91Èȱ¬

Two big battles yesterday and two big drubbings.

Tamsin Dunwoody - or perhaps Gordon Brown's Labour - turned a 7,000 inherited majority in Crewe and Nantwich into a 7,860 loss.

Applying 17.6% swings to a General Election may mean very little but you can bet there'll be Welsh Labour MPs in all four corners of Wales who are all too aware it would take a lot, lot less to oust them.

Prepare not just for talk of relaunching in Wales but for full-on attempts to be seen to be listening to the people who, at the moment, are not just dismissing but deriding Labour with their votes.

And at the Glamorgan Wanderers Rugby Ground last night the WRU President's XV beat the National Assembly Presiding Officer's XV by 80 to 36 (though not quite into a pulp).

Captain Alun Cairns may take comfort from the fact that at least Labour are feeling more pain than he is this morning.

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• - What's this?

On Tuesday my daughter and her four year old schoolfriends got to travel on a Cardiff bus.

They learned how to buy a ticket (after learning how to ask Mum and Dad for a £1 to take to school), what a bus-stop looks like and even how to wash the bus. She got a sticker for effort for this final bit and I'm told it was, without doubt, the highlight of her week.

I don't know whether this has anything to do with the new drive towards learning through play and outdoor activities but watching this morning's Finance Committee scrutiny of the Education Minister - good stuff - it's becoming clear that agreeing on adequate funding for the so-called Foundation Phase programme is anything but child's play.

History lesson first.

The Assembly Government offered funding of £30m.

Headteachers and local authorities shouted from the yard that it wasn't enough. A few weeks ago Jane Hutt conceded they were right and came up with an extra £5million to spent on the pilot schemes.

But the shouting in the schoolyard hasn't stopped and as became clear this morning, neither has the namecalling.

Let's recap: the government came up with a budget of £30million. This was understood by local authoroties to be on top of the £10million that was already being spent on pilot schemes.

Maths: £30m + £10m = £40m

But now it seems Jane Hutt's £30m is just that - £30m:

£10m (spent on pilot schemes)
£5m (extra money announced but ring-fenced to the pilot schemes)
£15m (new money - a specific grant announced through the settlement).

And whether you count bean bags in the yard, line the children up on the wall or sit at your desk with a biro, that looks like a shortfall of £10m to local authorities and headteachers.

Playing productively means a low pupil to teacher ratio and 1 teacher to 8 pupils doesn't come cheap.

This morning Maesteg headteacher Sue O'Halloran told the Finance Committe she needed to recruit four new members of staff from September to deliver the scheme. She'd been given under £20,000 to spend. You do the maths.

Another headteacher said his school needed £30,000 to create an outdoor play area required by the Foundation Phase curriculum. They've been given no extra money which must mean the PTA is drowning in raffle tickets and cheese and wine evenings.

The Association of Directors of Education had got their calculators out. WAG says the estimated cost fo each member of staff working on the Foundation Phase is just over £15,100. It should, claim Directors of Education, be more like £18,200 given the job they'll be required to do and therefore, an extra £3000 schools wil have to find for every staff member involved in the scheme.

Labour members of the committee wouldn't have it.

They turned their fire on the WLGA, accusing local authorities of failing to provide enough date for the government to make proper decisions on funding. They ganged up with Jane in the corner and it was metaphor time in the playground.

WLGA Chief Executive Steve Thomas came up with "smokescreen".

David Hopkins of the Association of Directors of Education went for the unusual and colourful - "you're being fed red herrings".

They meant it and could, they said, prove it. Not only had all the data that had been asked for been provided repeatedly by local education authorities. But locked in a drawer somewhere (and they're not telling where so there) are verbatim notes of a conversation with a senior official in the Education Department where the £30m on top of the £10m had been agreed. They even named names.

So did the Education Minister hold her (play) ground?

It doesn't sound like it.

She told the Finance Committee that it might be worth considering "whether we should be targetting the youngest first" - in other words she proposed it might be time not to stick to the

What's our line? We've gone for "11th hour scaling down of radical plans to overhaul early years learning".

