Peter Hain appeared before the select committee today, to answer questions on the Wales Office annual report.
I may be mistaken, but Peter does seem a different person since he was restored to the cabinet. He is considerably less belligerent and partisan and more willing to accept reasonable criticism.
Perhaps it’s a consequence of being involuntarily reminded that a political career does not always follow an upward trajectory. Whatever the reason, it becomes him better.
Tomorrow, the Welsh Grand Committee will debate the proposed Welsh Language legislative competence order (LCO).
The LCO has attracted a considerable amount of attention in Wales and was the subject of a report by the Welsh select committee shortly before the Parliamentary recess. The committee expressed a number of concerns about the original draft order and made several recommendations as to how it could be improved.
Last week, Peter Hain, the Secretary of State, issued his response to the select committee’s report, in which he accepted many of its recommendations. The order, he said, would be amended to reflect that.
So far, so good; and, as regular readers will know, I am a strong supporter of the Grand Committee, so I am pleased that it will now have the opportunity of debating the LCO.
There is, however, one significant problem: the amended draft order has not yet been published. This means that the Grand Committee will, ludicrously enough, be debating a document that none of its members – not even the Secretary of State – has yet seen.
I know that Peter is anxious to show he is cracking on with the LCO, but this, frankly, is ridiculous. It shows no respect for Parliament or the people of Wales and makes a mockery of the legislative process.
If the Grand Committee’s debate is to mean anything, it should be postponed until the new draft LCO has been published.
Posted in Peter Hain, Welsh Affairs Committee, Welsh Grand Committee
Tagged Politics
An excellent initiative has been announced to encourage the development of the growing cruise market in the Irish Sea.
Called Celtic Wave, the project seeks to unite the ports of Holyhead, Milford Haven, Swansea, Dublin, Waterford and Cork in promoting the Irish Sea as an integrated destination for cruise operators.
Last June, the Welsh select committee visited the Baltic as part of its inquiry into ports. We were extremely impressed by the Cruise Baltic initiative, which coordinates the efforts of ten Baltic countries in marketing the sea as an integrated, branded cruise destination. So successful has it been that the Baltic is now the third biggest cruise market in the world.
Celtic Wave has the promise of doing similar for the Irish Sea, and I hope that it will soon extend its scope to include Scottish and Northern Irish ports, as well as the Isle of Man and Liverpool.
Cruising is a massively expanding tourism market, and the Irish Sea, if properly developed and marketed as a destination, has a huge amount to offer.
Last week, I was approached by a constituent whose teenage son had been offered a two-year apprenticeship with a Football League club in the north of England. It was a condition of the offer that, in parallel with the apprenticeship, he should pursue an academic course at a further education college in the same town.
My constituent and her son were both naturally delighted that he had been given such an opportunity. The problem was that he needed financial support to help pay for his accommodation while living away from home.
My constituent discovered that the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) operates a residential support scheme worth up to £3,458 per annum to assist students who need to live away from home in order to study. The snag is that the scheme applies only to students resident in England.
Yesterday, I approached an official of the Welsh Assembly Government to enquire whether WAG operated a similar scheme to the LSC’s. I was told that it did not. It had reciprocal arrangements with Whitehall for the payment of Educational Maintenance Allowance if a student from Wales wanted to study in England, but nothing more. There was nothing, the official told me, that WAG could do to help my constituent and her son.
Earlier this year, the Welsh select committee published its report on the provision of cross-border educational services. Among its conclusions was the following:
There is not only a need for some further education learners to cross the border between Wales and England to attend college, but it should be welcomed and encouraged. Geographical convenience for those living close to the border, or a wish to attend a specialist course which is not available locally and conveniently in the learner’s home country are not the only reasons for crossing the border. There are advantages to colleges and learners on both sides of the border if this type of crossborder provision is made available when required and driven by learner and employer choice rather than by regulation. The evidence suggests to us that some processes to enable this to operate are in place, but that the border does act as a barrier, or at least as a perceived barrier, to colleges in their recruitment and to students in their search for the right course. We recommend that the Learning and Skills Council and the Welsh Assembly Government take steps to improve the level of cooperation…
It would appear that the committee’s recommendations have fallen on deaf ears. I keep making the point, but it’s worth repeating: Welsh residents pay their taxes at the same rate as anyone else. They therefore have an absolute moral right to the same standard of public services as anyone else.
The consequence of the failure of WAG and the LSC to put in place reciprocal arrangements for residential support for FE students is that a talented young footballer is unable to take up a place on the course of his choice that would be available to him if he lived a few miles to the east. He is therefore disadvantaged by devolution – or, at least, by WAG’s inept oversight of it.
