future of the city is is have the largest creative sector in the EU, around revamped inner cities and shared by business, the City Council, the and relative to GDP probably the largest docklands like disembodied pieces of University of Wales, Newport and the in the world. They account for 7.3 per jewellery, usually in the name of public regeneration company, Newport cent of the economy and are comparable art. Sometimes this has resulted in Unlimited. in size to the financial services industry – memorable landmarks. But for the most There is no question that culture following the crash probably larger.They part they have failed to unlock their full can have a transformative impact upon employ over 1 million people directly, potential. This is because one of the key cities. Temple Bar in Dublin was while another 80,000 work in creative components of culture as an agent for formerly a run down area before the occupations.The UK is one of the largest change – the cultural producers – have artists moved in. Seattle, a city on the providers of art, design and media not been factored sufficiently into the edge of the USA, became centre stage as education in the world, second only to equation. a home for avant-garde musicians and the USA. Around 136 institutions offer Fortunately, the presence of large artists. Perhaps the most famous example courses in art, media and design, numbers of artists and cultural producers is Soho in NewYork and, of course, there producing over 137,000 graduates a year. in Newport is an essential component of is Soho and the East end in London. In Most ofWales’s universities offer 19 its urban regeneration master-plan. these successful examples the artists stay subjects allied to the creative industries. Momentum behind this approach means and go on to become part of the larger Nonetheless, the portfolio of the Welsh that part of the redevelopment is now community. They contribute to the art schools is primarily complementary, being talked about in terms of a ‘left economy by attracting other investors rather than competitive, and bank’ and a ‘cultural quarter’. and businesses, and also by their ability employability is surprisingly good. Of course, some have questioned to set up businesses themselves and to Each year hundreds of art, media the concept of a cultural quarter for generally contribute to the growth of the and design graduates, the life blood of Newport. However, this may be because next generation of the creative industries. the creative industries, emerge from

winter 2008/09 economy

Newport and other cities in Wales. The environment, designed to be both a ‘Cultural Consortium’ should be challenge is how we ensure that these metaphorical and literal seedbed for established to progress to the next level fledging creative people stay and build interaction between academia, business the concept of a cultural quarter in business and industries that will benefit and industry. Newport. our culture and economy. Also moving the cultural quarter If we are to succeed we must In Newport this challenge has is the award winning International Film ensure that culture and the creative led the University and the City to School Wales, which has Skillset Screen industries are embedded as a living core combine to develop a major University Academy Status. Newport’s European in the city’s fabric. Renowned for its presence in the city, which will provide Centre for Photographic Research is many bridges, which after all are first and an integrated home for both the exploring the creation of a National foremost about making connections, it is University’s business and art schools. An Centre of Photography with other key perhaps not surprising that Newport is important part of this initiative has been national providers such as Ffotogallery. leading the way in putting this apparently to bring the artists back into the city. In This could either sit alongside the simple, yet elusive concept at the heart the process we are creating an campus or form part of a new Centre for of its regeneration. environment which will benefit business Contemporary Art. The future presence in the region, particularly the of hundreds of fashion and design development of the creative industries. students and graduates will provide It is no accident that the new additional impetus to the studio and campus is positioned prominently in the workshop culture already developing in cultural quarter, upriver from the the city. Riverside Theatre. Its design is The IWA’s ‘Cultural Quarter for deliberately constructed to act like a Newport’ conference, held at the University without walls. At the heart of RiversideTheatre in June 2008, brought • Professor Anne Carlisle is Deputy the development is an innovative glass together cultural groups and activists, Vice Chancellor at the University of structure called the Hothouse, which councillors, politicians, cultural agencies Wales, Newport. will provide a dynamic ‘think tank’ and the University. It was agreed that a

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winter 2008/09 politics idealists and pragmatists

t was utterly reasonable and peter stead casts appropriate for the IWA to invite i four party representatives to an eye over some consider what lies ahead for Welsh politics in the current yet infant century. prognostications The four selected party authors have conspired to provide a fascinating read for politics in 21st but one that must have surprised the IWA as much as it will the general Century Wales reader. To a greater or lesser extent all four seem reluctant to dive too deeply into the unknown. In his remarkably frank and sharp introductory appraisal the political analyst Anthony Barnett rightly suggests that all four authors seem more at home in the 1990s than in the new century. And in their discussion of the new century it is the party negotiations of May 2007 that loom large and form the starting point for any consideration of possibilities and prognostication. The authors may well have been chosen for their respective roles in those coalition negotiations and, of course, they were writing before the recession was confirmed in October 2008. Nevertheless, one might have expected the politicians to take this opportunity to step aside from the immediate political agenda by previewing a re-energised Wales in this new century. In several places respective 21 contributors emphasise how few political activists there are in Wales. Perhaps it is only those activists who still believe that everybody in Wales can be divided into four political camps. The four voices heard in this volume indicate the extent of complexity in Wales, even amongst those who support a degree of Welsh

winter 2008/09 politics

self-government. Evidently we are philosophies and theologies that allow There is no longer any need to agonise divided as much by our chosen rhetoric moral values to be sustained by new over , it’s all a matter of as by our ideologies. Readers should let kinds of political association. working the system to our advantage. rhetoric be their guide and tackle these So much for the idealists. We Meanwhile, we need fewer local councils essays in an order that differs from that turn now to the realists. Devolution has and preferably ones elected by PR. All the offered by the IWA. been good to Nick Bourne and he has while his emphasis is straightforwardly on The Liberal Democrat essay is deserved his rise to the role of Leader of making Wales work. His almost cavalier presented by Kirsty Williams in a tone of the Opposition in the Assembly. He has attitude to issues that, in the past have what one may term Primitive in essence created a new political party occasioned endless conferences and Rebelliousness. She assures us, perhaps to in Wales, given it electoral credibility, workshops and kept Adam Price and his the disappointment of some readers, that almost taken it into government, helped ilk reading through the night, is brilliantly she is “not advocating armed to change the nature of the British summed up by an almost throw away insurrection” but she certainly works up a Conservative Party, and made it possible summing up of Labour’s approach: “a head of steam. She is from Llanelli and for people in Wales to support preference for cooperation over consequently hates the Tories. Her main devolution and the extension of competition, a pragmatic, rather than concern is to explain and justify her 2007 Assembly powers without being either a ideological approach to markets and role as a ‘wrecker of the Rainbow corporatist or statist of the nationalist or private finance and so on”! Coalition’. For her the Rainbow AllWales neo-Marxist sort. His policies “are based Rhodri writes in the knowledge Accord was insufficiently Liberal. on deliverability, affordability and that as long as Labour is in power in Meanwhile, Labour’s approach to change localism”. His no-nonsense approach to London there is likely to be a coalition is too piecemeal and, accordingly, its age is Welsh governance will ensure he plays a government in Cardiff. But he also knows adjudged to ‘be over’. At the same time key role in the constitutional battles that, given the right leadership, his party she dismisses the “lazy intellectualism and ahead. His importance is made very has every chance of remaining at the easy rhetoric” of the Nationalists. She evident in his crucial advice that “if we forefront of that government. The most wants radical change, change that will are going to inject new life into our remarkable feature of 21st CenturyWales come from the bottom as the political system then we must stop has been the way in which professional introduction of PR at the local level will talking in crypto management-speak and bodies have accepted devolved politics. release the basically radical impulses of the diktats and acronyms that turn people off We should never underestimate the extent . and limit accessibility”. to which professionals employed in public Nobody would accuse Adam This brings us to the arch-realist life and in associated consulting and Price of being ‘a lazy intellectual’ First Minister whose essay is a service industries have a vested interest in although clearly he stands guilty of being masterpiece of laid-back dispassionate making the political settlement work. an intellectual. Like many who attempt reflection. He writes in the knowledge However, things can become too to philosophise about Welsh politics, the that, all-in all, given the forces that he has cosy and perhaps all these essays needed Nationalist MP for Carmarthen East is had to overcome in his own party, both to concede some reference to wider convinced that the public life of the in London and Wales, and allowing, too, energies in Wales. Bureaucracy can be as nation must be conducted in such a way for proportional representation, he has inimical to freedom as denial. Moral that guarantees the establishment and done well to gain general acceptance for values can be sustained as much by defence of moral and humanist qualities. the Assembly, to almost single-handedly cultural agencies as by political Perhaps Price currently expresses to a keep Labour in the driving seat and at movements. And above all, surely the unique extent what was once a more the same time to set the clock of nature of politics in 21st Century Wales general longing for the comfort that constitutional change ticking steadily. will be crucially determined by the Nonconformist Christianity, Primitive Firmly he urges his Labour colleagues to extent to which we allow our schools to Socialism, Marxism, the Miners’ embrace an all-Wales strategy and to rid empower and liberate our young people? Federation and pit-village life all used to themselves of those attitudes that All parties take themselves a little 22 offer. For him the Labour Party has encourage “the charge that Labour stands too seriously.They should settle for being become crudely and exclusively for some diluted or half-hearted form of catalysts and give the rest of us a chance . concerned with ‘redistributive Welshness”. In other words, there is more egalitarianism’, and is as closely associated to Wales than the Valleys and Labour • Peter Stead is a writer and cultural with market forces as capitalism itself. He should embrace rather than suspect the historian. Politics in 21st Century turns for satisfaction to the notion of an Welsh dimension. Wales is available from the IWA at independent Wales and to the ideas and There is an almost breathtaking £10 (£7.50 to IWA members) plus jargon of all those recent intellectuals down-to-earth directness about Rhodri’s £1.50 P & P) who attempt to outline social valedictory advice to his colleagues.

winter 2008/09 opinion finder

t’s fitting that a totally new type of have quickly got wise to the reality that Chair Sir aled edwards political Convention in modern modern electorates do not easily consent Emyr Jones Western politics should find its to constitutional change. Arguments must Parry heads assesses the role i up members most prolific discourse thus far on be clear and compelling and perhaps born of the Facebook. However, this early emphasis from an intense frustration with a All-Wales of the all-Wales on web-based interaction is now governmental status quo. Convention changing to a more traditional cycle of Creating the AllWales Convention following convention public consultation, while a more with its distinctive brief provides a marker their first meeting at thorough communication strategy will of a new maturity in Welsh politics rather the Pierhead get underway from January 2009. than an indicator of political nervousness or Building, 23 Conventions have traditionally insecurity. As it did with the gender balance Cardiff Bay, been given the task of writing in its representation, devolved Wales finds in July 2008 . constitutions and forging specific political itself leading the way once again. The settlements. Wales’s unique Convention benefits of holding a thorough public has been given a modern set of tasks for conversation before proceeding to the very modern political needs. As the recent question of a referendum should be self Irish vote on the Lisbon agreement shows, evident to the politically prudent and discerning European political hegemonies astute.The Convention has four tasks, of:

winter 2008/09 join the • Raising awareness and improve society understand the way the current understanding of the current settlement is working. There are a arrangements for devolved number of related issues to explore: government in Wales. • How the Assembly has gained and • Facilitating a widespread consultation used a growing list of secondary and support our work on the issue of full law making powers. legislative competencies since 1999. • Preparing an analysis of the views • The extent to which the Assembly has expressed and the evidence presented pressed for Wales-only Bills and “The IWA “In a time of through this process. amendments to UK legislation. occupies a transition for • Assessing the level of public support • The way the Assembly has now begun to unique place Wales, for giving the National Assembly for acquire powers to passAssembly Measures in Welsh politically, the Wales primary law making powers and through Legislative Competence Orders public life. Its Institute of report to the Welsh Assembly and provisions contained in UK Bills, analysis of current issues is Welsh Affairs provides a always professional and vital forum for all sides to Government on its findings, with under the 2006Wales Act. extremely helpful.” come together over both recommendations relevant to the Lord Richard of strategically important and holding of a referendum. It will also be crucial to discuss Chairman of the Richard contentious issues.” what proceeding to hold a referendum, as Commission Baroness Ilora Finlay of The Convention has not been set out in the provisions of Part 4 of the Professor of Palliative charged with the responsibility of ensuring Government of Wales Act 2006, will and “The IWA is a Medicine that the referendum delivers a positive won’t do. On face value, an affirmative quite extra- outcome. Its Chair, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, referendum would enable the Assembly ordinarily has emphasised that its role is not to argue to pass Acts as opposed to Measures. To valuable body, a pro or anti Parliament line. Assessing the put it simply, Acts can be passed in all the and I am very level of support for giving the National devolved policy areas, without the need proud to be a member of it.” Assembly primary legislative powers is not for Legislative Competence Orders or Lord (Kenneth) Morgan One of Wales’s leading synonymous with securing aYes vote. provisions in UK Bills to give the historians In making its assessments and necessary powers to the Assembly. recommendations, the Convention will At the same time, other aspects go beyond the still valuable but sometimes of the settlement would remain The work of the IWA I wish to become a member depends on the support and and enclose a cheque for £40. superficial indicators of public mood and unaltered. The position whereby the contribution of individual understanding provided by an array of works on the basis members across Wales and I wish to become a member now consistent opinion polls. From the that everything is devolved unless it is and pay by credit/debit card beyond who share our polling evidence thus far, it is clear that specifically reserved to Westminster the sum of £_ _ , _ _ _ . _ _ determination to mobilise having an Assembly with subordinate stands in sharp contrast to the position the nation’s human and Account Number legislative powers has increasingly become in Wales. Here the National Assembly social resources in order to _ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ face the challenges ahead. the ‘settled will’ of the Welsh electorate. works on the basis that everything is Expiry date _ _ /_ _ The question of whether there should or reserved to Westminster unless it is should not be an Assembly lies beyond the specifically devolved to the Assembly. As By bringing together boundaries of the Convention’s brief. So things stand that would remain unaltered. partners in business, I wish to pay by Direct is the question of independence. At this stage in the process I academia, and the public and Debit (This will help us keep our Crucially, however, it remains to cannot say when I think the most voluntary sectors, the IWA is costs down) Please send me a be seen if the majorities now indicated appropriate timing for holding a helping to shape economic, Direct Debit application form. social, educational, by the polls in favour of giving the referendum would be. That view is environmental and cultural Please send me details National Assembly primary legislative honestly held by someone who

policy across Wales. about becoming an IWA Fellow. powers would hold through a robust campaigned passionately for the Assembly Ê referendum campaign.This is the essence in 1997. For the time being, as an act of please cut along here of the Convention’s task. public service through the Convention, I Meanwhile, the process of am content, as a preacher once put it, “to Name Title gleaning in depth data concerning public make haste slowly” and “carefully”. Address opinion and knowledge concerning the Post Code current settlement, through the means of • Reverend Aled Edwards is a member Telephone Facsimile independent research, is well in hand.We of the AllWales Convention Executive E-mail need to establish how far the Welsh representing the Faith Forum. public and key stakeholders in civic Return to: Freepost RLTT-RBYS-JUUX Institute of Welsh Affairs 1 Radnor Court 256 Cowbridge Road East Cardiff CF5 1GZ politics just say yes

different people and get them passionate movement. Back in the 1975 Common mike german about doing something positive together. Market referendum, Labour politicians I have been cajoling the party were out on the doorsteps with argues that leaders since the turn of the year. Twice colleagues in other parties. I don’t think I have written to them. Twice, the only they’ve done it since. We need that level supporters of positive reply has come from Nick of trust and co-operation. That’s how Bourne – one of the leaders of the last we’ll get the job done. more powers for No campaign. It is clear to me that while I know some people have the Tories may not be united on suggested holding a referendum on the the Assembly devolution, the pro-devolution elements same day as the Assembly election. What at the top of the party are ready to folly! Such timing would completely should start co-operate. undermine the Yes campaign. Take The First Minister and his Newport East or Swansea West for campaigning deputy, who respond with one voice on example. How would you expect Welsh this issue, say it’s too soon. But if not now, Lib Dem activists to work with the very now when?When the No campaign has built people we want to take the seat from? It up a head of steam? Right now we have would be impossible to develop the trust nothing to lose, and everything to gain. and co-operation I’ve just been talking never wanted a second I’m not saying we need to have a about. All parties would inevitably put referendum. And I certainly didn’t full-blooded, eyeballs out, 100mph Yes their self-interest first and the Yes want this one. But we are where i campaign tomorrow. But we need to campaign would suffer. we are. For devolution to progress, we make a start. There is much to discuss. need to win a new referendum – and to At a technical level, we will have win, we need a Yes campaign to start to overcome the deficiencies in the work now. Welsh media. Too few people in Wales The launch of a fledgling No get their news from home-grown campaign has brought this to the fore. sources.We cannot leave them reliant on The Two Davids (Tory MP Davies and the skewed view from London. To reach Labour Cllr Rees) aren’t every household, we will have to deliver waiting for a Yes campaign. Their ‘True our message personally. That means Wales’ campaign is already seeding the tapping in to the existing delivery ground, talking of ‘slippery slopes’ and ‘a networks of the pro-devolution parties, slide in to Soviet Style poverty’. and recruiting new support in those areas They have started their where those networks are not so strong. campaign, and in my experience, Persuading life-long rivals and Monmouth campaigning for a No is relatively easy. competitors to work together can be Waiting for the Convention is Conservative There is no positive case to make. You difficult. Political parties spend their lives no answer. The Convention – as Sir MP David just have to sow enough fear, uncertainty competing against each other. And it is Emyr Jones Parry never fails to makes Davies, here pictured in and doubt that people hesitate. volunteers who deliver the message. clear – is not a campaign. Its job is to his part-time Winning aYes campaign is much Those volunteers need convincing in listen and inform, not to persuade and role with the 25 harder. You have to bring together a order to put down their prejudices and cajole. It will tell us the state of the British broad coalition of those who think work together. That’s the key lesson I’ve Nation. It will not tell the nation it needs Transport anything less than independence is a cop learned from the last three referendum more statehood (the Richard Police in London, has out, the federalists, the small ‘n’ campaigns. Pro-devolution supporters Commission has already done that). already nationalists, and those who know that need to be seen as a united front, people A Yes campaign can and should launched a the current settlement can only be of all parties and no parties working work in parallel with the Convention. ‘No’ improved by having a bit more power. together. That unity underlines the Putting the arguments that the campaign. You have to bring together some very strength of the argument, and builds a Convention can’t, and won’t. I still

winter 2008/09 politics

believe there is a window to hold and Perhaps that’s the real issue here. Scottish Nationalism – will report next win the referendum before the 2011 There is a failure to trust the people. year. We risk fighting a battle sometime Welsh General Election. It’s a small That’s a hallmark of the current Labour in the next decade, on a question that window, but we should take it. administrations in Westminster and should have been settled last year. Or not Putting the referendum off helps Cardiff Bay. are stuck in the fighting it at all, because the English no-one but the wreckers, the people same mould. But devolution is all about Tories don’t want to. These to me seem who don’t believe that Wales is worthy trust. If politicians will not trust the bigger risks than that of losing a of having powers more akin to those in people to support the project, we cannot referendum before 2011. Scotland, Catalonia and Bavaria. be surprised if the people fail to trust us In 1997 we won the referendum The devo-doubters Peter Hain, with the extra powers. The desire of the to start the devolution process by only and establishment for a referendum where a 6,721 votes. Every vote, in every county, say they worry that the referendum yes is a guaranteed outcome betrays will count next time, too. I believe this won’t be won. Well that’s only a real more than a lack of trust. It betrays a lack referendum is winnable, and winnable risk if they continue to stall on of courage too. before 2011. But the longer Rhodri and campaigning. If we wait beyond 2011, we run Ieuan stall on joining the fight, the All polls show that those in two risks: (i) that a Tory government longerWales will be waiting for a proper favour of greater powers are larger than decides to shelve devolution; and (ii) that Parliament . those against, and are still growing. The we will be having a referendum on an recent Assembly poll showed most people obsolete question. have an understanding of the Assembly’s Devolution, as they say, is a powers. We have to trust the people of process not an event. In Scotland, they Wales. It’s their country, and I believe they are moving on to the next question: want a Senedd that has the tools not just what is the proper way to fund a to play at the edges and re-organise the devolved nation? The Calman • Mike German is Liberal Democrat health service every five years or so – but Commission – effectively Gordon AM for SouthWales East. the tools to lift Wales to new heights. Brown’s response to the growth of

