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• 

  A strategic lead?

  Guest 8:04 pm on 8 May, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, Housing

  April saw the launch of the Welsh Assembly Government’s housing strategy Improving lives and communities.  The culmination of around two years work involving the input of a wide range of stakeholders. And launched in the context of impending ‘fiscal famine’ as well as a potential change of political control at Westminster. So we might expect the document to set out clear priorities for action to be achieved in given timescales alongside the resources to deliver and a clear sense of who is to do what. Not quite….  

  More detailed project and action plans are to follow we are told. But the document is full of language such as ‘develop more ways of helping people’, ‘exploring’, ‘reviewing’, ‘more will be done’. The only target in the document is the additional 6,500 affordable homes by 2011 established in One Wales.   

  As a supporter of devolution, I am concerned. If this is the best strategic housing document that our collective efforts can produce – what are the prospects for developing housing legislation that is fit for purpose and which does not result in a mass of unintended consequences?

  The history of housing policy is littered with such examples – take the surprise expressed when the introduction of private finance to support the building of new social housing at the end of the 1980s resulted in increased rents. 

  We have a collective responsibility to ensure that we minimise the unintended consequence.  And as a relatively affluent country in the 21st century, we need a clear plan to adequately house our population.   
   
   
  Tamsin Stirling is Editor of the Welsh Housing Quarterly and an independent consultant

   

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• 

  A good election to lose?

  Lee 8:56 pm on 20 April, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, Conservative Party (8), Economy (19), elections (6), Labour Party (10)

  The historian Norman Stone has set the hare running with a piece in tonight’s Evening Standard. The High Tory thinks Cameron’s Conservative Party is so limp, or ‘Dianafied’ as he puts it, that he would rather keep them in Opposition and let a new Lib-Lab coalition take the responsibility for the ‘quite bad’ storm that is about to hit us.

  ‘Cobblers’ cries Iain Dale in return:

  If the Tories lose this election to a Lib/Lab coalition, the first thing a new government would do is to introduce PR. Not just AV, but full STV. Clegg would demand it and Brown would have to agree. And if that happened the British people can look forward to a semi permanent left of centre government.

  Similarly I’ve heard the view expressed on the left that David Cameron’s policy of cutting the number of MPs by 10% would result in redrawn constituency boundaries that would favour the Tories and rule out a Labour Government for a generation.

  After the 1992 General Election anonymous Government Ministers were quoted as saying that it would have been better had they lost and let Neil Kinnock face the ERM meltdown. And detached observers are saying similar things about this election.

  But despite the intense economic and social pressures that the next Government will face tribal instincts on both sides run so deep that they find it impossible to take such a detached view.

  The current opinion polls beggar belief. Never underestimate the common sense of the public it is often said. And though I can understand the desire for a ‘balanced’ Parliament, I can’t help but feel that what’s about to hit is us going to be so destabilising that a stable Government is essential to withstand it.

  Of course, as coalitions in the National Assembly demonstrate, stability is not always synonymous with one party rule. Stable Governments can be forged from cross-party co-operation. But whether they’ll have the authority to re-write the rules of the game is yet to be determined.

   
• 

  A Professor writes...

  Lee 11:35 pm on 16 February, 2010 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, local democracy (9), One Wales (16), public sector (9)

  His may not be a name widely known outside the Cardiff Bay bubble, but Mark Drakeford has been a key figure in Welsh Government over the last decade.  On Saturday he’s likely to be selected as the Labour candidate for Cardiff West at the next Assembly elections – succeeding the man he’s been advising. 

  A very thoughtful man, he was the one who effectivley made Rhodri Morgan’s Governments hang together  – ideologically and organisationally.  The Professor of social policy at Cardiff University gave a short lecture to the Labour Grassroots ginger group at the end of January which I have just come across on the web

  It is an interesting read on a number of levels but the point that struck me particularly was his fear that without strong political leadership over how to deal with spending cuts the civil service will lead the way in crudely slashing schemes they were never keen on in the first place.  Or as Prof Drakeford put it “unless we are prepared with our own democratically driven way of dealing with reduced budgets, the machine will take it over”.  

  He warns there will be:

   -       An assault on the entitlement agenda: much despised as low populism, rather than the production of strong social capital which we know it to be;

  -       An assault on jobs: a firm belief that the public sector is bloated here in Wales, with lots of easy opportunities to slim back and make room for the private entrepreneurial spirits which we have held back for so long;

  -       An assault on  public services: those creators of dependency and sullen apathy which save people from the consequences of their own behaviour and teach them that, no matter what havoc they wreak in their own lives, and those of others, the state will always be along to bale them out.

