By stewartb – a long read

In December 2023, the British Labour Party’s government for Wales published its ‘Draft Budget 2024-24’. It provides the Party’s explanation for the present state of public services in Wales and the financial constraints on the government in Cardiff in its (less than successful) efforts to date to deliver much needed improvements.

(Source: https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2023-12/2024-2025-draft-budget-narrative.pdf )

Candidly, the explanation it provides would be dismissed in a Scotland context by British Labour Party politicians. It’s an explanation that in Scotland would be ignored by BBC Scotland, STV and most of the mainstream news media supposedly ‘serving’ our polity, or at best framed by them as having dubious justification or perhaps just as ‘grievance politics’.

From the British Labour Party in Wales

Below are extracts from the Foreword to the budget report written by the British Labour Party’s Minister for Finance and Local Government in the Welsh Government (with my emphasis). Note the frequent references to the negative impact of Westminster and references to other exceptional, economically impactful events way beyond Welsh Government control:

• ‘.. the way our funding settlement is structured – the majority of our funding continues to come from a block grant from the UK Government, reflecting spending decisions in devolved areas in England – means we are exposed to the full force of politically-driven decisions made in Westminster’

• ‘Over the last 13 years, successive UK governments have given us more than a decade of austerity, a botched Brexit deal and a disastrous mini budget, which almost crashed the economy. Despite our best efforts to shield public services, businesses, and the Welsh population from the worst impacts of these policies, each have individually and collectively had a significant and lasting impact on Wales’

• ‘During this period, we have also experienced the Covid-19 pandemic, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, persistently high inflation, a cost-of-living crisis, and we continue to respond to the ever-increasingly visible signs of the nature and climate emergencies’

• ‘At the Autumn Statement last month (i.e. November 2023), the Chancellor signalled a fresh round of austerity, as he chose to use his fiscal headroom to make relatively modest tax cuts and focus on short-term projects in marginal constituencies, rather than restore funding to fragile and brittle public services’

• ‘The choices he (the Westminster government’s Chancellor) made have short-term consequences on the decisions we can take in Wales in this budget round, and they will have longer-term consequences across the UK as public services once again face deep and damaging cuts because they have been deprived of real investment’

• ‘For the second year in a row, our funding settlement is not sufficient to respond to the extraordinary pressures Wales faces, including persistently high inflation, the cost-of-living pressures people and businesses continue to experience, unfunded public sector pay rises or to recognise rising demand for services’

• ‘This is the final year in the three-year Spending Review period; a final year in which there was less funding available to meet all our statutory commitments, let alone our priorities and ambitious Programme for Government. But following the UK Autumn Statement, our budget is now worth £1.3bn less in real terms than when it was set in 2021’

• ‘In making this Draft Budget, we have had to take incredibly difficult decisions – the starkest and most painful since devolution. This has not been a typical year, where we have had an abundance of positive choices to make about where we can target increased and additional investment.

The Minister goes on to explain: ‘we have taken the decision to refocus some spending away from non-devolved areas, which the UK Government should be funding – these are areas where we have previously stepped in to make up the shortfall’.

Then from Annex A of the budget report entitled ‘Strategic Integrated Impact Assessment’:

• ‘Over the last 13 years, we have experienced some very challenging fiscal and economic times, which have resulted in a real terms reduction in our budgets from 2010 onwards’

• ‘This decade of fiscal constraint, which includes austerity, the impacts of the UK leaving the EU, the subsequent global pandemic, increasing impacts of climate change and cost-of-living crisis and associated inflationary pressures linked to the war in Ukraine, has left public services incredibly vulnerable to further shocks, despite everything we have done to protect them from the worst impacts. Our budget continues to be impacted by the withdrawal of EU funding from Wales.’

• ‘The reality is that our budget settlement is not sufficient to recognise all these impacts. The 2024- 25 Draft Budget has presented the most stark and painful budget choices for Wales in the devolution era.’ And: ‘If our budget had kept pace with the growth in the economy since 2010, we would have had an additional £3bn to spend on public services and support for people and businesses in Wales in 2024-25. Instead, we are facing a real terms reduction.’

Specifically on public services, the British Labour Party government in Wales states: ‘As our Budget is under such extreme pressure, we will need to carefully consider whether additional funding can – and should – be raised by increasing charges for a range of services while we continue to ensure we protect those who are least able to afford higher charges.’ And adds: ‘People in Wales already pay charges for a range of services, including NHS dental care, domiciliary care and tuition fees – in most cases these are set at a level lower than in England and a range of exemptions are available for people on low incomes and for those on benefits. If we decide to increase charges, proposals will be brought forward for consultation.’

It will be ‘interesting’ to check the British Labour Party in Wales’ language on the impact of Westminster in the aftermath of the upcoming budget of the British Labour Party now governing the UK.