26

winter 2008/09 politics community government

he debate around a progressive out the enterprise and innovation of the paul griffiths agenda for Wales uncovers market and civil association. discusses the t several age old tensions, The New Labour critique of the unearths many shibboleths, fetishes and devolved government inWales is that we straw-men but has thus far missed the role are backward looking, Bonapartist or progressive ideas to be accorded to community and locality. Attlee-esque; in essence thoroughly In the Winter 2006-07 issue of un-modern and that as the people of underpinning the Agenda my former colleague Mark Wales emerge from their poverty of Drakeford set out the themes that have experience, ideas and resources they will Labour-Plaid informed a large part of the distinctive come to conform to the New Labour policy approach of the Welsh Assembly prescription. coalition Government: In reality, devolved governments • Expansion of universal services to in Wales have well recognised the confirm social cohesion and bind the challenges of modern government: how middle class into social democracy. to meet rising aspirations from limited • A limitation on the market in public resources; how to motivate an services as responsive diversity is increasingly unequal society to respond developed through stimulating and to the imperatives of social justice. Our managing the networks across responses, however, have not always been organisational boundaries. those of New Labour. On occasion we • A commitment to democratic have sought to motivate the middle class government. through universalising services rather than continuing the slide towards a The responses collated by the residual state. We have sought to expand IWA in its new publication Unpacking the choice through networks rather than Progressive Consensus provide a reminder markets, on the pragmatic argument that of the constancy of the dilemmas and markets often limit the diversity of contradictions which inform the services available. positions that we take over the roles and But the critique remains that the nature of state and society. When the progressive agenda in Wales is essentially dawn of democratic government began top-down, statist and therefore inhibiting Alexis de to creep across Europe in the 18th and to enterprise and innovation.The answer 19th Centuries, the concern of the lies in the consistent stress that has thus Tocqueville liberal intellectual was over the space for far been placed on the role of the individual, and protecting the energy community in the definition and of enterprise and voluntary associations provision of public services in Wales. “The strength of free nations resides in from the oppression of the majority and Writing in the first half of the the township.Town institutions are to the dictatorship of the proletariat. 19th Century, Alexis de Tocqueville was freedom what primary schools are to When New Labour set out to a bundle of personal and intellectual knowledge; they bring it within people’s supplant traditional Labour in the 1990s contradictions. He was from the minor reach and give men the enjoyment and 27 it presented an analysis, sometimes a nobility and bourgeois to the tips of his habit of using it for peaceful ends. parody, of the failings of the social fine fingers, and yet a committed Without town institutions a nation can democratic tradition which replicated democrat and egalitarian, with an establish a free government but has not the liberal concerns over an autocratic unwavering opposition to all forms of the spirit of freedom itself.” state. Labour in government, it was despotism. His resolution of these claimed, had been over-centralised, too contradictions lay in his promotion of Democracy in America statist, unresponsive to the growing community based association and Penguin, 2003. aspirations of the individual, crowding government (see Panel).

winter 2008/09 politics

When the Welsh Government that we have too much local democracy recently a presentation in Wales from a has promoted community-based inWales, too many councils and too many Flanders government official who schooling, community-based health care, councillors. It is asserted that less localism explained how that region was leading community regeneration, and would mean less parochialism which Europe in recycling and the management community-based local government, it would be a very good thing. It finds of waste. One response from a Welsh has recognised with Tocqueville that its expression in the call for a further local professional was that to do the same in commitment to progressive government government reorganisation which appears Wales we needed larger councils and can only be sustained, and prevented from to be based on the view that bigger is fewer politicians. He was clearly deaf to shifting to a stultifying autocracy, because somehow better. It is the argument of the the report that Flanders achieved its of the commitment to community-based mid 20th Century that witnessed ever success with 160 local authorities serving government. There are, however, current larger units of production with ever an average population of less than 40,000. challenges to this commitment which greater concentrations of power and Much is being made of the unless countered will come to undermine control throughout the public and private current proposal to create seven local the whole progressive agenda itself. sectors. Larger organisations were held to health boards which is seen as a precursor The May 2008 local elections have greater strategic capacities and more to what will happen to local government. were presented to the people of Wales as scope for specialisation. The downside of The excitement generated by this analysis a referendum on the personality of course was they became ever more is not based on the detail of the proposals. Gordon Brown, or on the taxation detached from citizens, customers and There is a belated rejection of the market policies of the UK Government. A communities. Instead, they became more model of health care. Local Health Boards London, and even Cardiff-based media attuned to the aspirations of producers. and Trusts, freed from the fruitless appeared determined to overwhelm any There is a deeper sentiment distraction of commissioning hospital judgement of local issues and policies behind this view that too much services, will concentrate on the provision with speculation over UK political democracy gets in the way of good of community-based health services. trends. The results were not reported in government. There are two political While they may have a governance terms of the impact on MerthyrTydfil or traditions in Wales that have been woven structure based on seven units they will Ynys Môn but in terms of the future across the divides of political parties. One need operational structures based on leadership of the Westminster and is the tradition of the‘werin’, a celebration communities, with a capacity to build Assembly Governments. of the capacities of ordinary working partnerships with local people and local There is a view that the people to take control of their own affairs. organisations. This is entirely consistent attachment to community is being The other is the tradition of the‘crachach’: with the current pattern of local weakened by increased affluence and the view that our destinies are best formed authorities and with the recognition that aspiration which change both attitudes by the select few, the Calvinist elect who a dynamic health service needs and geography as people move from provide the elders of our chapels, the community support and ownership. established communities to new, anomic boards of our Quangos, and the chairs of Much needs to be done to settlements with weaker social our universities. It is this latter tradition improve local government and local relationships. The argument is that which has long queried the legitimacy of democracy. We need better connections modern, aspirational Wales is less elected politicians, lamenting the calibre of with local people, better connections connected to communities and will councillors and Assembly Members, failing with local civic society, revitalised favour the choice-based public service to value the roots that such people have in political parties better able to act on a agenda that places markets before locality, the communities they serve. This is the community basis, more innovation, and individual over collective sentiment which promotes fewer better performance and better networks experiences. The evidence to back up politicians and forms of government across organisational and geographical this thesis is weak.The more affluent and which does things to people rather than boundaries. Community remains the key aspirational people in Wales want with people. to a progressiveWales. It is often ill served personalised public services which There is so much that Wales can by our various elites who too often seek 28 respond more precisely to the needs of learn from the experience of to impose upon the rest of us their aloof themselves, their children and extended community-based democracies in and unhappy detachment from families. However, they also want local mainland Europe. From Scandinavia to community involvement . services and there is often evidence that the Mediterranean local services are the ‘save our local service’ campaigns are provided by forms of community • Paul Griffiths is a public service being led by the more affluent ‘in-comer’ government which operate successfully consultant and former senior special to communities, living on the new estate. on a far smaller scale than in Wales, often adviser to theWelsh Assembly Most significant in recent times providing a cohesion and local ownership Government. has been the resurgence of the sentiment of which we can only dream. There was

winter 2008/09 politics devolving buses

Merthyr AM Huw Lewis: evolution is like a brand new huw lewis test driving vehicle that we are so busy the Wales outlines his d admiring we forget it is there 2006 Act. to drive. I always used to refer to a shiny sports car with that analogy, but now it proposals for might be more appropriate to think in terms of a modern, clean and safe bus. 29 applying a My bid to devolve powers relating to buses and coaches to Wales is, franchise system I hope, a transparently common sense next step in our bid to develop an to bus routes integrated modern public transport system. The “dramatic improvement in in Wales public transport”, promised in the coalition agreement, is a goal

winter 2008/09 politics

anyone who cares about social justice or with the process. A successful franchise Commissioner who is responsible for the environment should fully support. system has all the advantages of enforcing standards in Wales really be However, currently we do not have all combining public control and service based in (or London as the the legislative tools we need to deliver specification with the benefits of private new Local Transport Bill seems to on those aspirations. operation. The stability of long-term suggest)? My proposals to bring these contracts, which protects bus users from Devolving these powers would powers to Wales are rooted in a belief short-notice service withdrawals, also allow us to address other problems, aside that we should be exploring a franchise helps bus operators plan for the future. from those partially addressed by the model of bus provision, similar to the As I have repeated to Local Transport Bill. For example, the one operating in London and elsewhere stakeholders since winning the ballot to transfer of powers over buses and coaches in Europe. Franchising is the best introduce this Legislative Competence could help us overcome the stumbling available model to ensure that Order, it is a learning process for us all. I blocks we have encountered in non-profitable but socially valuable was therefore glad to see the number and introducing new regulations on school routes are properly catered for and that quality of consultation responses which transport safety. So much of transport providers meet certain standards over came in over the summer. While the policy already depends on funding and safety and cleanliness. great majority of respondents back the decision-making by the Assembly This kind of franchise model, I principle of devolving these powers to Government, it makes sense to have the found out recently, matches quite closely Wales, and there is a great deal of interest full legal toolkit at our disposal. a policy agreed by the Scottish National in pursuing the franchising model, there To return to the analogy I Party at their final Conference before the have been some genuine concerns, not started with, apart from the benefits I last elections. Their 11th hour decision least from the Transport Consortium believe these powers could offer to take the pledge out of their final covering my own region of South East transportation inWales, this is very much manifesto is shrouded in controversy, but Wales. It will not do to ignore these a test drive of how the new Government happily the idea has been resurrected by well-thought out concerns and it is clear of Wales Act works in practice. I have a Labour MSP who intends to bring there is work to do in creating a more been impressed by the willingness of all forward his own proposals on the matter. robustly worded and better evidenced political parties and people from across The franchise solution has clear merit rationale for the proposals. But that is civic society to get involved. I hope the and, inWales at least, cross party support. why we consult, and that is how we next stage of the process allows us to I should not get ahead of myself, ensure against bad law. work together further in developing however, for the bid for further powers is One of the issues raised about robust proposals to change for the better just that. Should I be successful in devolving further powers toWales relates the way public transport works inWales . bringing forward this Legislative to the upcoming Local Transport Bill Competence Order, there is no going through Parliament. While it is guarantee that it will used to develop the true that, if passed, the Bill will make it public transport system I favour. That easier for local authorities to negotiate a decision will rest with the Transport ‘Quality Contract’ with bus operators, Minister and the Assembly Government this still places local authorities on the more generally. back foot in terms of having to make a Before we can consider even case against current provision. Indeed, that, there are many challenges ahead. Quality Contracts are so complex that Firstly, the Minister for Transport in only one had been introduced by any London, Ruth Kelly, has only recently local authority in at announced her decision to step down. the time the Local Transport Bill was Consequently, the initial positive being drafted. The Association of conversations I held with her office will Transport Commissioning Officers was 30 need to be had all over again. vocal in its belief that the Bill did not go There are challenges, too, in far enough in addressing the needs of bus overcoming the fear amongst bus users. If the Association has doubts, operators that this is ‘nationalisation by people should listen. It is telling that they the backdoor’, or that there is implicit sponsored an amendment to introduce a criticism contained within the legislative system of Tendered Network Zones, bid. Neither of these fears has any basis. similar to the franchising model. Indeed, there are real opportunities here There are other questions. For • Huw Lewis is Labour AM for Merthyr. for private companies willing to engage example, should the Traffic

winter 2008/09 environment

newport A view of the Gwent levels - ‘Wales’s most important lowland bypass wetland landscape’, under threat.

heWelsh Assembly Government committed to the M4 Julian branscombe Relief road south of Newport in December 2004. puts the case against t However, the delay since since then in producing the Outline Business Case for the road strongly suggests that the announcement was made without reworking costs, identifying the projected M4 viable financing or undertaking a full cost-benefit analysis. Meanwhile, the project would badly damage the relief road Gwent Levels,Wales’s most important lowland wetland landscape, and be a major threat to wildlife. The Assembly Government faces a momentous decision. The outcome will determine whether it truly values the local and global environment, and its long-term intentions for the Welsh economy. The construction cost of the new M4 is likely to be in the order of a billion pounds. Experience of motorists’ willingness to pay means it is unlikely that the new M4 would make a viable toll road. A Private Finance Initiative may M4 Relief Road Timeline be the only way to commission the scheme. Annual repayments 31 for taxpayers across Wales could be as much as £100million a • Early 2009 – Outline Business Case submitted to Minister. year for decades. When an Assembly Government cost-benefit • Mid 2009 – Draft Orders, Regulations and case for the new M4 is eventually produced, the economic Environmental Statement published. assumptions will be the subject of great scrutiny. • Late 2009 – Possible public local inquiry. Surely our major public investment decisions • 2010 – Provisional start of construction. need to focus on how best to directly meet the needs of all, whilst observing the imperative to limit our global carbon and Source: Welsh Assembly Government website resource footprint?The current financial turmoil and the start of

winter 2008/09 Wales is dependant on our natural environment, through land management and tourism. What is more, the original 2001 study unearthed research to show that environmental quality influenced a third of investment decisions in England. InWales the wonderful diversity of our landscapes and wildlife should be even more influential in encouraging inward investment. Building a new motorway through the Gwent Levels could be killing the goose that should be laying us golden eggs. Newport needs to be marketed as a high-quality city surrounded by green lungs, from theValleys toWentwood Forest and the Gwent Levels. Encircling it with motorways hardly seems the best way to offer this setting as its Unique Selling Proposition. Campaigners There is much that can be done to ensure against the slower, but safe and predictable traffic flows along the M4. Indeed, M4 relief road rally I agree wholeheartedly with the call from the Director of CBI outside the Wales, David Rosser, for “an urgent appraisal of any methods of Senedd managing the current motorway to maximise the flow of traffic Building in through the Newport area”. However, the CBI also wants a new Cardiff Bay M4, citing the tunnels as a major bottleneck. The in September 2008. perception about the tunnels is widely-held, although significant hold-ups are rare.This is in sharp contrast to the daily jams a global recession are focusing attention on what is of real value, coming into Cardiff and Newport, and at other well-known and how to define poverty in a world which has greater material flashpoints such as the roundabouts between Pontypool and wealth than ever before. Cwmbran. There is abundant evidence that new roads start No-one now doubts that in the medium term filling-up as soon as they are built. A new M4 would increase the oil price will continue to rise. In a decade or two, could car-use, thereby adding pressure across at rush hour motorway junction business parks be seen as a huge end of the and worsening the daily scramble for car parking places. Millennium folly? Whatever the future holds in oil prices, surely The reality is that we need to address our it is better to be weaned off the , and put our places increased reliance on transport.We always managed in the past of work at public transport nodes, which are as available to car-free perfectly well without long daily commutes, and the majority households in Merthyr, Rhymney and EbbwVale as to car borne of our goods were still shipped and driven around the world. commuters from and Swansea. Reducing the speed of road transport – even when and where In the past, Newport was the hub of the our roads are relatively empty – would assist in tipping the EasternValleys and lowland Monmouthshire. Now it struggles balance in favour of locally-focused lives. We need public to compete with Cardiff and Bristol as a retail and business transport to be as cheap as, and faster than, going by car. And location. However, a new M4 would become a second surely we can do significantly more to reduce our transport Newport bypass, allowing people to speed off in either direction needs if we wholly embraced how we can do business with the along the old and new M4s. Wouldn’t it be better to invest in help of our much-vaunted technology. Newport as a city, and re-energise and expand the public transport network that served it so well until 20 or 30 years ago? The work of the Valuing our Environment • Julian Branscombe is Chief Executive of GwentWildlifeTrust. partnership, led by the NationalTrust, shows that one in six jobs in

32

winter 2008/09 environment neil anderson advocates a radical alternative to new road projects light rail

Light rail system in the urrently, the M4 is being widened between Castleton small town of (Junction 29) and Coryton (Junction 32).This will no Valenciennes, doubt be considered as a good investment either in in the Nord c spite of, or more likely because of, the additional traffic it will Départment on the generate.This might be termed the win-win proposition of new Scheldt river, roads, a beguiling but deceptive and disingenuous argument, close to the especially when considering higher speeds and accident severity. border with Widening sub-standard sections of the M4 . between Magor (Junction 23) and Castleton (Junction 29), and doubling the Bryn Glas tunnels, would similarly appear as the appropriate response.The cost and technical difficulties are not insurmountable, but should not be under-estimated. The terrain is hostile, and housing would be lost, never a popular option for politicians or residents when the compensation is so miserable. In 1999 an Ove Arup report discussed 33 alternatives to the 'M4 Relief Road'. It showed that a hybrid public transport enhancement/traffic demand management approach produced the best economic outcome. However, doubts were expressed as to its acceptability, fundability and deliverability within the powers the Secretary of State forWales then had. As a result the M4 Relief Road emerged as a solution.. But the Ove Arup report was published almost a decade ago. Since then our circumstances, if not the perceptions

winter 2008/09 environment

of some policy makers, have changed. In particular, the to Cardiff Bay would be one appropriate cross-route, and there enhanced transportation and legislative powers now enjoyed are other potential orbital and radial routes that should be by the Welsh Assembly Government should be able to make a considered in the context of theWales Spatial Plan and existing difference. travel patterns. Access to is another problem. Light rail could manage the incline at Rhoose, The route from Cardiff city is along the A48 through connecting the city with the airport and reducing the traffic Culverhouse Cross. Frequently congested there and beyond, around Culverhouse Cross. But an on-street line through the access roads are narrow. Access from the M4 for freight is Canton, Ely and Culverhouse Cross would have even greater also deemed to be important, though the amount passing benefits. The network should largely be on-street to maximise through the airport is miniscule. Three alternative road its accessibility and availability. Designed well, a light rail proposals have been identified to improve access. Each proposal network would significantly reduce vehicle use on the A48 on has negative environmental impacts, and each would encourage both sides of Cardiff, along the M4 and within both cities. It traffic growth. would be an effective solution to the urban mobility problem. Forgetting the dubious sustainability of air The network should also be freight-capable, travel on its present vast scale, theVale of Glamorgan rail line is connecting freight consolidation centres near the motorway close by and logically should serve the airport. However, the junctions, ports and railheads with spurs in retail centres. gradient of the line from Rhoose to the airport is too steep for Freight would add a significant income stream to light rail heavy rail, and tunnelling would be difficult to justify. Access by revenues and help finance the maintenance and extension of rail was therefore dismissed at an earlier stage. the network. Given the cost of these two schemes - perhaps There have been suggestions that the Valley £2billion in total - a safer, more sustainable and strategic lines should be converted to a light rail operation to gain the approach should be sought. Is there anything else we might advantages of lower track wear, faster acceleration and on-street spend that much on that could reduce our reliance on running in the centre of Cardiff. As it is, theValley lines provide non-renewable oil? good coverage and penetration in areas close to their Enter stage left, another mode of transport: alignments and stations. Conversion to light rail would not light rail. Although it is expensive, many small and large cities improve upon that, though shorter travel times would throughout Europe have found it affordable. Less than a marginally increase ridership and modal shift from cars. century ago trams were commonplace in many UK cities, It would be expensive to convert or extend including Cardiff. They had a marked influence on the urban high-level platforms, and to secure new rolling stock. Far better form and offered an efficient, low-impact, sociable and for that investment to be applied to a light rail network that collective form of cheap transport. would complement heavy rail, penetrating where the latter Let’s then imagine a Newport to Cardiff would be uneconomic. Nevertheless, certain key stations could Airport light rail line located on the A48 and , become light rail-capable, as much for freight as for passengers. through central Cardiff to Cowbridge Road and beyond. The There may be scope for express and other services to on-street east-west route would be the main spine of a network destinations. Track duplication at such stations would allow constructed incrementally thereafter to give adequate coverage trains to pass each other. to Cardiff, Newport and their environs. A line from Thornhill On the return of light rail to Cardiff and Newport, the primary role of buses would be as feeders to rail Light rail tram in stations, transport interchanges and light rail stops, and Dresden, providing express services. Germany The Welsh Assembly Government is in a position to choose to perpetuate the car culture or to opt for a sustainable path away from oil. A light rail system would not come cheap. But it would be popular, attract car-users, add style and peace to our cities, and offer safety and sustainability. Given 34 the relatively small distances between populated areas in south Wales, light rail would relieve pressure on road networks, and remove the need for an M4 relief road .

