The Blue Print

During difficult economic times, there is a real danger that politicians and members of the public can oversimplify the financial argument. There can be a tendency to look at the debate in black and white – what is essential and what is superfluous; what public money must fund (the frontline) and what has to go.

Frontline services are of course very important – hospitals, schools, social services, are all essential services that people expect to be funded by government; they are services that people rely on. However, there are spheres in our society that also deserve support because of the enriching texture that it brings to our daily lives; the added value that comes from performance, creativity and history, generates well-being, which gives quality to our lives.

Funding of heritage and the arts is an important part of British culture. To allows us to explore ourselves and our cultural identity. I’m not going to get drawn into a debate on how much the state should fund or about whether we have the right balance of funding, between state subsidy and philanthropic patronage. What I will say, is that the current model of government money channelled to independent, arms-length bodies, who make the final decisions on where that money should go, is the right one. But there has to be some remit guidance from government as to how that process should operate – so that everyone involved in that process is clear as to what is expected - this is vital to ensure equality. Moreover, there has to be some strategic rationale regarding wider government policy and how funding organisations that aim to deliver the goals of inclusivity, innovation and aspiration, is a social mission that helps transform society and benefits its citizens.

The Hijinx Theatre Company, is one such company that for me, ticks all the boxes of marrying strategic policy goals with the creation of innovative, challenging and high quality artistic production. The unique and excellent work of Hijinx is well known; not just in the capital but across Wales. The inclusive and respectful way in which it operates is exemplary, offering each performer – both able and those with special needs – a real sense of achievement and fulfilment.

Yet, I was astonished that the Arts Council for Wales has slashed its budget by 40% and has done so without any clear explanation why it has taken such a decision. I am of course, very aware of the constraints on public sector budgets due to the unprecedented legacy left by the previous UK administration. However, for a government body that received only a 4% reduction in its programme funding to inflict a 40% cut on one of its funded organisations, is out of step with the rest of its budget allocation and does not make any rational or strategic sense.

I am certainly not the only Assembly Member unhappy with treatment of Hijinx. I think the Arts Council must come forward and justify its decision to reduce the funding for Hijinx by such a considerable amount. But more importantly, the Assembly Government needs to clarify the remit guidance that it provides the Arts Council, to ensure that each organisation that applies for funding is treated equally and that each decision that is made is independently evaluated to ensure absolute fairness to all.

Leighton Andrews, the Education Minister has decided to get ideological in his latest proposed Education Measure.

In addition to the usual flannel which we expect in Ministerial statements about cooperation and collaboration and the like he added what to me is the most important statement on the future of education that we have seen from this administration. He said:

I will also be seeking views on a proposal to prevent an increase in the number of foundation schools. Each of these schools administers its own admissions, adding to the complexity of the local authority task of planning and providing school places. I therefore currently intend to prevent schools from changing category to become foundation schools, and to prevent any new foundation schools being established. This should retain the status quo in terms of the number of admission authorities, with the aim of ensuring that, as far as possible, local authorities are able to plan school places on a strategic basis.

The attitude of the Welsh Assembly Government towards Foundation Schools is clear in this ministerial statement. On this basis, regardless of the legal requirements of assessing an application to become a Foundation School, I am now fearful that Leighton Andrews is going to reject the application by Whitchurch High School to become such a school.

If the Assembly Government fail to support the High School it will lay the school wide open to a sustained attack by Cardiff Council who wish to damage what they have achieved. We need schools that are flexible, innovative and capable of determining their futures without the constant unnecessary interference of politicians and local education authorities.

I am challenging Leighton Andrews to confirm that he will be deciding the future of Whitchurch High School on the merit of their application, and the established framework within which such decisions are supposed to be taken, not on his ideological drivel spelt out in this statement today.

Families throughout Cardiff North want fairness from the Assembly Government, but I am afraid I do not trust the Assembly Government to deliver it.