From the British Labour Party in Scotland –  coming from a parallel universe?

On 19 December 2023 when the Scottish Government’s draft budget for 2024-25 was tabled in Holyrood, the BBC News website reported this from the British Labour Party’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar: “No ideas, no vision, just more managed decline from a tired and out of touch SNP Government. And stating: ”Instead, we have incompetence, waste and a failure to grow the economy.” 

These remarks were reported – and thus amplified – uncritically. Of course there was no comparison, no contrast with the expressed views of the British Labour Party’s government in Wales!

Questions

Every time a British Labour Party politician in Scotland makes negative remarks about the performance of the Scottish Government, the state of public services or the economy in Scotland, it’s worth asking the question: ‘what is the situation in Wales where the British Labour Party has been in government since the beginning of devolution?’ 

Every time leading politicians from the British Labour Party in Scotland ask for your vote in the Holyrood election in 2026 – because their’s is the political party which (allegedly) offers the policies and the competence that Scotland needs and wants – it’s worth asking the question: ‘what is the British Labour Party’s track record in Wales governing with just devolved powers?’

For the avoidance of doubt, I have no wish to engage in talking down Wales. My only objective is to contribute to exposing the hypocrisy of the British Labour Party leadership’s pitch to Scotland’s voters, something being enabled by a complicit Unionist media.

End note

For further insights into the track record of the British Labour Party in Wales – the same Party that wishes to govern in Scotland from 2026 – read on:

On education and support for young people: a recent report by the authoritative and independent (according to the BBC!) Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) concludes: ‘‘.. there is a great deal of evidence showing that Welsh young people experience worse educational and labour market outcomes after leaving school than young people in the rest of the UK”.

For fuller details of the IFS research see: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2024/10/01/no-bbc-scotland-report-allows-comparative-analysis-of-matters-across-the-nations-of-the-uk-unless/

The IFS findings are especially telling given this from the British Labour Party’s house magazine in Scotland, the Daily Record on 26 September 2024: ‘Time for poor to see their rewards as Sarwar aims focus on ‘forgotten 60 per cent’ – Record View says the Scottish Labour leader’s focus on the “forgotten 60 per cent” of youngsters who do not go to university should be welcomed.’  The IFS report paints a rather different picture of what the British Labour Party in a government with restricted, devolved powers achieves based on this evidence on the Party’s track record in Wales.

On the NHS: as one example,in a recent press release the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) stated: ‘New data released today, Thursday 19 September 2024, by the Welsh Government also revealed that last month was the second worst August for Emergency Department performance since records began in 2012, for patients experiencing extremely long waits. Almost a quarter of people (23.6%) waited eight hours or longer, and more than one in 10 (14.5%) waited 12 hours or longer in a Welsh ED last month.’

It added: ’In the last seven years, the number of people waiting 12 hours or longer has more than quadrupled, despite attendance being 3.5% lower than in 2017.’

(See https://rcem.ac.uk/long-emergency-department-waits-causing-real-harm-in-wales/ ):

And also from the RCEM, the graph below plots long A&E waiting times in Wales compared to other UK nations based on official data since January 2018. You will note that the percentage of attendances (of patients) experiencing 12 hour ‘waits’ in NHS Scotland has been substantially lower than in any other UK nation for years! (For emphasis, the blue arrow added to the RCEM graph points to the data plot for Wales, the green to Scotland’s.)

On poverty, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) report entitled ‘UK Poverty 2024 – The essential guide to understanding poverty in the UK’ has this:

UK context: ‘It has been 20 years since we last saw a sustained fall in poverty in the

UK. Even then, the rapid rise in poverty seen in the 1980s had barely been reversed’ and ‘In short, poverty in the UK is deepening. The deeper we look, the faster it is rising’

On inadequacy of UK social security: ‘Yet over the past decade, social security has fallen increasingly short, with the real-terms value of payments reaching a 40-year low at the same time inflation hit a 40-year high, pushing people deeper into financial hardship.’

Similarities across Great Britain: ‘In the latest data, the average poverty rates in England (22%), Wales (22%) and Scotland (21%) had converged to around the same level,’

But also important differences: ‘Child poverty rates in Scotland (24%) remain much lower than those in England (31%) and Wales (28%) and are similar (if slightly higher) than in Northern Ireland (22%). This is likely to be due, at least in part, to the Scottish Child Payment. This highlights the effect benefits can have in reducing poverty.’

(Source https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2024-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-poverty-in-the-uk ):

One could go on in a similar vein. Perhaps we should – and more systematically?  Anything and everything to awaken the electorate in Scotland to the duplicitous ways of the British Labour Party before the 2026 Holyrood election.