The cuts are on their way

In the last few weeks it has become clear that big cuts are coming our way. The new coalition Government in Westminster has laid out its plans to reduce the spending deficit by £6.2 billion this year alone. By their own admission, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Public sector pensions, which have historically balanced out the lower wages of workers when compared to their counterparts in the private sector, are now in the firing line.

Following Chancellor George Gideon Osbourne’s initial announcement of cuts, it has been calculated that £162.5m will be slashed from the Welsh budget. We have ‘generously’ been given the option of deferring the cuts from this year only to store up double budgetary pain next year. Some choice.

There is no doubt that in Wales, where a high proportion of workers are employed in the public sector, these austerity measures are going to bite hard. Plaid Cymru has maintained that it is wrong to force those on the lowest incomes and those who depend on public services to pay the price for the deficit, which has largely been caused by the tax-payer funded bail-out of the banks. What is more, it does not make economic sense in the long run.

We have recently heard how the cuts will be affecting Companies’ House which employs hundreds of people at locations in Cardiff and Nantgarw in Rhondda Cynon Taf. This UK Government department has been told that it must find savings of 11% in this financial year. We all hope that the workers there can avoid compulsory redundancies. The proposed pay freeze, which will hopefully stave off enforced job losses, will nevertheless hurt hundreds of employees living in South Wales. The closure of the site in Nantgarw, where 250 people are currently based, will also be a bitter blow for the local economy of the valleys. Surrounding businesses will no doubt be hit hard by the loss of the spending power of so many staff.

The Con/Dem Coalition has set its course and seems to have made up its mind to target us all. Public bodies and institutions should be looking to achieve savings in the upper echelons of their organisations, involving their workforce in the process of identifying where savings can be made. I'm sure the lower paid workers in Rhondda Cynon Taf would have a view as to whether the Jaguar car used to transport the mayor to Stansted airport or to Brighton for an awards ceremony and fish supper was money well spent.

Universities are also going to feel the squeeze. Will we see admin workers made redundant or courses scrapped while the bill for consultancy fees and Vice Chancellors pay keeps rising? Investigations by my office revealed that Cardiff University’s bill for consultants topped £3m in just three years. This was on top of a £1.5m bill for agency workers at a university where the Vice Chancellor collects £275,000 per annum.

The next few years are going to be painful enough without frittering money away on extortionate salaries, consultants and expensive cars.

Broken promises and the lust for power

Plaid may not have increased our number of MPs at this election, but it was good to see significant gains made in the Rhondda and next door in Cynon. The two constituencies saw significant swings to Plaid and cuts to the Labour majority. We saw our vote improve in many other valleys seats too.

The results show that in Wales people did not embrace the Tories, despite the instructions from the London papers. UK-wide, they failed to secure the majority they needed to form a government. Despite this lack of public confidence, we have ended up with an old Etonian at number 10 due, in part, to the opportunism of the Liberal Democrats who ditched their principles in their lust for power.

All this will make for interesting Assembly elections next year. In the first post-election debate at the Senedd, Kirsty Williams and her party colleagues were noticeably squirming about the policies they’ve had to ditch for this deal. Despite warning of the dangers of Tory public sector cuts before May 6, Liberal Democrat AMs will now have to remain silent while we take slash and burn cuts which they will no doubt try to spin as 'efficiency savings'.

Plaid Cymru has calculated that cuts of £220 million will be made to the Assembly budget this year alone, despite previous assurances from Tories that the Welsh budget would be protected for 12 months under their government. If we don’t see those cuts this year, we expect them to be doubled next year.

Grass roots Liberal Democrats must be left wondering if selling out on cuts and PR for a handful of cabinet seats is worth it. Disgruntled left-leaning Liberal Democrats have been invited to switch their allegiance to Plaid.

As for Labour, their scaremongering tactics which aimed to get people to vote for Labour in order to keep the Tories out, turned out to be rubbish. When they had an opportunity to stop Cameron and his cronies by forming a 'progressive alliance', they blew it. They must therefore take a share of the blame for what happens over the next five years.

I only hope that people remember that the election promises of Labour and Liberal Democrats were broken so, so quickly.

Camer Chameleon

Beneath the shiny exterior, honed and buffed up by the slickest PR machine money can buy, the true colours of the modern Tory party have been exposed. During the course of an interview by Jeremy Paxman, David Cameron let his guard slip by admitting he would make deeper cuts where public spending is higher, referring to Northern Ireland and the North East of England.