• Neil Anderson is a Cardiff-based consultant who has worked on mass transit projects in Australia, New Zealand and England.

winter 2008/09 education glynd wˆr university

michael scott explains why Wales’s newest university has named itself after a 15th century rebel leader

wain Glynd wˆ r (1349 – 1416) independence of the judiciary, the is known to many as a, if not freedom of expression and the autonomy o the, national hero of of the universities. Wales. A supporter of King Richard II, he The past year has seen four rose up against what he considered to be universities in Wales changing their the usurper, Henry Bolingbroke, when names. For three the change was simple the latter forced Richard’s abdication. and uncontroversial. University ofWales, Bolingbroke had himself crowned King Aberystwyth; University of Wales, “by the grace of God” not by natural Bangor and University ofWales, Swansea succession. In his revolt across Wales and became , Bangor the Marchland Glynd wˆ r took this as a University and precedent and had himself crowned respectively. Swansea Institute’s change of Prince of Wales “by grace of God”. name was a little less straight forward as It was a neat political and legal it became Swansea Metropolitan point. Glynd wˆ r was educated as a lawyer University. at the Inns of Court and valued the rule For NEWI (The North East of law. Bolingbroke had changed the Wales Institute) the choice would be constitution, the very basis of law, by more difficult. We wanted a name that force of arms. As a descendant of at least would make the university stand out. For two of Wales’s royal dynasties, Glynd wˆ r a long time we have prided ourselves on believed he had a greater legal right to being different from other universities the title Prince ofWales, than anyone else and now we had the opportunity to chosen by Bolingbroke. demonstrate that in our name. Whatever In 1404 Glynd wˆ r called the first name was chosen it had to reflect the Parliament in Wales. He believed in new type of university we wished to be. representation in the decision making It had to reflect an institution that was process of governance. He argued for modern, outward looking, but proudly freedom of expression in the Church and Welsh. It had to help in the recruitment 35 Michael Scott in 1406 called for the establishment of of students and be relevant to the needs pictured next two universities in Wales: one in the of Wales and it had to have some to the Owain Glynd wˆ r north, one in the south. It is appropriate, connection to the part ofWales in which statue in therefore, that a university has now been the university would be located. the Hall of founded, not only bearing Glynd wˆ r’s University title is granted by the Heroes, name, but also honouring the four Privy Council upon the Cardiff City freedoms of modern society: the recommendation of the Quality Hall. of Parliament, the Assurance Agency (QAA). We knew

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from the OneWales document there was Dyke University. Others argued even to the Vice-Chancellor of Swansea significant political good will towards more strongly against those names.There Metropolitan University for his advice as our obtaining university status.With such was even a suggestion of Alham Castle he had undertaken a similar process a few support we were confident that once the University, using a very old name for months earlier. QAA had recommended NEWI for Wrexham. No objections were raised to the university title the process would be The idea of a name based on the new name and so a formal application quick. We believed therefore that the mission and vision was considered, was made to the Privy Council for timetable for the rebranding was going resulting in a proposal for Enterprise NEWI to become Glynd wˆ r University to be extremely tight if we were to be University. An unusual suggestion, and for the title of Principal and Chief ready under a new name for the bridging two categories, came in the Executive to be replaced with that of September 2008 intake of students. form of Govannon University, named Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive. We had engaged a firm of after a Celtic god. More abstract Two months after the branding specialists to start work on suggestions included Red Kite application was submitted the Privy developing the name and visual identity University. However, the scarcity of red Council gave its formal approval to the of the new university. Their first job was kites in theWrexham area argued against new name and status and on 3 July 2008 to undertake a study of possible names this suggestion. Glynd wˆ r University officially came into and make a recommendation to the Naming the university after an existence. Having waited 120 years for Institute’s Board of Governors. Names individual of note was not without university title we felt we could wait a and branding of other universities and problems either. The explorer Henry few more days in order to arrange an organisations across the UK were Morton Stanley and Bishop William event worthy of the announcement. examined. The specialists also spoke to Morgan both had their advocates. Rumours, however, soon began to staff, students, governors, senior Ultimately, however, the consultants circulate and so few people who management, politicians and other presented a shortlist to the Board of attended the special meeting for all staff stakeholders to see what they expected Governors which, after considerable on the morning of 18 July were unaware of the name and the university. deliberation, agreed that the new of the momentous news that was to be This allowed the consultants to university should bear the name of the announced from the stage. produce a long list of names divided into greatest hero in Welsh history, Owain Politicians of all parties were four categories: geographical locators, Glynd wˆ r. highly supportive of our efforts to get individuals of note; names based on It has to be said that the choice university title and so it was appropriate mission and vision and the more abstract was not without its opponents. Fears that it was the First Minister who rose to names. Surprisingly the first of these gave were expressed that international and his feet to make the official the most problems. One possible choice European students would be discouraged announcement. Proceedings then took a was University of Wrexham. This was from attending – although it appears more formal turn as the first ever rejected not only because such a Glynd wˆ r is considerably better known Congregation of Glynd wˆ r University traditional formula (University of across the rest of Europe than he is in was held at which an honorary somewhere) failed to convey the fact that England. Others said the name was “too fellowship was conferred on Rhodri we wanted the new university to be Welsh”. It is difficult to imagine an Morgan. different from every other university, but English university rejecting a name How did the public respond to also because it excluded other areas of because it sounded “too English”. this bold new name? Even the hardened north east Wales. Our university was as To address these concerns staff of my office were overwhelmed by much for the people of Flintshire and meetings were held for all staff where the the tremendous enthusiasm for the name as it was for the people of reasoning behind the choice of name from all sectors of society. For nearly two Wrexham. The name North East Wales was explained. These meetings were months hardly a day went by without University was considered and rejected crucial in obtaining widespread support letters, cards or emails arriving bearing as again it did not properly convey the for the proposal. messages of congratulations and 36 magnitude of the change affecting the Once the governors and staff goodwill.We seemed to have hit a chord Institute. Nor did it translate particularly were convinced, the wider public needed with the people of Wales and, indeed, well into Welsh – the English acronym to be engaged. The Privy Council throughout the UK. NEWU would almost certainly have requires all aspiring universities to During the consultation period been used, giving us the same problem undertake a public consultation on their one particular concern was frequently as we had had with using NEWI in name to ensure that there is no possible raised. Glynd wˆ r University needed a Caption documents. confusion between the proposed name locator and so although the official name required here Some people argued strongly for and that of an existing university. In approved by the Privy Council was to be please John. Clwyd University and others for Offa’s doing this we were particularly grateful Glynd wˆ r University, in practice this

winter 2008/09 First Minister Rhodri Morgan is made an Honorary Fellow at Glynd wˆr University’s first Congregation, held in July 2008.

would be supplemented by the word produced under the Glynd wˆ r University some features have been quietly dropped Wrexham. This also meant that, as the name. Unfortunately, we only had two and with hindsight we might like to have University has plans for a new campus weeks after the First Minister’s made a little more of other aspects. On on the Welsh College of Horticulture’s announcement before one of the biggest the whole I think we have achieved this campus in Northop near Mold, that new cultural events in Europe, the National momentous transformation into campus could become Glynd wˆr was to start. Having a Glynd wˆ r University in a significantly less University, Flintshire, providing Flintshire presence at the Eisteddfod was vital for painful and troublesome way that I could with a university campus for the first us, yet time and money were in short have hoped. We now have the university, time. Plans are also advanced for supply. Nonetheless, excellent suppliers a highly important name and Glynd wˆ r University, Denbighshire. and imaginative solutions meant that the considerable goodwill. All we need to do Compared to the struggle to get University’s stand at the Eisteddfod was now is make it work . the name agreed, the choice of a entirely branded as Glynd wˆ r University, branding image was simple. Our with Glynd wˆ r University prospectuses in branding consultants produced a detailed English and Welsh, banners and 37 set of guidelines for a branding based on promotional material all carrying the vertical coloured lines. This too has won new branding. considerable praise from inside and It would be naive of me to claim outside the higher education sector. the whole rebranding exercise was Rebranding takes time and undertaken without any problem.Yet the • Professor Michael Scott is money. Signage across the university truth is there were very few – or at least Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive needed to be changed and all our few that could not be remedied. It is true of Glynd wˆ r University. publicity material needed to be we have had to tweak the logo a little,

winter 2008/09 education critical mass

any of the most detailed Education Funding Council forWales to huw beynon and complex problems set up a Reconfiguration and outlines a new m facing society Collaboration Scheme aimed at in the 21st Century call for investigation producing ‘landscape changes’ though and analysis based upon the more joint working and capacity collaboration that interdisciplinary social sciences.This was building. In the view of the Assembly a conclusion of the 2002 Rhind Government Wales had the opportunity strengthens Welsh Commission, set up to inquire into the to prosper as a “small and clever country” state of social sciences in the UK ( Great in which collaboration would be a key social science Expectations: the Social Sciences in Britain ). element. It found support for this view in the Post Rhind, the ESRC had also research major funding bodies, in Whitehall and been attracted to the idea of the devolved administrations, in business collaboration, especially in relation to the and in the media. It found particularly development and dissemination of strong support for social science from the methodological expertise. The National National Assembly where it was seen to Centre for Research Methods, based at have a major role to play in addressing the University of Southampton, and its the problems associated with linked nodes (one of them at Cardiff de-industrialisation. University), was one expression of this However, in the view of the policy in operation. Rhind Commission, much of the In 2008 the two organisations – research effort in Britain was HEFCW and the ESRC – joined forces insubstantial, organised as a ‘cottage to shape and support a bid for a new industry’ around individuals and small Wales Institute for Social and Economic research groups. In its view, universities Research, Data and Methods needed to create a critical mass of social (WISERD) with a grant of £4.8 million. science researchers, providing the basis In an odd way this innovation, which for developing large, coherent, came out of a weakness in the Welsh interdisciplinary teams, capable of research base, has produced one of the bringing new approaches to pressing most advanced and exciting examples of social issues. There were indications that interdisciplinary and inter-institutional this analysis found favour within the collaboration yet attempted in the UK. Economic and Social Research Council, The new Institute will have its a major funder of social science research hub at Cardiff University, which will and increasingly infrastructure. coordinate activities across five campuses The problem was seen in an (Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff, acute form in Wales where Rhind Glamorgan and Swansea). It brings commented on the deficit in funding together established researchers with related to the research assessment strong expertise in economics and 38 exercise. Others have pointed to the poor finance, education, geography, political aggregate performance of researchers in science, sociology, social policy and Wales, in competition for funds from all socio-legal studies. Together they have of the research councils. Our research worked on a variety of projects which, effort was thinly stretched across a in their different ways, have focused on number of intuitions, with high quality social and economic change in the newly researchers often operating in isolated devolved Wales, and the problems facing groups at sub-departmental level. the regeneration of local communities. Problems such as these led the Higher Within the new Institute they will be

winter 2008/09 education supported by an additional 27 which other activities will develop and devolved government is based on a researchers, trainers, project managers from which an extensive programme of coalition between the Labour Party and and senior administrative staff. Many of training and capacity building will Plaid Cymru. A third of the councillors these posts will be permanent ones. emerge. in Welsh local authorities are now It is well recognised that a Building on these foundations ‘Independents’. It is a country of sharp considerable amount of the data WISERD will introduce a phased series contrasts. collected by social scientists are sparingly of locality studies acrossWales.These will WISERD will analyse these used at best. Researchers in Wales – provide sites of detailed data collection changes and through trend assessments especially those working in the most and methodological development. and local forums provide policy deprived areas – are already being Participative forms of inquiry will assessments that will place the problems questioned about the need for their engage people in discussions about the of Wales within a broad comparative project and how and in what ways it places in which they live and how these context. In so doing it will both differs from previous ones, the outcomes could be changed for the better. Social strengthen the organisation and capacity of which were obscure. In questioning science will engage with publics over the of social scientific research in Wales, and the purpose of social scientific inquiry, kinds of knowledge that we can develop help to embed social scientific people are raising, albeit in new forms, about places in Wales and their engagement within Welsh civil society . the age-old question asked by Staughton trajectories. Lynd in his book Knowledge For What? Wales is changing. It is no longer WISERD aims to answer this dominated by coal and steel. Women question in a number of ways. It will now make up half of the work force and begin by considering what has gone migrants are at the core of the food before and bring together, integrate and packing industry whose factories span make more usable and accessible the the country. It still remains a relatively • Huw Beynon is Director of the wide range of existing quantitative and poor country within the UK with many School of Social Sciences at qualitative social science data that relate problems associated with ill health and Cardiff University. to Wales. This will be the hub around related economic inactivity. The new science science business

ombining scientific research john osmond with business development is examines the way c central to the economic thinking of the Welsh Assembly Government. First Minister Rhodri science is being Morgan, who has branded himself Wales’s Minister for Science and is in the put at the centre process of appointing a Chief Scientific Adviser, has placed science at the heart of the Assembly of his economic development plans.The Government declared in early 2006, “A Government’s science policy tailored to Wales’s needs will help accelerate the development of a economic policy knowledge economy as well as enhance the quality of higher education, the health service, the environment, agriculture and evidence-based government in general.” In practice the Government’s approach has focused on efforts to commercialise research and development in two main sectors: the health and life sciences, and promoting a low carbon The new economy through renewable Institute of Life Sciences technologies.This is building on existing building at clusters of business research activity. The Swansea Government is encouraging these sectors University. through strategic public investment in new University research centres also aimed at levering in private sector investment. In 2003 an Ernst and Young report for the former (now absorbed into the Government) identified 290 companies across Wales active in bioscience, including drug discovery technologies, non-invasive surgery, diagnostics, medical services, clinical 40 trials, and pharmaceuticals. The report advocated multidisciplinary research involving industry, academia and the NHS. Accordingly, a MediWales industry network has been established alongside NHS networks which together are being urged to identify potential clinical collaborations within NHS Wales to provide access points for industry.

winter 2008/09 science

Wales has long been a major The OneWales player in energy production, especially with coalition coal and nuclear power. Now there is a in action: Labour’s determined move to diversify into Education renewables. In photovoltaics Wales has Minister companies such as Sharp inWrexham and , G24 in Cardiff, together with supply chain and Plaid’s companies. There is also a solid state Deputy First Minister lighting industry consortium and Ieuan Wyn companies in micro generation Jones, jointly development and installation. To support open the them the Assembly Government has new Institute developed programmes such as of Biological, Environmental SMARTCymru, a scheme that assists new and Rural product and process development delivered Sciences at through nine innovationTechnium centres Aberystwyth across Wales, and the Knowledge University in Exploitation Fund which provides financial April 2008. support to HE institutions to help knowledge transfer to industry. There has also been funding for the energy business sector through the EU Objective 1 and Convergence programmes. These efforts are being undertaken against the grain of twin realities that Wales is a small country with, as yet, no devolved responsibilities in science and with very few private sector or UK government research establishments. million venture capital fund, aimed at 1,000 students. Its launch was accompanied Nonetheless, in the past few years some translating therapeutic innovations into by an award of £23.5 million from the important initiatives have been pursued by everyday clinical practice. Already there Assembly Government and the Higher the Assembly Government. has been some spin-out company Education Funding Council forWales, part At Swansea University a £50 success, for example: of a £55 million investment programme million Institute of Life Sciences has • Allerna Therapeutics, a drug over five years.The new Institute’s research been formed as the research arm of the development company originating agenda is addressing challenges such as Swansea School of Medicine. Described within the School of Medicine, that climate change, food and fuel security, and exuberantly by Rhodri Morgan as “the explores breakthrough treatments for animal and plant diseases. Current jewel in the crown of Wales” this is a asthma and other allergic diseases. initiatives include: unique collaboration between theWelsh • Calon Cardio-Technology which is • The Aeras GlobalTB Foundation, part Assembly Government, the European developing the next generation of of the new Institute, which has Union, the University, the computer implantable micro-pumps for the licensed ground-breaking research to a giant IBM, Boots plc, and the venture treatment of heart failure. non-profit product development capital firm Longbow. partnership working to develop new, As part of the relationship with In Aberystwyth the largest more effective vaccines against IBM, a dedicated ‘Blue C’ super grouping of scientists in the UK in the Tuberculosis. computer is housed in the Institute’s fields of biology, environmental and rural • The use of ryegrass – than can be 41 £12.5 million purpose-built six storey sciences was created in April 2008.This was grown on ground unsuitable for other building on the University campus. One achieved by the merger of the Institute of crops – to produce cellulosic ethanol of its uses is to enable the Institute to Grassland and Environmental Research as a cost-effective alternative fuel to make more effective use of health with the departments of Biological Science petrochemicals. informatics to drive clinical trials and and Rural Sciences at Aberystwyth complex disease modelling. The University. The result is the new Institute Meanwhile, the Welsh Assembly partnership has also created the Boots of Biological, Environmental and Rural Government is providing £5.1 million for Centre for Innovation, backed by a £40 Sciences which has more than 300 staff and a new Low Carbon Research Institute at

