Exclusive: Damning leaked Welsh Gov report

The last week has underscored many of the short comings in how Wales is governed

Good morning!

When you spend half of your life reading Welsh Government statements or listening to their politicians you can find yourself, sometimes, feeling sorry for them. After all, they have had to absorb some brutal cuts over the last decade.

But then you have a week like this. A week where it is made abundantly clear, time and again, that despite being dealt a bad hand, they continue to fall short of the standard and drive that we should expect from our elected representatives.

To illustrate this I am going to talk you through an internal Welsh Gov report that was leaked to me. It is my view that this confirms the outside perception that, while the fiscal situation is extremely challenging, they are utterly failing when it comes to basic management. Their stewardship of Cymru has become so short term in outlook that perpetual underperforming services and firefighting crisis after crisis is inevitable.

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Before I get to the leaked report, I want to address both the situation with the job losses at Cardiff University and the bizarre situation where the Welsh Government is taking a Welsh council to court.

Cardiff Uni cuts - It’s not like we need any nurses anyway right…?

The proposed 400 job cuts at Cardiff Uni have been covered extensively but I think what hasn’t got the attention it deserves is the Welsh Government’s attempt to abdicate responsibility over this.

Let’s just focus on the proposed removal of the nursing course (though loss in the other areas is also clearly devastating for Wales).

Here are some numbers:

• There are 800 to 1,000 students in the Cardiff Uni nursing school.

• There are 2,000 nursing vacancies in Wales.

• The Cardiff course is the #1 ranked nursing course in Wales and #5 in the whole of the UK.

One of the challenges Welsh health boards face is attracting staff to come and work in Wales. This is a particular issue in rural Wales and at Betsi Cadwaladr in the North. When people study in a place, there is a pretty decent chance they will stick around after university.

I know six people who studied nursing at Cardiff. Four of them were from England. 10 years on from graduating, five of the six are still working in the Welsh NHS.

You can make a strong argument that a shortage in a profession as vital as nursing is a national security threat. Especially given our aging population, long waiting lists and the ever present threat of pandemics.

Given that it is devolved, it begs the question what has been the Welsh Government's response to this crisis in higher education? Well it has been two fold:

1. To start with they were seemingly utterly blindsided by it despite other Welsh unis making redundancies and repeated warnings about the perilous state of HE institutions by economists like Professor Dylan Jones-Evans.

2. Once the proposed cuts were announced they did everything they could to distance themselves from the problem and deflect responsibility for solving it.

Barely anyone has come forward for an interview on the issue and when the minister for further and higher education, Vikki Howells, appeared in the Senedd it was an exhibition of the finest buck passing.

The Welsh Government have been seemingly blindsided by the Cardiff Uni announcement (Copyright: Senedd Cymru)

Over and over again she responded to questions saying that “universities are autonomous of the Government”.

That’s true but as BBC journo James Williams pointed out on his podcast, “so is Tata Steel in Port Talbot”, and yet the Welsh Government never missed a second telling the UK Government that they needed to intervene there (until of course Labour were in charge of the UK Government and then the plan made by the Tories was apparently good enough).

If you want to get a flavour for Ms Howells appearance in the Senedd watch this video:

She said:

“I am confident that the Welsh Government is supporting the sector as much as we possibly can. You’ll be aware, of course, that higher education institutions are autonomous and that 90 per cent of their funding comes from outside of Government.”

Really? You are supporting them “as much as possible”? You have left no stone unturned in helping them? The lack of taking responsibility is astounding and only compounded when she was pushed on financial support for universities. Her response was to call for the UK Government to conduct a review. She said:

“I'd like to place on record in this Chamber this afternoon that we need to see a review of how the HE sector is funded across the UK as a whole.

“I understand that some work is ongoing in the UK Government, and I expect the Welsh Government to have the opportunity to contribute to this review so that any findings are relevant to the needs of Wales, which will of course always be my primary concern.”

Oh for crying out loud. These jobs and vital training places are at risk of going right now. The UK Government clearly has no appetite for tackling the problems for unis in England let alone Wales. To call for that review by someone else and think that it is enough is a dereliction of duty. They are the custodians of Wales, they must do more.

