Hands-off approach
Western Mail (Cardiff) 22.01.2005
SIR - I was interested in your report of Professor Kevin Morgan's recent IWA paper on the closure of any real debate and the exclusion of the wider civil society in the new "post devolution" Wales of Cardiff Bay.
As Jim Sillers said of Scotland, "Devolution has produced an exclusive, introverted, introspective and parochial backwater.
However, it is interesting to contrast the Assembly's control freak treatment of the WDA, WTB, Elwa, etc, with their determinedly hands-off approach to say, Health?
From memory, the now departed Ms Hutt "reorganised" Health into 53 different and discrete bodies without any macro, strategic or effective working linkages between them. She then followed up this master stroke by saying, "Health is not my responsibility, I facilitate. Health delivery is now up to the LHBs." An interesting and convenient definition of ministerial accountably?
Could it be that in Wales, executive economic power carries potential advantage - political, party, and personal, whereas its social equivalent is best avoided as potentially career destroying. Or am I perhaps just being cynical? I am sure that the new Welsh political class works to the highest motives.
RICHARD HARRIS
Anglesey Court, Caerleon, Newport
Posted by euroregions
at 7:44 AM EST
