COMMUNITIES FIRST, WELSH ECONOMY LAST?

Yesterday, it would seem that Welsh Assembly Government officials responsible for the Communities First programme were not too happy about the conclusions of a report from the Public Accounts Committee that found that the regeneration scheme had not demonstrated value for money.

In a rare fit of pique, officials described the report as “unbalanced and partial”.

Given this, perhaps the same officials who “reacted angrily” could answer a few simple questions.

Why, despite spending £214 million of WAG money on the Communities First programme, has West Wales and the Valleys (where the vast majority of the Communities First areas are to be found) continued to decrease in relative prosperity?

Why will West Wales and the Valleys, in all probability, be the only UK region to qualify again for a third round of European funding despite spending billions of pounds of Structural Funding through the Objective 1 and Convergence fund projects?

Why have the three other non-devolved areas, alongside West Wales and the Valleys, that received Objective 1 funding between 2000 and 2006, actually grown in relative prosperity - South Yorkshire is now at 90 per cent of the EU average, Merseyside is at 83.2 per cent and Cornwall at 75.2 per cent - whilst West Wales and the Valleys has fallen to 73.4 per cent of the EU average of 25 nations, which now includes the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

The response of the civil servants just demonstrates, yet again, the bunker mentality that has developed in many parts of the Welsh civil service during the last eleven years, a mentality that has resulted in the economy of Wales falling further and further behind the rest of the UK.

Perhaps, as the great American cartoon Calvin and Hobbs once noted, WAG officials and politicians are not in denial, they are just selective about the reality they accept.