He and his mother are very angry about it. And I am, too.
The Welsh Assembly’s presiding officer, Lord Elis-Thomas, who has done such sterling work in the cause of furthering good relations between Westminster and Cardiff, is apparently to make a speech at the national Eisteddfod in Bala today in which he will suggest that, after the general election, “a Tory-dominated Welsh Affairs Committee could attempt to thwart new powers coming to the Assembly”.
The Welsh select committee currently has three Conservative members. It also has one member from Plaid Cymru. Every report of the committee on legislative competence proposals has been delivered unanimously; not once has a Conservative demurred from the contents of a report or sought to deliver a minority opinion. Nor, for that matter, has the Plaid Cymru member. There is consequently no obvious basis whatever for Lord Elis-Thomas’s typically inflammatory assertion.
Lord Elis-Thomas’s overtly and provocatively political stance sits oddly with what ought to be his neutral role as presiding officer.
I wonder how he would react if Speaker Bercow were to start criticising or second-guessing the workings of an Assembly committee.
No doubt, in his usual moderate and measured manner.
Posted in Conservative Party, Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Welsh Affairs Committee
Tagged Politics
Last Saturday, the Welsh select committee published its report on cross-border transport. Among its recommendations was the following:
The electrification of the Great Western Main Line is a real possibility in the coming years. This holds out the promise of a significantly better service for passengers travelling between London and Swansea. For social, economic and financial reasons, it is essential that electrification be extended along the whole South Wales route.
Today, according to the BBC, the Department for Transport will announce that the whole of the Great Western line will be electrified between London and Swansea, in a project lasting eight years.
I’m claiming no credit for the committee, but it’s fair to comment that our report was timely.
Mr Rhodri Glyn Thomas, the Welsh Assembly member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, has launched what the Western Mail calls a “blistering attack” (attacks are always “blistering”, just as defences are always “spirited”) on the Welsh select committee over its report on the proposed Welsh language Legislative Competence Order (LCO).
Mr Thomas has clearly attended the Dafydd Elis-Thomas school of anger management, if the following is anything to go by:
“Who do these people think they are?
“Nobody seriously doubts that decisions about the Welsh language should be taken in Wales, yet this group of MPs is desperately trying to cling on to a right of veto.
“The Assembly Government has spent two years looking at this and consulting widely, only to have the Welsh Affairs Committee say that the LCO (Legislative Competence Order) should be fundamentally rewritten…
“For some reason it seems that the Westminster committee has decided to delay the LCO’s progress…”
And so, apoplectically, he goes on. And on.
When he has calmed down a little, Mr Thomas might like to consider the following:
Mr Thomas should bear in mind that he is talking about a legislative process, which has to be got right. The public expect, and deserve, nothing less.
Mr Thomas observes in the Western Mail that he was the Welsh Minister responsible for the draft LCO in its early stages of development.
Perhaps, therefore, rather than blaming the select committee for pointing out the Order’s deficiencies, he should instead be accepting his own share of responsibility for the fact that it was so poorly prepared and presented.
The Welsh select committee today published its report on the proposed Welsh language legislative competence order. This will please a certain well-known Welsh journalist, who has talked of little else, and has probably scarcely slept, for several months.
The report recommends a transfer of competence to the Welsh Assembly, albeit hedged with many caveats, provisos and reservations.
The Welsh Assembly Government will now have enter into a negotiating process with the Wales Office to determine how the proposal should progress.
Peter Hain, for his part, has made it abundantly clear that he expects significant changes to be made to WAG’s original proposal:
“The committee is calling for a fundamentally different approach to the Welsh Assembly Government’s proposed Welsh language LCO and this will need very careful consideration and discussion in the weeks to come.”
The story isn’t over yet; this one will run and run.
Posted in Peter Hain, Welsh Affairs Committee, Welsh Assembly Government, Welsh language
Tagged Politics
MPs were, to put it at its mildest, somewhat surprised when a press release from Peter Hain appeared on the Wales Office website on Tuesday evening announcing that:
A Welsh Grand Debate on the Welsh Affairs Committee report on the Welsh Language Order, expected for publication in the next fortnight, will be held on Wednesday, July 8, to allow MPs to fully debate the content and scope of the Order and its proposed impact on Wales, particularly Welsh business and industry.
Regular readers will know that I am a strong supporter of the Grand Committee and approved wholeheartedly of Paul Murphy’s decision to increase the frequency of its meetings. However, even I raised an eyebrow at the prospect of a Grand Committee debate on July 8.
The problem, you see, is that the Welsh Affairs Committee hasn’t reported yet. It is likely to do so in the relatively near future, but for the Wales Office to arrange a debate before the report is even published looked a tad premature.