What's yours?

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• - What's this?

OFCOM and the Institue of Welsh Affairs are holding three public consultation conferences on the future of Welsh broadcasting next month.

I haven't yet booked my place but they might like to note this question:

Why is it that the television set in the Assembly canteen this lunchtime was showing the Points West news bulletin? Don't tell me the National Assembly's own aerial is pointing towards ... the Mendip transmitter?

(By the way the blog is undergoing some more technical tweaking today ... but should be back online properly by this evening.)

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• - What's this?

Do the Conservatives support Edwina Hart's move to give failed asylum seekers free healthcare or not?

You tell me.

Jonathan Morgan, the Shadow Health Spokesperson, has put out a press release saying this:

"In emergency cases where urgent medical attention is required, of course the NHS should be there for people. Primary care should also be available to a point where someone falls ill.

"However, we are firmly against the policy of allowing 'health tourism' to flourish. Those who are not supposed to be in this country should not be entitled to the benefits that citizenship of Great Britain affords, including elective treatment and surgery.

"The NHS in Wales already has huge challenges facing it. The very last thing we should do is stretch the capacity of the service so that just about anyone in the world can use it.

"The fact that the NHS in England is taking legal action to prevent such abuses, and that the Welsh Assembly Government seems happy to allow those abuses in Wales, will only place more strain on the service."

On balance I'd say that's a no.

Jonathan Evans MEP, Prospective Parliamentary Candiadate for Cardiff North at the next General Election is taking the same line.

But didn't their Welsh Party leader, Nick Bourne, sign up to the 'We'll keep a welcome" campaign before last year's Assembly Elections? In fact weren't all four party leaders united in their support for it?

And didn't pledge number 3: Provide fair and equal access to services come with a helpful briefing for those who signed up to it, a briefing that included this line:

"In signing our pledge cards, candidates commit to giving asylum seekers whose claims have been refused exemption from charges for treatment by the National Health Service Trusts."

It did.

So did Nick Bourne sign up to the pledge card?

The photograph, on this occasion, seems to say it all.

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• - What's this?

There's a word we're starting to associate with this government and that word is 'free'.

Free prescriptions, free bus passes, free breakfasts, free car parking in hospitals. But don't be fooled by the latest decision taken by the One Wales Government and more particularly, the Health Minister, Edwina Hart.

It may contain the word 'free' but it doesn't belong to that growing list of freebies.

It's a decision, taken quietly and not announced loudly, to give failed asylum seekers access in Wales to free NHS treatment.

Asylum seekers have access to free treatment on the NHS in England and Wales. The same goes for failed asylum seekers who are appealing against the decision of the 91Èȱ¬ Office. But until now free healthcare has been cut off for failed asylum seekers who've been told they cannot stay in the country. If there's any delay in returning or sending them home and they need healthcare, they get it. But then if the Trust thinks it's reasonable, it sends in the debt collectors.

Now Edwina Hart has decided that's wrong. Why? Because "the mark of a civlised society is the way in which it treats all of its people, particularly the sick and dying".

Put simply "because she believes it is the right thing to do".

So if that's the 'right' thing to do, what are they doing in England?

Last month a test case at the High Court led to a judgement that it was unlawful to refuse free NHS treatment to all asylum seekers as a matter of course. The judge, Mr Justice Mitting decided there were circumstances in which a FAS - a Failed Asylum Seeker - could meet the criteria that would give him or her access to free healthcare. So no more saying 'no' to everyone. FASs are no longer "automatically chargable" to use NHS language.

But Mr Justice Mitting gave the UK government the right to appeal against that decision and last Tuesday, May 13th, they lodged that appeal in an attempt to overturn his judgement.

Why?

Because as a Department of Health spokesperson explained today ".. given the significance of the judgement and its potential wider implications, this is the right thing to do".

Taking a different line to the UK government on scrapping car parking charges is one thing. Telling them that while they want to stick to a system where failed asylum seekers are refused free healthcare, you are going ahead and giving them that free care because you believe 'it's the right thing to do' is quite another.

