Leighton Andrews AM

Treorchy Sorting Office

Chris Bryant MP and I were invited to visit a sorting office in the Rhondda by the Royal Mail. We chose the Treorchy sorting office which has been under threat.

Strike

I was pleased to join members of the GMB, Unison and Unite on 3 Rhondda picket lines this morning, at Clydach Vale, Ty Elai and Bronwydd.

Students Debate in EU Mock Council

 
Yesterday, I spoke at the Mock Council of the European Union, organised by the Welsh Government and held in Cardiff Bay. It was the fourth event of its kind and involved students aged 16-18 from 27 schools across Wales, as well as two students from Silesia, in Poland. My colleague Christine Chapman, the Labour Assembly Member for the Cynon Valley and a member of the EU Committee of the Regions, chaired the event, which also featured a speech from Jonathan Scheele, European Commission Representative for the UK.

The Mock Council provides students with an opportunity to debate with peers from other schools and colleges and vote on key issues affecting the European Union. It is one of a number of events that we hold each year to raise awareness of EU issues in Wales with stakeholders and the wider public. During my speech, I highlighted the advantages of being part of the EU, from peace and stability, to trade, climate change, international crime and opportunities to study abroad.

The Mock Council provides a great environment for young people to consider these issues; make links between what is personal, local, national and global; engage in culturally-diverse experiences; critically evaluate their own values and behaviours; and develop skills that will enable them to challenge injustice, prejudice and discrimination.

During my speech I was pleased to highlight that Wales is at the forefront of teaching global citizenship and we are one of the few countries in the world to have placed sustainable development and global citizenship at the heart of our curriculum. I hope that the students involved in the Mock Council benefitted from their experience, gained a firmer grasp of how the EU works and continue to take an interest in EU issues in the future.

Support for Maerdy Church Campaigners

Last week, I visited local protestors at All Saints Church in Maerdy to show my support for their battle to keep the church open.

I spent time with members of the ‘Friends of All Saints’ group as they explained the impact that the church’s closure would have on their lives and their community. Campaigners were extremely welcoming and stressed their desire to find a solution that would end the current stand-off between the Church in Wales and local community activists.

 

In June, I wrote to the Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan about this issue, stressing the impact of closure on the local community and the need for a resolution that would enable all parties to move forward positively. The Archbishop has since replied to confirm his willingness to meet with local campaigners and did so on the 20^th July.

All Saints Church is clearly of huge importance to the local community, who have demonstrated that they will go to great lengths to keep it open. During my visit I heard how this church has served several generations of the same family and it clearly holds a special place in the hearts of so many local people.

I urge all parties involved to work together to find a solution that will ensure the continued existence of All Saints Church for the benefit of this community.

More photos from the visit can be found here.

 

Con-dem-ed (not a spelling mistake)

Five years ago, Chris Bryant MP and I campaigned hard, and successfully, to keep Llwynypia Magistrates Court open.

Chris and I also campaigned against the plans by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition to close the court when they were announced last year. 

Now the court is for sale, thanks to the Conservative Lib Dem government at Westminster. They appeared to be trying to remove the seal from the front of the building earlier today.

Paparazzi await the Murdochs

 

I was in Westminster when the Murdochs were giving evidence. Nice to see the paparazzi supply their own ladders....

It is Westminster’s higher education policies that are wrong, not ours

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised at the backlash following my announcement that Welsh –domiciled students would not have to find the additional money for higher fees charged in our higher education institutions in Wales – or those in England. I have worked in the BBC in London after all. Metropolitan provincialism defines the culture of most of the national newspapers and indeed, the television newsrooms. Senior figures in the BBC have told me that our announcement in Cardiff suddenly brought home to the BBC network newsroom what devolution actually meant.

And yet – the ferocity of response from some of the newspapers has been revealing. The use of the word ‘apartheid’ in both the Mail and Telegraph to define Welsh policies on the day after our announcement suggested either collusion or a collective narrowness of vision. Perhaps both.

I want to see English students continuing to come to Wales to study. However, I am responsible for the student support arrangements for students domiciled in Wales. The Scottish government is responsible for students domiciled in Scotland. Northern Ireland Ministers in their Assembly for students domiciled in Northern Ireland. And – wait for it – Vince Cable and David Willetts in the UK coalition government for students domiciled in England. They are welcome to follow our example in Wales. We are making a policy choice. So are they.