winter 2008/09 science

Cardiff University to co-ordinate research Science Research Councils, declared, on clean energy technologies and how they writing in the Spring 2006 issue of Agenda: can be put into practice. Led by the Welsh “Health and low carbon energy School of Architecture, other partners are systems are vitally important, but a Cardiff’s School of Engineering, Bangor catalogue of mainly small businesses University’s School of Chemistry, Swansea or university groups active in these University’s School of Engineering, and areas is not a Science Policy.This Glamorgan University’s Sustainable must be about how the Assembly Environment Research Centre. The Government will generate lots of word Institute, which is providing independent class new science and engineering in advice to theWelsh Assembly Government the Universities in the almost on the delivery of its energy policy, is complete absence of UK government focusing on four main themes: funded research institutes inWales.” • Low carbon energy generation, storage and distribution, including large-scale The key challenge for the offshore wind and tidal power Assembly Government remains generation, biomass micro-generation channelling extra resources into the sites, better harnessing of solar energy Higher Education Funding Council for through more efficient photovoltaic Wales. At present its budget of around electricity technology, use of fuel cell £450 million a year represents a £70 and hydrogen technologies in million funding gap with the rest of the generation and transport, and more UK, a gap that has been growing by sustainable coal and gas-powered energy. around 50 per cent a year since 2003. In • Energy demand reduction which the Spring 2008 issue of Agenda the involves research into greater energy outgoing chairman of the Council, efficiency in buildings. Professor Roger Williams, warned that • An Energy Graduate School Wales had just two years to make up the collaborating with industry to produce shortfall or face falling irrevocably behind a skilled workforce familiar with England and Scotland in scientific research: sustainability issues. “This is not an insurmountable • Partnerships with industry, research problem for theWelsh Assembly organisations and the Assembly Government.We have to realise that Government aimed at creating new if we want a modern, technologically energy industries. advanced economy it is vital that we have top class universities that can Also at Cardiff University the compete with the rest of the UK.” Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council has awarded £3.8 million to And as Sir John Cadogan put it: establish an international research centre for Artist’s impression of the 400 metre, “Without a strong Science and Integrated Renewable Energy Generation 66-floor Lighthouse Tower approved for Engineering base, real economic and Supply within the School of construction in Dubai, United Arab progress, far from being achieved, will Engineering.This initiative will concentrate Emirates. Designed by the Welsh School of Architecture and partners within the go into reverse.This is because (i) on developing research capacity in integrated new Welsh Low Carbon Research new technologically based business renewable energy generation, including Institute, it aims to achieve a major will not start up; and (ii) established ‘Smart Grids’ of the future (intelligent power reduction in energy use compared with a high tech business will see no point grids), and contributing towards meeting the standard high-rise building. There will be 42 in being located in aWales far from UK medium-term renewable energy targets. three large 225 kW wind turbines, 29 meters in diameter, on the building's the scientific and engineering While these initiatives are south facing side to generate electricity. nourishment provided by universities admirable in their own right and a clear set It will also be clad in 4,000 solar panels elsewhere.” of sector priorities are being established, to generate additional electricity. The what is emerging is more of an economic tower will also reduce its overall energy development than a science policy forWales. consumption by 65 per cent, and its water consumption by 40 per cent in • John Osmond is Director of the As Welsh Fellow of the Royal Society, Sir comparison with an equivalent building. Institute ofWelsh Affairs. John Cadogan, former head of the UK

winter 2008/09 science

creatures great and small

here are three arguments for The Department of Environment, penri james creating a Welsh Veterinary Food and Rural Affairs estimates that there makes the case t School: growing demands from are over 21 million pets in the UK which pet owners and the agricultural industry, require care on a regular basis. Latest 2008 increasing government regulation of statistics show that UK livestock producers for a Welsh animal industries, and the fact that only keep 33.9 million sheep, the largest flock one new veterinary school has been in the EU, 10.3 million cattle, the third veterinary school opened in the UK in the past 50 years, at largest in the EU, and 4.8 million pigs. Pig Nottingham (see panel overleaf). herds carry a higher veterinary burden due at Aberystwyth In the Royal College of to their susceptibility to virus and their Veterinary Surgeons 2007 annual report epidemiological role as virus multipliers 43 there are 22,162 registered vets with particularly with Foot and Mouth disease. 16,162 having a recognised UK Livestock play an important role in qualification. However, only 42 per cent the agriculture ofWales, with 71 per cent of of the 1,342 vets registered during gross agricultural output dependent of 2006-07 obtained a UK qualification. livestock production. Even if livestock The remainder had overseas numbers are decreasing in line with changes qualifications, mainly from Australia, in the Common Agricultural Policy, there and Poland. are core veterinary practices which have to

winter 2008/09 be undertaken irrespective of whether there there would be a surplus. However, its are 10 or 1,000 animals in an enterprise. In 2007 annual report recorded 569 UK addition, Single Payment qualifying criteria graduates, a figure that had been become a fellow specify a minimum level of animal care and relatively static for the previous three . Supermarket chains only purchase years, an annual increase of around 80 on and support our work meat from suppliers adhering to welfare and the three years before that. So the targets “I appreciate “The IWA fulfils other criteria set by Assured British Meat. set by the College have not been the immense a vital role in Much of the Single Payment cross achieved, and there will certainly not be contribution Welsh civic compliance and assurance work cannot take the surplus it predicted. At the same time that the society. If it place without veterinary input. The Langlands report showed that Institute has were not there Alongside this government is veterinary medicine attracts substantial made and is making to the it would have to be invented.” constantly increasing its veterinary numbers of high quality applicants life of Wales. We would be IWA Fellow, Rt. Hon. Dafydd surveillance and regulation, not least which far exceed the number of places much poorer without it.” Wigley Honorary President, IWA Fellow, Labour Peer Plaid Cymru because of outbreaks of Bluetongue, Bird Lord Gwilym Prys Davies Flu, Foot and Mouth, and increasingly “As someone Tuberculosis. Faced with these demands “I am an who has been the 856 government vets are under admirer of the involved all of severe pressure. quality of the my professional In his 2005 Gateways to the work produced career in think- Professions report, Sir Alan Langlands,Vice by the IWA. Its tanks, research bodies and research and publications are policy units, I would like to pay Chancellor of the University of Dundee, of inestimable value to Wales tribute to the way in which the identified four key issues for the and its people.” IWA has clearly established veterinary industry: IWA Fellow, Liberal Democrat itself as a leading forum for • Students entering veterinary school Peer, Lord Livesey of Talgarth debate in Welsh political life.” after obtaining a previous degree IWA Fellow, Conservative Peer receive no additional grants. Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach • There are far more women than men training to be vets. Fellows of the IWA are able, if they I wish to become a Fellow so wish, to become involved in / Life Fellow and enclose a • The impact of increased tuition fees shaping the work programmes of cheque for £200 / £1000. on applications for veterinary degrees the IWA. In addition Fellows will: coupled with the high level of debt I wish to become a Fellow • Receive special recognition in affecting vets entering less well paid the IWA’s regular journal / Life Fellow and pay by specialities such as farm animal Agenda (unless they have credit/debit card the sum of chosen to give their support £_ _ , _ _ _ . _ _ practice and veterinary research. • The entry of many new vets into small anonymously). Account Number • Be invited to special Fellows _ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ /_ _ _ _ animal practice, leading to a loss of available. The conclusion must be that events each year. large and farm animal veterinary skills. there is a lack of training capacity rather Expiry date _ _ /_ _ • Have access to the IWA for than qualified candidates. policy advice and briefing. I wish to pay by Direct Some of these issues can be A recurring theme in analyses of We ask that Fellows subscribe a Debit (This will help us keep our addressed by government modifying the the veterinary service, especially by the minimum annual payment of costs down) Please send me a financial rules. In the Welsh context, for NFU and FUW, is the lack of large £200 to the Fellows Fund. Life Direct Debit application form. instance, the Welsh Assembly animal farm livestock vets. Animal fellowship will be bestowed for a single payment of £1,000. Please send me more Government has been ingenious in charities and benefactors concentrate These donations will qualify information about becoming reducing fees. However, many of these financial donations on companion

under Gift Aid. an IWA Fellow. concerns need to be met by establishing animal and equine care rather than farm Ê a new veterinary school aimed at livestock. Moreover, television please cut along here undergraduates primarily interested in programmes such as the Herriot All large animal care. creatures great and small series have a role Name Title In evidence to the Environment, in promoting small animal care. Address Food and Rural Affairs Select It is worth dwelling on the Post Code Committee in 2003, the Royal ‘Herriot factor’ for a moment. During Telephone Facsimile Veterinary College expected there to be the 1970s and 1980s the rapid increase in E-mail 700 veterinary graduates per year by demand for places at vet schools may 2008 and that within five to ten years have masked an underlying scarcity of Return to: Freepost RLTT-RBYS-JUUX Institute of Welsh Affairs 1 Radnor Court 256 Cowbridge Road East Cardiff CF5 1GZ science suitable candidates willing to undertake addressed this need by forming a Research with the Institute of Biological large animal work. In the short term, partnership with Coleg Sir Gâr and Sciences. This is providing a focus for insufficiencies are addressed by overseas Aberystwyth University in creating research in the key sustainability priority students. However, in the medium to the Welsh RegionalVeterinary Centre areas established by government: climate long term the Royal College needs a to enhance large animal experience. A change, food, water and energy security. strategy to deal with manpower shortages further step would be the creation of a These activities would be complemented in an important sector of the food veterinary school. by developing a permanent veterinary producing economy. Setting high animal Agricultural and rural decision training presence in Aberystwyth. welfare standards cannot be achieved making in Wales is already gravitating The key players, including the without practitioners to monitor them. towards Aberystwyth with the Royal Veterinary College, the British The trend toward small animal Commission, FUW, Hybu Cig Cymru all Veterinary Association, and the Assembly care provides a dilemma for vet having headquarters there. Moreover, the Government have to be persuaded of the schools in finding practices capable of Welsh Assembly Government Agriculture merits of a vet school for Wales. The latest Royal College Strategy Plan has no reference to developing training by establishing more schools. Instead it alludes to ‘building from within’ existing institutions. This is a conservative approach and the College needs to be persuaded to take a more radical stance. Here there are key roles for the Royal College’s Education Policy and Specialisation Committee and also for the Chairman of its Public Affairs Committee, Martyn Jones, MP for Clwyd South. In the first instance Aberystwyth University should draw up a coherent plan on how to establish, fund and operate a vet school. The National Assembly Committees on Education and Rural Affairs should also investigate the case and build up a head of steam. The Welsh Assembly Government needs to decide whether a vet school fits into it giving adequate large animal training and Fisheries departments will migrate development strategy for higher for graduates. Reduced exposure to from Cardiff to Aberystwyth during 2009. . Of course, funding large animals during training also Another highly relevant development has will be a major issue but there is a strong reduces the likelihood of graduates been the creation of the Institute of case and it should be articulated. entering and remaining in a large or Biological, Environmental and Rural mixed animal practices. The Royal Sciences in 2008, through the merger of the Veterinary College has partially Institute of Grassland and Environmental

Veterinary Schools in UK and Ireland – year established 45 Royal Veterinary College, London 1791 The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University 1823 Glasgow University 1862 University 1904 • Penri James lectures in farm University College Dublin 1946 management at the Institute of Bristol University 1948 Biological, Environmental and Rural Cambridge University 1949 Sciences, Aberystwyth University. Nottingham University 2006

winter 2008/09 science genetic doublethink

Formerly the from translating the wealth of research European countries. This is the one that IGER plant dafydd huws information it has on GM into practical eschews science and science-based breeding plant-breeding outcomes. This is a sad progress, especially in the fields of station but argues that a now part of indication of Wales’ prospects for a agriculture and medicine, in favour of Aberystwyth flourishing economy based on cutting totally untested alternatives. It is a strange University’s sustainable Welsh edge science-based industries. doublethink, in which science-based and newly created Despite being world leaders in evidence-based progress is refused on Institute of agriculture cannot basic plant research we are contenders ideological grounds, while potentially Biological, Environmental for the Canute prize for progress in dangerous and often untried and useless afford to be without and Rural bringing GM biotechnology to market. remedies are accepted without question. Sciences. Its The same applies to Cardiff University It would be amusing if it weren’t activities are GM technology with regard to biomedical technology so serious. The ideological and even constrained by although GM approaches appear to be superstitious opposition to GM is restrictions on GM trials somewhat more publicly acceptable in moving from the wrong headed to the in the UK. he real GM scandal is that this area. downright immoral. It cannot be whereas Wales is at the forefront When even the farming unions tolerable for European middle-class fads 46 t of biotechnology research and and landowner representatives are and superstitions to preclude sharing the development including genetic ambivalent about embracing GM benefits of scientific technological modification, hostility to GM is blocking technologies, and we continue to advance with the third world and its our benefiting from this research. The subsidise the flawed concept of organic starving populations. Institute of Biological, Environmental farming as the answer to mainstream Far from precluding it, it is this and Rural Sciences (formerly IGER) at agriculture, GM is indeed the technology among others, which can, for Aberystwyth is doing world-leading technology that cannot speak its name. example, offer the possibility of raising cutting edge research, yet is prevented by Wales appears to have a virulent strain of drought resistant crops in desert the present climate and lack of support the virus afflicting the UK and many conditions, salt resistant crops in the

winter 2008/09 science massive hectarage of the world’s salty grew 12 per cent from 12.3 million organic movement has played a big part lands, or produce seed varieties which hectares to reach 114.4 million hectares. in sustaining the ideological opposition will make food crops more productive, This was further augmented by farmers to GM. Having failed to demonstrate any more disease resistant and less reliant on adopting varieties with more than one danger whatsoever to human health, it fertiliser and pesticides.That is what will biotech trait. These ‘trait hectares’ grew now rests its case on the concept of really offer the best chance of ensuring by 22 per cent. New crops are being purity. Organic food has to be free of security of food supply. Added to this added to the list such as insect-resistant so-called GM ‘contamination’. there is a whole range of medical benefits poplar trees planted in China to aid Supermarkets display signs such as the incorporation of vitamin A reforestation efforts. claiming that produce is GM free, into ‘golden rice’ which has a massive Even more impressive is that of implying a danger that doesn’t exist. potential to save lives and avoid hundreds the 12 million farmers enjoying the Anyone with a superficial knowledge of of thousands of cases of blindness across advantages of the improved technology, world agriculture and food production the developing world. nine out of ten were resource-poor will realise that this, too, is a battle that is While the debate is dominated farmers. In fact, the twelve developing already lost. We are all unwittingly or by negative voices demanding a ‘GM countries planting biotech crops wittingly ingesting or otherwise freeWales’, as also happens in the field of surpassed the eleven industrialised benefiting from genetically modified energy, from nuclear to wind power, we countries, with a growth rate in the products, whether they are food or will also be heading inevitably to a developing world three times that of medicines. Instead of promoting organic ‘wealth free Wales’. Meanwhile, we have industrialised countries. farming the Welsh government should world-class establishments in Wales, Studies in India and China show be promoting science-based sustainable which are constrained in making an that biotech cotton has increased yields agriculture. unfettered contribution across the whole by between 10 and 50 per cent, with a But surely, it will be argued, range of technologies that include GM. 50 per cent reduction in insecticide use. organic and sustainable agriculture are Throughout history farmers Moreover nine out of ten of these the same thing? Not at all. Whereas have sought to improve yields by farmers replanted biotech cotton year on organic agriculture does promote cross-breeding plants with desirable year. Australia, which is in the frontline sustainability, and in that sense there is characteristics. However, cross-breeding of climate change induced drought, is much to applaud it, it is prevented by can be a lottery with consequences that field-testing drought tolerant wheat. ideology verging on superstition from may not be easily predicted. One Strict regulation of GM is of adopting technologies and practices method of breeding to obtain improved course necessary but it has hitherto been which will make a truly significant crops was to bombard seeds and plants far too onerous and expensive even difference to sustainable agriculture on with gamma-rays to cause mutations. without the ideological resistance. The the planet. When the Soil Association, This is by nature a very untargeted process rather than the product has been of the organic movement, approach which, in their desire to avoid subject to testing. However, it is now is asked why it doesn’t consider GM as a ‘artificial’ chemicals, organic farmers possible to design regulatory systems that valuable adjunct to organic farming, the appear willing to accept. In fact they are are rigorous without being overly shutters come down, apparently because just as, if not more, reliant as onerous, with the result that more of an ideological refusal to consider the conventional farmers on crop varieties developing countries are likely to matter. that were generated in this way. GM is approve the technology. Regulation of In any case, organic farming is an additional tool for plant breeding the product not the process will based on the manifestly false principle which provides a much more targeted accelerate the rate at which GM that ‘artificial’ chemicals are bad, and approach. It is inherently no more products will be approved. Tragically ‘natural’ chemicals are good, as if plants ‘dangerous’ and in fact may well be safer millions have been deprived of the could tell and were interested in the than some older traditional methods. benefit of major advances by the delay in difference. The one justification for The International Service for approving crops such as ‘golden rice’ organic agriculture in its present form is the Acquisition of Agribiotech where it seems the demands of the its ability to command a premium in the 47 Applications is a not-for-profit regulatory systems have often been the market, which outweighs the increased organisation, which aims to deliver the end and not the means. cost of production, and the more benefits of new agricultural Viewed against the burgeoning extensive use of land, which is usually biotechnologies to the poor in population in the third world and a synonymous with greater inefficiency. developing countries. According to its shrinking and impoverished land Although the recession will ensure a research, the rate at which the rest of the resource, the organic movement should temporary fall, the burgeoning price of world is forging ahead without us is be recognised for what it is, as only being diesel fuel does not augur well for systems stunning. In 2007 the biotech crop area able to sustain a niche market. The dependent on high levels of tillage.

winter 2008/09 science

The era of cheap food is over, and Plot scale which may well give them a temporary it is questionable whether the middle class evaluation respite, but the decreased production and will continue to indulge its taste for of crop the extensification involved will mean the performance organic food. Already the numbers of at IBERS - benefits won’t last long. BMWs parked in cut-price supermarkets red clover, Farmers, often at the wealthier like Lidl’s might be a harbinger of that. lupins, spring end of the scale who can afford the The environmentalist James Lovelock has barley and organic luxury, make up for loss of estimated that if all farming became perennial production by taking over other farms, ryegrass are organic, we would only be able to feed grown under thus depriving yet another family of a one third of even the present world different living. With the ever-increasing population. Without a science-based nutrient input proportion of US and South American increase in yields from the world’s existing regimes. All grain production being GM, European agricultural land, food production will are bred using farmers will face huge economic conventional inevitably spread more rapidly to techniques. difficulties if the zero tolerance in Europe environmentally fragile land, rainforests Currently of GM content in their feedstuffs persists. and wildlife conservation areas. the scientists It remains true that the family It is inevitable that GM crops A whole range of technologies is are unable to farm is the future of Welsh agriculture experiment will be accepted worldwide, even in necessary to achieve the degree of and will determine the sustainability of with genetic Europe. But in causing the delay in their sustainability that will make a difference modification our rural communities. However, it will adoption the anti GM lobbies have to the prosperity and profitability ofWelsh because of only be saved by low input, high margin exacted a heavy price. Their opposition agriculture.These include traditional plant the anti lobby. agriculture that derives from has undermined agro-business in Europe breeding, experimentation with new science-based practices across the board and has driven much research into plant varieties for their persistence and including GM. This means improving: biotechnology abroad.Yet this is an area in Welsh conditions, and, of • The way we manage our soils, our in which Wales has the potential to course, GM. A sustainable agriculture in forages, and our home grown feedstuffs. maintain a world-leading role. Wales cannot afford to be without access • The productivity, efficiency and In contrast with the situation in to this technology. longevity of our livestock. Wales, China is planning a 3.5 billion We seem to be locked into the • The ability of livestock to thrive dollar GM crops initiative over 13 years. In mind-set from the early decades of the outdoors on natural poor quality contrast with the organic diversion we are Common Agricultural Policy, when we grazing, and a developed innovative pursuing, China is set to move from high believed surpluses were synonymous range of forages matched to the input and extensive cultivation to with too much land too intensively changing climatic conditions. high-tech and intensive cultivation. Yet farmed. As a result we came up with the • Marketing and adding value, making China has moved very cautiously in crazy idea of ‘set aside’. We continue to Welsh agriculture more qualitative in its adopting GM crops. Of six approved plant promote extensification and taking land output rather than being a quantitative species, only insect-resistant cotton is now out of production and practices that source of primary production. planted widely. Since its introduction into would make any third world farmer commerce in 1997, 64 varieties of pest weep, such as returning drained On a global scale, tackling the resistant cotton are now grown on 70 per productive agricultural land to bog and food crisis facing the world must be led cent of the area of the cotton growing area, marsh, in the name of a short sighted and by science rather than superstition. It averting the use of a stunning 650,000 often spurious environmentalism. requires the urgent deployment of all tonnes of pesticides.This is in contrast with The situation facing Welsh science-based technologies to meet the the UK where a rare attempt to field trial farmers is dire.We are now witnessing the yawning need. Of course, GM is not a potatoes was trashed by opponents. hitherto inconceivable, namely the magic bullet. However, it is part of a What would a sustainable importing of liquid milk from Northern range of solutions that we cannot afford 48 agriculture industry in Wales look like? Ireland, Holland and Belgium, because to do without. Since the dramatic rise in the cost of fuel, UK dairy farmers’ margins over input fertiliser and feedstuffs, the recent costs make it impossible for them to stay in increase in agriculture prices have been business. The loss of dairy farms from • Dr Dafydd Huws is a retired NHS more than wiped out. Consequently, Wales, by far the best form of agriculture consultant, a renewable wind and sustainability is largely synonymous with to provide a decent living on limited wave energy developer, and has low input agriculture, particularly in a acreage, has been damaging to rural operated a beef and sheep enterprise in predominantly stock rearing and communities. Meanwhile farmers are Ceredigion since 1965. dairying country like Wales. lured by the fool’s gold of organic farming,

