Apologies for not doing it sooner but I left the house at 6am this morning for a trip to North Wales and have only just arrived back.
Overall, it was an interesting evening and many thanks to Hugh James for inviting me.
My one and only complaint was the format, which meant that it was not so much a debate as a speech, followed by question and answer session with very little time for the panelists to put any views across in any real detail.
Of course, that did not apply to the Deputy First Minister, who was given around fifteen minutes to set out his stall for the ERP and then the rest of us were given one minute to respond. We were then peppered with questions from the audience on a range of matters.
It did get quite heated on occasion as the Minister continued to try and toe the party line about all 190,000 firms in Wales would benefit from his policy of high speed broadband as opposed to the 10,000 that WAG currently works with.
The fact that the vast majority of the 190,000 are one man bands in sectors that will benefit very little from high speed broadband seemed to have passed his briefing people by, as did the statistics that a small number of companies will always create the majority of jobs.
Tellingly, he did not respond to the question whether inward investors would also have to repay any grants or why only Welsh companies in six sectors would qualify for financial support.
Tellingly, he did not respond to the question whether inward investors would also have to repay any grants or why only Welsh companies in six sectors would qualify for financial support.
However, what was most disappointing was the Minister’s attitude towards devolution.
At a time when the funding of universities is critical and he had emphasised the importance of higher education to the economy, I challenged him to raise the issue of devolving university research funding to Wales with the UK Government, thus releasing a further £120 million for university research in Wales.
At a time when the funding of universities is critical and he had emphasised the importance of higher education to the economy, I challenged him to raise the issue of devolving university research funding to Wales with the UK Government, thus releasing a further £120 million for university research in Wales.
This he refused to do, stating that, in his opinion, there was enough research going on in Wales and that what was needed was to commercialise more ideas.
Yes, incredibly, the leader of Plaid Cymru - the Party of Wales - refused the option to devolve more funding to Wales!
Yes, incredibly, the leader of Plaid Cymru - the Party of Wales - refused the option to devolve more funding to Wales!
And the debate was over. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to use the red hot information I wanted to on the evening but that can wait until the newspaper column on Saturday.
On reflection, I was slightly miffed at not being given any real opportunity to put my point of view across as you would in any normal debate but I am more than happy to engage in a second round at any time as long as I get more than one minute to put my view across!
One other thing - I know some of audience from last night are regular observers of this blog so would value your opinions on the evening and how it went.
One other thing - I know some of audience from last night are regular observers of this blog so would value your opinions on the evening and how it went.
Comments
Perhaps your question needed to have been better thought-through. Or perhaps you could explain what you meant, if you meant something different.
Currently £6 billion is spent on HE research every year at a UK level. Wales gets approximately 3 per cent of that by competing with other UK universities for funding from the research councils.
Simply put, if it was Barnetised and devolved, which it currently isn't, then an additional £120 million could be made available to Welsh universities for research.
Last night, when I posed this issue, Ieuan said that we had enough research funding and blamed the universities for not simply doing enough to get more research funding through the door. However, it is not a matter of the quality of proposals. There are enough of those coming from Welsh universities but simply not enough funding available centrally.
It is a vicious circle. The big Russell Group universities continue to get the funding which attracts the best researchers which then get even more funding, which is why the gap continue to grow between Wales and England.
Incidentally, Scottish universities punch well above their "Barnetised" weight.
My argument is that this is critical funding for the Welsh economy that needs to be transferred to Welsh universities.
Incidentally, some Vice Chancellors I have spoken to about it are opposed because they believe that Wales should compete at a UK level.
I also spoke with Gerry Holtham about it last week and he hadn't considered this as part of his review but was nevertheless interested in whether it could be done, and the effect on Wales. I know that Eurfyl ap Gwilym has also been looking at other aspects of the UK budget that currently are not Barnetised but should be. I made a similar point about the lack of funding for the National Botanic Garden when kew, in London, was receiving £20 million in subsidy from the Uk Government.
Hope that helps - I am now off to bed!!
I think we was making the point that HE needs to be smarter with bids (like Scotland I guess) to win more than our 3% share of the pot. Again, I don't think he did well answering the question about further powers, but I did'nt get the feeling that he was against Barnetising HE research.
Thats how I read it from in the audience, anyway.
Good show, just not enough time to ask questions. I was there for ages wanting to have have a pop about the sectors and anchor companies.
Why now?
Where is it?
Where’s the evidence for targeting the 6 sectors?
Why shouldn’t (non repayable) grants go to both indigenous and inward investment companies.
Where’s the evidence for broadband infrastructure?
Where’s the strategy for the Valleys?
What’s wrong with 10,000 businesses receiving grants when they in fact created some 80,000 jobs?
Yes we would have liked IWJ to answer some of the key questions, and the Chair could have asked IWJ directly, but naturally, Hugh James had nothing to gain by doing that. How about doing a debate on dragon’s eye?
IWJ went through the rhetoric, but strangely placed emphasis on issues that were operational failings not policy failings i.e. public sector procurement and barriers to planning. With respect to grants, he said he wasn’t going to give them out to large companies to stay, even though TRW were offered one last month?
In addition, he thought recycling the grant fund was a good idea; despite the fact repayable grants were introduced in 2004/5 and WAG hasn’t received any repayments yet. Finally, he stated that he is going to set up a task force to look at Business Finance…. I didn’t get that one either!
