WAKING UP FOR WALES?

News that the Labour in Wales Government in Cardiff Bay has woken up for Wales by belatedly calling for Wales’s share of the UK capital funding being committed to the HS2 Rail project (in England) should be warmly welcomed. Plaid Cymru is absolutely spot on to criticise the hitherto lethargic approach pursued by the  Welsh Government's when it comes to standing up for Wales.

This somewhat belated u-turn on HS2 consequential for Wales should be welcomed Labour in Wales, previously their standing up for Welsh interests has resembled sleeping in the armchair for Wales. Plaid Cymru has rightly accused the Welsh First Minister and his party of being "all over the shop" and correctly drawn attention to the fact that Labour MPs from Wales failed to vote against the paving bill for HS2 when it was being discussed in Parliament.

Labour in Wales sudden interest in the Welsh percentage (potentially we are talking of a figure of some £4 billion pounds) of the HS2 UK capital funding is in itself interesting. It coincides with the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee’s public criticism of the planned HS2 high-speed rail link as estimated benefits dwindle and estimated costs soar.

Coincidentally Labour in Westminster may be positioning itself to ditch the much criticised HS2 project. Hence the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) suggestion that theDepartment for Transport was failing to present a "convincing strategiccase" and added that it was instead based on "fragile numbers, out-of-date data and assumptions which do not reflect real life".

The PAC said there was no evidence the line would help the growth of regional cities and would instead draw even more business to London. A target of getting the required legislation in place by 2015 was criticised as unrealistic and the committee wanted to know how quickly the department would fill gaps in commercial and major project expertise among its personnel.

Additionally the PAC said that out-of-date assumptions for the high-speed line had been made including failures to take into account technological developments that enabled people to work on trains using laptops and other mobile devices. The case for HS2 still needs to be made and there is a valid line of argument that suggests that the potential £80 billion pounds (HS2 costs) could go a long way towards making significant improvements to significant portions of our aging railway infrastructure.

What concerns me is that the Labour in Wales government in Cardiff may be cynically asking for something that it knows it won’t get. While the skids are not necessarily under HS2, as the PAC’s criticism may owe more to Labour in Westminster mischief making, serious questions do need to be asked about the actual economic benefits of large scale infrastructure projects be they M4 Relief Roads, the LG Development or High Speed Rail projects.

The one mantra often forgotten by failing midterm governments and opposition parties is that when you are spending public money it is important to work it exceptionally hard. As we begin to stagger out of the worst self inflicted economic downturn in recent history we need to squeeze every single possible benefit out of it and putting all the eggs in one basket with one off massive infrastructure projects may not be the best way to maximise the economic benefits.

DANCING IN CARDIFF BAY?

There is an old saying, he who pays the pier calls the tune? That said, it is worth remembering that it was the Labour in Wales government in Cardiff, not the Con Dems in Westminster, that chose to reduce investment its capital investment in railways from £37 million (2013) to £12 million (2014-15) – incidentally this £16 million pound saving would not even pay 10% of the provisional costs of the Heads of the Valleys road scheme let alone make a dent in the interest payments on any loans used to pay for the proposed M4 Relief Road.

Now it would be easy to suggest that Labour in Wales’s decision is literally be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul as the budget won’t stretch to paying for everything. Limited budgets aside for the moment, this was still a bad decision, one that does little to build (or rebuild) our fragmented public transport system. The underlying problem is that rail investment is not yet devolved and the real decisions about significant infrastructure investment in Wales are still being made in Westminster and Whitehall.

So obviously when looking at transport infrastructure spending and development with a London centric perspective (which no doubt continues to hold sway in some of the darker reaches of the civil service here in Wales) tends to ensure that smaller projects that could have a significant impact here in Wales tend to drop down the long list of priorities. This lack of budgetary authority is something that directly interferes with our ability to choose the most cost effective transport option.

Full budgetary authority for transport in Wales needs to be devolved to the Welsh Government because the combination of spilt budgetary authority (between Cardiff and London) and the ineffective arms length relationship between the Welsh Government and Network Rail is not addressing our countries transport needs. Now the lack of budgetary authority is only part of the problem. It is worth remembering that the Transport (Wales) Act (which was effective from February 2006) gave the National Assembly the power to plan and co-ordinate an integrated transport system.

Now this may not sit well with what appears to be an old style Welsh Office inspired civil service that may still be thinking in London centric terms having failed to grasp the concept of devolution. That aside, the real problem is the almost total lack of any vision on the part of the Labour in Wales government, which like various other Labour groups across our country is more concerned with being there than doing anything.

Even the most passive observer of the hitherto inert Labour in Wales Government in Cardiff should not be surprised to see that road has been chosen over rail in relation to transport priorities. This largely passive but not mostly harmless government has shelved several rail schemes that could make a real difference to people’s lives and deliver value for money in favour of questionable expensive road schemes that won’t deliver much to our communities let alone value for money.

Back in January (2013) the Welsh Government released figures that show that it intended to spend around £805 million pounds on finishing off the Heads of the Valleys Road (something that has been on the drawing board by my reckoning since 1958) by 2020. Now they are salivating at the prospect of additional financial powers even if part of the price may be a commitment to construct an excessively expensive M4 Relief road with dubious economic benefits and a significant price tag – I wonder whatever happened to value for money?

