According to the current Secretary of State for Wales, Labour's manifesto plans to:"unleash a wave of thousands and thousands of jobs in Wales, encouraging businesses and entrepreneurs to get help to start new enterprises that can make the most of the global move to low carbon.”
Sounds great but if you look at Labour's record during the last thirteen years, it doesn't exactly stack up.
Indeed, Mr Hain should explain how exactly he is going to create these jobs, given the dismal economic record of his government in Wales. For example,
- Wales has 133,000 adults out of work - the highest unemployment rate out of all the UK nations with one in four adults in Wales being economically inactive
- The business sector has been hit hard during the recession, with a fall in employment of 45,000 private sector jobs in Wales during the recession. In contrast, public sector employment has increased by 8,000 workers
- Since 1997, Wales has experienced the lowest increase in average full time weekly earnings of any UK region. As a result, the gap between earnings in Wales and the rest of the UK has actually increased from £1800 per year less than the average for the UK in 1997. £4200 per year in 2009.
- The value of exports in Wales in 2009 was £9 billion as compared to £10.6 billion in 2008. This represents a decline of 15.4 per cent over the last twelve months as compared to a fall of 9.8 per cent across the UK.
- The manufacturing base of Wales, which actually rose to 28 per cent of the nation’s economic output during the last Conservative government, has now declined to 18 per cent since Labour came to power
In terms of green jobs, he should read recent evidence to the Enterprise and Learning Committee, where the commercial manager of Eco2 - a leading Welsh supplier of renewable energy - stated that Wales has missed out on the chance to create manufacturing jobs in green energy, especially wind and wave power.
In terms of creating new businesses, it is worth noting that Wales has experienced a decline in new business starts between 2004 and 2008 was 19.4 per cent - the worst performance of any region of the UK. WAG also ditched the Entrepreneurship Action Plan for Wales - the private sector led enterprise strategy that, for once, actually made a real difference to entrepreneurial activity and awareness across the economy.
More relevantly, after thirteen years of Labour and billions of pounds of wasted opportunities, Wales remains rooted to the bottom of the UK's prosperity league table.
Perhaps the mainstream media could ask Mr Hain, at Thursday's Welsh Labour manifesto launch, why anyone should trust him and his party on the Welsh economy when we have seen our relative prosperity shrink from 80 per cent of the UK average to 74 per cent, with four of the five poorest areas in the whole of the UK being here in Wales?
The facts show unequivocally that, under Labour, the Welsh economy has gone backwards relative to the rest of the UK.
Why on earth would anyone want five more years of the same?
Comments
What about leaving an economic legacy which Labour totally squandered as the facts demonstrate unequivocally.
During the Major years, manufacturing as a percentage of GDP in Wales went up from 27% to 28% - it has fallen to 18% under Labour.
"The EAP...it was useless".
Was it now?
Strange that all the independent assessments show differently and that it actually made a real difference to enterprise culture and the number of new businesses.