winter 2008/09 social policy wicked issues

he Beecham Review received a issues like school reorganisation and steve martin warm reception from right surplus hospital beds. reflects on progress t across the political spectrum. Nevertheless, Beecham was But two years on what has actually been optimistic that public services could rise achieved? What are the prospects now to these challenges. According to the since publication for the ambitious vision forWelsh public review team, Wales could and should services outlined by Sir Jeremy and his aspire to be an exemplar of “small of the Beecham colleagues? country governance”. So were they Beecham didn’t pull any punches right?What progress has been made? Are review in July 2006 about the challenges facing our public there reasons still to be cheerful about services. He endorsed the principles which future provision? underpin the Assembly Government’s Two years on the ‘Beecham ‘Making the Connections’ strategy, but principles’ continue to generate a great argued that they needed to be pushed a lot deal of discussion. ‘Beecham’ is now further. The quality of services was, the firmly established in the lexicon ofWelsh review team concluded, too patchy. And public services. Enter ‘Wales + Beecham’ service providers had to become more into a search engine and you will turn efficient so that the ‘Welsh pound’ went up dozens of references to the review further.We needed better comparative and (interspersed with sites dedicated to the longitudinal performance data and more pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline powerful incentives to secure and to Sir Jeremy’s namesake Thomas, improvement. Governance arrangements the renowned early twentieth century Sir Jeremy were too complicated. Service providers conductor). And it seems that Beecham’s Beecham, had to juggle conflicting planning cycles, assessment of the state of services former leader performance frameworks and funding continues to ring true for most people. of Newcastle City Council regimes. There are also some signs of real and former Moreover, a lack of joined up progress. Probably the most visible has Chairman of targets, timetables and inspection was been the creation of Local Service the Local getting in the way of local partnership Boards. Although Beecham did not refer Government working.The Assembly Government was to these by name, he did argue for Association of England. too wedded to top down command and “greater partnership working between control which bred a culture of councils, local health boards, the police compliance at local level. Ministers and and fire services” and non-devolved civil servants needed to pay more services such as the Pensions Service and attention to delivery processes and Jobcentre Plus. He pointed to Public councils had to become more pro-active. Services Boards in England as a model Rather than waiting to be told, they which Wales might want to have a look needed to find new ways of working at and perhaps learn from. together in order to make the most of The Assembly Government took thinly spread managerial capacity and up this recommendation with alacrity. Its 49 other scarce resources.The public had to formal response to Beecham pledged be able to hold service providers to action to bring together the providers of account. Local and central government devolved and non-devolved services in needed to gather intelligence about what order to improve delivery in areas such citizens really want from and think about as health and social care, services for services.We needed a clearer strategy for vulnerable children and others where promoting informed public debate about good outcomes depend on joined-up how to tackle the really contentious action.Within a matter of weeks it issued

winter 2008/09 social policy

a general invitation to bid to become functionally organised departments, and collaboration. Schools and colleges should Local Service Board pilots. Most councils this has left some ministers wondering stop competing for students and instead and their local partners responded how boards relate to their portfolios. Put work together in order to ensure that they positively and six were selected. One year bluntly, they haven’t been sure what can provide a full post-16 curriculum. on a second phase is underway and there Local Service Boards can ‘do for them’. Councils needed to co-operate to build are signs of increasing enthusiasm for the This highlights one of the joint waste management facilities and so Service Board model even among those dangers of the Boards, namely that they forth.This rejection of competition wasn’t who were initially sceptical. risk being seen simply as delivery agents Welsh perfidy; it is underpinned by sound For the most part, joint for Assembly Government policies and intellectual arguments. working between local government, priorities. The appointment of senior Markets can only work as an health, the police and other partners civil servants to liaise with them might efficient means of delivering public seems to be developing well and there have confirmed this perception. services if users can access and choose to is evidence of progress in tackling some However, in practice it has been an act upon accurate information about of the most difficult ‘wicked issues’. It inspired move, providing officials with their own needs, the cost of services, the hasn’t all been plain sailing. There are opportunities to see what is actually quality of alternative providers, the size areas with a legacy of difficult happening ‘on the ground’ and enabling of the available budgets and the inter-organisational or interpersonal local agencies to flag up national policies opportunity costs of different forms of relationships where progress has been and practices which make their lives provision. As Sir AdrianWebb, a member slow and it will take time for local unnecessarily complicated. of the Beecham review team, has argued, partners to trust each other. Another danger is that Local in practice none of these conditions Service Boards are seen as the ‘only show apply (see his Centre for Leadership in town’. In practice most issues can in publication, Further education: leadership fact be dealt with by single organisations amid complexity ). And even if they did, or by joint working between two or competition would still tend to penalise three agencies. They don’t need Local less well informed users who would be Service Boards piling in.The new boards stuck with ‘sink’ schools and hospitals should not replace, displace or duplicate from which better informed (and existing arrangements. Rather, they need probably more affluent) users had fled. to focus on a relatively small number of Moreover, competition is likely issues that really do require joined up to erode the public service ethos and working. Perhaps for this reason, shared sense of commitment to public Beecham endorsed a number of other services in Wales. And it only drives mechanisms for improving services. efficiency if there is excess production Contrary to popular belief, the and the political will to close down ‘Beecham’s Beecham recipe for success included providers who fail to attract sufficient recommenda- Ministers will probably need to structural change. True, the review ruled users. Beecham’s recommendations tions reflect a be patient with the Local Service Boards. out wholesale local government reflect a recognition that in the real recognition It is also said that some partnerships are reorganisation as an answer Previous world people aren’t willing to travel any that in the real not yet clear about the role of voluntary attempts to impose structural change ‘top significant distance to access primary world people aren’t willing sector. Should voluntary organisations down’ have often caused more education or health care. In practice, too, to travel any expect to be treated as service deliverers disruption, been more expensive and low population densities across much of significant operating on a par with statutory yielded fewer efficiency gains than the country make it very difficult to distance to agencies? Or are they better off keeping expected. But Beecham was careful to sustain the multiplicity of providers that access health their distance in order to safeguard their emphasise that “This does not mean that would be needed to give users a genuine care.’ independent advocacy role? there should be no change in current choice. Moreover, the strength of local 50 More fundamentally, there has structures”. In particular “consensual opposition to school reorganisation and been some confusion about what Local mergers of two or more organisations, hospital closures demonstrates just how Service Boards are actually for. The within or across sectors” could provide difficult life would be for politicians who whole concept has proved quite difficult an important means of increasing let the least successful providers go to the for some who have only ever worked capacity and improving services. wall, as the market model requires. within the traditional service-based The review team turned their In place of market-based ‘silos’. Precisely because they are backs on consumer driven competition competition Beecham suggested several designed to address the ‘wicked issues’, between providers as a way of improving possible models of collaboration Local Service Boards tend to cut across public services inWales, calling instead for including:

winter 2008/09 social policy

Campaigners against hospital reconfigura- tion gather on the steps of the Senedd ahead of the May 2007 election: ‘…the strength of local opposition to hospital closures demonstrates just how difficult life would be for politicians who let the least successful providers go to the wall, as the market model requires.’

• Joint appointments, pooling budgets Some authorities have actively health improvement, transport projects and the creation of joint operational considered joint appointments but found and a wide range of other services, both vehicles such as care trusts. it difficult to see what is really in it for before and since Beecham. And there are • Development of joint provision of them.Though probably a good thing for some services, such as waste corporate support services, through Wales as a whole, the savings to management, where there is a shared services models and/or lead individual authorities from shared widespread assumption that provider models where one council appointments are relatively small and collaboration at regional level is the only provides a service on behalf of others. may not be enough to persuade them to sensible way forward. • Joint provision of specialist analytical take the risk that services could suffer However, progress on some and challenge capacity, such as support under the leadership of a director with other fronts has been painfully slow. for scrutiny and analysis and divided loyalties. And thus far the Welsh According to the WLGA, the four commissioning of services. Assembly Government has done very regional boards, which comprise local much to create conditions in which the authority leaders and chief executives The report also recommended balance of risk and reward are tilted supported by WLGA funded ‘regional the development of “stronger, managed decisively in favour of taking the plunge. co-ordinators’, have laid important networks of professionals and Similarly, there has been only foundations for collaboration. However, 51 administrators to pool skills and expertise slow progress in creating large shared none of them has delivered a really high across organisations”. The good news is services projects.Voluntary collaboration profile, ‘star project’. This lack of really that in the wake of the Beecham report between local authorities is nothing new. ‘big wins’ is understandable. Partnership there has been a lot more talk about A recent Welsh Local Government is hard work. It is difficult to create these forms of partnership working than Association publication, WorkingTogether: win-win situations. And collaboration ever before. The bad news is that on the case studies inWelsh local government , lists a requires different attitudes, different ways whole progress in implementing them host of ways in which councils have been of working and different kinds of has been slow. working together to deliver social care, leadership skills to those needed to run

winter 2008/09 social policy

successful stand alone organisations. • “A revolution in how people are able to locally. Some require action at regional Though they would probably deny it in contact services, in the quality of customer level. Some are best dealt with nationally. public, it would not be surprising if some care, in the responsiveness they experience, Others require combined action at local, senior managers see the collaborative and in their access to redress when things go regional and national levels. agenda as a much more difficult route to wrong”. Similarly, some problems have to go down than a future round of • Plans for measuring and reporting respond well to traditional ‘silo’ based local government reorganisation (which citizen satisfaction. solutions. Others can only be tackled if a is widely assumed to be the fall back if • Action to give the public a greater role range of local agencies choose to work partnership working fails to take off). in the delivery of services. together. Some problems can be The failure to clinch the really • Initiatives designed to give addressed by changes in funding – either big deals in areas such as revenues and communities a ‘stronger voice’. in overall budget allocations or in the benefits, HR and payrolls seems to have ways resources are distributed. But others been the result of a combination of self Much of this is common sense. call for different ways of working preservation instincts, risk aversion and But, as governments around the world through the adoption of new techniques perhaps a lack of imagination. Ministers have found, some of it is very difficult to and application of new technology. Still have responded by proposing to grant achieve. There has undoubtedly been others depend on the development of themselves new powers to force the pace significant improvement in recent years, greater organisational and/or of change by directing authorities to both before and since Beecham. Many inter-organisational capacity through, for collaborate. But whether ‘top down’ authorities have introduced customer example, leadership programmes and tactics of this sort will have the intended contact centres and other ways of workforce development. affect remains to be seen. improving access to services. Better data There are differences between Some observers speculate that about public satisfaction are being service areas. Drivers of improvement in the colder financial climate may create a collected. Proposals to establish national waste management are very unlikely to greater appetite for joint working as minimum service standards have been work in education and vice versa. There authorities are forced to seek further developed, though they have not yet are also differences between different efficiency savings.The problem is that in been fully implemented. Citizen kinds of performers. Failing services the short term it is often easier to cut engagement pilots and a host of other almost certainly require very different services than to cut out wasteful initiatives are also being developed. forms of support, intervention and duplication between councils. Under The difficulty for the Assembly performance management than excellent pressure to make savings, authorities may Government is that there is a limit to ones. simply baton down the hatches and what it can do. Most of the action needs So there are no simple, one size redesign their own services in isolation, to be locally based and cannot be fits all, solutions. The key to future rather looking outwards to find better orchestrated from the centre. Councils, success will be an appreciation of the ways of working with others. Many local GPs, the police and other service pros and cons of different modes of authority leaders point to what they see providers are closer to the citizen and governance and different approaches to as a lack of any real incentive to achieve they need to find ways of engaging with service delivery. We need to develop greater efficiency. What, they ask, is the their service users which make sense governance systems and mindsets which point of them working hard to make locally. are sufficiently sophisticated and flexible savings when they suspect that the As with the rest of ‘Beecham to deploy different approaches in Assembly Government will use the agenda’, success in citizen engagement different contexts . money which this frees up to bail out will therefore depend on action at all NHS trusts which have run up deficits? levels of government and across many The other key ‘Beecham’ theme different parts of the Welsh public was, of course, the importance of service. The Assembly Government involving citizens in the design, delivery cannot do it all on its own, nor can local 52 and monitoring of services. The review government nor can health or the concluded that “The development of the voluntary and community sectors or relationship between citizens and public town and community councils. services must be pursued effectively and We need a better understanding urgently” and “mechanisms for of which issues are best dealt with at • Steve Martin is Professor of Public informing and engaging the public need each level and which instruments are the Policy and Management at Cardiff to be transformed”. In its response the most effective drivers of improvement in Business School. He was the Academic Assembly Government set out four different kinds of services and in different Adviser to the Beecham review. priorities: contexts. Some issues need to be tackled

winter 2008/09 social policy adrian roper calls for courageous action to tackle bed blocking in our hospitals vicious circle

ealth services receive the adults, it is often closely linked to biggest percentage of the housing services. The children involved h Welsh Government’s budget, are typically at risk of neglect or abuse. and year after year public officials report The adults have assessed support needs that it is not being spent efficiently. The relating to one or more of the following: main story is of the money being wasted • Old age on high cost acute services where patients • Learning disabilities are forced to languish in hospital because • Physical disabilities of the lack of low cost services to support • Sensory disabilities their prompt return home. It has been • Mental health problems dubbed a vicious circle where more and • Alcohol and drug misuse more money goes into the hospitals to pay • HIV/AIDS for the ‘blocked beds’ whilst community • Terminal illness. care services remain cash starved. The answer should be obvious, Social care may be a short term or but the money never moves. Every year a permanent arrangement. It may be a grant new report calls for greater collaboration for some equipment to help you get between the NHS and social care agencies upstairs, or involve staff paid to support in order to achieve synergy and seamless you. The staff are generic rather than services. But the money never moves. specialist. Through experience and Social care is publicly funded on-the-job training, they are able to help services intended to maintain vulnerable people manage all sorts of issues: epilepsy, children, adults and family care-givers, in dementia, diet, diabetes, depression, reasonable health and dignity within benefits and bills, autism, medication, their own home, or some other homely isolation, incontinence, neighbourhood setting in the local community. For harassment, mental incapacity, living skills

‘Whatever ordinary or special needs people might find themselves facing, social care staff are out there dealing with them .’ 53

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had five years of public reports and figure 1: transforming health and social care in Wales policy exhortations seeking to address – all talk, no action? “unsustainable” costs within the NHS. • 2003 Wanless Review of Health and Social Care inWales : (See Figure 1). There has been a Called for “a radical redesign for health and social care services” and consistent call for action to develop a highlighted “the need to develop capacity outside acute hospital settings”. range of local services which will The agenda was “Prevention, Optimising Service Delivery, Involving People, promote health, prevent illness, maintain Performance and Accountability”. independence, and reduce the level of • 2004 Audit Commission report: unnecessary high cost medical care. Transforming health and social care inWales: aligning the levers of change : In November 2007 we had yet Stated: “The whole-system of health and social care is not organised to best another report, this time from the Wales effect…. Making it effective is not just about better management, or better Audit Office. It was a review of the staff and equipment. It is also about the way in which services are organised “delayed discharge” situation in Cardiff, with and between primary and secondary care and between health and social theVale of Glamorgan, care services…” and Gwent. Lo and behold, the problem • 2005 Welsh Government report and solution was the same as it was when Designed for Life: a ten year Strategy for the NHS : Called for action to Derek Wanless reported in 2003. The “develop the role of local communities in creating and sustaining health, Audit Office advised the Local Health promote independence (and) re-cast the role of all elements of health and Boards and local authorities to: social care so that the citizen will be seen and treated by high quality staff at “…identify clear and costed strategies home or locally”. to enable the transfer of resources from • 2006 Beecham Review of local service delivery and its government response Making the Connections: acute to community services to break Delivering Beyond Boundaries : Described how public services in Wales the ‘vicious circle’ whereby vulnerable needed to: “put citizens first, foster effective collaboration across the people are drawn into inappropriate boundaries of organizations (and) get better value for money for the institutional care…; this may require investment in services”. LHBs and Councils to identify • 2007 Welsh Government Social Services Strategy, transitional funding to enable new Fulfilled Lives, Supportive Communitie s: Called for the development of a services to be set up before existing pattern of services whereby “disabled people will receive quickly the help and models are decommissioned”. equipment they need to lead fuller lives; older people affected by illness and Sadly, there has been no report in impairments will be supported at home with the need for admission to 2008 to suggest any subsequent hospitals or residential care greatly reduced; (and) carers’ needs will be step-change in this situation. Internal recognised and supported.” re-organisation grips the NHS with all the inevitable consequences of distraction deficits, low self esteem, and so on. social services is £110 million. It is decidedly and paralysis.The Councils face yet more Whatever ordinary or special needs people not a large sum for assuring the basic health horrendous funding shortfalls.There will might find themselves facing, social care and dignity of hundreds of thousands of be little or no “transitional funding” staff are out there dealing with them. people suffering from pain, confusion, coming from the counties, and who can According to the Assembly despair, or chronic social exclusion. blame them? Who, after all, has got any Government website, around 100,000 adults In contrast, the Welsh NHS spare money in this situation? are supported by social care services. But received £4,577,900,000 in 2006-07.That The budget headings in Figure 2 these directly supported people are only the is about 42 times more than social services. have been ordered so that those items tip of the iceberg. Families and informal Of course, social care is not a universal which might particularly arouse the carers provide about 70 - 80 per cent of all service, nor is it as widespread in its curiosity of the social care sector are at 54 the care provided in Wales and supporting interests as the NHS. However, the the top. One must start with the £608 them to continue in their caring role is a comparison between funding levels needs million for ‘Unknown Programme major responsibility for social services. to be made in order to bring to the surface Category’. But one also wants to know Statutory responsibility for the provision of the current gap between the resources what £47 million for ‘Social Care’ is social care lies with local authorities. But the deployed for citizen care in the doing in the NHS budget. Might not amount of funding that authorities can community and those deployed for patient some of the £134 million for ‘Healthy deploy is significantly dependent on the level care in hospitals, surgeries and clinics. Individuals’ be more effectively and of revenue grant provided to them by the The size of the gap is particularly economically used by local generic Government.The 2008-09Welsh budget for worth contemplating given that we have support agencies?Why is ‘Mental Health’

