Welsh Labour too comfortable by far

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One of the big issues surrounding the actions which we need to take to avoid climate change is that, whilst most politicians (excluding the fringe elements who choose to believe that the whole question of man-made climate change is either a hoax or a conspiracy) know what needs to be done, they fear doing it because they know that the actions required will be unpopular. For all the polls which show that most of us want our politicians to act, almost every individual action proposed meets with opposition. And sometimes that opposition even comes from the politicians professing their whole-hearted commitment to action, as in those who support wind energy as long as it’s in someone else’s constituency. A classic example of the problem is transport. There’s plenty of research which shows that whilst building roads alleviates congestion in the short term, in the longer term it simply leads to more traffic. Cutting private car use is one of those things which is popular in the abstract but unpopular in the specific.

To be able to tackle this sort of problem, two things are needed. The first is a government the opposition to which is divided and either unpopular or else trying to appeal to such widely disparate constituencies that the government is likely to be re-elected in one form or another, almost regardless of what it does. There are sham democracies – more like dictatorships as a rule – which more or less fit the bill, but the stand-out example which strikes me is our very own Welsh Government in Cardiff. It doesn’t matter how badly it does, on education, health, or whatever: a combination of deeply-held loyalty to one party over generations and an aversion to some or all of the alternatives makes it likely that Labour could do almost anything and still win. Well, maybe not quite anything, but almost. So if there were a government anywhere in the world which might try and call a halt to almost all road-building, Wales just might be the place. There will be protests, of course. People not getting their by-passes or long-awaited improvements will complain, and the ‘Welsh’ Conservatives will huff and puff in their usual irrelevant and hyperbolic style. But no-one will listen much, and Labour will still end up as the largest party after the next Senedd election, and continue to lead the government.

For the policy to be a ‘success’ however (rather than just avoiding any consequent electoral failure, which is a very limited definition of success) it needs to be accompanied by a rapid and dramatic improvement in the availability, comfort and reliability of public transport. And, ironically, the precise conditions which make it viable for the Welsh Labour government to get away with the first also, sadly, make it possible for it to fail on the second with equal impunity. It looks to be well on course to do so. It really isn’t enough to talk about improvements in the distant future, nor about responding to demand. Encouraging public transport use requires that transport to be available in advance of demand; use needs to be driven by provision rather than provision being driven retrospectively by usage. Fast, frequent, comfortable, reliable, with seats always available – these are key elements, even if expensive in the context of what is a largely rural and sparsely populated country. There is no obvious sign that the government understands this well enough to move away from the Treasury approach of a narrow cost-benefit analysis of each individual proposal.

Nor should we really expect that there will be. That sort of thinking requires the will to break free of the constraints imposed by the UK Treasury as an inherent part of the devolution settlement, and the comfortable – unchallengeable, even – position in which the Welsh government finds itself does not encourage that sort of thinking, even if its members were capable of it. The same factors – complacency, comfort, and unlikelihood of defeat – which make it possible for Wales to try a revolutionary approach also make it nigh-on impossible for us to see it through to its logical conclusion.

Getting to the root of the problem

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Last week, the BBC reported on the ‘cost’ of traffic jams to Welsh businesses following an analysis by a private company of 30,500 traffic jams on Welsh roads during 2017.  There is undoubtedly a cost to traffic jams – that is beyond dispute.  There is the direct cost to businesses and individuals of the fuel used whilst vehicles are stopping and starting repeatedly, or even simply operating at below optimal speed.  I’m a lot less certain, though, about the approach to costing the time involved, which is based on some assumptions about the amount of time ‘wasted’ sitting in traffic. 