The response of the committee’s chairman, Hywel Francis, to the announcement was a study in glacial pique. He has, quite simply, told Peter Hain where to get off:
“I have informed him he will need to consult with me and the opposition parties before a Welsh Grand Committee can meet to discuss my Committee’s Report.”
Hain has now done a swift U-turn and confirmed that the debate has been called off.
And the Wales Office’s excuse for not consulting the chairman? Well, they did try to give him a quick bell, but couldn’t contact him because he’d lost his mobile phone.
Perhaps, just perhaps, they might consider a letter or even an e-mail next time round.
Posted in Peter Hain, Welsh Affairs Committee, Welsh Assembly Government
Tagged Politics
Last day of the Baltic visit begins with a visit to the Swedish Urban Network Association at the grandiosely-named World Trade Centre, a large office block behind the railway station.
The weather improved yesterday and in the evening we had the chance to escape from the minibus (it seems to be the same one, no matter which city we are visiting) and take a walk around the old town.
The FCO brief for Sweden is equally as informative as that for Finland, but less quirkily so. There is, however, a fascinating nugget in the section headed “Royal Family”:
The Royal family holds a ceremonial role and is popular with the public. Republican groups occasionally try to create a debate on the future of the monarchy but there is little public support for its abolition… A member of the Royal family is Princess Lilian – born Lilian Davies in Swansea in 1915. She was married to King Carl XVI Gustav’s uncle, Prince Bertil, who died in 1997.
I am ashamed to say that I had never previously heard of Princess Lilian, but the Swedish Royal Family website has a short but interesting biographical note, which tells us that she also holds the title of Duchess of Halland.
Early start tomorrow: flying to Tallinn, Estonia, to join the Welsh select committee on its inquiry into ports. We will be visiting three countries – Estonia, Finland and Sweden – and returning on Thursday.
The weather in Scandinavia looks pretty foul – 55°F or thereabouts and lots of rain – so the crossing from Tallinn to Helsinki on Tuesday should be interesting.
I’m taking my laptop with me and will try to keep blogging during my absence.
The delightful Betsan Powys, who has a truly impressive, absorbing interest in the Legislative Competence Order (LCO) process, has written a lengthy blog post about the Housing LCO, which the Welsh select committee considered as long ago as October last year.
Readers will recall (or perhaps won’t) that the committee reported to the Secretary of State that the draft Order should be approved, with one important proviso:
The full scope of the power to be transferred under a proposed Order, rather than just the current policy intention, should be clearly expressed in the Explanatory Memorandum. Proposed Orders should be drafted so as to transfer only those powers which are required and for which a clear purpose has been established. The same considerations apply to granting to the National Assembly for Wales the ability to abolish the Right to Buy/Right to Acquire. We recommend that the proposed Order be revised so that this power is specifically excluded from its scope. We further recommend that the proposed Order should not proceed unless this proposed revision is made.
Given that the Assembly Government had made it very clear in evidence to the committee that it did not intend to abolish the Right to Buy, one might have thought that this would cause few problems to WAG and that the LCO would proceed fairly swiftly.
Not so; it caused fury in certain quarters of Cardiff Bay and outrage on the part of the Assembly’s presiding officer, Lord Elis-Thomas. The committee’s recommendation, it seemed, had caused a grave constitutional crisis of the greatest magnitude. Everybody got terribly aerated.
So the LCO sat on a shelf for a bit, gathering dust, while tortuous, protracted negotiations proceeded between WAG and the Wales Office. Eventually, a compromise, not to say fudge, was agreed, which provided the Secretary of State with a veto if WAG should ever decide it wanted to abolish the Right to Buy. I personally thought that was a constitutionally questionable solution to the non-problem, in that it effectively turned the Secretary of State into a Governor-General. However, both sides – WAG and the Wales Office – were by now intent, above all, on saving face and both seemed to regard the rather dodgy lash-up as acceptable.
The draft Order was duly tabled; but then disaster struck. The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments examined it and reported it for “doubtful vires”. In other words, the committee was less than satisfied as to the Order’s legality.
The Order was consequently pulled; heaven knows when it will proceed. Betsan talks of a “third way” to restore it, but, as to what that may be, gives no inkling.
All this is, of course, awfully silly. WAG is effectively holding its breath and stamping its feet in an effort to obtain a competence it never, ever intends to exert. Where’s the sense in that?
One other point of interest that emerges from Betsan’s post is that it reveals that the individual who proposed the Secretary of State’s veto as a solution to the impasse was a Plaid Cymru special adviser. I understand that the gentleman in question is a very special, special adviser who carries a great deal of clout within the Plaid hierarchy.
