Childcare and welfare reform

Yesterday I was thinking about what to say at a conference on Thursday about welfare reform in Wales (see the Bevan Foundation website for details) when one of my children gave me a leaflet about local childcare over the summer holidays. Good news - there are two venues which will offer child care. But on closer reading, not so good - the centres are only open from 9 til 5, they close on 22nd August, and they are only available for over 8s. On top of that, both venues are outside the town centre, meaning two bus rides if you don't live in the neighbourhood.

So, if you work anything more than 9.30 til 4.30 - and let's face it most people do, if you need to work between 23rd August and 3rd September when the kids go back to school, or have any children under 8, you may as well give up any ideas about working because there is nothing there for you.

This abysmal state of affairs is in one of the 'inactivity hotspots' where there were more than 2,000 lone parents in 2001, a high proportion of whom are not working. Lone parents are one of the key targets of the government's welfare reforms, with parents of over 10s being switched to Jobseekers' Allowance this autumn and threatened with loss of benefits if they don't find work. But what parent - lone or otherwise - will risk looking for a job without some assurance of childcare for the summer holidays?

Getting people off benefit needs more than threats - it needs the right social set up to support people which includes that cinderella of services, childcare. Without it, welfare reform - and efforts to combat child poverty - are doomed to fail.

In Scandinavia, good maternity provision and then good childcare, is the norm and enables men and women to work on equal terms. The Bevan Foundation called for free, universal childcare back in 2005, only to be pooh poohed.

What more does it take to get the Welsh Assembly Government to wake up to this problem?

Jobs Crunch in Wales

According to the Royal Bank of Scotland's review of the economy in Wales, jobs have been shed from the private sector at a record rate, with only the East Midlands losing a larger proportion. It's not clear from the report why this is the case - but Wales has long been vulnerable to tough economic times. I suspect that as well as the continuing contraction of manufacturing jobs in the bottom end of financial services are also on the way out as well.

So, what do we have from the Welsh Assembly Government to meet these challenges? Do we have an up to date long term strategy focused on achieving growth and jobs. Er, no. Do we have a strategy for protecting and enhancing what's left of our manufacturing. Not yet. And do we have a statement on how the Assembly government is responding in these straightened times? Must've missed it.

Instead we have a conslutation paper issued two and a half years ago. Full stop. Come on Ieuan Wyn Jones - what is the problem?

Link to the RBS report - http://www.rbs.com/content/economic/downloads/pmi/wales.pdf

Rout out the racists

Well done to the Conservative party for dealing swiftly with racist comments, first, by Alan Cairns (which didn't make the BBC UK news) and then by one of Boris Johnson's special advisers (which did).

And, yes, this is a pro-Tory comment on the Bevan Foundation blog please note.

These kinds of comments are not just casual slips of the tongue, nor even someone not quite getting the politically correct phraseology right, but reveal a deep-rooted contempt for people different from the White British norm. These comments are unacceptable, who ever says them, in which ever party (or none) and should be dealt with accordingly.

What is interesting, however, is whether the Conservative Party, which holds British nationhood so close to its heart, really is capable of developing a multi-racial way of thinking or whether those foolish enough to have loose tongues will be dealt with whilst the rest who want to 'send them home' carry on in private.

Rights and Freedoms

How much do you value your rights and freedoms?In resigning his seat and forcing a by-election, that's the question David Davis has been asking us over the past week. Regardless of whether this was the best way to do it, it is a pertinent question and one which needs to be answered.Unlock Democracy, and Charter 88 before it, have spent 20 years campaigning for democracy, rights and freedoms.

As a former Welsh representative on the board of Charter 88 this is a cause very close to my heart. Gordon Brown's plans to extend the amount of time individuals can be detained by the state without charge to 42 days, should not be dismissed out of hand ,my problem is with the way he is going about it. This policy was not mentioned in Labour's manifesto. In the face of a backbench rebellion, the government only got this legislation through the House of Commons by the slimmest of margins. Now they could bypass the House of Lords completely through use of the Parliament Act.No country that prides itself on being a democracy should be able to abolish fundamental human rights without cross-party consensus. No responsible government should seek to do so in the first place.So I agree with David Davis that the time has come to draw a line in the sand, his method is another discussion. Fundamental to that is to make the case for a Bill of Rights and, ultimately, a written constitution to limit the powers of the state. This is long long overdue

Who cares about children in care?

I've been very busy recently hence the lack of posts. One of the things I have been doing is looking at policy on children in Wales. In amongst all the fuss about sugar pills, alcohol abuse by 13 year olds and hoodie crime, I have come across some truly appalling statistics about children who are in care - otherwise known as 'looked after'.

In March 2006 nearly FIVE THOUSAND children were looked after by local authorities, mainly in foster care. Foster care may give some children a secure home but a staggering 13 per cent of children had more than three foster care placements a year. Hardly surprisingly, the effects of being 'looked after' on children are not good. They suffer poorer health and by the age of 16 less than half had at least one GCSE or GNVQ. By the age of 19, only only 40 per cent were in education, training or employment.

These are children who are already vulnerable and damaged in some way - otherwise they wouldn't be in care in the first place. Not only do they deserve much much better than this, but we are surely stacking up problems for the future by failing to give them the care they need.

