Wales never got on level playing field, says Hain
WALES always lags behind Northern Ireland and Scotland when it comes to the attention span of top UK politicians like the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, according to former Welsh Secretary Peter Hain.
Speaking on a BBC Radio 4 programme about the Welsh economy, Lord Hain says: “I was Secretary of State for Wales for seven years, and I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for two years, and saw consistently Northern Ireland coming first in terms of priorities, attention span on the Prime Minister and the Chancellor for a very good reason – the peace process; Scotland coming a clear second and Wales always lagging behind in third.
“It wasn’t for lack of advocacy. It was simply that the Whitehall machine prioritised those parts of the UK in that order very firmly. The Scottish element in the Cabinet, certainly under Labour, was always much stronger. Scotland had big hitters like the Chancellor, the former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.
“I’m not saying this to snipe – but I am saying that Wales never got on a level playing field.”
Outlining his concerns about the rise of right-wing economics, Lord Hain tells the programme: “I think the fashion for small government and the neoliberal economy is extremely destructive of economies such as Wales, but particularly those older industrial parts of Wales that were once the absolute motor of the Welsh economy and are now incredibly weak.”
Plaid Cymru AM and leadership candidate Adam Price initially paints a stark picture of Wales’ economic plight, saying: “In a sense, we in Wales have learned to be poor. There is this phenomenon of learned helplessness. We see around us the ravages of socio-economic disadvantage and we understand that as being our normal. And then it becomes reproduced because we have no alternative benchmark. Where are the role models, if you like, at an individual level?
“But at a much deeper level, what are the stories that we tell each other about who we are, what is success in life etc? Do I feel that I have agency, do I feel that I have the capacity to determine my own future? Or am I basically an object? Are we a community to which things are done rather than a community that does things for themselves?
“We are a vassal economy in terms of our level of poverty. We should never accept the kind of inter-generational hopelessness. There has to be a different way. The lessons of history are very clear: no country ever ruled another well.”
Mr Price is not despairing, however. He says that to understand the Welsh economy, one needs to understand two stories; the old story and the new story: “The old story is the familiar one, which is the almost mono-culture of coal and steel, and the legacy that that’s imparted.
“But the new story is there: walk around the streets of Cardiff and Swansea and you see the same kind of millennial start-up culture, the buzz that is there in advanced economies throughout the world. They actually don’t have that legacy of a lack of economic selfconfidence etc, and many of those young entrepreneurs you speak to in Wales have the attitude ‘look, anyone can make it in New York – where’s the challenge in that? I’m going to make it back home in Narberth. I’m going to go back to my home town and I’m going to make the best coffee company in the world’.”
Leading economist Professor David Blanchflower, originally from Cardiff but now working in the United States, says: “Relative income levels [in Wales] compared to the rest of the UK have deteriorated over the past 20 years or so.”
Professor Calvin Jones, of Cardiff University’s Business School, says: “On average Wales produces less wealth per worker and per capita. We are on average 20% poorer per person than the rest of the UK in terms of the value we generate. That’s a combination of fewer people working and of people working in lower value jobs.
“If you look at particular sectors, you’ve got an over-dependence on the public sector compared to the UK, you’ve got still some high value manufacturing, which is largely from foreign investors like Ford and so on, and that drives up value added.
“Then you’ve got quite a lot of jobs in, for example, white collar private services: back offices of banks, call centres which are quite low paid and then that drags the average down again.”
Presenter Sarah Dickins concludes: “Is it a big idea that Wales needs? Is that what’s been missing – something targeted, using our own assets?
“We’ve been the back office support, the assembly line of operatives for decades, and the gap in productivity between Wales and the UK has only got wider. What seems clear to me after many years of gauging the Welsh economy is that dancing to someone else’s tune doesn’t reap rewards.”
■ The Dragon Next Door was first broadcast yesterday evening but will be repeated at 5pm on Radio 4 next Sunday, August 26.