Merely multiplying the number of hours involved by the salary per hour of all the individuals is a difficult enough calculation in the first place, involving as it must some assumptions about salaries, purposes of trip etc.  But the value of that time to employers isn’t necessarily the same as the cost of it – indeed, if it were, then the viability of employing the individuals concerned would surely be a question which they should be asking.  In theory, any individual spending an hour at work should be generating more – significantly more – income for the employer than the cost of that hour to the employer.  But on the basis of observation and experience, to say nothing of the application of the Pareto Principle, let alone the culture of presenteeism which seems to pervade business, I seriously doubt that the reapplication of the hours involved to other activity would make as large a difference as is being assumed.

Leaving that aside, I’m more interested in the sub-text to this type of report, which is that eliminating traffic jams (presumably by building more roads – the picture of the Brynglas tunnels in the report and the emphasis on M4 bottlenecks gives us more than a small clue to the BBC’s agenda here) would somehow recover all this lost time and turn it into productive and profitable activity.  That in turn implies that the delays and obfuscation by governments in road-building are the ‘cause’ of all this lost time.  It isn’t the only possible conclusion though.  How much of that time is being lost, in truth, not because of lack of road capacity but because of hundreds of individual decisions to drive rather than take the train?  Is this ‘lost’ time all the fault of government for poor planning and execution of road construction, or is it the fault of people and businesses who insist on using roads rather than rail?

More like the sheriff of Nottingham...

Tweet Giving Wales the right to vary income tax is something of a double-edged sword.  It’s a power that is unlikely to be much used, I suspect.  The package of other tax measures likely to be devolved as part of the announcement made last week by Cameron and Clegg is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  On top of all of that, it seems likely that given borrowing powers, the Welsh Government is likely to blow the lot on one hugely expensive and environmentally damaging road scheme in the south east corner of Wales for which the rest of the country will end up paying for decades, if not generations.

None of that, however, is a reason to oppose the proposals, and if referendum there will be, then as a nationalist, I cannot vote other than ‘yes’ to the next step along the tortuous path.  Having the powers, and what we do with them, are two entirely separate issues, and separate they should remain.  I may not feel any huge enthusiasm for what the Welsh Government will do with the powers, but I’ll vote for the proposal, although somehow I can't see them rushing into calling a referendum.

The joint statement by Cameron and Clegg tells us something about the sort of society they both believe in.  It’s not a surprise coming from the Tories, but I suppose there are still some people out there who don’t understand that the Lib Dems have signed up to a very similar agenda.  One sentence in particular caught my eye: “one of the best ways to raise living standards is to cut people’s taxes”.

From the point of view of those whose taxes are cut, this may well be true, or at least feel as if it’s true.  More money in the pocket always pleases people.  But there are two sides to the ‘lower taxes’ coin, and the other side is ‘lower government expenditure’.  That in turn affects the services and benefits which people receive, and those most dependant on those services and benefits are likely to experience lower taxes as something which lowers rather than raises their living standards.

What the Tories and Lib Dems are both, in effect, saying is that they support improving the living standards of the most well-off whilst reducing the living standards of the least well-off.  Maybe children from their social background were fed a rather different version of the Robin Hood stories than the one that I read.

Expensive roads

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I was concerned at the time the previous Welsh Government ditched the M4 relief road plans that, by taking the decision solely on cost grounds, there was a danger that the beast would be resurrected.  And that has duly come to pass, according to this report from the BBC last week. 

Strangely, the cost seems to have more or less halved from the £1 billion it was going to cost in 2009 to a ‘mere’ £550 million now.  It’s far from clear why the alternative scheme now proposed wasn’t part of the consideration in 2009; but either way, it’s still an enormous cost for a fairly short section of road.

Last week, Carwyn Jones seemed to be using the scheme as some sort of a stick with which to demand borrowing powers for the Assembly.  It could only go ahead, he said, if the Government was granted such powers.  In short, the government isn’t against the scheme as such; it merely cannot afford to build it.  That is not, as the Tory spokesperson claimed, a U-turn from the decision taken in 2009, merely a re-affirmation of the thinking behind that decision by the One Wales minister, who never actually claimed to be against increasing the M4 capacity as such.

