The costs of Labour governing Wales

Wales abandoned school league tables in 2001. In England the government continued to collect data about school performance and kept publishing school league tables. Whilst league tables are controversial, there is however clear evidence of the effect school league tables have on school performance.


In a study conducted by Bristol University, researchers found incontrovertible evidence that the abolition of league tables in Wales cost pupils dearly. Welsh school performance deteriorated sharply after 2001, the year the Welsh Labour government decided to cease publishing data on school performance.

Expressed in GCSE results, the abolition of school league tables in Wales cost pupils 2 grades over the last 10 years. As Prof Simon Burgess explains:

'The effect was sizeable and statistically significant. It amounted to around two GCSE grades per pupil per year - that is, achieving a grade D rather than a B in one subject. Pupils in England and Wales were performing very similarly up to 2001, but thereafter the fraction gaining five good GCSE passes strongly diverged.'

Leighton Andrews, current Labour Education Minister tries to eradicate the toxic legacy of his Labour predecessor

The current Welsh Education Minister Leighton Andrews has recently decided to re-introduce a rudimentary form of school league tables after a hiatus of more than 10 years. Schools will now be grouped into performance 'bands', indicating how well they do in teaching their pupils.

It would be easy to see this as a lesson in another failed Welsh Labour policy pleasing the teaching unions, but this would miss the point. What Welsh Labour was uncomfortable with in school league table was to provide more transparency in public services, and, in effect, more choice to parents. Labour in Wales still stubbornly resists the 'choice agenda', although, ironically, it was Tony Blair who formulated the basic principles of choice in public services during 'New Labour'.

The lesson is therefore not one about whether or not to listen to vested interests, such as the teaching unions. The real lesson is one about the futility to govern a modern society without giving people who use public services choices about those services, be they in the health, social care or education sector.

What's wrong with Wales?

The Welsh economy has been in decline for the last 4 years. Not only that Wales has been hit hard by the recession since 2008, it also seems to be caught in a vicious cycle. Since inward investment is difficult to come by, economic activity in general is low in Wales which makes it an unattractive place for any investor to be. On top of that, the economic policy of the Welsh Government does not help. The Labour government under Carwin Jones has mainly one objective: to keep the public sector as large as possible since it is public sector jobs that form the main electoral pool for his party, and because public sector employment is often the only mechanism to address structural unemployment in some areas with low economic activity.

The result of this devastating policy and the long term structural problems of the Welsh economy are reflected in the economic figures. In almost all indices of economic activity Wales lags behind all other regions, whilst it leads the four home nations in almost all statistics of government expenditure. Government spending in Wales as a share of GDP has been 57.4% in 2007/8. The comparable figure for London (with plenty of government activity!) was 37%. That's a 20 percentage point gap between the two areas.

But look more closely and the figures reveal an even more shocking picture. Wales also lags behind in terms of productivity. The gross added value in Wales compared to the whole of the UK (100) is 74, leaving Wales way behind any other region as one of the least productive of the UK.

How difficult it is to break out of this vicious cycle of enormous government expenditure and low economic activity has sparked a lively discussion amongst economists and policy makers. The only person who seems to show little interest in tackling the deep seated problems of Wales is the First Minister himself, Carwin Jones, who explained in a recent interview with the BBC that, I paraphrase, everything is just peachy and, once Wales will have internet broadband in 2015, she will pull ahead of the other home nations (at 43 mins into the interview).

The poor performance of Carwin Jones as a First Minister and his government is widely acknowledged amongst commentators and reveals one fact above all. They still have no strategy how to pull Wales out of this mess which they have permitted to develop over the last 12 years in power. There are plenty of possible solutions. None of them however appeal to Labour politicians since they would damage their long term electoral strategy in Wales. The most attractive way out of the situation would of course be to shrink the public sector and to free up governmental expenditure to invest in the upgrading of infrastructure in Wales. There can be no doubt that the current ratio of governmental spending stifles private investment and economic activity. The state in Wales has become the Leviathan that devours all else.