winter 2008/09 figure 2: NHS Wales funding – due for robust challenge? £ Million Unknown programme category £608.7 putting women Social care needs £47.5 Healthy individuals £134.8 in their place Mental health problem £546.5 Learning disability problems £89.9 glass ceiling conference Neurological system problems £154.3 Eye/vision problems £93.9 6 March 2009 Hearing problems £22.8 Angel Hotel Musculo skeletal system problems (exc Trauma) £238.2 Trauma and injuries (inc burns) £304.6 Cardiff Circulation problems £465.4 Maternity and reproductive health £178.4 This conference will take a rain check on the Neonates £37.6 opportunities women face in professional life Poisoning £54.8 in today’s Wales. We pride ourselves on Genito Urinary system disorders (exc infertility) £204.1 having achieved gender parity in the National Respiratory problems £301.7 Assembly. But female representation was Dental problems £173.3 four per cent down at the May 2007 election. Gastro intestinal problems £269.7 Women are well represented in some Skin problems £97.0 professions, such as teaching, but woefully Infectious diseases £64.6 small in others such the law. Cancers and tumours £302.2 Blood disorders £46.7 Within the IWA it is noteworthy that women Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic problems £141.2 currently only make up 20 per cent of our Total £4577.9 membership and 13 per cent of our Fellows. Note: These are 2006-07 figures. The 2008-09 figures will be higher. This ‘Glass Ceiling’ conference’ will: such a notorious Cinderella service start to make a politically significant • Bring together women from enterprise and when it has £546 million in the NHS difference to the safety of children and business, community groups, local and kitty? And why has the NHS got £89 to the isolation and indignity national government and trade unions. million for ‘learning disability problems’ experienced by hundreds of thousands of • Debate an Equality and Human Rights when it is a matter of long-standing older people, people with disabilities, and Commission’s report on Gender Parity in public policy that people with learning their family care-givers. Wales being released in February. disabilities are not ill, nor curable, and So what about a straight transfer • Draw up recommendations to be presented principally require social supports and of £100 million to the social care sector? to the National Assembly. valued life opportunities? It would achieve far more than any In the language of the Wanless number of public service reviews or Keynote speakers: Report, how confident can we be that re-organisations. We have some • Katy Chamberlain, Chief Executive of these monies are being used to “optimise courageous political leadership in Wales. Chwarae Teg: “We need to develop inclusive service delivery”, or that issues of But have they been somehow steered cultures that encourage women into the ‘performance and accountability’ are away from challenging the NHS where boardrooms and senior executive positions.” being properly addressed? it really counts – in the finances ? • Karen Robson, Conservative MEP A humble £1 million of extra candidate: “Research demonstrates that on 55 funding for each Social Services current trends, it will take another 200 years for gender parity to be achieved department across Wales would be • Adrian Roper is Chief Executive of enough to kick-start a transformation of in Westminster.” Cartrefi Cymru which supports • Kirsty Williams, Liberal Democrat AM: the delayed discharge problem. An extra people with learning disabilities, or £2 million would enable a raft of “The IWA has an important role in tackling other special needs, to continue to live the glass ceiling in Welsh public life.” preventative and proactive service plans in their own homes and within their to be put in place before people reach local communities. crisis point. An extra £3 million would …Call the IWA on 029 2066 6606 or book on-line www.iwa.org.uk to reserve your places social policy light in housing gloom

sue essex reflects on the t was in the late Autumn of 2007 conclusions of our review, as reported to that I was commissioned by the Minister in June 2008, was: Jocelyn Davies, the Deputy lessons from her review i “…to deliver sufficient affordable Housing Minister, to carry out a review housing, there needs to be a sustained on affordable housing inWales.The remit of affordable housing political, organisational and financial was specifically set in the context of the commitment.The market alone will One Wales targets for affordable housing, provision in Wales never be the complete answer to and the need to take a look in depth at affordability. Integrated Government the regulatory regime for housing intervention is essential and this associations in Wales. intervention must be sustained and There had been a series of contribute to building up a stock of reviews and investigations quality affordable housing in carried out for England in the last couple communities acrossWales”. of years and a major piece of legislation around organisational change for The review report was also very housing in England was going through strong in stressing that housing must be Parliament at Westminster. However, tackled with the aim of ensuring that wide nothing comparable for Wales had been social, economic and environmental contemplated. objectives are met. Quite simply, By Autumn 2007 the ‘Credit house-building and renovation can support Crunch’ was well underway with the skills development and employment, difficulties experience by Northern community cohesion and regeneration, Rock. At the same time, there were signs sustainable and mixed communities, health that the inexorable rise in house prices and wellbeing. Moreover, if done that had made affordability so difficult thoughtfully it can also make a significant over the previous decade was a process contribution to reducing CO 2 use in the going into reverse.This would have been built environment. good news for all those people who had Adding these objectives to the been out-priced from home ownership One Wales targets requires a considerable were it not for the fact that the ‘Credit rethink in the way that the Assembly Crunch’ rapidly turned into the ‘Credit Government approaches housing. It is also Crisis’. The very people who had been clear that the One Wales target of 6,500 out-priced from the housing market new affordable home by the spring of now faced a credit famine. 2011 should be seen as the starting and not 56 The only positive slant to this the finishing point for home numbers. dire situation was that at last housing, and There is no 100 per cent reliable figure for particularly the availability of affordable housing need in Wales and in the current housing, was back on the public and, of economic climate the term affordability course, the politicians’ agenda. Affordable cannot be considered as a static definition, housing is, and always should have been, either in money or location. There has to a matter of high priority for government. be an acceptance from government that Henceforth, it should not be an issue just this is a long-term problem requiring for short term attention. One of the key long-term intervention.

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The affordable housing As community leaders, local of light even in the gloom. House challenge is a classic dilemma for a authorities should use their powers builders who are experiencing a static government which is not itself a direct and responsibilities to best advantage. private sale market may embrace provider and is dependent on others to They must be the drivers at the local affordable house building as a way of deliver its policy intentions. It raises key level, working across organisational keeping their businesses going. Land questions about how to use the tools, and geographical boundaries to should become more available and at and theinfluence government has, to ensure deliverability, chasing progress lower prices to reduce development secure the outcomes it wants. The and taking action, focusing on costs. Indeed once the worst of the review team suggest that the way housing need and regeneration and lending stagnation eases, investing in forward is to bring all the key players in being accountable for performance. affordable housing may be the kind of the housing field together and maximise There needs to be sufficient safe, secure and transparent investment knowledge and capacity. It is essential to flexibility for local responsiveness to that many long term investors, including establish a common purpose and ensure that the right development is pension funds and building societies, will direction, to ensure that the enabling in the right place, such as allowing find attractive for the future. framework and system are right for the small-scale well located developments There is also a strong argument, job so that all players can play their full in rural communities. as argued by the IWA in its Future of part, and that all the delivery tools are in Social Housing inWales report, for looking Sue Essex: place and fully developed. This is ‘…the at a more innovative model of funding particularly true in terms of finance, land strongest gleam such as that used by Glas Cymru. This is and skills. of light in the essentially a not for profit vehicle for The Assembly Government’s gloom is the raising funds for water delivery and Making the Connections model, developed positive way investment in Wales which may have that the in the wake of the 2006 Beecham Assembly relevance for housing development and Report, provides a framework for this Government is renovation. At the same time we will approach. The review team believe the responding .’ continue to need the Welsh Assembly model, with its focus on collaboration to Government to give affordable housing deliver shared outcomes, best value from funding priority, not just because it is for resources, and a stress on the role of the desperately needed housing, but because citizen, is most appropriate for housing. it can also help meet so many other of Assembly Government involvement has the nation’s priorities to be one of engaged leadership, not Perhaps the strongest gleam of command and control, making sure that light in the gloom is the speed and the framework that supports local positive way that the Welsh Assembly authorities and housing associations Government, through its Housing enables them to deliver and allows The private sector needs to be Minister Jocelyn Davies, is responding proper accountability. inside the tent, too, both as providers, to the review. A dynamic partnership is Housing associations are critical particularly in our large urban being put together, charged with to affordable housing and supported communities, with the emphasis on delivering our recommendations . housing delivery. There had been quality and availability of affordable concern from Community Housing property, and also as funders, critical to Cymru, the umbrella organisation for the supplying necessary finance to enable associations, that their regulatory new building in areas of need. framework was too limiting and did not We can take some allow them to work to their full potential encouragement from the excellent work in delivering housing numbers and going on, both within and outsideWales, • Sue Essex , a former Minister in the working as social enterprises.The review which is transferable and could be Assembly Government and an IWA 57 team thought that greater flexibility for mainstreamed. Our planning policies and Trustee, led the Assembly associations is important to enable land disposals must aid the drive to meet Government’s Review of Social innovation in response to housing need. the OneWales housing target. Everything Housing during 2007-08, together This flexibility should be accompanied must join up and be integrated for us to with Bob Smith of the Regeneration with greater attention being given to stand a chance of fully delivering for Institute, Cardiff University, and Peter housing associations’ finance and those in housing need. Williams, formerly of the Council of governance to give assurance to tenants, Can all this deliver in the current Mortgage Lenders. funders and government. financial crisis? Well there can be gleams

winter 2008/09 europe euro speak

n July the Council of the European status in Wales, under-pinned by des clifford on how Union agreed thatWelsh should be successive Language Acts, but it is not Welsh has followed i permitted, on request, as a language deemed an official language of the UK available to Ministers to speak at its as a Member State of the EU. Irish, on meetings. This means that when, as part the other hand, is an official language of Catalan into of the UK delegation, a Welsh Assembly a Member State and therefore can be an Government Minister speaks at the official language of the EU – although in European discourse Council in Brussels (or sometimes practice it is only recently that the Irish Luxembourg), they may do so in Welsh. government has invoked usage of the This is the first time that Welsh language at EU level. has been accorded any kind of status at The use ofWelsh at EU level is a the level of institutions. new departure, not easily imaginable in The breakthrough was described by the the past, and it is worth describing how First Minister as “an historic the changed atmosphere in Europe came development” and illustrates that the about. The recent enlargements of the Assembly Government can deliver Union effectively doubled the number progress in Europe in ways that simply of official languages. Around the same would not have been possible before time the EU adopted a new motto devolution. United in Diversity, and the process The Council decision is the leading up to the Lisbon Treaty made essential first step in a series that will much of inclusion and appealing directly eventually allow Welsh to be used in to citizens. Arguably this was a reflection several EU contexts. The Assembly of new realities rather than inspired Government is currently negotiating vision, but it became harder for Europe’s through the UK Government to secure natural centralisers to sustain a narrow the necessary agreements with the EU cast view of language regime. institutions. In practice this will mean: The decisive political shift • Ministers will be able to speak Welsh derived from the Spanish elections of at the European Council. 2004. These were held just a few days • Members of the Committee of the after the appalling Madrid train Regions will be able to speakWelsh at bombings. It had seemed likely that the plenary sessions. Conservative Party would sail back into • Citizens will be able to correspond power until the out-going Prime with EU institutions in Welsh. Minister Aznar peremptorily blamed The EU has • A right to deposit translations of EU Basque terrorists for the bombings. He 27 Member documents in Council archives with spoke without any evidence and it States and 23 official web-links from the Council web-site quickly emerged that, in fact, Islamist languages. to sites posting translations. extremists were responsible. Spanish voters were already traumatised by 58 Welsh has not become an official intelligence failure and now felt misled language of the EU, and nor is this likely by their government. Aznar handed an in the near future. The EU has 27 unexpected victory to the Socialist Party. Member States and 23 official languages. The incoming Prime Minister, The EU’s official languages are those Zapatero, lacked an overall parliamentary listed in the Treaty of Rome (and majority and relied on the Catalan subsequent accession treaties) and parties for support.The Catalans enjoyed comprise the official languages of a unique moment of power which they Member States. Welsh has legislative aimed to exploit. On their shopping list

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Plaid Cymru MEP is pressing the to adopt the new rules on Welsh language acceptance that have been adopted by the Council of Ministers. In October 2008 she presented responses she has received from over seventy Welsh organisations supporting her campaign to the President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering (picture insert on right). of demands was the use of Catalan at EU Commonwealth Office in 2006. Over element (translations of letters) should, in level.The Spanish Government set about the next two years detailed discussions principle, be straightforward and the aim negotiating the necessary agreement at took place in London, Brussels and is to accommodate these within existing the European Council allowing, in Cardiff to thrash out a viable policy resources in Wales. The spoken element, certain circumstances, Catalan, Galician under-pinned by workable processes. interpretation, is more complex. and Basque to be spoken by Spanish The Assembly Government agreed to The EU interpretation service ministers at its meetings. This required bear the costs. The UK Government (DG Interpretation) provides unanimous agreement from Member agreed to sponsor the proposal through interpretation at all official EU meetings. States, which was achieved in 2005. the EU institutions and to work with us The Iberian languages had it easy. Some This major change was to invoke its use in practice. The broad 40 per cent of the EU’s Spanish immediately noted by the Assembly cross-party consensus in the National interpreters are proficient in Catalan, Government. Since the UK Government Assembly in favour of promoting the use with a sufficient number also able to deal had approved the principle of permitting of Welsh created a helpful domestic with Galician and Basque. Not a single Spain to use languages other than political context. interpreter in the EU’s current Spanish under certain circumstances, Consultation across UK interpretation service can offer Welsh, a why not Welsh? We maintained close Government is a lengthy affair and sad statistic which our modern languages contact with our Catalan colleagues and different interests need to be balanced. students and universities should note. As so were well briefed on the practicalities Opinion was not undivided. Although a result, interpreters from Wales will be and politics involved. The Assembly our collaboration with the UK contracted as need arises. But these 59 Government was not in a position to act Government both in Brussels and interpreters must first be tested and alone. Only Member State governments London was effective, and produced the approved to the same level as the EU’s may formally bid for changes to the right result, it is fair to say we were in-house staff. The Assembly language regime. The first vital step was sometimes frustrated by bottle-necks and Government worked with the to gain the active support and delays in Whitehall. Commission and the Welsh Language co-operation of the UK Government. In parallel with political Board to help prepare candidates from First Minister Rhodri Morgan discussions, detailed attention was given Wales. At the first tests in Brussels our initiated discussion with the Foreign and to the practicalities involved.The written interpreters recorded an impressive 75

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per cent pass rate, well above the usual The agreement with the (ironically) for native English speakers, 40 per cent average. This means we now Council of Ministers is a first step. We and practicality now means that have a panel of accredited Welsh hope to negotiate other agreements with interpretation is increasingly taken from interpreters in place and able to work for the European Commission, the a feed of one of the ‘core languages’. For the EU institutions in Brussels or Committee of the Regions, the example, while a speech delivered in Luxembourg on demand. Economic and Social Committee and Maltese might be interpreted directly Some will argue that adding the European Ombudsman. For the time into French and English, the Slovak language provision in Welsh and other being the European Parliament resists interpretation would then be effected languages simply adds to the complexity opening up its plenary sessions to from one of these.WhenWelsh is spoken and cost of EU business. In a narrow languages other than the EU’s official it will interpreted directly only into sense this argument has some force. languages. It argues that its approach is English and the other interpreters will However, there are other aspects to partly pragmatic and that they have take their feed from this. It’s a good consider. In an enlarged Union the difficulty in providing a full service in the reason for not cracking jokes in language regime is necessarily more existing official languages (although why European speeches – the chances of it complex and the selective provision of this should be a problem for the being funny in 23-plus languages are slim and, in any case, the punch-line will take Des Clifford pictured at least a minute to travel around the alongside room. First Minister Wales has no monopoly on Rhodri pride in language. Most countries, and Morgan, not just small ones, feel pretty strongly taking advantage of about their cultural status. The Italian simultaneous Government has recently insisted its staff translation at speak Italian at meetings even if they a meeting of speak another language very well. The European French are famously insistent in this Regions with respect. The potential for sensitivity on Legislative language provision is substantial. Critics Powers. say a profusion of languages just makes everything more difficult. Better, they say, to cut back on languages, ideally to just one. In a large, multi-lateral, multi-identity Union the arguments can be stacked up in different ways and there is no single ‘correct’ solution. For now, it is a source of pride to the Assembly Government that Welsh additional languages on request is Parliament and not for the Council is not will be heard, and interpreted, for the perfectly practical, as the United Nations immediately obvious). It seems there is first time at European Union level. Given demonstrates day in, day out. Language also political resistance from some that 2008 is the EU’sYear of Intercultural is not simply a matter of technicality. It quarters of the Parliament to opening up Dialogue this represents a very practical also reflects identity and culture. That is the language regime. We are hopeful, expression of Europe’s variety. Since why politicians almost invariably prefer though, that the Parliament will agree to devolution began the Assembly to speak their native language when it is facilitate correspondence in Welsh with Government has worked hard to ensure offered, even if they could manage its President and other office holders on that Wales takes its place in Europe as an 60 perfectly well in another mainstream demand. It is perhaps worth pointing out engaged partner. The facility for citizens language, as many can. As for cost, that none of this affects correspondence and our elected representatives to use certainly it’s an issue but the with individual MEPs who are Welsh is positive recognition of this. circumstances where Welsh might be responsible for deciding their own used are geared towards elected approach to Welsh correspondence. representatives and citizens. Our plans The rapid growth of the EU • Des Clifford is Head of theWelsh deliberately do not call for the translation undoubtedly presented major challenges Assembly Government European of large quantities of EU documentation to the EU’s interpretation services. Union Office in Brussels. into Welsh. Recruitment is difficult, including

winter 2008/09 communications

news blackout

A massive undertaking by members of the language group, with much consolidation ned thomas reflects appreciated outside support, built up over a number of years in newspaper in the face of that radical self-doubt which is endemic in most printing is underway in on the future of the minority communities because of their historical experience the UK. The Welsh press and media of losing. The Assembly Government’s decision risks only confirming that lack of self-confidence. At first sight this is newspaper ironic given the communitarian rhetoric of our new print institutions, but on consideration perhaps it merely operations hen the Welsh Assembly Government reneged now left in demonstrates that the lack of self-confidence runs to the very in February 2008 on its commitment in the One Wales are top. Whatever our own decision as a company, I suspect the Wales coalition agreement to establish a NWN Media w issue will not go away, nor should it, if only because of this (formerly daily newspaper in Welsh, there was widespread outrage at the question of morale. North Wales decision itself, which was compounded by the perceived Secondly, there is the European dimension, Newspapers) contempt for the electorate shown in the amateurish and and Trinity which has been important to our project from the start. When unconvincing attempts to justify the decision. However, politics Mirror in the former Heritage Minister wrote to the Association of moves on, and so, conveniently for all perhaps, has the Minister Cardiff, Minority Dailies expressing his determination to set up a who made the decision. pictured here. At the end of the day, we get the elected Welsh-language daily, the news of his commitment went round politicians and governments we deserve, who have the right to Europe very fast. make their own decisions and their own mistakes and to defend The bad news, when it came, circulated just as them as best they can. As the economic skies darken, the swiftly. The Irish daily Lá has been rescued until the end of Government’s original commitment already seems to belong to 2008, after which its future is very uncertain. There is now a past world of rising expectations, where of all the promises in every chance that a company which has carried a substantial its programme, the new Government had this one opportunity loss on its Irish language paper over the last years will be told to make its mark in its first year of office, and blew it. Setting to make do at best with a grant for a website, citing the Welsh aside the shock to the company which we established to example. In the world of European minorities, the UK has had 61 publish Y Byd at not being able to bid for sums we had been a relatively progressive profile within which Wales has been its led in the most unambiguous terms to suppose would be best card. I regret the damage done to that image and to other available, I feel a wider regret at what happened, and that on minorities. three fronts. Finally, there is the damage done to politics First, there is the blow to the self-confidence of itself inWales. Many of the two thousand or so people who are theWelsh-speaking community. Y Byd was not a project dreamt directly or indirectly involved with Y Byd and are relatively up by politicians or theWelsh Language Board for the good of well-informed naturally have strong feelings about what the language. It has been a very broadly-based communal happened. But outside their ranks, so far as I am able to judge,

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the episode has registered mainly as another reason for cynicism. Removing my hat of company chairman Lawyers and media people in Cardiff, farmers in Ceredigion, (since the future of our company will be decided amongst people completely unknown to me who have stopped me on ourselves, the shareholders), I write what follows as a simple the street in , all have variants of the same phrases:“It’s researcher looking at the question of whether there is a still a dirty business politics”, or “That’s politics for you – they fix a need and a case for a daily newspaper in Welsh after the things between themselves behind closed doors”, to “They’re award of an annual £200,000 to Golwg for another Welsh all in it for themselves”, and “You can’t trust politicians”. news website. This is clearly a step forward as it will pay for You can argue that acquiring a degree of the time of more journalists working in Welsh, and its cynicism is a necessary part of any nation’s political education, coming has already persuaded the Daily Post to launch its but as it happens I don’t agree with these sentiments when own Welsh website. expressed in a blanket manner.We have found, and continue to The case that it cannot replace a daily find, interest and support for the daily newspaper project in all newspaper relies on a number of different arguments. First is parties. Like the rest of us, politicians are a mixed lot with reach. Allowing for the moment that news websites are able to mixed motives, including very often the intention to do some take over the functions of newspapers, we are still a very long good. If they are in power they get bad advice as well as good way from saturation when it comes to internet and broadband (but that does not exonerate them). They are surrounded by access in Wales. OFCOM’s 2008 figures show the percentage yes-persons and what George Orwell called “backstairs of households inWales with such access as 55 per cent and 45 crawlers”. They learn as they go along like everyone else and per cent respectively. Since the figures for broadband rise far they have to cope, in Harold Macmillan’s phrase, with “events, above the average in Cardiff and Swansea, it is pretty clear that dear boy”. Sometimes they get a second chance. broadband access must be well below the 45 per cent average To help politicians succeed (and practice in much of the rest of Wales, including many of the most virtue) they need a media and press which makes them visible Welsh-speaking areas – either because of poor or no to and engages them with their electorate, which investigates connectivity, or else because of economic deprivation. Rhodri and explains those things which ordinary citizens find it hard GlynThomas’s answer to this problem of social exclusion, “let to investigate for themselves, and which can, when necessary, them go to libraries” was pretty unpopular in areas where that reveal corruption, ferret out lies and expose spin. We saw the supposes access to a car and a fifteen mile drive. Nor is Wales newspaper project from the start as a kind of unspoken catching up very fast; in fact, it is increasingly falling behind partnership with the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Assembly England.The broadband figures for 2008 showed only a 2 per Government in the building of a Welsh democracy in the cent increase on 2006. On this score alone there is a good case post-devolution period. So it is a matter of regret that things for paper remaining an essential medium in Wales for some haven’t turned out that way – but it is never too late. time to come.