Because morally speaking, they can't both be right, can they?

UPDATE: Lots of views coming in .

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• - What's this?

It barely covers two sides of A4 but it sums up the unhappiness amongst AMs with the process of drawing down new powers from Westminster pretty neatly.

It's the report of the Proposed Vulnerable Children LCO committee.

In it they express their "disappointment" that the majority of their recommendations haven't been included in the revised Order and that "there are many areas we have not been able to scrutinise and report on".

There's concern that while the Assembly LCO Committee wanted to work jointly with the Welsh Affairs Select Committee to scrutinise the Order, "this has subsequently proved not to be possible".

And there's yet more disappointment that despite cross party support in the Assembly for the conferral of powers in relation to the physical punishment of children - it isn't, of course, happening. You must remember the 'Slap in the face of the Assembly' headlines.

At the other end of the M4 I think it's fair to say things are no better. There's frustration that the process isn't delivering as it might, that joint working is just not working and outright fury that the Presiding Officer questioned the Welsh Select Committee's 'tardy' scrutiny last week.

And then there was that half-hearted invitation from the MPs to AMs to 'observe' their scrutiny ... but not join in.

A quick call today to find out how many have taken up the invitation: in other words, will the authorities need to book a mini-bus or will a tandem do?

The answer is neither. There will apparently be no-one going.

It's perhaps no surprise then that the Ministry of Justice has issued a guide for officials' on devolution which tells them to:

"Be open and helpful to approaches from colleagues in the Devolved Administrations"

and to

"Ask the experts - your colleagues in the Devolved Administrations want to work with you".

A guide for the politicians is coming out soon.

UPDATE: Why are there no AMs going to 'observe' the Welsh Select Committee scrutinising the LCO today? One suggestion is that it would have been "helpful" to let them know officially of today's date before Tuesday afternoon.

Bring out that guide.

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• - What's this?

A little while ago AMs asked for guidance on what they can and can't do with their websites, if they're funded through the OCA - the Office Costs Allowance. AMs can claim up to £13,800 a year for things like maintaining and equipping an office, hiring rooms for surgeries, paying for cleaning, mobile phone bills and newspapers - and if they choose, setting up websites.

They got an answer with electronic bells on.

The good news first. 'Likely to be allowable' are the following:

But it's no to conducting business activities, obtaining inappropriate private benefit, fund raising, encouraging people to join a particular political party and no too to "advancing perspectives or arguments with the intention of promoting the interests of any person, political party or organisation you support, or damaging the interests of any other such person, party or organisation".

Then the really tricky bit - the guidance on content.

AM websites "shouldn't seek, directly or indirectly, to compare a Member's party favourably with another, promote one party at the expense of another or seek to undermine the reputations of political opponents. In this context, the selective use of statistics should also be avoided. This means that stating the following on your website would not be acceptable:

"Investment in our national health service will have trebled over the past 10 years to 2007/08".

"Council tax has already increased by a staggering amount since 1999".

It's ok to tell the people who voted for you (or indeed didn't but live on your patch anyway) what you've done for them but only as long as it sounds a bit like this:

"I helped the *** Theatre retain its £85,000 grant from the XYZ Council and ws delighted that they received a £400,000 increase in its grant from the government funded Arts Council for Wales for the next three years".

Can't wait.

But AMs won't stand for it.

There are rumblings about fundamental rights to free speech on behalf of constituents being breached, contempt for this 'ludicrous' attempt to 'gag' AMs and a rainbow coalition of protest against what some feel amounts to 'political censorship'.

They could of course just shun the public subsidy and do as this does. As Paul Flynn put it recently:

"MPs' blogs are subjected to idiotic censorship. Criticism of other MPs is not allowed. That is one of the dozens of piddling restrictions. Where is the fun in that?

Happily this blog is liberated, self-financed and unfettered by Commons censorship.

That's why so many people read it."

Watch this well-regulated space.