  In particular he foresees a temptation to engage in displacement activity by going after local authorities: “there are voices, at the Assembly, who believe that the solution will be found in an attack on local government in Wales”, he warned.  I half agree with his advocacy of PR for Local Government allied with a new settlement centred on “binding agreement around a small number of key outcomes”.  But can’t help observe that this has been done in Scotland without much effect on the culture of Local Government.  Anyway, that’s an aside.

  Here is a man who intimately knows the way the Assembly Government works, at both a political and official level.  His warning about the ‘machine’ taking over is a sober one.  There are undeniable failings of delivery right across the Government in Wales.  Ministers need to deal with that and not let their officials get away with sloppy work.  But capacity problems pose challenges and there is clearly a fear that when the spending cuts bite and the fog of war descends, the civil service will have the perfect cover to cut the big schemes they never wanted (free bus passes, free prescriptions) rather than deal with the inefficiencies and inadequacies throughout the system.

  So we must rely on “our own democratically driven way” to ensure the response to the cuts is driven by political priorities and not administrative prejudices.  But Mark Drakeford doesn’t seem confident that this will happen…

   
• 

  The consequences of a No vote

  Lee 5:52 pm on 2 February, 2010 | 2 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, One Wales (16), Referendum

  So it looks like there will be a referendum in either October or March.

  I’m still not entirely convinced of the wisdom of this course, as previously discussed.  But if it going to happen then it needs to be won.  In my view perhaps one of the most misleading points made by True Wales is that voting No will have no negative consequences.  That somehow we’ll be able to carry on as before.

  Irrespective whether you think a Yes vote will give the Assembly the tools it needs, it is certain that a No vote will be a damaging reverse in the devolution process.

  We already know that Whitehall mandarins needs little excuse to sideline Welsh affairs.  If there is a no vote within the next 12 months the slow and complicated system of law making will get even worse.  Whitehall will feel emboldened and legitimised in frustrating the Assembly’s requests.

  So the status quo is not an option.  Forward or back, that’s the option.  And lets not pretend otherwise.

   
• 

  Will the Welsh NHS be a political football in the General Election?

  jonathan 1:54 am on 27 January, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, Health (11), NHS (5)

  I had a meeting today with the Health Board Clinical Pharmacist who supports our general medical practice to use medicines safely and wisely. We discussed the targets that have been set for her which then become targets against which our prescribing behaviour and performance are measured and rewarded.

  I was interested to note references to ‘AOF targets and requirements’ sprinkled through her documentation.  The Annual Operating Framework for 2010/2011 was published just before Christmas. The Minister concludes her covering letter to the bosses of the NHS in Wales: ‘I am looking to you to make sure that your organisations are aware of their responsibilities and deliver the AOF requirements’. The AOF makes a surprisingly good read.

  The NHS in Wales has been moving along in a unique direction since devolution and this year’s strategies and targets build upon the strengths of policies, programmes and people that have been established in recent years. It makes me even happier to be a general practitioner serving the Welsh NHS.

  If you have not read Scott Greer’s analysis of the priorities within each devolved administration and their styles I warmly commend his paper ‘Devolution and divergence in UK health policies’ to you. 

  I have been mulling over how the NHS might become a political issue in the forthcoming General Election. Surely there will be no debates in the media or hustings in Wales since Welsh MPs have no say in Welsh NHS affairs? Why should precious time and energy be spent during the Welsh campaign on political issues that only matter in England?

  Last week the Nuffield Report about the differences in healthcare between the four Nations ten years after devolution was published.  The media paid the most attention to the headline figures in the Report about “efficiency”. It was reported that the Welsh NHS was less cost-efficient than the English Service. The Governments in Cardiff and Edinburgh made some cogent criticisms of the report’s methods and conclusion. The report was reviewed in the British Medical Journal by Peter Donnelly, now Professor of Public Health Medicine at St Andrew’s.  Peter will be remembered in Wales as a dynamic public health doctor who worked in Cardiff and Swansea. His concluding remarks are very interesting in the context of the General Election: ‘Ten years on, anxiety on behalf of the devolved administrations is unnecessary and perhaps even patronising. Their parliaments are accountable for the performance of their versions of the NHS. The UK parliament is accountable for the financial settlement with these devolved administrations.’

