Peter Black was probably right when he urged caution about the Western Mail’s ‘billion pound budget cuts’ in yesterday’s paper, after Alistair Darling announced an intended £15bn cut in public spending.
The devil is in the detail, suggested Peter – no doubt upset that the Lib Dems new narrative of attacking Plaid already looks wooden and clunky.
Fortunately, in the name of open government, the Westminster government has released their ‘Operational Efficiency Programme: final report’ in time for the Budget so that we can analyse in detail those £15bn cuts in public spending.
Darling’s £15bn is best explained as:
• £4bn saved in back office operations
• £3.2bn in IT
• £6.1bn saved in extended collaborative procurement
• £1.5bn on the public sector property estate
The report also investigates asset management and sales, and local incentives and empowerment.
The detail, though, is highly uninformative for what interests Peter and myself – some vaguely wafted figures based upon case studies and examples.
Wales does play a walk-on role in the report, which notes on page 8 that “the devolved administrations...are free to use the findings and recommendations of the Operational Efficiency Programme to inform their progress on efficiency.”
Which is lucky as repeating the whole exercise for Wales or Scotland alone would surely otherwise have gone against ‘extended collaborative procurement’, no?
The most important facet of the report in the short term for Wales is probably the decision to ‘vest’ the Royal Mint into a company, i.e. set it up as a corporate organisation, with the presumable end-game of privatisation.
In that management double-speak that makes no real-world sense, the case study (on p48 of the report) explains how a previous ‘vesting’ in 2004 had been ended in 2006 because of the need to tackle the performance business, but now that the business’ performance had improved significantly, this could go ahead.
So, keep the Royal Mint in public ownership when not performing well, but sell to the private sector when making a profit for the taxpayer?
With that sort of thinking, is it any surprise we’re in the economic mess that we are?
A happier Welsh case study is used in the section on procurement.
Value Wales frameworks are used as an example of how Welsh public sector organisations are delivering better arrangements through economies of scale across the entire Welsh public sector.
Examples noted include savings of 39 per cent on IT equipment and services, 30-35 per cent on stationery and paper and around 26 per cent on computer consumables, including printer cartridges.
But that success brings the whole project back into stark reality.
As a journalist put it quizzically, when discussing the alternative Plaid People’s Budget yesterday morning, doesn’t it all come back to the Barnett Formula?
Well, yes. The Welsh budget will be affected by cuts or savings (call them what you will!) in the budgets for UK departments that have devolved sectors.
The Welsh budget will be affected, irrespective of whether we have already implemented these savings or whether these savings cannot be delivered in Wales because of different structures.
It’s like being told that your salary and living conditions are dependent upon a friend’s well-being. If he (or she) gets a rise then you get a rise, irrespective of whether or not you deserve one. If they have to take a pay cut then you have to make cutbacks, even if you’ve already made them.
He might cut back voluntarily as he has enough food for a nice meal. We still have to make the same cut back, even if we have a bare larder.
The savings suggested in the report are cross-cutting savings with no specific target (like, say, Trident or ID cards which I would scrap at a moment’s notice) which means that there will be no major announcements, but a lot of backroom organisation that will probably go un-noticed by the public at large, and possibly most politicians.
It is likely that many of these savings will come in devolved areas like health and education and that they will affect Wales very strongly – as we already are by the English NHS capital spending changes already announced.
But even if they're not, as these are public service efficiency savings rather than a culling of major projects such as Trident or ID cards, then Wales may find itself in a worse situation - as with the closure of around 50 DWP offices under the Gershon Review and the proposed closure of HMRC offices throughout West Wales and the Valleys.
What’s worrying is that, as with Value Wales, an example in the area where the biggest savings are suggested, if we’ve already taken the chaff out of the system, then where will we cut?
The Lib Dems don’t have to worry about these sort of decisions – Kirsty and Peter took the ‘gutless’ route out of government two years ago.
Showing posts with label Peter Black. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Peter Black. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Friday, October 24, 2008
Policy by Blog
Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the Bevan Foundation-sponsored 'To blog or not to blog?' event on Tuesday night at the Assembly (the downside of working in London!), but was very interested by some of the issues and debates that were discussed (as read on various blogs).
Matt Wardman is right when he says that the blogosphere and bloggers should not be treated as one entity, or even one community - it never was and characterising it as such was simply lazy journalism for those back in the 90s who thought the internet was some kind of fad that would quickly disappear.
For professional politicians, it's an opportunity to get their message across without the constraints of a reporter or a sub-editor getting in the way; for online journalists it's a way of drawing attention to issues that they consider important but might not be covered in the mainstream media, for whatever reason; others just want to get their two-penneth worth out there - whatever the reason, as long as it contributes to debate or gives me a new angle on the world, then, personally, I'm interested in reading it.
There have been a marked increase in Plaid/Welsh nationalist blogging in the last year or so, and with good reason - being the bottom up party that Plaid is, being a Plaid blogger means that there is a good chance that your ideas will be read, analysed and discussed at all levels of the party and, if people agree with you, acted upon.