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ITV's Executive Chairman, Michael Grade, was in Cardiff today to face the Assembly's Broadcasting Committee.

Would he do us a quick interview about proposed cutbacks, about whether ITV will have enough money in the future to meet the same public service commitments it has now? (The answer he gave the committee is no, by the way).

Yes, he would give us an interview.

Did we have a camera, let alone a cameraman available to film his interview?

Ummm ... cutbacks.

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• - What's this?

So who dunnit?

We know what happened to Labour councillors in Wales. We watched as the victims of May 1st's electoral rout fell - all 129 of them.

But who dunnit?

Remember Rhodri Morgan's line the very next day? That Labour was taking "a belting" in its heartlands because of wall to wall bad news about the economy, that it "has been unrelenting adverse news - no good news and an unrelenting series of adverse headlines really going back to the impact of the credit crunch suddenly hitting home".

And his advice to the Prime Minister? "

"Listen, listen, listen and just see how we need a strategy to get people to understand what it is Labour is trying to do to steer the ship of state through exceptionally choppy economic waters."

From AMs came stories of doors being closed in their faces, disillusioned former supporters turning elsewhere and a constant refrain of 10p, 10p, 10p.

So a niggling question: how come Labour did so well in Neath Port Talbot, the only authority in the UK where Labour held majority control before May the 1st and actually increased their majority? Weren't people bothered by the abolition of the 10p tax rate there?

And then another coming from worried campaigners: why hadn't Rhodri Morgan 'done enough' to counter the negative impact on the doorsteps of that other Labour leader, Gordon Brown?

And now it's Rhodri Morgan's turn to listen as the former Welsh Secretary, Peter Hain and Lynne Neagle, Labour AM for Torfaen - yes, that well known Labour marginal as Paul Murphy put it - warn that if Wales Labour don't listen, they will lose again.

Labour, says Peter Hain, is a victim of its own success in Wales. In government it's created social changes but then as a party, failed to keep up with people's aspirations. (Is he saying Labour have created a nation of Tories? Plainly he's hoping not.)

And there's more: here's a taste of what the Labour Group Chair in the Assembly, Lynne Neagle, had to tell party members in Monmouth:

"The electorate has just told us that we haven't done enough - and what we have done clearly hasn't been communicated well enough."

"The very idea that none of what happened in the local elections in Wales has ended up at the door of the Assembly is monumentally worrying - it must make us question just what kind of an impact the institution has made on the Welsh psyche?

"We control education, health, housing, community regeneration - and according to some - we've established clear red water between ourselves and an unpopular UK Labour Government.

"And yet on May 1st, the clear red blood of good Welsh Labour councillors ran thicker and faster than their counterparts in England. It is time to take some responsibility.

"It takes a strong character to ask for a discussion with the person who has just bloodied your nose - but that is what Welsh Labour must do with the electorate, starting today."

She may have a particular strong character in mind, she might not.

She may speak for some AMs though not for others.

Peter Hain may be the 'former' Welsh Secretary.

But the ball is firmly in the court of the Wales Labour leadership.

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• - What's this?

The Presiding Officer, Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, has a great fondness for blaming journalists for failing to grasp the Government of Wales Act and for insisting that the process of drawing down new powers from Westminster is going without hitch.

Any problems are in the eye of the beholder apparently.

So why has he just suggested to the Justice Committee, who have travelled to Cardiff from London to take evidence as part of their inquiry into Devolution: A Decade On, that maybe the House of Lords' Constitutional Committee might like to take over from the Welsh Affairs Select Committee the job of scrutinising requests for new powers made by the Welsh Assembly?

Why did he suggest that they might bring more 'justice' to the process?

Surely he's not suggesting that the Welsh Affairs Select Committee are having trouble doing the same or are dragging their heels - is he?

And did it have anything at all to do with this?

Now that would be one (Dafydd) El of a U-turn.

UPDATE: He's not just suggesting. On tonight's Dragon's Eye he spelled out his dissatisfaction with the Welsh Affairs Select Committee pretty forcefully. If any of its members want to post their response here ... they're more than welcome.
.