I have been pleased by the debate that has been generated over the last two weeks, following my call for the citizens of Cardiff to have an open and frank debate on whether the city should have an elected mayor.

The most important aspect of the debate for me, is that the people of Cardiff have their say on whether they think this is a good idea for the future direction of the capital. I am a representative politician for part of the city but I am also a resident. My view is that the city would benefit significantly from having an elected individual, fully mandated by voters from right across the city that would provide clear lines of accountability, demarcated responsibility and effective leadership so that it is clear to everyone in Cardiff “where the buck stops”.

I am not saying by any means that Cardiff ‘must have’ an elected mayor. The case still has to be made and the details scrutinised. However, I would say that the current system that governs the process of triggering a possible referendum is so perverse it is putting the citizens of Cardiff at a complete disadvantage compared to the citizens of England’s largest cities like Birmingham or Manchester. I intend to develop this argument further in an article to WalesHome next week.

I would like to thank Dan O’Neill – the Echo’s own ‘Kairdiff Kid’ – for his recent article (18^th August) examining the prospect of an elected mayor for Cardiff. I do have a few observations regarding the points he made.

I would firstly say that just because some of America’s mayors ended up in prison isn’t a reason to shut down the debate from the outset. The situation in America is not just indicative of some of the people they elect but of a system that lacks scrutiny and rigor. You can’t just extrapolate and assume the same here. On that basis you’d scrap local county councils because of previous misdemeanours such as those experienced in the Vale of Glamorgan or Blaenau Gwent, where council leaders and members ended up facing criminal charges.

Secondly, Dan ridicules the notion of belief and idealism. Surely one of the reasons why turnout at elections has been dropping and a general distrust of the political class has been increasing is because politicians are seen as clones without idealism and belief.

Finally, he claims that business leaders and school heads shouldn’t become elected officials because they wouldn’t have served any apprenticeship. Why should politics just be left to those we regard as politicians? Surely there are some very impressive leaders and visionaries who have led in the field of business, education and the arts. Politics and governance cannot just be left to political hacks.

I look forward to the widening of this debate in the weeks to come. Ultimately, I believe that Cardiffians should be talking about the sort of city we wish to live in and the type of governance and leadership which would provide it.

The recent selection of Nigel Howells by Cardiff Central Lib Dems for the Assembly elections is bad news, very bad news, for Rodney Berman who also applied for the job.

Berman is deeply damaged by this.

He failed to persuade his colleagues, many of them in his own Council cabinet, that he should be their candidate at the 2011 Assembly election. Having led Cardiff Council since 2004 one would have thought he was their obvious choice having had the experience of running the capital city. This lack of confidence from his own party casts doubt on his own future at the helm of the capital city’s local authority.

Secondly and perhaps most seriously is that we still have a Council leader who had decided by applying to be an Assembly candidate that he no longer wanted his present job after next year. I have always believed that Berman lacked the vision and ambition for the capital city, it’s now obvious that he also lacks the stomach for the top job.

As the AM for Cardiff North I have long believed that the Lib Dems are only interested in their Cardiff Central stronghold, and Berman’s wish to represent one part of the city is further indicative of their and his mindset. Perhaps they should be reminded that Cardiff is made up of four constituencies, not just the one.

Over the past few months I know that many people throughout Cardiff have called into question the direction our capital city is heading and whether the leadership is strong enough to give the vision and ambition for the capital of Wales. The decisions taken, for example, over the transport infrastructure and the resulting chaos on our roads, the proposals to reorganise school places and close popular schools demonstrates the poverty of leadership that the people of this great city are having to experience.

Running a local authority is not just about collecting bin bags, for Cardiff it means having a leadership which can see where our capital city needs to be in the next 10 to 20 years. We simply don’t have this.

I do not believe that he can continue in his role, but if he does I hope the Lib Dems will at least show some guts by replacing him.