So the Daily Mail, which tells us it ‘has reservations about the plan to treble the cap on fees’, should direct its fire at the UK Coalition Government, rather than wittering on about Wales ‘exempting its nationals from Whitehall’s increases in tuition fees’. The UK Coalition government has chosen to levy in England the highest tuition fees in the world outside the United States. Facing a cost of between £70-110 million to support Welsh students attending English universities, the One Wales Labour-Plaid Cymru coalition government has found a route which protects our students and at the same time gives our own higher education institutions a fighting chance of holding their own against universities east of the border.

Let there be no mistake – I would prefer not to have to raise fees in Welsh institutions. I would prefer to leave them at about the current level. But I am not prepared, and nor are my Cabinet colleagues, to see a one-way transfer from the Welsh Assembly Government budget into the English higher education system, which is what would happen if we did not raise fees in Wales but supported Welsh students who wanted to study in England to do so. Fees are rising in England, not as was originally intended, to provide additional income for higher education institutions in England, but instead to plug the 80% cut in the university teaching grant in England.

Of course, the suggestion that under EU laws, EU students could benefit, was guaranteed to raise the blood pressure of the Daily Mail. But then, in most EU countries, tuition fees are far, far lower than in the UK. So why they would be racing to study here is an interesting question. This is precisely why I doubt the long-term sustainability of the UK coalition government’s policy. It is the policies made in England which are out of kilter with those of most of Europe. In any case, Welsh and English students studying in EU countries will enjoy the same fee regimes as the inhabitants of those countries. Remember all the stories in the summer about students from the UK, unable to get places at UK institutions, studying in Maastricht or elsewhere with lower fees than at home?

Welsh graduates will, of course, pay a contribution and will be repaying the loans that they require to pay the fees that will be levied on them. But they will be at a more affordable rate, not at the full-cost or near full-cost level others will face.

By the way, though you wouldn’t think it, we also pay taxes in Wales. We do not live off English subsidies. Taxes collected in Wales exceed significantly the budget of the National Assembly, as the independent commission on the financing of Wales chaired by Gerry Holtham found.

This is a policy choice we are making. We are continuing to provide more generous support for university teaching than in England. We will not be saying that there are academic subjects not worthy of subsidy. We do not believe that the market will protect culture, history and language and we will intervene to protect these. We will plan the development of our higher education system in Wales. If that puts us in the European mainstream, while England swims in a different direction, so be it.

 

 

 

Tonypandy 1910-2010 the book

Great launch in the Rhondda Heritage Park for the book on the riots by David Maddox and Gwyn Evans, with Dai Smith speaking.

                    David, Dai and Gwyn

Dai speaking while Churchill observes....

Not a Clegg to stand on?

The madness of the Electoral Reform Society

The Rhondda constituency consists in the two valleys of the Rhondda Fawr and Rhondda Fach. They are steep narrow valleys, with housing development from the mid nineteenth-century constituting almost two long streets along the valley sides, though local people are clear when one community, village or town stops and another commences. Indeed, The Long Street was the name of a famous BBC film series about the Rhondda in the 1960s. The valleys, then, are enclosed, with steep mountain roads leading out of the northern ends, from Maerdy in the Rhondda Fach over to Aberdare, from Treherbert to Hirwaun, or north-west from Cwmparc to the Ogmore and Afan Valleys.

As Professor Dai Smith, Chair of the Arts Council of Wales, former Head of English Language broadcasting at BBC Wales, historian extraordinaire and Rhondda native, has written:

On the map, they look like the handles of a water diviner's fork. From the air, they are twisting, continuous ribbons of intertwined rivers, roads and overhanging houses.

In the Rhondda Fach, the communities of Maerdy, Ferndale and Tylorstown flow down the valley. Residents know which are which, but there is a seamless link between them. Now the Electoral Reform Society, in its proposals to equalise parliamentary seats, proposes to split the three wards between three different parliamentary constituencies. They must have been looking at a map without contours. They will split three adjoining communities which have unbroken links going back 150 years.

The ERS proposals are set out in this spreadsheet -  Download New_Parliamentary_Constituency_Data. Tylorstown would go into a new Bargoed and Treharris constituency; Ferndale would be in the new Aberdare and Merthyr Tydfil contituency, despite being further from Aberdare than Maerdy, and Maerdy would be in the new Rhondda and Maesteg constituency.

The proposals for these three Rhondda Fach wards are simply the most blatant examples of the ridiculous nature of the ERS proposals. Other wards in both Rhondda Valleys are arbitrarily divided without reference to geographic or historic links. 

These proposals appear to have been drawn up by someone who believes that Wales, and the Rhondda, is flat, taking no account of hills, mountains, roads, or history. They are simply mad. If you want to look at a topographic map of the Rhondda, go to the Ordnance Survey website and type in Rhondda. Shame the ERS didn't.