PAYING THE PRICE?

When it comes to developing (or devolving) energy resources there is always a price, either paid for by the indigenous inhabitants (i.e. us) and / or by the environment. The snipping between Westminster and Cardiff Bay over the 50 MW rule is only a symptom of a greater problem - our ever increasing need for and our dependency on the energy we need to make our society function. The extraction of oil form the tars sands of Alberta, the extraction of fractured gas (from under parts of the south of Wales) or the construction of wind farms (largely run by and for the profits of companies based out side of Wales) all comes with a price that someone (often local people) end up paying.

Some of these potential energy resources are costly in a variety of ways, not just environmentally - if the basic rule of thumb (even with relatively high prices per barrel in the case of oil) is one unit of energy in for the ten units of energy out - then some of the prosed developments and their returns are marginal at best. In the case of tar sands to extract one barrel of oil, you need to burn 1,400 cubic feet (US) of natural gas, to polluter 250 gallons (US) of fresh water (and then store or clean the polluted water) and emit over 220 pounds (US) of carbon dioxide. Incidentally (and just for the record) in 2009/2010 the USA used some 19 million barrels of oil per day.

The environmental price for fractured gas is equally grim, and if this goes a head we will all get to live with the residual environmental pollution for years and years afterwards and see scant medium to long term benefits and get parts of our country and some of our communities trashed as part of the process. The palpable anger in parts of Mid Wales over the development of Wind farms and the electricity grid to carry the energy away is only the start - this row is going to rumble on, the reason I say this is that fundamentally the decisions about developing energy resources in Wales are being made in Westminster and fundamentally the development to communities across the length and breadth of Wales.

Glyn Davies, the much respected Conservative MP for Montgomeryshire (and former AM) has somewhat honestly said that his constituents should target their protests at Westminster rather than Cardiff Bay, which if nothing else is a backhanded and belated recognition of the fact that decision making over energy development and energy policy is made outside of Wales. Basically its not for us (the Welsh People) to decide or to benefit form decision made outside of Wales, but, we will have to live day in day out with the consequences - that state of affairs is something the voters of Montgomery and the voters of Bridgend may come to regret along with the rest of us.

EXIT STAGE LEFT (PURSUED BY PLAID)!

There is a bit of a spat (or a row rumbling on) between Cardiff and Westminster in relation to energy and decision making. Carwyn (Jones) is busy standing up for Wales - possibly with a few choice asides or stage whispers? Odd that, especially as the Wales Office Minister David Jones informed Westminster MPs (on the 29th June) that the UK Westminster Government had received no formal request to devolve the power to decide large energy projects from Westminster to Cardiff Bay. Apparently the First Minister may have raised the matter of devolving energy consents directly with the UK Government, on three separate specific occasions since the Welsh General election in May.Odd that the or his predecessors never quite managed to raise their voice once during the 13 years of alleged joined up Labour Government? I am sure that Peter (Hain) would have been able to help? Or perhaps not?

WHAT'S NEXT FOR OUR FARMERS?

With the election over few politicians will be out chasing the farming vote or chasing farmers for that matter. Will Carwyn's Labour lot even try to appear to be the farmers friend or stand up for Wales? Our farmers, despite mutterings to the contrary, are not merely seeking the annual brown envelope from Brussels but for real opportunities to make a living (and a contribution) within the agricultural sector - they need a fair deal.

We in Wales still need take more practical steps to give Welsh farmers a fighting chance of making a real living; the aim of securing 80% of publicly procured food locally by 2015 should still a realistic and practical aim. This is something that could provide the first practical step towards helping Welsh farmers and other producers make the most of the new opportunities that will arise from higher public purchasing of local products.

Our farming communities, still feel pretty isolated and marginalised, the contempt with which the farmers had been treated in the past by Labour and Conservative Governments in Westminster and even in Cardiff Bay prior 2007 used to mirror the neglect of the important agricultural sector, which despite everything still makes a significant contribution to our rural economy.

Any economic failure across the farming sector could (and did) have a massive knock on effect for dependent small businesses and suppliers across the whole rural economy, in the small towns and across the Welsh countryside itself; which is as the living landscape is a result of generations of ongoing hard work by our farming community.

In the past both Labour and Conservative Governments in Westminster (and Cardiff Bay) treated the agricultural sector with indifference. It is vitally important that this attitude at all levels of Government become a thing of the past; much more effort has to be made to market first class Welsh produce within the UK, in Europe and beyond.

We should not forget, that in the 1980's it was a Tory Secretary of State who literally sat on his hands and quietly did nothing when the Welsh Dairy farmers got hammered into the ground by cuts in the milk quota. Never again must any Welsh Minister fail to stand up and be counted and to fail to argue their corner on behalf of Welsh farmers.

That changed with the arrival of Plaid's Elin Jones (who became the One Wales Government Minister for Rural Affairs) - she hit the ground running and was not afraid to meet with and stand up for our farmers and fight for their their interests - this made an immensely refreshing change from what has gone on before. The question is what or who will happen next?