‘PUT PENNY ON TAX FOR EDUCATION’
PLAID Cymru leadership contender Adam Price has suggested a 1p rise in income tax so that an extra £1bn can be invested in education.
Asserting that Wales’ education system should be “as modern as anyone’s in the world”, the AM for Carmarthen East & Dinefwr said Wales was a country “crying out for new ideas”, and described the Labour Welsh Government’s brand of “weak managerialism” as “broadly mediocre at everything”, but which “fails even to achieve that”.
Writing in the Sunday Timers, Mr Price stated: “It’s time to turn this self-defeating logic on its head and instead ask ourselves what we want to be uniquely good at, and then allow that excellence to permeate everything else we do.”
While Wales “should aspire to be a good place to grow old in”, Mr Price asks why it doesn’t aim to be “the best country in Europe in which to be young”.
Investing in education, Mr Price argues, is a “down-payment on the future”. He proposes a 1p tax increase to invest more than £1bn extra in schools, colleges and universities over an Assembly term.
He goes on to state: “Diverting £150m from a flabby economy department could fund £2.5bn in capital through long-term borrowing.
“We could create innovation campuses throughout Wales – not just in Swansea’s SA1 – and new specialist units and colleges in areas of unmet skill needs like Newport’s nascent Software University – and build 21stcentury schools for everyone, not just for the lucky few.
“We could end the crisis in our education system that has driven us spiralling to the bottom of the global PISA rankings, turning teaching into a valued, high-paid, high-skilled profession once more. We could turn further education from forgotten Cinderella sector to the high-powered engine of a new European-style vocational system.
“Wales, that gave the world the first mass adult literacy programme in the 18th century, and the first comprehensive school in the 20th, could be the Knowledge Nation of the coming Machine Age.
“When Ireland in the late 1970s faced a similar fork in the road between continuing failure or alternative future, it decided to embark on a massive programme of Keynesian fiscal expansion.
“As a macroeconomic policy, it was completely misguided. But as much of the money was invested in education, it was enough to awake the crouching Celtic Tiger.
“Whether our own hidden dragon is to emerge from its slumber, and how, are the fundamental questions every would-be leader needs to answer.”
Mr Price and Ynys Mon AM Rhun ap Iorwerth are both challenging incumbent Leanne Wood for the Plaid leadership.