Has One Wales changed anything?

If the One Wales agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru is famous for anything amongst us anoraks it is its opposition to public private finance.

Despite the looming £500 million cuts that the Assembly Government may shortly have to make to key services, Plaid Cymru politicians still roam around Wales claiming that they have persuaded the government to rule out private finance options in the delivery of public services.

Disappointingly the only reference to this I can find in the document itself is the section on health where it states: We will rule out the use of Private Finance Initiative in the Welsh health service during the third term. Still it is an article of faith that must not be challenged or is it?

Plaid Cymru Assembly Member, Leanne Wood must have been shocked when she discovered that the Assembly Government had nevertheless gone ahead and re-established a new public-private partnership unit, so much so that she asked a question about it yesterday:

Leanne Wood: Can you tell us what the thinking was behind the establishment of a new public-private partnership unit, five years after your predecessor, Sue Essex, wound up a similar unit? Do you agree that, at a time when the private sector has become dependent on state handouts, due in large part to its own recklessness and greed, Welsh public services would be exposed to unacceptable risk if anything were done to make them more dependent on private capital now? Furthermore, will you give an assurance that no existing public sector staff will be transferred, under any partnership deal, to either a private or a third sector organisation?

She did not get the answer she was looking for:

Andrew Davies: I want to make it absolutely clear that there is no change to our existing policy. However, as the Minister with responsibility for finance, I am determined that we will make the maximum and most effective use of our resources, particularly our capital resources. As we know as a result of the recent pre-budget report, it is a possibility that our capital allocation will be reduced substantially. Therefore, it is even more important that we make the maximum use of our resources. The public sector generally, across the UK, has not been good at using capital. In many cases, we do not have the skills and expertise required to make the best use of our capital expenditure, and there is a whole range of programmes, information communications and technology projects, and e-government and other projects where the public sector does not have the skills and expertise required. The idea behind setting up the partnership Wales unit, as I have called the public-private partnership unit, is to ensure that we have that expertise, and are able to deal with the private sector and other public sector bodies in a realistic way, ensuring that we make the maximum use of our resources. To recap, we have not changed our policy; however, it is about making the maximum use of the resources that may be at our disposal.

Of course this unit and this approach would not have been agreed without the consent of Plaid Cymru Ministers, something that the Finance Minister confirmed later on, but the really devasting news for Plaid members must be the statement that Assembly Government policy has not changed.

In other words the One Wales Agreement has not made the slightest difference and that if private finance proves to be a viable way forward then it will be used. With the All Wales Convention looking increasingly like it is dead in the water and with a whole host of other policy failures Plaid Cymru must be wondering what it is that they have signed up for.