The other way to improve Wales' economic future would be to stop introducing petty legislation through the Welsh Assembly. Since the Labour dominated Welsh Assembly has been created it has either idled its way through the decade or engaged in matters, at best, peripheral to the state of the economy, at worst, detrimental to its growth prospects. Part of the explanation is that Welsh Assembly members of all parties are of fairly low calibre. Any politician with political talent tries to get a Welsh seat for the House of Commons rather than wasting their time in the Welsh Assembly. With a severely restricted talent tool for the Welsh Assembly, debates are often either painfully partisan and tribal, or focussed on politicians' pet projects such as the organ donor legislation or legislation to make it compulsory to install sprinkler systems in newly built houses. Needless to say that neither of those are of any consequence to the Welsh economy.

The main response of the Welsh Government so far has been to blame others for the state of Wales. Carwin Jones and his Labour ministers are habitually pointing the finger at Westminster when they are criticised for their poor performance. It is London, so their story goes, who should shoulder the blame. The statistics however belie this argument as a cheap attempt to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions. Wales receives much more from the treasury than it puts into the coffers of the chancellor. In 2006/7, according to official figures, £19.3 billion were raised in taxes and duties in Wales, whilst governmental spending reached £28.2 bn in the same year. Which makes Wales a net recipient of public money.

It seems that as long as the Welsh Government is in denial about its own responsibility for the devastating economic situation in Wales and as long as the Labour party clings to the mirage that public sector employment is the only way to tackle socio-economic deprivation, little will change in the land of Glyndwr.

Is the Welsh Government corrupt?

Nick Clegg put in quite a robust and combative performance in this interview he gave to BBC Wales. He points out the obvious: Welsh Labour has been shifting blame for its dire performance in government in Wales to anybody else but itself.


Clegg points out that Carwin Jones (Welsh Labour), who has not even managed to put together a legislative programme worth mentioning for  this Welsh Assembly in 2011, has played the anti-English card for the last year and got away with it. However the fact is Labour has been in power in Wales since 1999 and under successive Labour led governments the Welsh education system has dropped ever lower in the rankings, NHS performance is poor and schools are notoriously underfunded by the Labour government to the tune of about £400 per pupil per annum compared to England. Where does all the money go that the Labour government under Carwin Jones gets every year to run this country (after all that's about £15 billion)? 


We now have a hint where some of this money ends up: the BBC reported about widespread corruption apparently countenanced by the Welsh Government documented in a Wales Audit Office report just this week. More than £1.5 million of public money disappeared as it changed hands from the Welsh Government to some of its contractors in North Wales. The Audit Office makes clear that the money was never recovered and may now be in the hands of some people who appear to be suspiciously close to some influential figures in the Welsh Government. No surprise then: it seems Labour and Carwin Jones still have their hands in the till! 

Election postscript

As some of you know I have been brave enough to stand in the local election last week. We were trounced completely by the local Labour Party. You can see the local results here and a diagramme below. Although the turnout was very low, it seems that the Welsh Conservatives have a steep hill to climb to ensure a good result in 2015 for the general election. 


The impression of a bumbling coalition government in London certainly has not helped but the main reason for the good showing of Labour is a curious phenomenon: although most relevant issues are decided by the Labour Government in Cardiff, the Westminster government seems to get a lot of blame for the deterioration of health services and education where Wales has slumped into the last position amongst the home nations. 


Be that as it may, we now have to live with a Labour Cardiff Council which we faced last time in 2004. At that time, the Labour vote collapsed due to allegations of corruption and mismanagement in City Hall under Russell Goodway. Although I am not a LibDem supporter, I am sad to see the local councillors go since they have done a great deal more for Grangetown than Labour. Under the LibDem council, recycling had been introduced, and the tricky issue of school reforms had been tackled. 