I don't expect this will generate lots of comments - social policy issues rarely do - but at least I have said my piece.

Running on empty?

The head of one of the World's biggest oil companies has stuck his neck out to warn that oil prices could double again before we know it

In today's Independent the head of the Russian state energy firm Gazprom said we can expect £2-per-litre petrol. It is hard to see how this won't lead to a global slump.

Arguments about cutting fuel tax entirely miss the point as it would take a significant drop in fuel duty simply to keep up with the rising price of oil.

Ten years ago a barrel of the black stuff was trading at $13 a barrel. Five years ago it had doubled to $25. It hit nearly $140 last week.

The real issue is how do we make our economy resilient to oil shocks.

It is not just the price of petrol that is affected. Our economy is heavily dependent on oil. The price of gas and the price of steel are all closely linked to it – so the cost of building and heating homes is going up. The cost of building roads is set to rocket - the price of Tarmac has alone is up by 25%

And we all know from our weekly shop the price of food has risen sharply. It is closely linked to the rising price of fertiliser and animal feed – all of which rely on oil for their production. And of course there’s the cost of moving goods around.

Around 95% of our transport system is dependent on oil. We’ve been used to fuel costing the same as mineral water and we have designed our towns and cities around the assumption that we can all hop in the car.

But not everyone can. As I point out in today's Western Mail, in communities like Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr, where 35% of families are car-less, many low-income families feel forced to “invest” in a car to access jobs and services. And as the cost of petrol goes up it will be the families on tight budgets that are hit the hardest.

We've got to shift our transport system away from oil dependence. People can dismiss the need to respond to the challenge of climate change because it is an issue for tomorrow, but oil is an issue for today

You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours in academia

According to a report in Saturday's Guardian (link below) the quality of academics' output is to be evaluated using a fantastic new sophisticated system - the number of times they quote each other's work. Yup, this counting of how many times one person's article in a learned journal mentions their mates (Havinalaff 2006, Swindle 2004 etc) is the product of the UK's finest minds. On the basis of this highly sensitive, totally uncorruptable method, billions of pounds of public money will be allocated.

(The fact that their articles - paid for by public money - are published in journals that then require a subscription costing several hundred pounds so that ordinary people can't read them is another irritant but I'll save that for another day. And of course they'll be all the more unreadable because of the stream of citations (Heresy 2005)).

Is this seriously the only way that academics can assess the quality of research work? Ahem, what about things like - impact on society's well being, contribution to human knowledge?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/08/education.highereducation

A Song for Wales?

This post has been delayed by technical gremlins but is a matter of national importance ... the UK has come last again in Eurovision and even Sir Terry has threatened to resign when the musical equivalent of the Warsaw Pact saw a Russian victory. But before we launch a vocal cold war I have a solution ... an Independent Wales! I'm not normally a proponent of breaking up the United Kingdom but this is serious. This wouldn't just mean a song for Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland but if Andorra or Monaco can have an entry then why not the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands and I think a strong case could be made for the Isle of Wight ... Bardsey Island might be pushing it a bit though. Although if we could repopulate it with monks gregorian chanting is quite popular at the moment.



There is of course the small problem of whether the disaggregated components of the UK would actually vote for each other but if the countries formally known as Yugoslavia can manage it why not us? And we don't even need a referendum ... this is just the sort of thing the Assembly's petition committee should be considering. And all I need are nine of you to sign my petition ...

Bottom again Wales must do better

Its official we in Wales have the lowest economic growth rate in the UK during the Tony Blair decade that began in 1997. Official UK Government figures included in a report on competitiveness in Northern Ireland place Wales at the bottom of the economic performance league behind all other 11 UK regions. The table is headed by London, followed by the south-east of England. Northern Ireland is in third position and Scotland is seventh.
All the efforts to get people back to work, have only resulted in many of the new jobs created being low paid, and are not producing enough added value to the economy.
We are just not performing as well as we should in the education stakes either – it’s clear Wales is under-performing in comparison with England and many other countries. Every year we are told exam results are improving, but what matters is how they compare with what is being achieved in other countries. In the business sphere there is a sense that that a lot of vocational courses taught in further education colleges do not reflect the needs of the jobs to be filled in the Welsh labour market. The two sides need to communicate more perhaps.
Dylan Jones Evans has been banging the drum for more spend on science and technology: we are way behind Scotland and Ireland on that front.
The support for new business and growth business has been revised and there appears to be less not more for this important sector to create new jobs at local level, this despite the nice words coming from WAG around business support.
We have to look at our economic policy in Wales over the last decade ,look at who has been advising , look at what has worked and what hasn't and if these advisers are not cutting the mustard , then we have to listen to those who can.
We need a larger private sector, that's obvious , that's where jobs and wealth creation are birthed. We are far too reliant on public sector jobs . The first step towards generating wealth, improving skills, encouraging entrepreneurship, and fostering greater competitiveness is to engage with the business community. This is a priority and needs to be more than a cursory meeting of the Business Partnership Council ,CBI and FSB.
The priority needs to be not just in WAG but also at local government level. More needs to be invested in economic development If you look at the departments across Wales you find that these departments are often the Cinderellas.
If we want prosperity we have to up skill our workforce, develop our SME sectors, encourage business including social enterprise and may be focus the government on action rather than debate on referendums and expenses.