28/05/2014 The Wales Report

As the dust settles on last week?s European elections, we speak to

the victors, UKIP, who narrowly missed topping the poll here.

Where next for the Liberal Democrats in Wales?

And is a flagship Welsh Government scheme aimed at tackling poverty

in the most deprived communities in Wales working?

Good evening and welcome to The Wales Report.

On tonight?s programme, the results of last week?s European

elections are still being digested across Wales.

On the surface, there?s no change, the same four parties,

the Conservatives, Labour, Plaid Cymru and UKIP, still have one

seat each representing Wales in the European Parliament.

But the political landscape here has been radically altered,

with UKIP narrowly missing the top spot in Wales.

It was a very different night for the Liberal Democrats, who

performed badly across the board, losing all but one of their MEPs.

For the first time in Wales, the party was pushed into sixth

In Blaenau Gwent, the party was beaten by the BNP.

So, what does all of this mean for the future of the party?

The Liberal Democrats are bruised and battered and in need of a fight

to get them back into the general election. Imagine what Wales' most

famous liberal would have made of this.

David Lloyd George - a radical, a reformer and the only Welsh

politician to make his home in Number 10.

But despite his successes, his coalition partnership played

Falling to sixth place in the European election shows their

support has shifted elsewhere. They will need more of the courage their

leader in Wales spoke of last year. We took a courageous decision back

in 2010. But will they be attempting their fightback with Nick Clegg in

charge? He is adamant he will not walk away but is that a wise choice

when voters seem to be running from the party?

Joining me now is the party?s leader in Wales, Kirsty Williams.

Is Nick Clegg the right man to lead you? Yes, he is. He has had the

courage of his convictions to make a positive case about what the Liberal

Democrats and the Welsh Liberal Democrats believe in. He had the

courage to do what was right for the country by taking the party into a

coalition government. The voters don't buy it. In this election, the

results show we have not been successful in getting that message

across to people but it is going to take more than one election talking

positively about why we should be part of Europe. Perhaps we should

have talked more about how we want to change you rip to make it work

better for Wales. But he is the person to take us forward. He is a

friend. Have you spoken to him? I have not spoken to him but I have

exchanged text messages. He is tired and disappointed, as disappointed as

I am to see the results coming from the European elections, but he is

determined to stick to his guns and continued to play what is a very

important role. Is he listening? A 4% share of the vote in Wales. How

bad does it have to get for him to listen? He is listening, he

understands that these are bad results. But simply walking away

would be to undo all the hard work of being the Deputy Prime Minister,

being in a coalition government. It is one thing to walk away from the

leadership, but you would not have to leave the coalition. There is no

leadership issue. What we need to do now is acknowledged that it has been

a very difficult week for the Liberal Democrats and we have to get

back on track, speaking quite clearly to the British and Welsh

public about what the Liberal Democrats are for. Just to be

absolutely clear, he has said he has never considered his position.