  What does this mean for the General Election contest in Wales? Should the manifestos of the Welsh parties only be tackling strategy and policy in relation to the ways in which Westminster will influence the Assembly? How much influence do MPs have upon decision making about the financial settlement?

   
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  Cuts, cuts, cuts - in MPs that is

  Lee 12:14 am on 26 January, 2010 | 7 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, Conservative Party (8), local democracy (9)

  There are likely to be few dissenters when David Cameron gets round to cutting the number of MPs if he becomes PM. 

  The Conservative Leader has pledged to cut the size of the House of Commons by 10% as part of his initiative to reduce the cost of Government.  It is of course completely unrelated to the desire to recalibrate the Parliamentary boundaries that currently disadvantage the Tories.

  It is assumed that a 10% cut would reduce the size of the Welsh Parliamentary Party from 40 to 36.  But as Richard Wyn Jones from Cardiff University’s Welsh Governance Centre has pointed out, this may be an incorrect assumption.

  The only clear statement setting out how the change would be implemented comes from Lord Kenneth Baker. The Tory grandee introduced a Bill into the Lords in 2006 proposing that every constituency should be equalised at  76,000 electors – up from around 56,000 in Wales at present.  This is said to be the working model by experts in the field.

  That would mean just 29 Welsh MPs.  And given that the number of Assembly seats is related to the number of MPs it would cut the number of AMs from 60 to 49, throwing the Assembly into chaos.  And causing profound tensions within the main parties as politicians scrabble for seats.

  Little detail has been given by the Conservatives in public about exactly how they will determine the cuts – or indeed how much money it will really save, or the exact implications for devolution.

   
• 

  Everybody wants to win an Oscar

  Lee 1:17 pm on 12 December, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, Conservative Party (8), Plaid Cymru (2)

  So the dust is settling.  Oscar is a Tory.

  In his defence he is not claiming his defection to be an act of principle.  In a candid interview with the Golwg website he confirmed that the reason for his shift was that the chances for advancement were greater with the Tories – even suggesting he may have had reassurances that the number 2 spot on the south east Wales list would be his.  Indeed at the press conference to announce his defection he said he looked forward to ‘playing an important role in the shadow team within the National Assembly’.

  As Paul Flynn has recorded “His four changes of party all coincided with times when his chosen party was in the ascendancy”.  Oscar seems unashamed.  Indeed in an interview with the Politics Cymru blog he seemed bewildered by all the fuss – it is worth a look. 

  There’s been much venting of spleen, which is understandable -  as is the inevitable criticism of the list system and its application.  But for me what this episode shows up is the dangers of political parties going for a quick fix to address their own lack of diversity.

  Ieuan Wyn Jones and Dafydd Trystan (then Chief Executive of Plaid Cymru) put enormous time and effort into securing a seat for Mohammad Asghar.  The Party Chair John Dixon acknowledged that the defection had thrown up flaws in the selection process but said in the Party’s defence “We don’t use polygraphs to test their sincerity, nor would I want to”.

  Of course, there can be no safeguard against crude opportunism.  But the question in my mind is were causes for concern overlooked in the rush to secure the prize of diversity?

  Writing on his blog this week Dafydd Trystan said he took Oscar to be an “honourable person, idiosyncratic in his views and his approach to life, rather more right-wing than your average Plaid member, but dishonest no”.

  I have been hearing stories of two years of concern about Oscar’s political ability and performance, but it was all treated as a joke – Oscar, he’s a one! 

  It is only fair to point out that of course he is not the only AM whose behaviour or ability is the subject of criticism.  Blind eyes are turned for others too.  But Plaid suspected he may have been an opportunist and chose to ignore it because of the political value of having a Muslim AM (both to the Assembly as an institution and the Party).

  Now the Conservatives are in danger of doing the same.  Nick Bourne has been able to make little progress diversifying his stable of candidates.  It is only by luck they have a female AM.  And political tacticians will not blame him for a bit of opportunism of his own in swooping on Oscar.  But the far harder task of changing the culture of his own party remains

  I have no quarrel with wanting a more diverse political class, far from it.  But it will take more than tokenism to achieve it.  And as this episode has demonstrated token gestures open parties up to opportunists, and that does nothing to advance the cause of diversity.

   
• 

  A fortnight on...

  nick 5:55 pm on 1 December, 2009 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, Civil Society (3)

  Well its exactly two weeks since the launch of the All Wales convention report and already the handling of its conclusions have caused public tensions at the heart of the One Wales government.