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• - What's this?

Back from London and a trip which proved that most Labour MPs have retained a sense of humour after last week's thrashing in the local elections. Overheard:

"Ah yes, Torfaen - that famous Labour marginal."

"What happens when you've got a load of mad buggers (independents) in charge? It'll be officers' play-time!"

"Rainbow? You mean rag-bag don't you?"

"How's Rhodri going to sort this mess out?"

There's a distinct feeling among some MPs over there that Labour politicians over here are laying a bit too much blame at the door of 'national' issues, that councillors who hadn't been opposed and hadn't faced an election for a decade or more had simply forgotten how to knock doors let alone make a pitch if they weren't closed in their faces, that Labour politicians over there and over here are going to have to work out pretty quickly how to manage this "miasma" and that it would be nice to hear from Rhodri Morgan how he intends to do just that.

I'm pretty sure his response yesterday was along these ines: that he planned to leave coalition deals and decisions to Labour local councillors. Democracy had done its bit and now it was up to them to make it work.

There will be some who'll expect more strategic thinking than that, perhaps some of the same 'some' who think attacking the Liberal Democrats so consistently in the run up to the local elections did little to help their cause in areas where Plaid Cymru swept up the anti-Labour vote.

57 Varieties

I wonder if they'll be cheered by the news that the Local Government Data Unit is one of 57 new bodies that the Heritage Minister, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, is planning to bring under the Welsh Language Act.

In future the Welsh Language Board will be able to order all 57 - including the Bank of England, the Olympic Delivery Authority, the Royal Mail and the British Council - to comply with the Act and produce a language scheme so that Welsh and English will be treated equally "so far as is appropriate in the circumstances and reasonably practicable". The Act simply "does what it says on the tin" we were told, which given there are 57 new varieties of bodies listed today seems just about right.

One obvious question then: where is the Welsh Language Legislative Competence Order?

March 1st has come and gone (I have the school Eisteddfod photos to prove it)

Spring has well and truly been if not gone (daffodils dead-headed)

It might not be top of the agenda over there or over here come to that but it would be nice to know Minister: where is the LCO?

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• - What's this?

Oh the irony!

Three white, besuited, middle class, (upper) middle-aged, educated, bilingual men, talking about appealing to the ordinary 'gwerin' of Wales.

Who am I talking about?

The First Minister, the Deputy First Minister and the Chair of the All Wales Convention, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, a man for whom "power" is a word of one syllable and one with which he is very much at home at that. Thank goodness for the glint in his eye.

What do they want?

The three lined up in the Senedd this morning to spread the message that they're on the look-out for four ordinary Welsh men and women, not "the usual suspects", - the body charged with sensing the nation's appetite for further devolution.

There will be sixteen members in all, four nominated by the four main political parties, eight chosen from names put forward by eight "key organisations" (think acronyms: WCVA, WLGA, CBI, TUC etc) But four seats at the table of this posh committee- or the body that will be crucial to the future governance of Wales (hint: if you're veering towards the first, it's probably not worth filling in an application form) - will be on offer to anyone who is interested enough to apply for the job and can get their application form in by May 27th.

What will your job be? To raise awareness of the powers the Assembly already has, to listen, consult, analyse, assess how much support there is for a referendum on full law-making powers and report to the Welsh Assembly Government.

And even as we sat there listening, you could almost sense the ground shifting.

What about Welsh Labour's dreadful performance on Thursday night? What about the real possibility of all three other parties having a hand in running more councils in Wales than Labour? If there is to be a referendum, will it be about Labour being able to deliver support for further devolution at all?

What about Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander's on a referendum on independence? She may be hoping to watch it being lost while giving Labour a chance of winning the next election but the "hot news" from Holyrood, as Rhodri Morgan put it, was hard to ignore. At a push he'd admit it "may not be unhelpful to have one (a referendum) going on in another part of the Celtic empire".

What about for the Conservatives? What if, come July, he recommends to David Cameron that he should pledge to hold a referendum in Wales during the first term of the next government - if he wins of course?