On that basis, one of the fascinating developments for me has been watching the development of a Welsh economic policy on the internet by Plaid bloggers - a quick scan of blogs by Adam Price, Leanne Wood, Rhydian Fon James and others shows Plaid members, elected or otherwise, using the internet as a means to open up policy for debate and putting issues out for discussion, not hatching it behind closed doors, scribbling figures on the back of a fag packet.
It's the democracy of the internet that allows participation - and it's that democracy (even if economic policy is a little harder than 'learn three chords and start a band!) and interaction that makes blogging worthwhile.
After all, why write a paper and wait three months for a response when you could have people telling you what they think later on tonight?
Matt Wardman is right when he says that the blogosphere and bloggers should not be treated as one entity, or even one community - it never was and characterising it as such was simply lazy journalism for those back in the 90s who thought the internet was some kind of fad that would quickly disappear.
For professional politicians, it's an opportunity to get their message across without the constraints of a reporter or a sub-editor getting in the way; for online journalists it's a way of drawing attention to issues that they consider important but might not be covered in the mainstream media, for whatever reason; others just want to get their two-penneth worth out there - whatever the reason, as long as it contributes to debate or gives me a new angle on the world, then, personally, I'm interested in reading it.
There have been a marked increase in Plaid/Welsh nationalist blogging in the last year or so, and with good reason - being the bottom up party that Plaid is, being a Plaid blogger means that there is a good chance that your ideas will be read, analysed and discussed at all levels of the party and, if people agree with you, acted upon.
On that basis, one of the fascinating developments for me has been watching the development of a Welsh economic policy on the internet by Plaid bloggers - a quick scan of blogs by Adam Price, Leanne Wood, Rhydian Fon James and others shows Plaid members, elected or otherwise, using the internet as a means to open up policy for debate and putting issues out for discussion, not hatching it behind closed doors, scribbling figures on the back of a fag packet.
It's the democracy of the internet that allows participation - and it's that democracy (even if economic policy is a little harder than 'learn three chords and start a band!) and interaction that makes blogging worthwhile.
After all, why write a paper and wait three months for a response when you could have people telling you what they think later on tonight?
Friday, September 26, 2008
Sovereign Wealth Funds: The Politics
The idea of a Welsh Sovereign Wealth Fund was raised by Adam Price on Wednesday in the Western Mail, based on the possible windfall that Wales could receive from the discovery and licensing of gas in the South Wales coalfields.
Adam estimates that anything up to £15bn could be available underneath our feet.
However, instead of being joined in our call for a fund that would assist future generations in Welsh, support domestic industry, and, who knows, helping an independent Wales stand on its own two feet economically, opponents such as Lib Dem Peter Black have instead tried to use the situation to claim some kind of cleavage between Plaid members.
The Assembly response was, in my opinion, quite correct - the Assembly doesn't have the powers to currently create a fund of this nature. It also would have been overtly political to make such a claim for powers above and beyond those that will be included in the coming referendum.
But, and it's a claim that Peter himself makes when outsiders comment on Lib Dem politics, he fails to understand how Plaid work.
In our case, almost every Plaid initiative since the 1920s has been fought for, tooth and nail - we propose an idea, we are informed that said idea is 'unworkable', we continue to find supporting evidence for the proposal and, eventually, through weight of evidence and persuasion we find that, actually, the idea is very much achievable, and that all that was missing was political will.
Adam has already identified the necessary amendments that could be made to allow the Assembly to have these powers - the question is which of the unionist parties will tell us longest and loudest that we shouldn't have these powers to assist future generations of the part of the UK with the lowest GVA?
Perhaps they'll make the same arguments about Scotland as well?
Adam estimates that anything up to £15bn could be available underneath our feet.
However, instead of being joined in our call for a fund that would assist future generations in Welsh, support domestic industry, and, who knows, helping an independent Wales stand on its own two feet economically, opponents such as Lib Dem Peter Black have instead tried to use the situation to claim some kind of cleavage between Plaid members.
The Assembly response was, in my opinion, quite correct - the Assembly doesn't have the powers to currently create a fund of this nature. It also would have been overtly political to make such a claim for powers above and beyond those that will be included in the coming referendum.
But, and it's a claim that Peter himself makes when outsiders comment on Lib Dem politics, he fails to understand how Plaid work.
In our case, almost every Plaid initiative since the 1920s has been fought for, tooth and nail - we propose an idea, we are informed that said idea is 'unworkable', we continue to find supporting evidence for the proposal and, eventually, through weight of evidence and persuasion we find that, actually, the idea is very much achievable, and that all that was missing was political will.
Adam has already identified the necessary amendments that could be made to allow the Assembly to have these powers - the question is which of the unionist parties will tell us longest and loudest that we shouldn't have these powers to assist future generations of the part of the UK with the lowest GVA?
Perhaps they'll make the same arguments about Scotland as well?
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