IWJ opening speech did go over the 15 minutes allocation by some way; this possibly a tactic to avoid questions.
I thought David Davies, Axiom, made some excellent points, he stated that business support should be arms length from government and thought the abolition of the WDA had been a bad idea (especially as he had been receiving useful export support from them at the time). He also added that even though some Inward Investment companies had left; they had provided jobs, training and subcontract work, so in fact had been a success during their time in Wales.
I was hoping to get 2 questions out, but didn’t manage it. The first one was a flippant one (an intro so to speak) targeted at David Stephens, Admiral. Unfortunately, he irritated me when he used the term ‘footloose’ and was quite negative about grants in spite of the fact his company had received £1m of SIF (not very much, apparently). He also said he would have undergone his business expansion with a repayable grant…. mmm perhaps IWJ should have asked him for his dept’s money back.
My second one would have been to ask how an infrastructure policy could solve the immediate 118,000 unemployment level.
Finally, the topic of branding Wales arose along with the need to attract Inward Investment. Well the WDA brand was scrapped & IWJ has just abolished IBW so what should one expect? (Yes right in the middle of the Ryder Cup! When Wales was awash with billionaires & multi millionaires)
Despite this vacuum, IWJ did offer a suggestion that we should all be using a uniform Welsh Dragon logo.
Yes, I would fully agree that Wales ought to receive a share of the money from research councils on the basis of our population relative to the UK. However, glancing at the RCUK website, they say they distribute £2.8bn. I wouldn't quibble over the figure, but the principle of a 5% share seems reasonable. Whatever the additional money is would obviously drive up standards. And yes, that would change the balance away from the existing order of things, but it looks like it's a balance that needs to be changed.
I can't comment on whether IWJ understood that point or not, but it does seem inexplicable otherwise. Though of course it shouldn't stop the Welsh universities trying to get research funds by other means. A professor I know at Imperial gave up on the red tape associated with trying to get research funds through the research councils, and got his funds directly from Japanese companies.
As it happens, I totally agree with the point you make about Kew. In 2007, at the time when funding of £500,000 threatened the future of our National Botanical Garden, I noted that Kew got grant in aid of £25m, plus another £9m in "grants, gifts and donations", and the Scottish equivalent was getting £5m a year. I've just checked Kew's latest accounts and they got £28.5m grant in aid last year plus £6.6m "grants and donations". A seventeenth of that would go a long way. Edinburgh's garden got grant in aid of £15.4m in 2009.
In fact we could make a very similar case for Barnetizing infrastructure investment by Network Rail, where we also get much less than our fair share, leaving the Welsh Government to pay for improvments like the Ebbw Vale line out of the block grant instead.
Ironically, a recent research conference organised by HEFCW suggested that Wales was actually punching above its weight when it came to certain commercialisation activities. However, that was clearly not in his briefing notes....
AngloSaxon - Yes, I was frustrated too by the format which was totally biased in favour of IWJ. I was told that the discussions to get him there were more protracted than for a Mariah Carey concert so are you really surprised that he was given the majority of the time?
I was initially told that I would have five minutes to respond and only just before the start was I informed that this had been reduced to one minute, so it buggered up my preparation completely. I was also frustrated at not being able to ask more detailed questions directly on some of the issues you raise. However, Hugh James should be congratulated on at least getting him out in the open to discuss this but, as I said, I am more than happy for a rematch if anyone wants to organise it and assuming, of course, that IWJ is willing to turn up for a proper debate.
MH - I believe that there is finally a new politics emerging in Wales, where it is not about UK vs Wales but a debate on what we do within Wales that is best for the nation. I believe that, finally, the majority of Welsh Conservatives in Wales seem to 'get it' but, funnily enough, Plaid seem to be the one party that is finding it most difficult to adjust to this new reality.
We have seen this with business rates - where Plaid could have cut the one set of business taxation with ease but chose not to - and now with research funding, which is an anomaly that should be corrected immediately. At a time when HE is going to be under enormous pressure, surely there should be a campaign to get us every single penny that we are entitled to. Indeed, there has been almost no effort by the third WAG to examine further extension of our fiscal responsibilities. Is that good enough for Wales? I don't think it is but that is a debate for another day.
Anglosaxon, I assume you were the member of the audience who was calling for the Dragon to be scrapped!
“What’s for tea, Mam?”
“Beans on toast.”
Its also an added bonus that Ieuan Wyn Jones was there and didn't suddenly pull out of the event because he was afraid being challenged by you face to face over the ERP.
Just scrap ERP, Gavin Henson, WAG/Senedd, the Welsh Language Board, James Price, IWJ, racism towards the english, double language road signs (have one or the other), the 22 local authorities (only need 2) and the excessive rainfall.
....and no I won't because I like living here, the rest of it is great!
actually Gavin is quite entertaining on 71 Degrees North, so I'll take him off the list.
What is this? We weren't at the event so would like more info. As long as 'Finance Wales' is not involved we would welcome some new initiatives on business finance. We don't need a task force we just want some action.
However I do 100% agree with IWJ re the research v commercialisation point. We are awash with research - and research on different ways of solving problems for which research solutions have already been found. The golden opportunity for Wales is to become known as the place which brings new technologies to the market before anywhere else - creating and sustaining quality jobs in the process. If the universities concentrated on that side of the equation, then we'd all be in profit.