What, one might ask, was a senior Plaid official thinking, in proposing that the Secretary of State in Whitehall should have the power to inhibit Assembly legislation by extending a downward-pointing thumb?
I have my own theories, but I really don’t want to deprive Betsan of the opportunity of penning another post about this truly fascinating subject.
Are you all still with me?
Posted in Plaid Cymru, Wales Office, Welsh Affairs Committee, Welsh Assembly Government
Tagged Politics
On Friday, the Welsh Select Committee published its report on the potential benefits of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics for Wales.
Our conclusion, in essence, was that those benefits, frankly, are precious few. The Olympics were promoted as the UK’s Games in London. They will, in fact, be London’s Games in London.
Some heats of the football competition will be held in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium, but, given that it is unquestionably the second-finest (some might argue the finest) stadium in the UK, that is hardly a surprise. The football tournament will need to use most of the large stadia in the country.
North Wales gets nothing out of the Olympics, despite the pre-bid talk of holding the sailing competition there. The mountain biking event, for which Wales would appear to be especially well qualified, will take place in Essex.
Welsh business is also deriving minimal benefit from the Games. The Olympics offer the opportunity of £6 billion in procurement contracts; however, Tessa Jowell told us in evidence that the contracts so far awarded to Welsh companies via the Olympic Delivery Authority’s supply chain were worth “tens of thousands of pounds rather than millions”. That evidence was contradicted by the Welsh Assembly Government, which said that two of the contracts awarded were worth over £10 million. However, in the scheme of things, even that is relatively small beer.
Most worryingly, from a constituency viewpoint, the report concludes that Wales will be disadvantaged as a consequence of the diversion of Lottery money to the Olympics. In fact, the disadvantage is already being felt. In Clwyd West, a number of recent well-presented projects, including one major sports development, have been rejected.
The Olympics will probably be the most important and memorable sporting event to be held in this country in the 21st century. It is such a huge pity that the only memories of the Games that will be generated in Wales will come from a handful of football matches in Cardiff.
Chief witness at the select committee’s session today on digital inclusion was Lord Carter of Barnes, a.k.a. Stephen Carter, the Prime Minister’s “gatekeeper”, and the author of the Digital Britain report.
I had expected a Julius Nicholson clone, but not so; Carter was personable and highly articulate. Indeed, he was possibly one of the best communicators we have had before the committee.
He was, however, prone to lapse into management-speak from time to time, for example, when he opined that “this is where the question starts to get crunchy”.
Crunchy?
Memorably, also, he told us that the internet will be “the network reality of all of our lives”. No, I haven’t a clue what that means either, but at the time it sounded impressive and almost inspiring.
Carter’s most famous quotation, however, dates back to his time at NTL. The Independent reported it thus:
No one has suggested that he was responsible for the state of NTL’s finances, but aggrieved investors filed a law suit in New York, accusing him of having “issued false statements” to hype up NTL’s share price. One damning allegation in the documents they filed was that during a telephone conference in 2001, Carter had been asked by NTL customer marketing director how he could persuade investors that “NTL is going to be OK, when you know it isn’t”. Carter’s reported response was: “What I tell them is nine-tenths bullshit and one-tenth selected facts.”
Whether or not the Indy’s account is true, I can only say that Carter’s language before the committee today was a lot more temperate, if not quite so crunchy.
Yesterday the select committee visited Bangor and took evidence for our digital inclusion inquiry at the new Technium in Parc Menai.
It was a particularly interesting session, made all the more enjoyable by the glorious weather: a stunning May day, warm and balmy, with a clear blue sky. The Technium itself is an impressive modern building set in manicured parkland against the backdrop of the Snowdonia foothills; the weather showed it to best advantage.
Because I have a statutory instrument committee today, I had to travel back to London last night. I took the evening train, changing at Chester and arriving at Euston shortly before 10.00. The journey was a delight, the fields lushly green and the hedgerows heavy with hawthorn blossom.
I turned on the BBC news when I got back to the flat; still wall-to-wall coverage of MPs’ expenses; our reputation continues to be damaged, our credibility undermined. I could have felt almost terminally depressed.
And yet, I felt that I had undertaken a long day’s work, contributing to a report I hope will be valuable, with the added pleasure of meeting erudite, interesting people. I had rounded it off with an evening’s journey though our beautiful countryside at the very best time of year.
This job is not easy, but it is, I believe, important and valuable; it is an absolute privilege to be elected to do it. Nobody should ever take that privilege for granted.
And, despite the current poisonous political climate, I, for one, wouldn’t want to do anything else.
Posted in Parliament, Welsh Affairs Committee