Now don’t get me wrong, in an ideal world, any review of HE would indeed cover England and Wales because HE institutions on both sides of the border are facing similar issues like changes to visa rules, the impact of Brexit and the student finances rules set in London. Not to mention the fact they are very interconnected.

But this isn’t an ideal world and Welsh Labour clearly have next to no influence with their Westminster colleagues to drive the changes

Therefore it is the duty of the Welsh Labour Government to step up and do all they can to help the sector in Wales. Barely a day goes by when Welsh Labour doesn’t call for more powers to be devolved, but when there is an issue in an area which is already devolved they call on the UK Government to do more. It is infuriating.

Finally, it is important to note that though Cardiff grabs the headlines, almost every uni in Wales is facing the same challenges. This is a Wales issue, not a Cardiff issue.

Why is the Welsh Government spending public money taking councillors to court?

While the Welsh Government can’t seem to muster the energy to vehemently defend Welsh Universities they have found the time and energy to repeatedly take a group of Welsh councillors to court at the taxpayers expense.

This story is absolutely astounding and is a testament to the importance of local democracy.

Let me explain a long story very quickly:

• A a local development plan (LDP) is a document created by local councils outlining how a particular council area is expected to develop in the future. It often outlines future areas for housing.

• Wrexham Council put forward an LDP.

• A majority of councillors twice voted against it because it meant building two “super estates” amounting to 3k homes on greenfield land.

• While the councillors acknowledged the need for more houses they said that, given that the vast majority (91%) of these houses are not “affordable” homes, the plan wasn’t appropriate (plus there are 1600 empty properties in the borough).

• The councillors were then taken to court by the Welsh Government, seven major housing developers and Wrexham Council.

• A judicial review found that the councillors WERE obliged to vote for an LDP. The councillors feared they were at risk of breaking the law if they still opposed the plans.

• But unperturbed, Cllr Marc Jones (on behalf of the councillors who opposed the LDP) took the case to the Court of Appeal.

• They only bloody went and won! Three judges unanimously agreed that an order that councillors MUST vote for the Local Development Plan was unlawful and should be quashed.

Since then, Wrexham Council has announced it will not contest the court’s decision after taking legal advice, and it also appears that the developers have decided not to appeal.

However the Welsh Gov have refused to throw in the towel. Instead they have applied to the Supreme Court to appeal a Court of Appeal decision.

In my view it is inescapably undemocratic to force elected councillors to adopt a plan. They were elected to scrutinise and make decisions on behalf of their constituents.

In a statement the councillors said:

“Who in the Welsh Government has authorised this fresh appeal? Which government minister approved it at a time when they should have a laser-like focus on sorting out the NHS, reducing child poverty and pensioners left out in the cold?

“Our case is simple - we want a plan that meets the needs of Wrexham. We don’t agree with the plan inspectors want to impose on us and we have the right to reject it. That was the Court of Appeal’s clear ruling.

“The Welsh Government has sided with the developers not local democracy at every step of the way. Why?”

I went to the Welsh Gov and asked them why they were continuing with this legal challenge and how much public money they had spent on it. They replied:

“Ministers have applied to the Supreme Court for permission to appeal the Court of Appeal’s judgment. As this is ongoing litigation, we cannot comment further.”

If councillors are forced to vote for something that they don’t agree with, it very much begs the question of what the point of them is at all?

A damning leaked report

Over the years I have had several “strictly confidential” government reports leaked to me. People leak for all sorts of reasons but I have always found the most common one to be that of principle. A feeling that change is needed but simply isn’t going to happen without an external kick up the arse.

As a rule, the person (or persons) leaking them usually overestimates the significance of what they are leaking. They will think it is really explosive when in fact it is more often than not fairly mundane management speak.

This report is not like that. It is, in my view, indicative of a chaotic situation inside a Welsh Government department.

It is a review of the “culture division” within the Welsh Gov which has responsibilities for the arts, museums, libraries and archives. It oversees our nation's cultural heritage organisations. Given the state the Welsh cultural sector is in, you would hope that the culture division would be in a great position to support it - apparently you would be wrong.

According to the report there were “several areas of concern after the 2020/21 staff survey”. It then adds that “the 2021/22 survey reinforced these concerns”. Therefore the company Resolution at Work ltd were brought in to look at the issues in the division. I understand this was delivered in early 2023.

So what did the report find?