Those who thought they had won the battle will now have to engage in the debate afresh when the scheme really could and should have been ruled out more comprehensively at the time.  There really are better ways of using these amounts of capital, if it were to become available, which will have more economic impact and less environmental impact.

Fewer new roads?

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There was a lengthy story in yesterday’s Western Mail about the transport experts calling for a review of all road schemes in Wales in the light of evidence that car traffic might be declining.  One thing that struck me as notable in the report was that – unusually – there was no comment from politicians of any party.  Whether they were asked and declined, or simply not asked, I don’t know. 

There are few topics on which politicians are usually reticent to rush out a quote.  Road-building may well be one of them; it’s a subject on which they know that they can’t please everyone.

In another context, it became clear to me a week or two ago that much of the economic case put forward by governments for road schemes is based on an assumption that traffic will continue to grow inexorably.  Partly this is just a result of population growth, but it’s also partly based on the assumptions that there will be economic growth, and that economic growth will of necessity lead to increased traffic.

It’s good to see those assumptions – all of them – being challenged. 

I wouldn’t support the abandonment of all the proposed road schemes though.  Although governments like to present the case in business terms, as though everything can be reduced to cost and benefit, there are other factors involved of which we should not lose sight.  Not a few of our trunk roads follow very old routes through the centres of villages and towns, and even if the levels of traffic drop from current levels, there are still valid reasons for constructing some alternative routes.

But overall, a stress on alternatives to road-building is to be welcomed, particularly if it starts to look more at freight traffic as well as passenger traffic.  Although there has been a switch in recent years from investment in roads to investment in public transport, it’s been too little too slowly.

Rail improvements are still too often the result of responding to lengthy campaigns after the demand has already appeared rather than an attempt to plan and provide pro-actively to encourage the demand.  Similarly the freight strategy for Wales is a document full of worthy sentiments, but remarkably light on hard actions which will do other than respond to demand.

The response of the Welsh Government to the report was not encouraging.  They clearly remain wedded to the idea of continuing growth in road usage.  It’s another example of a mismatch between 'green' words and 'business as usual' actions.

Rehashing the old arguments

Tweet A week or so ago, Ieuan Wyn Jones announced the route for the much-awaited Llanddewi Velfrey by-pass. It's still a couple of years away, by the time it goes through all the final design phases, and the legal processes, but it's a commitment and it's in the plan.

Who knows for certain whether it will stay in the plan for long after the election, with Labour committed to significant reductions in capital spending, and the Tories complaining that Labour aren't cutting quickly or deeply enough? (At least, that's what I think the Tories were saying yesterday, but their economic policies currently seem to be changing on an almost daily basis.)

The Tory response locally was extremely negative. Instead of welcoming the commitment to addressing the very serious problems being experienced by residents in Llanddewi Velfrey, they have complained that the road is not going to be a dual carriageway. In short, the party of deepest cuts in public expenditure is complaining that the Government is not spending a great deal more on building a bigger and better road.

(That does seem to be a general problem with the Conservatives in Wales at Assembly level – much of their critique of the government seems to be about why the government has not spent more. They seem to be significantly detached from the Conservatives of England, although it's the latter who actually set their economic policy. Would they still feel as free to argue for more spending under a Cameron government, I wonder.)

In arguing for a dual carriageway, they are effectively arguing for a longer delay before the by-pass is built – they know as well as I do that the increased cost could only be met by robbing other schemes or by delaying this one. They also seem to have forgotten that when the same arguments were used in relation to the Robeston Wathen by-pass, those arguments were comprehensively and unanimously refuted by the Assembly committee which considered the matter at the behest of Pembrokeshire County Council. Even the Tory on the relevant committee recognised the fallacy of the arguments presented.

The appeal by Pembrokeshire added significant delay to the process, as well as costing around £250,000 to stage. The Tories seem to want only to re-hash the same debate over again, rather than accepting that the time for argument is long since over. I, like local residents, will be hoping that Ieuan ignores them, and gets on with it.