Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople
Y Dirprwy Lywydd / Deputy Presiding Officer
We’ll now turn to spokespeople’s questions and first up this afternoon is the Welsh Conservatives’ spokesperson, Janet Finch-Saunders.
Janet Finch-Saunders
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’d like to thank my colleague, Mark Reckless, actually—[Interruption.] I thought that would bring a smile—for raising the issue of uncontested seats, because, actually, as voters go to the polls tomorrow, it is quite a serious issue when one considers that 92 councillors, already elected, will face no contest whatsoever. Eight per cent of Welsh local authority seats are uncontested. In Gwynedd, it’s 30 per cent, with 21 of the 74 seats depriving the electorate of a vote. Of course, in Machynlleth in Powys, a seat has gone uncontested for 37 years.
Janet Finch-Saunders
Now, I realise that all political parties have their own part to play, but, as the local government Cabinet Secretary, do you, like me, endorse Professor Roger Scully’s comments that this simply makes a mockery of democracy? How do you intend to address this for the remainder of the Assembly term and allow our electorate to fully engage in the democratic process?
Mark Drakeford
Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, I began my answer to Mark Reckless’s question by expressing my regret that any democratic election doesn’t have a contest and doesn’t offer a choice to the electorate. There are things that Governments are able to do in making elections more attractive, in opening opportunities to people who might be willing to stand, through our diversity in democracy project, and so on, but, in the end, Dirprwy Lywydd, it is political parties that put people up for election. Her own party will put up fewer than half the number of candidates needed to fill the number of councillors that are needed by principal authorities in Wales. So, all political parties in Wales have a responsibility to try to recruit people who are willing to do these difficult jobs, to make them attractive to people. Government has a part to play, but Government is only one part of this jigsaw, and, actually, I believe that political parties themselves are more powerful players.
Janet Finch-Saunders
Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, and, of course, I hasten to mention the number of uncontested community council seats, which run into the hundreds.
Janet Finch-Saunders
Cabinet Secretary, over the past few months and leading up to the local government elections, political parties of all colours—and, as my colleague over there has said, except the independents—have been outlining their manifesto pledges and promises to which the electorate can then hold them to account in the future. The Welsh Conservatives are very proud of the manifesto on which they stand and the pledges therein, but why is it that the party of national Government here in Wales, with responsibility for local government in Wales, has failed to even produce a national manifesto for local government elections?
Mark Drakeford
The Labour Party goes into local elections with manifestos right across Wales, explaining to local electorates exactly what a Labour-controlled authority would offer to them. They do that against the background of a White Paper in which this Government has set out our national policies for local authorities in the future.
I agree with what the Member says—that it is a very important contribution to democracy that all parties make when they put proposals in front of electors and allow those people to make up their minds between the different prospectuses that are there in front of them, and we will do well, I think, to allow people to make those decisions when they go to the ballot box tomorrow.
Janet Finch-Saunders
And finally, Cabinet Secretary, across Wales, local authorities are signed up to private finance initiative schemes with a capital value of £308 million but a total overall cost of over £1.5 billion. A £53 million waste management scheme in Wrexham will cost the taxpayers £450 million, a £28 million lifelong learning centre in Rhondda Cynon Taf will cost over £112 million and the £40 million school project in Conwy will cost my taxpayers over £175 million, a cost that will be reluctantly inherited by the new administration from the previous Plaid and Labour-run council. As we enter a new local government municipal term, what input will you have to ensure that local authorities do not simply get carried away signing up to costly PFI schemes, which then not only place a burden of debt on future administrations, but more so on our tax-paying and hard-working families?
Mark Drakeford
Dirprwy Lywydd, an uninstructed listener would find it difficult to have discerned from that the fact that it was the Member’s party that introduced PFI schemes and enthusiastically put them in front of local authorities to persuade them to do it. There are Conservative local authorities in Wales that have PFI schemes as well. What this Government has done, particularly under the leadership of my predecessor, Jane Hutt, is to provide revenue support to local authorities to support them in conventional borrowing to help them with their twenty-first century schools programme and to help them with some of their housing responsibilities. We will do more during this Assembly term in the field of the flood risk management and, in that way, we will assist local authorities to borrow responsibly, to use the powers that are available to them, and to carry out very important work on behalf of their local communities.
Watch video of all questions here:
1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeQ0FJd1L5Y&t=13s