The Prom!

I enjoyed this in the Evening Post so mucI wanted to give it a wider audience

Apparently hairdressers can’t just do your daughter’s hair on the day, they have to practice first? But surely, if surgeons can manage to do an operation without a trial run, hair’s got to be a lot simpler than that.
From the replies I received on facebook it is not easier!
 

9 things a Swansea prom is not complete without - or so dads are told

PROM is bigger than Christmas, it's bigger than everything...apparently. But it's...

southwales-eveningpost.co.uk

 

Welsh Government and borrowing powers (Assembly speech)

I want to concentrate on one part of the resolution, namely that of borrowing powers for Wales. I intend initially to compare the proposed borrowing powers of the Welsh Government with those of a local council. A local authority has total discretion as to how it spends its capital allocation, but it can also undertake prudential borrowing. It can borrow as much or as little as the council feels is needed and believes it has the ability to pay back. It can borrow for whatever reason and it can make local choices: it can build new schools, make road improvements or build new civic buildings. That is, borrowing for capital schemes is available for use across the whole of the council’s infrastructure investment. Why should the Welsh Government be treated less favourably than local councils?
	If you are talking about some of the routes, Newport City Council could borrow money to produce some of the routes if it so desired, without anybody having any means of stopping it. Of course, instead of borrowing, the Welsh Government could enter into a 30-year PFI deal, which would cost more, because the private company involved would borrow at a higher rate than from the Public Works Loan Board, and it would have profit built in. This would be acceptable to the Treasury; in fact, it said so this morning. It can be carried out without any attempt at external control.
	Then we have what I consider to be the bizarre system to borrow against your income stream, yet no income stream is needed for a PFI scheme that is entered into for 30 years, and no income stream is needed for leases and leasing equipment. Income streams are only required for borrowing so you can do exactly the same thing any other way as long as it does not have the word ‘borrowing’ against it. I find that absolutely and utterly bizarre. However, each of the PFI scheme leases have an ongoing annual cost, similar to, although much more expensive, than borrowing. Borrowing should be under the same conditions. We should have Welsh decisions on how much to borrow, Welsh decisions on what to spend it on and Welsh decisions on who to borrow it from.
	Take local councils. They have their own income stream, but it has basically been cut twice. First, it was when commercial rates were centralised, and then when council tax replaced the poll tax. Local income via council tax could be abolished at any time—that is within the power of the Westminster Government—yet prudential borrowing is allowed. There is also the choice of where to borrow it from. They can borrow it from the Public Works Loan Board, which is normally the place of choice. They can also borrow from the European Investment Bank, from other banks or by using bonds, as Transport for London did, which is a public sector local government body, which raised £600 million to help finance the construction of Crossrail.
	The Welsh Government should have the power to undertake prudential borrowing, and the power to decide the priorities of Wales without any intervention from outside.

the future shape of local government

When I first became active in politics in the 1970s the structure of public services was very different to those we have today. County Councils were the basic building block of local services and Further Education colleges, Polytechnics, Institutes of higher education and the fire service were all directly run by County Councils, whilst services such as probation and health were organised on a County basis with direct County Councillor involvement. Beneath the County Councils were District Councils which provided the bulk of local services including almost all public housing and some County Councils organised their services on a District basis.
Today we have a far more fragmented public service with 22 unitary authorities replacing the former County and District Councils. Further Education Colleges, Institutes of Higher Education and the Polytechnic of Wales have all left Local Authority control. The fire service is currently split across Wales into three and these are controlled by local authority joint boards with representation politically proportional and weighted on the size of local authority area. Health has new boundaries different to the old County boundaries whilst probation has been made an all Wales service on its way to privatisation. The old University of Wales has split up into its constituent colleges such as Swansea and Cardiff.
In the context of this transformation in the way our public services are delivered we now have the Williams report with a number of recommendations including a proposed new structure for local government in Wales. This has been met with varying degrees of enthusiasm from the totally supportive to the totally against.
What we do know is that reorganisations cost money and whilst the Williams report uses the merger of District Councils with the County Council in Cornwall as the means of calculating the cost, I believe that the merger of unitary authorities will be a lot more complex and a lot more expensive than that. When the District Councils were merged into the County Council the major services such as Education, Social Services and highways stayed in the same place. If the experience of local government reorganisation in Swansea in 1996 is replicated then the cost of reorganisation will be at least 5% of the budget of the new authorities.
What I am sure that everyone agrees on is that we cannot continue to reorganise local authorities in Wales every 22 years. What is produced during the next few years needs to show the longevity of the County, County Borough and District Council model created in the 19^th Century.
The County, County Borough and District Council system lasted virtually unaltered in structure, although not in services, for over 80 years. The advent of the Conservative 1974 Local Government act put an end to the County Boroughs, urban District Councils and the rural District Councils that had served Wales since their creation in the late 19th century, with the County Councils continuing albeit on different boundaries and new District Councils being created. Then in 1996, 22 unitary authorities were formed by the Conservative government of the day in order to save money, reduce duplication and provide a better service to the public.
The “Williams” commission recommends the creation of between 10 and 12 new unitary authorities by merging existing unitary authorities with the intention of creating better and more cost effective services.
I believe that there are two alternative structures for Welsh local government to the “Williams commission”, that should be considered, and one variation on it.
The first alternative is to keep the 22 unitary authorities but to organise joint boards, either based on the Williams proposals or as close as possible to the former County Council areas to cover the two major services in terms of budget and staff i.e. Education, and Social Services plus Trading Standards and the development plan in the same way as the Fire service is currently managed. The advantage of this is that it would be relatively cheap to carry out but it would mean effectively lead authorities and there would be problems of scrutinising decisions and service provision.
The second alternative, and one I campaigned for in the 1990s, was to base the structure on County Councils. Whilst the exact boundaries of the old County Councils could not be easily replicated this would be a structure such as North West Wales (Ynys Mon, Gwynedd and Conwy), North East Wales (Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham), Dyfed (Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire), West Glamorgan (Neath Port Talbot and Swansea), South Glamorgan (Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan), Mid Glamorgan (Rhondda Cynon Taff, Bridgend and Merthyr), Gwent (Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen, Caerphilly, Newport and Monmouthshire) and Powys.
The weakness of this, as with the County structure was that it could appear remote to the people whom it serves but this could be overcome by creating area committees, based upon either the former District Councils or the former Unitary Authorities, to deal with most of the former District Council functions such as development control and leisure services. This is effectively recreating the former two tier system but utilising the same Councillors and officers.
The final option is to use either the former County structure outlined above or the “Williams” proposals but creating fewer and much larger community Councils to carry out some of the former District Council functions. The disadvantage of this is that it is recreating the two tier system and it will need to dramatically reduce the number of community Councils.
There seems to be no option that doesn’t have its downside but what ever is decided I hope it is robust enough to last. The scenario we must avoid is to continue reorganising local Government every 22 years

smoking

I am very pleased that according to latest figures Wales has seen a drop in the proportion of people who smoke, As reported in the Western mail on the 22^nd May the results of the Welsh Health Survey show that the percentage of adults who smoke fell from 23% to 21% between 2012 and 2013. This is certainly a substantial move in the right direction in one year. Whilst there will be many reasons for it, I would like to highlight two important actions in Wales that have certainly helped. The first is the banning of smoking in pubs and clubs which has certainly reduced temptation and the second is the work on running smoking cessation groups by community first clusters in Wales,

I hope next year to be welcoming a further reduction in the number smoking.