The aspiration to launch Y Byd was ‘a broadly-based communal undertaking … in the face of that radical self-doubt which is endemic in most minority communities because of their historical 62 experience of loosing.’

winter 2008/09 communications

But like Dylan Iorwerth, writing in the Meanwhile, in newspaper printing, a massive Summer 2008 issue of Agenda , I take the view that print and consolidation is happening with more and more investment in websites suit different types of material – background analysis fewer and fewer supersites – none of them inWales, where now on the one hand, breaking news on the other.The average time only Trinity Mirror in Cardiff and NWN Media (formerly users spend on some of the most popular news websites is North Wales Newspapers) have printing operations. Trinity around five minutes, which suggests they go there for certain Mirror is currently closing its Liverpool site which prints the kinds of material only. Daily Post with the loss of 100 jobs, and moving titles to its Virtually all newspapers are now multi- new supersite in Oldham. NorthWales Media recently made a platform operations in an attempt to ensure that, in the drift brave investment in a new press on Deeside but it has came from print to web in certain categories of advertising, the on-line at a difficult time when smaller printers are under income still remains within the company. One problem they increasing pressure. Unite’s Assistant General Secretary recently face is that while display advertising still seems to be most suggested that soon every UK newspaper might be printed by effective in print, ‘search advertising’, at which the internet News International. Their recent £660million investment in excels, has very largely been taken over by the large search three large printing facilities in the UK allows them to handle engines. Another is how to monetise web content. Only the between 25 and 30 million newspapers a day, when the daily Financial Times seems successful in getting people to pay for national print run of newspapers only amounts to 10 million on-line content.What everyone hopes to do is to use the paper copies. Enough capacity to slip Y Byd in there! Harmsworth to send people to the website and vice versa. Newspapers still Printing (The Daily Mail Group) has also made a massive have the edge over magazines as the print medium when it investment in state-of-the-art presses at a site near Reading comes to wide distribution because of the lower costs for (recently opened by David Cameron) and is looking for newsprint. Once more, newspaper plus web would seem the contract printing. There are knock-on effects in the paper preferred option for reaching the maximum audience and industry as the economy shrinks. UPM has announced the securing the maximum advertising revenue, within the small closure of two paper mills with the loss of 1600 jobs in Finland, Welsh-language market as well as more generally. where 4,000 of its workers are on strike. Let’s hope their However, at the moment, all that discussion Shotton Paper Mill survives. seems pretty academic. Newspapers and commercial media Where and when will it end? I’m not rash generally are in something like free fall since mid-2008. This is enough to answer that. But I think one can make a few entirely due to the economic downturn where advertising spend predictions: that there is at least one very bad year ahead, and is one of the first casualties. It is affecting television where that when things bottom out we shall have seen an almighty Channel 4 is cutting 15 per cent of its staff, and ITV losing 1,000 shake-out and consolidation both in the world of newspapers jobs, some of those in Wales. It is affecting daily and weekly, and newspaper printing, with fewer but stronger brands which London, regional and local papers across the UK, whether paid will run across both print and web. for, part-paid, or free (though there are always interesting Cover prices are already rising steeply and individual exceptions which will repay further analysis). It is also papers may become thinner during the downturn. Circulations affecting advertising-dependent, free-standing websites. may drop further and some readers may indeed defect to the All the major groups – Trinity Mirror, News web entirely, but the brands will measure their readership across International, the Daily Mail Group, Newsquest and Johnston all media. Press – are reporting steep declines in advertising income across It is most unlikely that the UK will be without their papers and websites. For example, Johnston Press which a number of daily papers in English for years to come so that publishes 18 dailies including the Scotsman and theYorkshire the human rights and national case for a daily newspaper in Post, and some 300 weekly papers, announced a 9.5 per cent Welsh will still stand. Times of crisis can also be times of reduction in advertising in the first six months of 2008, opportunity. Will there still be a daily newspaper in English followed by a 21 per cent decrease in only the first seven weeks published in Wales in a few years time? I wish I could be of the second half. completely confident of that. In September 2008 alone very substantial job cuts were announced by Trinity Mirror in Birmingham and 63 the Express group in London as well as by smaller groups. Across the UK in the same month there were numerous closures and mergers of titles. In Wales we lost the Bridgend Post, and saw the merger of the AbergeleVisitor, the and PrestatynVisitor andYourVale into a new DenbighshireVisitor. • Ned Thomas is Academic Director of the Mercator Centre at The Big Issue Welsh Edition made two of its three editorial the University of Aberystwyth and Chair of Dyddiol Cyf. the staff redundant and moved production to its Scottish office. company set up to publish the first daily newspaper inWelsh. No-one in the trade thinks the worst is over.

winter 2008/09 culture

Everyone looks for Wales and so the worst – live and die inside the capital. many do not find it. Either like R. S. The Wales beyond is an alien land. Full real wales Thomas they search for a Wales which of workless pits and mountains. No Asda. does not exist, moving ever westward, in No Lidl. I am not going there. Why hope. Or like the academics find a new should I? What would I get out of it? Wales right in front of them, constructed I have also met a well-known from the past’s framework, a place that northWales novelist who claimed never peter finch on changes and doesn’t simultaneously. A to have visited . The land of magic. Wave your divining rod. south? Not Welsh enough. discovering his Follow your ley. Non-compliance as a political act. For Defining Wales is rather like him there are three countries: Y Fro country defining verse. For every rule someone Cymraeg, Welsh Wales, an arc of land in comes up with there will be an the western reaches;Wales that might as exception which breaks it. Ultimately well be England, including the capital poems become what they are because and the north east and the southern the poet says so.Wales is like this.The bit coasts; and Y Fro Efallai where desire you think of as real probably is. The and actuality mix, where reality comes o what is this place? Grey crags Feathers in Llanystumdwy. The in like a short wave signal – Myddfai, and green miasma in the Greyhound on High Street in Newport. Banwen, Merthyr, ; Aber out s western British mists. A place, Barafundle. The power station at of term time; Trefdraeth when the sun like poetry, where nothing happens. A Connah’s Quay. . The Millennium shines. Who is to say that his Wales is place of sheep and hairy men. Where is Coastal Park at Llanelli.The Spar at Flint. any better than mine? Or that mine is this land? Most of the world do not The writers gathered at the Vulcan in more real? know. And if they do then they can rarely .The street of subscribers to The book I’ve written is about point us out. “Wales? I never heard of Taliesin in Pwllheli.The coach spotters at this country. A place where some that place,” was an excerpt from a Swansea bus station. Brecon Cathedral. imagine that no one has raised a sword in conversation I had with some picnicking The cairn at the far end of Golden anger since Glynd wˆ r’s rebellion went black Americans on the coast of South Road. The pile of horseshoes in a front down in 1409 and the Welsh were Carolina. Wales, the invisible, the lost. garden outside Aberystwyth.The sewage banned from ever owning anything Wales, the real Cantre’r Gwaelod . A small works at Aberystwyth.The place up near outside their borders. A place where island in the Hebrides. A rock off the Dyfi Junction where there’s no platform others know, for certain, that the real west coast of Ireland. A hummock out but the trains still stop. Pete Davis’s Wales is waiting, just round the political there in the stormy ocean. Wales, Chicken Shed at Brynamman. The left corner, and a new day will come. Grassholm writ just that little bit larger. bank of the river Lugg near Bleddfa.The Minorities rise. Nation states fragment. A floating land, full of birds. Codfather of Sole chipshop on Barry It’s the post-modern way. The great historian Gwyn Alf Island seafront. The place where Dafydd Real Wales may well be a place Williams said the people of this place had Elis-Thomas parks his car near the of people, a land of human intervention, “for a millennium and a half lived in the Senedd. The steps of the National of despoliation in the search for minerals, two western peninsulas of Britain as a Museum and the pillars behind which of pipelines and power grids, and roads Welsh people, (and) are now nothing but JohnTripp once hid his bicycle clips.The that mesh the green like fishnet, but it is naked under an acid rain.”The tourist trade jetty at Mostyn from where the Airbus not an urban country. The city life of sells us as a place of endless singing, long wings set sail. The bridge over the lost disenfranchisement, dislocation and yellow beaches, rugby and folk in stovepipe Rail branch on Hill. All alienation is not ours. Wales, land of hats. Business promotion says we are a are as real as each other. communities, where decisions reach the global centre, a land of opportunity, a place In a country the size of ours it surface through compromise and 64 to relocate to, perfect transport, weather should be possible to visit everywhere – conciliation. Wales where power like . The government says we some claim to have – but there are still frightens and underdogs are prized.Wales have the highest incidence of heart disease towns and villages appearing on the where time slows and life is longer.Wales in Europe. We smoke too much. We don’t nightly BBC Wales weather maps that I where the past actually is important and climb enough of our hills. Wales, a fake have never been through. And on historians are honoured. Wales where place made by Woolworth, cellotaped to occasions there is one of which I’ve highrise is feared and there is no navy. the west of the , useful for car never heard. The real Wales is where people always rallies, and as a butt of English jokes. You Some people never bother. talk about who they are, strive after roots, are a country.You can’t mean that. Cardiffians – and some of them can be want fields rather than mansions,

winter 2008/09 Some of Peter Finch’s although generally have neither.The real Real Wales adopts the same travelled by car and train and on foot. quirky images Wales is the one I’ve gone looking for. approach for the whole country. The Much of the distance on foot, for often taken from Not sure I’ve found it all yet. Real Cardiff books (volumes one and two there were only unpaved tracks. RealWales: Cardiff’s When I wrote Real Cardiff , back already best sellers and a third out there I discovered a lot. The sheep are skyline is in 2002, I determined to write about the in the hazy, not-yet-completed wings) many. The rain is often. The light is reflected in land as I saw it. No considered history spawned a series: Real Swansea , Real brilliant. The skies can be huge. The past the window nor topographical guide, no Merthy r, Real Newport , Real Wrexham , can be picked up because it is often so of a wine socio-economic handbook, nor fictional Real Aberystwyth . The present volume is near the surface. The past can also never merchants; tea ladies in prose. As I observed it the world kept my look at my country. Didn’t know it be found again because of what we have changing. The past slid from me. Those was mine until I grew and went out done to it. Broken it, built on it, lost it, market; and a guarding it seemed to want to usher it there to see. There are many like me. thrown it away. And there is also the pile of cast-off away. What we were went underground Lights go on. We need to find out just matter of the mysteries, that stuff ofWales horses to stay hidden or to be dug up by the who we really are. which makes things happen, or seem to hooves in Cwmystwyth. disinterested and burned. Few seemed to In writing it I’ve used classic happen, of which I’ve found no evidence care. The land also seemed to be secret. Real Cardiff techniques. I’ve visited places anywhere else. Kings sleeping below Full of self-contained, excluding by accident, simply because they rocks. Blood in trees. Wonder in the epi-centres, places where you could only sounded interesting, or because I found grass. A consensus of who we are. Future gain access if you had a key.The Cardiff of myself nearby. Places determined by their in the air . Geraint Jarman’s Welsh reggae, of Philip importance to Wales. Places that had to 65 Dunleavy’s Castle, of Callaghan’s slum be rediscovered. Places where things clearance, the Cardiff of Geoffrey Inkin’s existed. Places where, apparently, they did Barrage and Bay. These innovations were not. I went on tour, doing poetry making us a completely newWelsh city, a readings. I visited alone, with my partner, • Peter Finch is chief executive of post-industrial capital for an incoming in the company of local experts, Academi, the Welsh National millennium, something out there was literateurs, odd balls, historians, novelists. Literature Promotion Agency. His happening. It had to be tracked and I used old maps and new ones. I read Real Wales is published by Seren. written down. local histories and national overviews. I

winter 2008/09 culture

northern icon

The Craft Centre’s new was, of course, no accident. The The first thought was to adapt courtyard derek jones reputation of its old Craft Centre, visited and extend the existing building: two works as an by some 90,000 tourists and crafts galleries, a shop, a café and 12 small urban space introduces the new – ‘proved on enthusiasts each year, was already notable workshops arranged round a rectangular the opening and established. The potters Emmanuel courtyard. The galleries were capable of night when Ruthin craft centre Cooper and Walter Keeler were regular miraculous small displays which revellers ate, exhibitors, along with the expressed the essence of an artist’s work drank, danced, Denbigh-based jewellery maker at a particular time. Many had good and enjoyed a n the nick of time, Wales has been Kathleen Makinson, the quirky sculptor memories of them. Yet size was a performance presented with a world class centre and performance artist Andrew Logan, constraint, and although homely and under the for the applied arts. Had the Arts stars.’ i Jim Partridge and LizWalmsley, furniture familiar, the old centre was not great Council or Denbighshire County Council designers, Cefyn Burgess, from Deganwy, architecture and had a great many dragged their feet in 2005, the tentacles of maker of textiles and prints, and many practical disadvantages. the London Olympics would soon have others. The potters Matsuzaki Ken The Arts Council of Wales, then been attached to the money. Fortunately, vision and imagination prevailed and a (Japan), and Gwyn Hanssen Pigott chaired by GeraintTalfan Davies, was open superb new building, uncompromisingly (Australia) held solo exhibitions in 2005. to the possibility of building a new national of the 21st Century, opened its doors, on The Ruthin curators have centre for the applied arts, with some sense time and on budget, in July 2008. regularly showcased contemporaryWelsh of presence, which could extend and enrich It is surely a sign of cultural art for the International Art Fair for the portfolio of an already successful health that this new centre should not be Contemporary Objects at theV and A, at imaginative enterprise. Denbighshire 66 housed in the capital city, but in a small the International Exposition of County Council agreed. Sergison Bates, the northern town, with a population of just Sculptural Objects and Functional Art in London-based architects appointed to over 5,000. People must come to Ruthin , and, not least at the National re-develop the site, suggested that for the if they wish to experience the very best Eisteddfod. For the past 20 years Director same money – £4.4million, including of contemporary crafts: ceramics, textiles, Philip Hughes, and Deputy Director £3.1million from the Arts Council, the furniture design, jewellery-making, or Jane Gerrard, have adopted a firm policy largest capital lottery grant ever devoted to silversmithing. of national and international an arts project north of the M4 – they The choice of this town as home inclusiveness, while remaining could design an entirely new building, for a national centre for the applied arts determined to encourage local talent. which was fit for purpose, answered the

winter 2008/09 culture client’s need for space, and would be worth are set against all modern architecture. Education has always been visiting in its own right as well as housing On the other hand, it is fair to report that central to the Centre’s mission, and, with work of high quality. What was more, it many of those who were initially hostile greatly increased space, its programme of could be constructed without straying changed their minds once they set foot work with local schools and universities, outside the ‘footprint’ of the old building. inside the courtyard. master-classes, discussions, and Architects and staff were The first visitors – at least 10,000 demonstrations to accompany adamant that, while they wanted the new during the first fortnight alone – were exhibitions, can be expanded. There is centre to reflect 21st Century values, astonished by the 300 square feet of space money to employ an education officer they did not want a ‘glass box’.What they which has been created for exhibitions. for the next two years. The Cultural have presented to Ruthin and toWales is There are now three galleries.The biggest Gateway room is still a little primitive. surprising in more than one respect. Not is lofty and full of natural light; it is now However, Welsh filmmakers, whose least it has preserved the memory of its possible to make full use of the walls, and topographically innovative work is shown predecessor by retaining the idea of the the floor, and people can inspect exhibits continuously on a loop, are adding a courtyard. But it is a transformed without getting under each other’s feet. welcome extra dimension to the Centre. courtyard, with a spectacular sloping After careful soundings, the latest work of Inevitably, commerce has its entrance, and with steel gates by Brian Andrew Logan was chosen to baptise this place. There’s an attractive shop, with Podschies, making you feel that you have gallery. views out to the town, close to the three really arrived somewhere. Looking inside The second gallery, smaller and galleries.You could spend a lot of money from the gate, the wavy roofline of the more intimate, was devoted to recent there, but craft never came cheap, and not workshops, the dyed sandstone-coloured ceramics by Nancy and Gordon Baldwin, everything is beyond the average pocket. concrete walls (Ruthin is built on inspired by classical Greek motifs. Some The already-popular café spills out into sandstone), and the high windows, which might be tempted to think of the third the courtyard. Around its walls is the one throw light into the main galleries, gallery, which links the other two as a mere permanent exhibition in the centre: convey a sense of intimacy and corridor. In fact, it is central to the whole Cordelia Weedon’s photographs of shapeliness. experience of visiting the Centre, because Ruthin, which challenge the often The new courtyard is no mere you can see its exhibits from the courtyard, clichéd imagery of tourism; few more architectural flight of fancy, but actually providing a sense of unity to the imaginative projects could have been works as urban space.This was proved on whole. Artists with Welsh connections – devised to bury the local myth that the the opening night when Craft Centre Claire Cuneen, Eleri Mills,Walter Keeler Craft Centre does nothing for the town. If revellers ate, drank, danced, and enjoyed and Audrey Wood – were on show there this exhibition does not persuade tourists a performance under the stars. By happy for the first couple of months. In late to walk up the hill to examine some very accident, since then an outdoor concert 2008, the only UK presentation of work different buildings, nothing will. by Ensemble Cymru has demonstrated by the goldsmith and silversmith David Philip Hughes believes that, that the courtyard has excellent acoustics. Watkins was installed, alongside Raising among other things, the Centre is a Its furniture, low wooden benches by the Bar: Influential Voices in Metal , the first response to the decline of mass tourism. Partridge andWalmsley, cunningly reflect product of a promising partnership with Often fed on a diet of homogeneous the shape of the roofline. the Innovative Craft gallery in manufactured goods, visitors respond Locally, the odd eyebrow was Edinburgh.The use of the definite article, warmly to work which has been made by raised about the propriety of replacing a in the Centre’s new strap-line, The Centre hand. building which was only 25 years old. As for Applied Arts , is already justified. Perceptions of craft continue to the new Centre began to take shape, Several more elements complete change and, on past form, the Ruthin contributors to the Ruthin blog took the the ensemble. Craftspeople have changed Craft Centre will always be ready to view – sometimes stridently – that it the way they work over the last 25 years, innovate. For young craftspeople, the looked more like a factory than an arts and it is now realistic to offer just six Centre will be an inspiration.Yet, as Philip centre. They didn’t care for the zinc permanent workshop spaces. However, points out, one of the most attractive cladding on the external walls, which is the aim remains the same, to remove characteristics of makers is that they never 67 all that casual passers-by can see, or barriers to understanding by revealing retire.With that in mind, early in 2009 the appreciate the implicit respect being paid makers at work. Two further spaces have Centre will present The Age of Experience , to the neighbouring business and retail been allocated to a series of three-month an exhibition exclusively devoted to work park (though not, perhaps, to the Tesco residencies for artists who would value by artists over 60. supermarket opposite, which is anything the opportunity to research and develop but iconic). It was always likely that some their practice in a creative atmosphere, as • Derek Jones is Chair of the Civic would not warm to this latest addition to well as contributing to the Centre’s Trust forWales. Ruthin’s townscape because their minds educational programme.