I have no doubt that Labour will do in Cardiff Council what it does best wherever it is in power: precious little. The default position of Labour in Wales has always been not to confront difficult decisions and instead to sit problems out as long as possible. We will see where that takes Cardiff.

Vote Plaid get Labour!

Today the new leader of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru reiterated her offer to work with Labour and ruled out any co-operation with the Welsh Conservatives in local councils or in the Welsh Assembly. Leanne Wood, who belongs to the socialist wing of her party, said in an interview with the BBC that co-operation across party political boundaries had to be based on shared values and that Plaid certainly shared many values with the Labour Party. 

Her statement, coming close to the local elections in Wales, will create problems for some local councils where Plaid councillors have been working with their Conservative counterparts to bring about much needed change for local residents. Wood who seemed to categorically forbid Plaid councillors to work with their Conservatives colleagues has thus completed the shift of her party to the extreme left. 

The immediate beneficiary of this move is the Labour Party under Carwin Jones, whose Labour government has failed so far to present a legislative programme and who maintained a low profile since his re-elections last year. Jones, whose party does not have an outright majority in the Welsh Assembly, can now count on Plaid votes in the Assembly without offering the nationalists anything in return. 

As many of Wood's colleagues across Europe can tell her, ruling out political co-operation with specific parties can only reduce the party's flexibility for future party political negotiations and worsen her party's position with the electorate. As Wood makes her party increasingly indistinguishable from the Labour Party, voters across Wales will ask themselves what the point of Plaid really is. 

Socialism reborn - Welsh Labour and the NHS

The NHS in Wales is in real difficulties. The budget has been slashed (before inflationary effects are taken into account) by about 9% this year. This spells trouble for the Welsh NHS. A medical service whose costs are constantly growing because of increasing demands from an aging population, requires more resources, not less. Yet the Labour Government in Cardiff thought it can get away with it. This onslaught on the Welsh NHS has been long planned and carefully prepared by the then Health Minister Edwina Hart. She made sure that the NHS now collects less performance related data than ever in its history. Transparency of the service and how it measures up to clinical benchmarks is at an all time low. Performance targets were removed by the Labour politicians in case they may turn out to embarrass them.

Yet for some, the dire straits of the Welsh NHS are all the fault of the evil doctors who work every day in its wards and clinics. The Bevan Foundation, a socialist Think Tank has just published a pamphlet by a Welsh clinician, Julian Tudor Hart (no relation), who argues that the NHS should be further nationalised and general practitioners, who are currently working under a contract with the NHS, should be forced to work as employees of the NHS with fixed salaries. 

His pamphlet is sprinkled with vacuous slogans, but the ultimate aim of his proposals for the NHS is revealed in the last paragraph. The document culminates in a phrase straight out of Stalin’s writings: ‘We need to make Wales NHS into the property of the people, personally and collectively – a national institution shared and owned by everyone... This is the only way to ensure it will never be taken away, and that Wales NHS can resume development as a potential birthplace for democratic socialism.’ Taken away by whom? Aliens? Evil doctors? Or even patients perhaps? 

Anybody remember what happens to institutions and organisations that are allegedly ‘owned by everyone’? Yes, no one feels any responsibility for it. The fact is that Hart’s wish to make the NHS ‘owned by everyone’ reflects a breathtaking ignorance of the dynamics of large scale organisations, of which, incidentally, the NHS is one of the biggest in the world with more than 1 million employees in the UK. If he thinks that commitment and work discipline can be instilled in the people who work there by telling them that ‘they own the place’ is naive at best, crooked at worst. 

As Leo Trotzky wrote long time ago about the Soviet soialism: if everyone owns everything, no one owns anything. We know where this all ended, don’t we?

Plaid heads for Groundhog day

Almost unnoticed by the Westminster village, one of the main political parties in the UK has a new leader. Any guesses? Yes, it is Leanne Wood who has become the leader of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru. If you thought this is of no importance to UK politics, think again. 