  Obviously the way in which the  new First Minister for Wales handles the recommended referendum will be critical to the sustainability of the coalition. Following last week’s events a statement of intent seems likely sooner rather than later. 

  Given that our recommendations were reached unanimously, based upon the evidence, by a diverse executive committee which included representatives of all four major parties in Wales and key groups from across civil society,   it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect all parties in Wales to be clear on where they stand on a referendum by the time they publish their general election manifestos. I hope that they will also give due consideration to the other recommendations in the report.

   

  Nick Bennett was a member of the executive committee of the All Wales Convention

   
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  The Irrelevance of Law Making Powers

  paul 11:49 am on 23 November, 2009 | 3 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, One Wales (16)

  The recently published report of the All Wales Convention has recommended that we should move rapidly to propose in a referendum that the National Assembly has primary law making powers over all devolved matters.

  This proposal should be enthusiastically supported by all – primarily because it will hardly make a jot of difference to the capacity of Government in Wales to make a difference to the lives we lead and the public services we get.

  Governments have a range of tools to achieve their policy objectives. They make budgets: deciding which programmes of health, education, environmental management and transport will best meet our needs, deciding who gets what and how much. They employ people and issue contracts to implement those programmes. Government is a profoundly political process as it prioritises competing interests and tries to engage citizens in making its programmes more effective. Government is devilishly complex administrative process in which so many policies falter though inadequately designed implementation.

  The tool that is rarely necessary for devolved Governments in Wales is the power to make new laws. Think back over the past decade and try to identify one significant policy that was not implemented because of a lack of legal powers. I can’t. As with all Governments, there may have been a lack of imagination, a lack of will, an inability to engage and convince citizens, a lack of resources, an inadequate administrative capacity – but so rarely has there been a lack of legislative powers to achieve an identified purpose

  Significantly the Jones Parry Report assumes that legislative powers are important and references a lot of lawyers who say that is so; but no evidence is given. So why is the argument over the location of legislative powers, objectively irrelevant, so significant for some parts of our political elite?

  Westminster parliamentarians have long been led into the belief that their role in making laws is important and that should it be lost then something significant has happened to the British Constitution. But look at the Bills in last week’s Queen’s speech – proposed laws which would require Governments to seek more equality, budget more prudently and provide better schools. These are things that Governments should just do; the proposed bills are entirely totemic and any enthusiasm for preventing the devolution of such law making powers is a mere fetish. If MPs made less law they might be better able to challenge the executive action of Governments in waging wars, regulating bankers, implementing fair taxes and benefits.

  There are ‘devo enthusiasts’ for whom primary law making powers have acquired the same totemic status. For many such people the complex realities of actual government and politics are too messy to grapple with; far better to imagine, like a John Lennon song, a world in which legal competence somehow resolves every tension and achieves every purpose .

  Let’s get on and devolve primary law making powers so that there is clarity of responsibility and no more lame excuses.  Hopefully once a Welsh Assembly has more complete legislative powers then a Welsh Assembly Government will decide to legislate less and achieve more.

   
• 

  When?

  Lee 10:40 am on 20 November, 2009 | 4 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Assembly, One Wales (16)

  Huw Irranca Davies makes the case in the Western Mail this morning for delaying the referendum beyond 2011.  I’ve heard very serious people outside the Labour Party say the same thing.

  I am concerned about the game of chicken that seems to be going on within the Cardiff Bay bubble, with enthusiasts for a referendum goading each other to race across the road confident of avoiding the juggernaught of public opinion.

  Though there is merit in Geraint Talfarn Davies’ argument that “our politicians are going to have to make their own weather on this issue”, the consequeneces of losing the referendum are too great to rush into it.

  My own view is that the All Wales Convention has not properly addressed the long-term issues and has locked itself into the sterile trajectory of Peter Hain’s Government of Wales Act

  As I’ve argued repeatedly in recent days, the offer on the table is not so much extra powers but a different way of aquiring them.  The Assembly would still be the poor relation of the Scottish Parliament, both in scope and shape. 

  Public opinon is volatile and the narrative of a yes campaign not yet clear.  I’m less concerned about the sub-text of Huw Irranca Davies’ argument (that Labour need time to unite before a referendum is triggered), than I am about the need to get this right.

  I would rather time to build a consensus around revisiting the settlement and fighting a referendum on a stable model of devolution that would last more than 10 years, rather than risk defeat for another flawed outcome.