He said:

"In Northern Ireland it is quite clear – and almost every party accepts this –that the size of the state has got too big.

"We need a bigger private sector. There are other parts of the country, including in the north-east. The aim has got to be to get the private sector, to get the commercial sector going.”

We can only imagine what will happen to our public services should the Tories take power given they have signalled a crack-down in areas of need. Tens of thousands of jobs are likely to go, all in the name of ‘efficiency savings,’ with little regard for the social consequences.

What is frightening is that the Tory cuts are inevitably going to be even bigger than those implemented by Labour should they somehow cling onto power. Research carried out by Eurfyl ap Gwilym, and the prospective parliamentary candidate for Carmarthen East, Jonathan Edwards, suggests 45,000 public sector jobs will be lost in Wales based on the latest statements made by the Labour Party. This is the equivalent of 50 Bosch factories closing. Horrific.

Four independent reports have concluded that under the current funding system, Wales receives at least £300 million less every year than we should be getting. Without reform of this system - which is not on the agenda of the Tory, Liberal or Labour's agendas. A slash and burn approach to the public sector will be a double whammy for Wales.

Those of us of a certain age can't help remembering Thatcher and the swingeing cuts that devastated too may many communities, particularly here in the valleys. The only difference between now and then is that Thatcher didn't try and dress up her elitist brand of capitalism as something it wasn’t. Yes, she was heartless, but she did little to disguise it.

Cameron, on the other hand, could be argued to be a more dangerous beast. For all his talk of a ‘big society’ and ‘protecting the NHS,’ things will be very different should he gain power. George Osbourne, who has remained tight-lipped on his talk of an “age of austerity” after it proved to be unpalatable with the electorate last autumn, has already prepared the ground for an abrupt change of direction. In what is certain to be welcomed by his party’s non-dom paymasters, Osbourne has stated he would be calling an emergency budget 60 days after moving into number 11 Downing Street. This will allow him to sweep aside all the pre-election party promises with a simple ‘ah, but we didn’t know how bad the position was until we saw the books.’ It is so predictable.

I only hope those who value public services and believe jobs should be protected, can see the political chameleon that is the modern day Tory party, and are not blinded by the air-brush. Plaid Cymru has pledged to ensure that the most vulnerable do not bear the brunt of the cuts. If Wales had fairer funding we’d be getting at least £300million extra per year and that would safeguard up to 9,000 jobs in the public sector. It wouldn't be enough to close the gap, but it would help.

There is consensus between the big thee parties that cuts will be made to the welfare state. All will deliver severe cuts in health and education and to public sector jobs. Our MPs, in their Celtic bloc with the SNP, could hold the crucial balance of power in the event of a hung or balanced parliament, which is looking increasingly likely by the day. In this scenario, we would make sure the best possible deal for Wales is put on the table before reaching any agreement. What other political party can be trusted to do that?

Plaid Manifesto 2010

I attended the successful Plaid Cymru manifesto launch at the Wales Millennium Centre this week, where we outlined the principles our party stands for in our bid to re-elect a record number of MPs to Parliament.

The trio of Elfyn Llwyd, Adam Price and Hywel Williams has garnered a reputation among political commentators with no axe to grind for punching above their weight. The Celtic bloc with the SNP, could place Plaid Cymru in a position to secure major concessions for Wales if the election result is balanced, as many of the polls are predicting.

One of the core principles underpinning many of our seven priorities is our call to protect the most vulnerable in society against the coming cuts. Plaid believes that people on the lowest incomes should not be made to pay for the mistakes of the banking elite, who are largely to blame for putting the UK’s finances in the red by their greed for profits.

We have called for frontline health and education budgets to be protected and the unfair Barnett funding formula, which short changes Wales by over £300 million every single year, to be reformed.

We have also called for a living pension to be introduced so that pensioners are not forced to choose between heating and eating. Starting with the over 80s, we have costed the raising of a single person’s pension to £130 a week and a couple’s pension to £202 a week.

The Environmental Action Plan aims to tackle and prepare for the effects of climate change, an issue which must be at the fore for any responsible government. We want to stimulate a green revolution in our economy which will ensure much-needed investment in community-based farming and small scale manufacturing.