winter 2008/09 culture life’s diary

y eyes kept turning to the books on the two john morgans describes top shelves of the old family bureau. Should I how he reduced five million m read them? There they were, with their black, brown, red, and silver spines. All the books were the same size, each with 365 pages – except a few with 366 pages.That’s words to 160,000 not quite true.There were three exceptions.They were smaller and slightly more tattered.They were the Letts Schoolboys Diaries for 1952, 1953 and 1954. Should I begin to read the 56 diaries? How long would it take? How bored would I get? How much would be forgettable? Was anything worth remembering? It was soon after retiring in March 2004 that my eyes gazed at the bureau. As I began to reflect upon the years that had passed so swiftly, I opened the diary for 1952 and began to read my entry for the first of January. I had not read those words for more than 50 years. Why did I start to write a diary all those years ago? Amongst my gifts for 1951 was a Letts School-Boys Diary . Dutifully, on the first day of January 1952, I wrote my thoughts for the day that was passing. Little did I imagine that 56 years later, every evening before I sleep, I pick up my diary and the Parker pen I received for my 21st birthday and continue to write. In 1952 I wrote a dozen words each night. Since 1955 when I graduated from Letts to a ‘page a day diary’, I have written between 250 and 300 words each evening. This has happened every day throughout the years and the total number of words amount to more than 5 million. It is now an ingrained habit. Sleep comes only after the diary is written. As I began to re-read, I realised that here were descriptions of a world that had passed. Was I that boy aged twelve, weighing 6 stones, and 4 feet 10 inches in height? As I read on through the years, I rediscovered the young man in his twenties, the married man, and finally the father of three children who had arrived at the status of a grandfather. I had written about the years (from 12 to 25) of my life in Tylorstown; about the life of a student in Swansea, Oxford and Hartford in the ; about ministry, centred in turn in Llanidloes, Swansea, Cardiff, and Penrhys. Four years after beginning to read the diaries in 2004, and now approaching my seventieth birthday, I know I am the 68 same person as that twelve year old of 1952. And yet it would be difficult to recognize the effects of that journey that has brought me from there to here, had it not been that ‘my life had been recorded in the diaries’. I started the journey through my lifetime by extracting pieces from the diary recorded by the 12 year old. Did we really John Morgans on an outing to Porthcawl in 1948, with his grandfather, live like that in those long-past days?Were our lives shaped by the Hugh Davies, a retired coal miner and seaman with Cory Brothers Cardiff on coal kind of things I was now reading about for the first time? Was ships to South America. Rhondda composed of large extended families, living within

winter 2008/09 culture walking distance? Did we visit grandparents each week? And did John Morgans the ‘exiles’ always return for the Easter Gymanfa Ganu (the with his wife Singing Festival)? Were the crowds in the streets a combination Norah in the Church at of the locals and the ‘Cymry ar wasgar’ who came from distant Penrhys in places like Hereford, Birmingham, London and Lowestoft? February And what of the life of the street? The street was the 2004, on the key locale for the young boys, and I assume the young girls but occasion of they played their own games. Boys played in the street – their goodbye to football, and cricket, ‘cat and dog’, ‘strong horses – weak the donkeys’, kick the tin, collecting milk tops. Boys explored ‘our community. mountain’ which stretched behind the street, and ventured onto ‘other mountains’ which belonged to other boys. At home was the world of the wireless with its serials, plays and comedy shows, and when one grew older, its concerts and the forbidden world of jazz on the crackling ‘Voice of America’. It was the world of the Grammar School and the divisions between County School, local Grammar School and Secondary Modern School.The divisions were healed by the local • Living on Penrhys from 1986 to 2004 proved a privilege of education authorityYouth Club, the Chapel and theWelfare Hall. both delight and heartache.What the media had described as As I read, I copied exact extracts, page after page and a ‘no-go’ area became for us a place for the receiving of gifts year after year. Three years after beginning the re-living of my and learning the value of community. Politicians and town life’s journey, I discovered I had extracted a totally unmanageable planners could also learn by living in similar communities. 1 million words. There followed the challenge of editing and And as I conclude my reading of the past 56 years, am re-editing to eventually arrive at 160,000 words: just 3 per cent I able to discern threads in this complex pattern? of the original diaries. Would this record be of interest to my • The boy who recorded the death of George VI on his children and grandchildren? And what of the wider public? birthday in 1952, shared that fact with Elizabeth, the Queen Most people are interested in reading the celebrations Mother. and struggles of ordinary people in everyday situations. Most • The boy who recorded the defeat of England by Hungary in are stimulated to learn of the remarkable way in which people 1953 has two Hungarian daughters-in-law, and three Welsh live courageously and compassionately. Here recorded in my Hungarian grandsons. diaries is the story of a world burgeoning with potential and • The boy whose grandmother read the Welsh Bible to him, yet scarred by inequalities and injustices. Of course, it is a very presented a copy of the new Welsh Bible to Metropolitan personal and contemporaneous view of my own life and my Philaret in Moscow in 1988. view of Wales and the wider world, from the 1950s through to • The grandson and great-grandson of miners met McGregor, 2004. But there are some issues and events of wider significance: Scargill and Peter Walker in an abortive attempt to bring a • Beginning in 1983 (in the depths of the Cold War), a just settlement. relationship between Wales and Hungary, a relationship • The boy who collected eggs from Penrhys Uchaf Farm which enabled many hundreds from both nations, to share much later lived with his family, on the housing estate built different gifts in language teaching, working in care homes, on the land of the demolished farmhouse. and enjoying holidays. • Rediscovering in 1995, the 200 year relationship between Would I have been conscious of these threads if I had Wales and the island of Madagascar and enabling two dozen not kept a diary? Probably not. But the threads existed, whether young people from that island to live and work on Penrhys. or not I was conscious of them. Is that the same with us all? • Helping to break down historic barriers between Catholic Perhaps reading Journey of a Lifetime might jog many memories. and Protestant by forging a link in 1971 with the Cistercian Writing it has jogged mine . Monks of Caldey and enabling many thousands to pray and 69 live with the monks during a relationship of over 30 years. • Seeking to create church reconciliation in the formation of Churches Together in Wales (Cytun) in 1989. • John Morgans was Moderator of the United Reform Church • Working for peace and justice in the struggles of inWales during the 1980s before creating the Church and anti-apartheid, disarmament and in the sharing of human Community of Llanfair, Penrhys, in the Rhondda during resources. the 1990s. His Journey of a Lifetime was published in • Struggling abortively with other Welsh Church leaders to November 2008. create a just settlement in the Mining Dispute of 1984-85.

winter 2008/09 culture

David Williams comes face to faith with Archbishop Barry Morgan.

disarming archbishop

But suddenly I found myself personalising the david williams on the whole interview and turning the question back on myself. I suggested to the Archbishop that the evidence, or at least part incense, wine and fudge at of the reason for a declining flock, was sitting right in front of him. Although I still felt imbued with Christian values I the heart of the Anglican confessed that I no longer felt the need to attend church. I went further and suggested that Christianity was itself a form of debates over sexuality subtle fundamentalism which had been rammed down my throat as a child. By now I was in full flight. Bolstered by my understand that agnostics are normally listed in the same own-found confidence in secularism I demanded to know how category as atheists and non religious people. I I could be sure that the religious education I’d received as a i understand, too, that an agnostic takes the philosophical child had been the right one? view that the truth and value of certain claims, particularly The Archbishop laughed out loud and looked metaphysical beliefs regarding theology, afterlife and the existence at me with that expression of kindness and understanding that of God, is unknown or impossible to prove or disprove. I had come to know so well. In a soft comforting voice, he gave In that case I think I can safely consider myself to a devastating reply, “You don’t and I certainly don’t”. be an agnostic, though I prefer to cling to the comforting thought While I was still reeling from that response he that I’ve merely been hedging my bets about God, denying went further. He came close to uttering what I regarded as atheism just in case my doubts are misplaced.The best that can be heretical thoughts. He confided in me, while the camera was said of me is that I’m a lapsed Christian who leads a secular life still rolling, that he didn’t want to defend the church’s record 70 based on my own found spirituality. I no longer feel the need to in the past. It was not, he said, a record of complete goodness go to church and consult with or confide in the clergy. and mercy, though he wished it otherwise. I thought this was So it came as something of a surprise to find pretty good coming from an Archbishop and I told him so. myself confessing all this to Wales’s leading Anglican, no less His reply to that was even more disarming. a person than the Archbishop ofWales, Barry Morgan. It came “You have got to be honest,” he said. But then came the about by accident in the middle of filming a wide ranging explanation which, to me, characterised the Archbishop’s television interview intended to get the Archbishop’s view continuing faith. He suggested that, at its best, Christianity on the many challenges and responsibilities facing him and reveals something of the character of God and that Jesus his church. exemplifies a God of love.

winter 2008/09 culture

The problem, he suggested, was that many Canterbury conference. Those who stayed away took a believed instead in a God of Hate who ‘zaps’ people. “That is traditional view that the Bible rules out ‘active homosexuality’. not the God of Jesus,” he said. In a newspaper interview on the eve of the Hear endeth the lesson.The agnostic had been conference, Barry Morgan helpfully, suggested that he would put, ever so gently, in his place. During my time at the heart of be prepared to consecrate a gay Bishop. He justified his reasons I learned something very important – the value in an interview with me at Lambeth. It was just what his friend and beauty of ambiguity. Nothing was black and white. All was the Archbishop of Canterbury did not want to hear as he incense, fudge and diversity. attempted to maintain unity over this divisive issue. And by God it was necessary at a time when Nevertheless it did not stop from sitting there was so much sorrow, pain and anguish in the Anglican alongside his Cambridge contemporary and Welsh soul mate Community. It has been a year which has challenged the Barry Morgan for an interview with me in Canterbury. leaders of that institution, not least because of the deeply The Archbishop of Canterbury, though, was far divisive debate over homosexuality in the church. too wise to answer any direct questions on the ‘elephant’ in the But as the debate raged around him, the church hall. When I asked him if he found his friendship with diminutive figure of the Archbishop of the Wales stood resolute in the Archbishop ofWales helpful, RowanWilliams responded in his belief that his should be an inclusive church. He is a clergyman the affirmative and ‘thanked God for it.’ Oh how very Anglican! foremost, but he is also a man not afraid to speak his mind on social If Lambeth decided anything it was that there and political issues. Indeed, it has been the hallmark of his leadership. should be further discussion before any decision could be made Now aged 62 and a grandfather, he became on the issue of sexuality. In the meantime there is to be a in 2003 and since that time he has been a moratorium on the consecration of gay Bishops. At times it felt champion of women priests and an advocate of women as though it would be easier to find clarity in communion wine becoming Bishops. We filmed him trying to persuade the than discovering an unambiguous answer at this religious feast. Governing Body of the Church inWales to accept this view. He However, Barry Morgan blessed me with a failed, but he is convinced the argument will eventually be won. demonstration of his very clear stance in support of lesbian and gay If anything is to define his time in office it will Christians by attending a Lambeth fringe event starring anAmerican be the argument over the consecration of women Bishops. But comedian. The show was based on the comedian’s real life that was not the only divisive issue which revolved around the experiences of programmes designed to ‘cure’ his homosexuality. Bishops of the Anglican Church during my time spent filming The presence of the Archbishop of Wales and the Archbishop ofWales.There was also the continuing debate two Welsh Bishops at this fringe event took on added over whether or not to consecrate Gay Bishops. This surfaced significance. They could have stayed away, but they took their again during the summer of 2008 at a conference of The seats for an event which they knew we were filming. Modern Church Union in Hertfordshire Barry Morgan is listed as one of the 50 top This was a gathering of the liberals in the movers and shakers in the Anglican Community. The organisers Anglican Community, the people who dare think the unthinkable. knew they had succeeded in achieving something of a coup in It was suggested to me at this conference, which Barry Morgan having him in the audience and they loved him for it. In his own chaired, that the real crisis in the Anglican Church would occur quiet dignified way the Archbishop of Wales displayed the same only if all the homosexuals left rather than the traditionalists who trace of grit and determination which had run in the blood of his were threatening a split over the issue of sexuality. coalminer father. It was an important statement, a mark of where And there in the audience listening to Barry Barry Morgan stands on the issue of sexuality in the Church. Morgan giving a lecture on the poet-priest R.S.Thomas was the He is not afraid to make a stand and speak his man who, perhaps, more than anyone epitomises the argument over mind though he is often surprised by the response to his sexuality, Gene Robinson, the gay Bishop of New Hampshire. pronouncements and for that reason he will probably not enjoy In an interview for the programme, Bishop seeing himself on television agonising over the painful issues Robinson told me that if we wanted to see what the church which have set Anglican against Anglican in the last few months. would be like after people had stopped obsessing over sex they His only real failing during the making of the should come to his diocese in New Hampshire. Sexuality programme – he was very, very careful in his choice of words – was 71 wasn’t an issue there, he told me. his inability to convert the agnostic sitting in front of him. But at Just a week after that gathering the Bishops of least he can take comfort in knowing that he did make him think. the world, or at least most of them, were getting together for the Lambeth conference which for a century has been one of • DavidWilliams is a freelance television producer and presenter the events keeping intact the largest Protestant church grouping and former Political Editor of BBCWales. His 40-minute in the world. This year, however, there was a big falling out, a Boomerang documentary on the Archbishop ofWales will be so called schism tearing at the very fabric of the church. Almost broadcast at 10.40pm on BBC1Wales on 3rd December 2008. a third of those invited, 250 Bishops in all, boycotted the

winter 2008/09 last word taking Wales with you

the best and most of manyWelsh families and, of we discuss contributions to painstakingly administered course, in our political history political parties and in the haircut I have ever had. Never too. The disastrous swish Russian resort of Sochi had my nose and ears been so Dardanelles Campaign forced we shunned the various meticulously groomed. The Churchill out of government oligarchs who tried to crisis came at precisely one and began the unravelling of importune us. o’clock just as a long open Asquith’s premiership. It was There were lighter razor was being applied to my Gallipoli that brought Lloyd moments. There was an Aber sideburns. There was a loud George to the premiership. man on board who was crackle and the local muezzin We sailed on to the always able to give me the burst into his agonising call to Narrows and to the latest scores and who prayer. Nobody prayed more impressive modern Turkish instinctively crossed himself fervently than I. It was, of city of Canakkale. This is a when I asked after the Swans course, the God of Welsh place known to History as and the City. One evening off peter stead Baptists whom I was Chanak and it was the the Greek islands there was a imploring to steady the hand conflict here between Greece heated discussion as to that was holding that fearsome andTurkey that led directly to whether Talgarth or he great Dutch travel razor. I had reverted entirely the fall of Lloyd George in Aberhonddu was the better writer Cees Nooteboom to the persona of the 1922. The Prime Minister choir. In aYalta palace I met a t reports that many of thirteen-year-old who had had wanted to go to war in fellow passenger with whom his acquaintances assume that been baptized in Bethania support of Greece but I had been in grammar school when he embarks on foreign chapel. nobody else did. The greatest between 1954 and 1957. He travel he is running away One of the joys of Welshman of modern times asked which primary school I from something. This is an being on holiday is that one was out of power for good, as had gone to: I said ‘Romilly’, issue that all of us who love to can vary one’s identity. One indeed was Liberalism. It is an he replied ‘Holton Road’. pack our bags and take to the has one’s James Bond, astonishing footnote to And that was more or less air or the seas have to Hornblower, Byron, Nelson, Empire that the careers of the that. We were standing in a confront. Do we vacation to Lawrence of Arabia and Orde two greatest British statesmen region that might be about to escape from our everyday Wingate moments. But, of of the 20th Century were occasion a new ColdWar, but selves or to take the course, one’s Welshness is shaped by events in a twenty certain fundamental opportunity to discover our always there when one wants mile stretch of the beautiful distinctions have to be real identities? The 12th it. On this summer’s holiday I Dardanelles. maintained. Century Arab travel writer was rarely allowed to forget it. I had plenty of Throughout the trip Ibn Al-Arabi thought that “a We had sailed through the company with which to we took the opportunity to voyage reveals a person’s Dardanelles and the presence discuss these weighty matters. visit the former homes of character: on a journey you on board of so many There was a leading Welsh famous people. At various get to know yourself”. Australians had resulted in an Liberal peer on board and times we were able to I got to know myself extremely moving service also a biomedical industrialist, familiarise ourselves with the particularly well at lunchtime being held on the open deck. originally from Swansea, and working and sleeping 72 on Wednesday the 1st of Anzac, British and Turkish both men wanted to discuss arrangements of heroes such October. In Istanbul I had lives were commemorated, Welsh affairs.We had informal as Atatürk, Chekhov, Pushkin taken the ferry across the the Last Post was played, and a seminars on how to develop and most memorably Bosphorus to Uskadar and wreath was cast into Suvla Welsh entrepreneurial talent Stalin.“Was it true”, I had been persuaded by the Bay. I remembered John and on how successful Welsh wondered, “that Stalin stayed wide smile and warm greeting Davies’s comment that exiles (of whom there are so in the Bush Hotel, Dowlais in of a Groucho look-alike to Gallipoli actually means ‘city many) could contribute more 1906?” I’m afraid it’s a case of enter his shop so that he could of the Celts or Gauls’. The directly to Welsh ‘once a Welsh historian, give me a haircut. It was to be name resonates in the history regeneration. At no point did always a Welsh historian’.

winter 2008/09