When the recession first bit in the autumn of 2008, one of the commitments that came out of the first all-Wales economic summit – convened to tackle the recession in a co-ordinate way – was for the Assembly Government and other public sector bodies to work more closely with businesses who had public sector procurement contracts, to not only pay them on time but to increase the amount of business it did with indigenous companies.

Increasing the amount of Welsh businesses tendering and winning public sector contracts is very important to the private sector because £5bn worth of goods and services are procured annually by the public sector; so this wasn’t an inconsequential commitment. It actually wasn’t a new commitment either as a key pledge in the One Wales document published a year earlier stated:

“We will introduce an all-Wales purchasing code of practice to support progressive increase in the amount of public purchasing sourced from Wales.”

So how has the Government fared in delivering this pledge?

In its annual report, which was debated in Plenary last November, the Government stated that it was ‘COA’ or to jargon bust ‘Completed and Ongoing Activity’. For me, this way of measuring a key performance indicator on government progress seemed very odd – how can you have something that has been completed but is ongoing at the same time? There were other such examples, like one of the commitments in the Economic Development section of One Wales which stated:

“Implement a labour market strategy with a long term goal of full employment at the rate of 80%”

Again this commitment was labelled as COA, which as we all know, is a complete nonsense.

Andrew Davies, the Finance Minister at the time said that the levels of Welsh businesses securing public sector procurement contracts was rising and that nearly half of that business was being won by Welsh-based companies. However, the reality as I found is very different.

I have gathered information under a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the levels of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies) procurement local authorities and health boards had awarded Welsh businesses in 2008-09. I was amazed by the results. For those health boards that responded, nearly £40m worth of procurement contracts had gone to less than 5% of Welsh businesses; and from the local authorities that responded, nearly £45m of contracts had gone to less than 5% of indigenous companies.

I challenged the Government again today on its record and both the First Minister and the Business Minister admitted there had been problems for Welsh business to properly engage with the public sector and win those ICT contracts. The Business Minister said that she has been exploring recently with the Director of CBI Wales, David Rosser, what the barriers to procurement were and how access could be improved.

She promised me a Government statement; I look forward to hearing what she has to say.

I am sure that the announcement by the First Minister that the Assembly Government favours October as the month for the referendum has nothing to do with the fact that we have a Conservative Secretary of State!

For months the Assembly and UK Government have been silent on the timing of the referendum.  If the previous government had been that interested in resolving the timing then Peter Hain could have advanced this issue at a greater pace instead of acting like an asthmatic ant with a heavy load of shopping (My apologies to Black Adder Goes Forth for misusing this phrase)!

In addition to meetings at the Wales Office it begs the question as to what Peter Hain was actually doing before he left office. Perhaps the new Secretary of State should search for a note left by her predecessor explaining why he couldn’t face responding to the request for the referendum, it seems to be the fashion these days!

Personally I have always favoured October, and in my view the new Secretary of State should do all she can to achieve this. If however it is impossible then St David’s Day is the obvious choice where we still leave 2 months until polling day for the Assembly elections.

This blog has been somewhat light on “postings” – well non existent actually – during the election period as my attention was elsewhere.

Now that the election is over and a new government is taking shape between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats it is worth taking stock at what we have witnessed this week.

Since the new political map of Britain was defined by the electorate on May 6 there was clearly going to be a lot of hard work to construct a government which could command the confidence of the House of Commons. I suppose this was the main sticking point for the Labour Liberal talks where a grand coalition would have required a sort of “Rainbow Plus” arrangement relying on the nationalist parties of Scotland and Wales, the Northern Ireland parties such as the SDLP, together with Lady Sylvia Herman and Caroline Lucas!

It simply wouldn’t have worked.

The attempt to put together a government using the skills and experience in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties demonstrates a political maturity, a willingness to achieve stable government to take the difficult decisions in the national interest. Instead of ploughing on with a minority government David Cameron has played his hand exceptionally well, demonstrating not only his suitability to be our Prime Minister but also why he has the capacity to be a great Prime Minister.