Having been unjustly sidelined by the BBC during the scheduling of the televised election debates, I was glad to see good attendance from the various media outlets, both national and UK-wide. Early signs are that the London-based media is devoting more time to political issues in Wales and while the coverage is not as extensive as it should be, it is a step in the right direction. With many people in Wales relying upon London-based papers or news bulletins for their election information, this enhanced coverage is crucial. Without it, people risk being misinformed. Debates about health or education policy at a UK level rarely have any relevance here in Wales, but people are given the impression that they can vote on those issues in this election, when in Wales and Scotland they can't.

There is an alternative to the cuts agenda of the three main UK political parties and Plaid’s parliamentary candidates are prepared to fight for the interests of the working class - even if it means taking on big business and greedy bankers.

From the record: Cuts

From the Assembly's Record of Proceedings, 20th January 2010, questions to Jane hutt, minister for Business and Budget

Leanne Wood: I have recently been in contact with the chancellor of the University of Glamorgan, who has expressed concerns about funding. We are aware that it has had to make efficiency savings in this year’s budget, and I have been informed that the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales has asked it to identify savings of a further 10 per cent for the financial year 2011-12. There are fears that staff could be made redundant if cuts of this magnitude go ahead.

Furthermore, I met with representatives of the National Probation Service recently and there is to be a potential 20 per cent cut in the probation service’s budget over the next three years. Although I accept that the probation service is not a devolved matter, this cut will have an impact on many people in our communities in Wales. Rather than risk reducing such vital services to breaking point, will you agree to make the case as forcefully as possible to the Chancellor for the scrapping of Trident and identity cards, because they are socially useless and expensive projects that the public sector cannot afford at this time?

We're all in this together

No major surprises from the Tory conference. If elected, a Tory government will freeze the pay of low-paid public sector workers, slash tax credits, extend the retirement age and introduce tax breaks for private schools. Yet the rich will be left hardly touched.

In the Netherlands, a cap on bankers' bonuses has been introduced. Under the Tories, the bankers will be let off scot-free. As Paul O'Shea from UNISON Cymru has said today:


"Yet again they (the Tories) are aiming to look after the wealthy, while low-paid public sector workers and those members of the public that depend upon public services pay the price for the bankers' greed."


Quite.

Save Cardiff University's Lifelong Learning

Cardiff University has announced a proposal to close most of the subject areas in one of its oldest and most respected departments. Cardiff Centre for Life Long Learning provides the opportunity for students of all ages and backgrounds to access higher education irrespective of any previous qualifications. The centre currently runs hundreds of evening and weekend classes in a variety of subjects in both Cardiff and across the whole of South East Wales; from Brecon in the north, Porthcawl in the west and as far as Caldicot and Monmouth in the east. If the proposal is implemented then this will radically reduce the Centre, scrapping its entire humanities provision, this includes literature, history, archaeology, music, creative writing, philosophy, art history, religion, photography and Welsh.

A campaign group has been set up and a protest has been organised for the 27th July, the day the University Council meets to decide whether or not to go ahead with the cuts. I spoke at a campaign meeting this week and agreed to support their alternative plan which involves a stay of execution for a year. They have a compelling case - demand for their courses is expected to increase during the recession. A facebook group has been set up, giving information about things people can do to help with the campaign.

Treherbert pool under occupation

Today I've been supporting campaigners in their last ditch attempt to save Treherbert pool. The council decided to close the pool without consultation in order to save money. Campaigners have formed a committee and are prepared to manage it themselves. With help from the Wales Co-operative Centre, they have prepared a business plan which the council has agreed to look at. But they needed a stay of execution. That request was refused.

The pool will now be "mothballed", with the council saying it can be re-opened if the budget situation improves. No-one expects to see budget increases in the short term.

Today was the pool's last day. A small group of us refused to leave at closing time, and one person is still in there.

Treherbert is a Communities First ward, which means it gets additional money to reduce deprivation levels. Treherbert has recently lost two post offices, allotments, the disabled riding school and the park ranger. Communitites First wards are meant to have extra facilities - they shouldn't be losing amenities. The kids will have too far to travel to exercise their right to free swimming, meaning the health statistics for the area can only get worse.

People in Treherbert are left wondering what they will lose next. There are already rumours about the youth centre and people are fearful for the future of the local library.

The upper Rhondda Fawr is within the Heads of the Valleys Regeneration area. How can losing the pool help with regeneration?