If you do send in an application form - good luck and enjoy the ride.

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• - What's this?

No final tally - a few recounts still going on, some wards where the election has been delayed until next month - but this is where they four main parties stand:

Labour down from 471 to 343 (- 128)

Plaid Cymru up from 177 - 204 (+ 27) and within one of their tally in '99, their best year ever - proof perhaps that statistics rarely tell the whole story?)

Conservatives: 110 - 171 (+ 61)

Liberal Democrats: 143 - 161 (+18) - despite every effort to oust them.

Independent candidates: 348 (+26) - 5 more than Labour

Others, including small parties: 26 (-2) - 8 People's Voice, 12 Llais Gwynedd among them

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• - What's this?

Through the haze I think I remember rightly that the 91Èȱ¬ graphics team plumped for grey to denote councils in No Overall Control.

On an anything-but-grey night in Wales, the map by now is inappropriately and almost exclusively grey.

Only four of Wales' twenty two councils are held outright by one party: Monmouth (Con), Vale of Glamorgan (Con), Rhondda Cynon Taf (Lab) and Neath Port Talbot (Lab).

Can't wait for the fall-out from the first meeting of the newly-christened WLGRA. (R stands for ... rainbow).

And as attention turns to London's 'Boris' and 'Ken', you may have spotted that in Wales 'Ron' (along with his fellow newly-elected independent councillors in Caerphilly) is exactly where he's wanted to be for a long time: holding the balance of power between Labour and Plaid.

And would you believe that the 91Èȱ¬'s Broadcasting House, the Royal Welsh Showground and the Senedd are now all in Lib Dem held wards.

Boy those party press officers will spin anything ..!

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• - What's this?

I've just re-read the words "Torfaen Labour loss" just to make sure.

In fact Labour didn't just lose Torfaen: they were given a good kicking there. Hands up who genuinely foresaw that 18 Labour councillors would be wiped out in Torfaen? By the sound of one ousted councillor on Radio Wales just now, not him. The mood? That he really hadn't stood a chance.

I wonder what comfort Torfaen's MP Paul Murphy, the Welsh Secretary, can offer him? You can hear his verdict when he appears on Good Morning Wales after 8 o'clock.

I've just driven back to Cardiff from the Memorial Hall in Barry. Very little had been 'occurin' until 2.30am thanks to a load of late postal votes that had to be verified. It was nip and tuck all the way until Conservative AM David Melding was spotted nodding sagely and saying his maths had the Tories on course for 24 or 25 and victory. By the time he turned out to be right, the man with his sights set on Cardiff North, Jonathan Evans had arrived to join the party. Shadow Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan popped up from nowhere: "Nothing flash" she whispered, "just steady as she goes".

I drove past a road sign declaring Merthyr Tydfil 24, Newport 14: one already in No Overall Control, the other, if Labour Deputy Minister John Griffiths is right, looking as though it might suffer the same fate.

Turn left for Fairwater. Three straight Labour losses including group leader Michael Michael.

Labour have lost control of Flintshire, Torfaen, Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil. They're down to third place in Cardiff. I don't think their roadmap had warned them it would be this bad.

Counting starts in Rhondda Cynon Taf today with Adam Price MP claiming in the early hours that Plaid will do ok in RCT and even better in Caerphilly - a Labour source dismissing those claims, made before a single vote is counted, as 'tosh'. Not in doubt is that Plaid look set to lose outright control of Gwynedd and to lose some big name councillors. As 'scalps' go, Ceredigion prospective parliamentary candidate Penri James and - apparently - party president Dafydd Iwan, count as pretty impressive ones.

As far as Labour goes Neath Port Talbot has bucked the trend and is certainly safe. It looks too as though Bridgend will return to Labour control. That may cheer them up.

But the real comfort must be that the anti-Labour protest vote has been scattered far and wide, divvied up between a bit of everyone ... which means that come the General Election, there is no sign yet of one, clear winner who'd be just waiting to teach Labour another lesson.

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• - What's this?