In 2006 Plaid joined Welsh Labour in a coalition government in Cardiff. This is generally regarded as a tragic decision, not helped by the fact that the then party leader of Plaid, the uncharismatic Ieuan Wyn Jones,  acted as deputy first minister of Wales. Going into a coalition with Labour cost Plaid significant number of votes at the next election in 2011. Ever since, Plaid has languished behind Labour and the revitalised Welsh Conservatives who became the second largest party in Wales in 2011. 

So, for Plaid it is all change now. But where will the new leader take the party? There are few continuities with the previous leader. Ieuan Wyn Jones was widely regarded as an ineffectual leader and deputy first minister who struggled to free the party from working in the shadow of the Labour party in Wales. Whilst Plaid is the only openly nationalist party which aspires to take Wales out of the Union, Plaid had considerably moderated its nationalist stance and there was little talk about Welsh independence over the last years. 

This may change with Leanne Wood. During the hustings for the leadership election, the new leader has advocated full independence for Wales, and ruled out any coalition with the second biggest party in Wales, the Welsh Conservatives. She may come to regret this. 

Positioning Plaid in Wales’ political landscape wont be easy. Welsh Labour always haboured distinctly ‘old Labour’ sentiments, favouring a large public sector largely financed by the bloc grant it receives from the Westminster government. Despite some recent pro-business rhetoric, Welsh Labour retains socialist instincts and so do many Plaid voters. Which means Plaid will have to formulate policies that are different to Labour’s policies to set itself apart from Welsh Labour while appealing to roughly the same voting constituency. 

Given the abysmal record of the current Welsh Government (currently a minority administration formed by Welsh Labour only), Labour’s vote is likely to decrease at the next election for the Welsh Assembly and the question for Plaid will be whether it is serious about getting into government. Since even Plaid wont do the same mistake twice, another coalition with Labour is unlikely. And so the only alternative will be a coalition with the LibDems and the Welsh Conservatives. There is much that unites these three parties, not least their determination to call an end to Labour’s (then) 16 years rule in Wales. 

Yet the new leader’s socialist and nationalist rhetoric makes it difficult to conceive of such a coalition. Plaid once again may take the blame for letting Labour stumble on in Cardiff Bay in 2016. 

Welsh Labour wants to ban smoking - everywhere...

Early morning raids of homes in the Rhondda Valley, the local gaols filled to the last cell with mothers and innocent grandmothers, and an ever-present MI5 spying on teenagers going to school in the morning, this is Wales under Labour. Well, not yet, you might say, but soon if the Labour Government under Carwin Jones is getting its way. Why? Because it wants to make smoking illegal. No, not what you think: to ban smoking in restaurants and pubs, but to make it illegal everywhere, even in your own home. 

A spokesman of the Welsh Government tried to calm the nerves today, saying ‘we do not currently have the [legislative] powers to make smoking illegal’. But as and when they do, Carwin Jones will turn Wales into what he and the Welsh Labour Party always wanted it to be: a country where people are arrested on a whim and a rumour for having had the audacity to indulge in the personal preference to light up a ciggie. 

It is probably here that I should declare an interest, or a ‘non’-interest, to be more precise. I do not smoke, and I have never been a fan of any sort of tobacco based products. But count on it: if the Labour Government will outlaw smoking in Wales, I will take it up. 

I am more than happy to go to jail to protect the liberties of ordinary people across Wales against the vicious anti-libertarian instincts of this Labour government. A government that has, incidentally, failed to bring investment to Wales, is failing the Welsh NHS with rocketing waiting times and imminent hospital closures, but wants to crack down on the few pleasures some of its citizens still have. Do they have nothing else to do in Cardiff Bay than to think about how to make the lives of their citizens more miserable by the day? 

Well, as I said, if the Labour Government goes ahead with its proposals to ban smoking everywhere: see you in Cardiff Prison!