25th July 2009
WoS and financial literacy
The recent reports from the Holtham Commission and the House of Lords’ Select Committee about the financing of Wales have put the cat amongst the pigeons – if the comments of David James from last week’s Wales on Sunday are anything to go by.
He seems to suggest that Plaid Cymru’s long-running campaign for justice for Wales, for a fair-funding scheme that is based is around needs rather than just population, is somehow flawed.
That this is an opinion backed up, only within the last month, by two of the most authoritative publications on the subject of the Barnett Formula is ignored, while he goes straight for the jugular, calling upon the might of the Centre for Economic and Business Research, to prove us wrong.
The CEBR, of course, as you might probably guess from the name, are an unashamedly pro-business right wing free-trade and free-enterprise consultancy.
They are a business themselves, selling their statistics to the highest bidder.
But let’s look a little deeper into David James’s charges against myself and my merry men, as he so jovially puts it.
Firstly, that Wales is overly-dependent upon the public sector.
Actually, figures from the Office of National Statistics show that 23% of jobs in Wales are in the public sector, while the UK average is 20%.
Higher, therefore, but not dramatically so.
Then what about his claim that high spend on public services are forcing out the private sector?
Someone should tell that to London, where the identifiable publix expenditure spend per head is 118% of the UK average, greater than either Wales or Scotland.
I don’t ever recall, though, that London has ever been described as a bastion of communism.
If there is a problem, then it is that the GDP of Wales is lower than it should be.
And if there’s a reason then it is the consistent underfunding of Wales, as a result of the Barnett Formula.
In the last decade alone, during the so-called good times, what is known as the Barnett Squeeze between the increase in public spending in England and public spend in Wales amounted to around £4.5bn lost from Wales – our schools, our hospitals, our economy.
Meanwhile, the Holtham Report estimates that, if the Barnett Formula continues in its present form, every man, woman and child in Wales would lose out on up to a further £2,900 of funding each, up to £8.5bn in the next decade.
It also shows that similarly economically disadvantaged parts of England have received far greater investment than has Wales since Labour came to power.
The report is proof that we in Plaid Cymru have been right in opposing this ill-thought out funding system for decades.
Indeed, what sort of politician would not be standing up and shouting from the rooftops about such an injustice?
Yet, David James thinks that, in claiming the funding that is rightfully ours, we are somehow doing Wales a dis-service.
The CEBR, whom he quotes as evidence for how Wales is over-reliant on the public service, actually want a massive cut in public expenditure in Wales, after we have faced decades of under-funding.
Unsurprisingly, unlike the evidence given by Plaid Cymru’s Dr Eurfyl ap Gwilym, the evidence of CEBR was given short shrift in the Lords’ report on the Barnett Formula when it came to writing up their final report.
But Wales is already facing the huge cuts being suggested by the CEBR that David James quotes.
According to Labour’s Westminster Budget this year, Wales will lose out to the tune of a further £2.2bn between 2011 and 2014.
Is this really the position of the Wales on Sunday? To impoverish the people of Wales? A very funny position for our national Sunday newspaper to take!
It certainly isn’t Plaid Cymru’s position. We believe in long-term investment in infrastructure across Wales that will make up for the lack of investment that has taken place in the past.
The second part of the Holtham Commission report will spell out further possibilities so that we can take control of our own finances here in Wales. That way, we can make decisions that are best for us, based on our own criterion, not whether England needs more schools or hospitals, as we rely on in the current system.
Policies designed and made in Wales, for Wales, just like the ProAct and ReAct schemes that have received support all across the spectrum from business organisations such as CBI Wales, to the trade unions.
Independence is a long-term aim, and one that will only take place with the agreement of the people of Wales, but what we are concerned with here are laying the foundations of a better society in Wales – one that can look after itself, without needing to go cap in hand to Westminster. But also one that gets its fair share.
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