I wish him, and my colleagues who are now occupying government departments, well as they get our country back on track.

Yesterday the proceedings of the Assembly chamber were affected because of strike action, not by those who had voted to exercise their legitimate right to take industrial action but by Labour & Plaid AMs who simply refused to turn up for work.

We were left with the rather odd picture of only the opposition parties attending the Senedd to discharge their responsibilities as elected members; where we debated the need for legislation to separate AMs from setting their salaries and allowances, and also having a full debate on the Labour Plaid government. For us it was business as usual.

I have no problem with officials venting their anger at the actions of the UK government and I fully understand their concerns about their employment conditions. My problem is with the actions of leftist AMs who behave as though they’re an integral part of the dispute, they’re not. I accept that there are occasions when members might be absent, that’s the same for any profession. But to use the strike as an opportunity for a duvet day is utterly ridiculous.

This morning the Older Persons’ Commissioner Ruth Marks has announced her first major review, pledging to tackle the indignities suffered by older people whilst in hospital.

Having served for 6 years from 2003 as my party’s Health & Social Services Spokesman I know how needed this inquiry is, I encountered many people whose personal experiences of hospital had been a dismal one where nursing staff had failed to ensure that patients were treated with dignity. Sadly my own personal experience of family members upheld what I had found throughout Wales.

Before my re-election to the Assembly in 2007 my grandfather was admitted to the University Hospital of Wales with a suspected bleed on his brain. He spent about a week or so on the A1 link ward, a sort of temporary fix apparently before they could decide what to do with him. He quickly deteriorated, physically dishevelled and confused, and the nurses were pretty useless in helping him or family members to understand what was going on. On more than one occasion he told me about the attitude of a number of the nurses, uncaring, unhelpful and abrupt with patients including him.

My grandfather is not your typical retired octogenarian who takes life easy. He remains incredibly active, politically involved in the party and socially busy with family and organisations. He retired from serving as a County Councillor in 2004 when he was approaching 80 years of age having spent a total of 22 years on both the City & County Council; some years before that he was the city’s Deputy Lord Mayor.

And yet for a period of a week in UHW he had to tolerate the indignity of his treatment. I use this as an example of why this review by Ruth Marks is so important, and why it is right to ensure that the “caring professions” really know how to care.

In February 2009 the Health Minister approved the outline business case to revamp the provision of mental health services in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, announcing that £120 million would be spent on a new hospital in Whitchurch and new facilities in Llandough.

However, Health officials have now halted the plans claiming that they want to go back to the drawing board. Apparently £80 million is still available to be spent on revised plans once the Local Health Board has done the work.

There are a number of imp0rtant issues about the decision and the impact on those services.

Firstly there’s the issue of delay and dithering over plans which had been approved for the redevelopment of the Whitchurch site and where work had already started. Buildings have been demolished, road and ground works started with £6 million already spent. Why stop this now, when the Assembly Government had already given the go-ahead after the final business case was submitted to them in the Spring of 2009?

Secondly it looks as though the Assembly Government’s own decision making ability is questionable. Their original decision would have been based on a thorough analysis of the outline business case and then a final approval before starting to spend money. It does require some explanation as to how effective the Assembly Government is in ensuring that service reform proposals are robust and deliverable.

Thirdly, in February 2009 the Assembly Government announced almost £120 million for the work and spent £6 million before halting the scheme. On Monday officials told the local press that £80 million had been ring fenced, so what’s happened to the other £34 million that was part of the initial allocation? They’ve either run out of money or the remainder of the money is being spent elsewhere.

Fourthly, the effect of this decision on local services means more disruption and delay which puts the modernisation of the service back on the shelf. This will not be good for patients, families and clinicians who were geared up for this reform. I believe that the Health Minister needs to explain who quickly she expects this matter to be resolved.

Whichever way you look at this saga, there are many questions which require answers, the present position is frustrating for all of us who want to see mental health services reformed.