Shirley Williams says he has. You are adamant that he should not

consider his position, he should carry on, business as usual. I could

not be any clearer. I think Nick Clegg is the right man to lead this

party into the general section. We need to redouble our efforts in

explaining to this country what the Liberal Democrats are achieving as

part of this government and what we are for. You have been trying to do

that for years. It is not working. What we need to do is to be

absolutely clear with people about what they get if they support the

Liberal Democrats. In the past we have been the repository for many

protest votes. We can't be that now that we have taken the step of being

a party in government. We have to demonstrate that we have taken that

responsible decision, we are capable of being a party in government, we

stick to our values and do the things we want to do, which is

making sure there is a strong economy, which means people get back

to work and we can use the proceeds of that to help the poorest in

society. And that is your mantra. I suggest it has not worked. Was it a

mistake to go into coalition with the Conservatives? You were not keen

and in Wales you did not fancy the rainbow coalition on the table which

did include the Conservatives. You were far more keen to go with

Labour. Have you been proved right? It is not a question about who has

been proved right. The party was faced with a very challenging

decision. The public had decided not to give one party and overall

majority. The easy choice and the safest choice for the party would

have been to have walked away. But let's be clear what would have

happened, the economy would have been in even more serious trouble,

they would have been a snap election. So why aren't voters

thanking you? We would have been decimated. We took the responsible

choice to go into a coalition government to try and sort out the

economy. And you have paid heavily for that choice. Was it the wrong

choice? No, because what would have happened would have been disastrous

for the country. It would have been a disaster to go with Labour? If you

look at the Sims, it did not add up. We would not have had a stable

government which could have lasted five years. The Labour Party were in

no position to enter into that agreement. I was in London and the

behaviour of the likes of Ed Balls demonstrated they were not taking

that option seriously. Would it help you going into the next general

election to say, we will not renew this deal with the Conservatives? We

cannot rule in or out any coalition because that is not our choice, it

is the choice of the people of this country. When you next text Nick

Clegg, what will be your word of advice? We have got to get out there

and we have got to be clear and distinctive in our message about

what the Liberal Democrats are for. We are a party capable of being in

government, taking the tough decisions to make sure our economy

gets on track, but we need to be clear about how the recovery is

there, which is how we can invest in public services to make sure

everybody has a decent education and a decent health services and

services they can rely on. Thank you.

The fall-out from last week?s vote is still far from clear.

Big questions are being asked of all the parties as we approach

For UKIP, those questions concentrate

on the party?s ability to replicate their European success both

The party?s Welsh representative, Nathan Gill, says that the results

prove that Wales is ?just as Eurosceptic as the rest of the UK?.

If UKIP have caused a political earthquake, where does

their performance in Wales register on the Richter Scale?

Well, the ground hasn?t opened up and swallowed the other parties,

but Farage and friends have certainly shaken the status quo.

The single most remarkable result last night was in Wales.

With 28% of the vote, UKIP have galvanised support

across the country, picking up more than 114,000 votes since 2009.

Politics dressed in purple taking votes from those in more tried and

tested colours. ?The Valleys are ours

for the taking?, say UKIP, and in their sights, a handful

of AMs with seats in the Senedd. But will their anti-EU

and anti-immigration platform be what voters are looking for in next

year?s General Election and beyond And as the focus shifts away

from Europe, will UKIP have answers on education,

on the economy and healthcare? I?m joined now by Wales? newest MEP,

UKIP?s Nathan Gill. You are heading to Brussels, we know

what your long-term aim is, to abolish that institution. In the

meantime, how will you be fighting for the people of Wales? I am going

to have to take a period of bedding in when I find out what my role is.

But it is important for me when I get there to find out exactly what

it is that is being done there for the people of Wales and what is

being done with our money and what the institutions are going to be

putting on to us with regards to legislation and all those things and

bring that information back to the people of Wales so that they can be

informed as to what is going on in these institutions. What about jobs

for Wales? How are you going to secure more jobs? I fail to see how

an MEP can secure more jobs for Wales. The reality is, MEPs have

very little power, this is something we have been saying all along, when

people understand how the institutions work in Brussels, the

MEPs are just a veneer of democracy. So this is a pretty expensive

fact-finding mission because it does not sound as if you are going to be

doing anything. This is a very expensive layer of government we

want to get rid of. Every MEP costs the British taxpayer ?1.25 million.

Will you take your whole salary? We want to get rid of this. Why not set

an example and say you do not need these allowances, you do not need

this salary? With regard to allowances, every time you turn up

to Brussels, there is a 304 euros daily allowance they are claiming.

We personally donate from our net wages towards the cause that we

believe in, towards getting us out of that eat you. The focus now

shifts because we know where you stand on Europe, we know where you

stand on the institutions. The focus very firmly switches to domestic

issues. We know where you stand on immigration. Health and education,

bread and butter issues, are your big challenge. We know you won't go

into specifics until your manifesto is out in September, but is the NHS

a good thing? Absolutely, and we support it 100%. One of the sad

thing during this campaign was that the Labour Party, funded with the

help of the unions, went out and basically spread a lot of lies about

UKIP policy. What about private sector involvement in the NHS? You

need to wait about September to our manifesto. In principle? If we can

make the NHS provide a better service for the people of Wales

crossed it --, that is what we want. Testing in education in principle,

are children tested enough? In principle it is always good to test

and find out where we are and where we stand. On the economy, posterity,

is that the right road for the British economy? As with any

household, you have a budget and you have got to live within your means.

It is about time that the British government learned to do what the

British housewife and house and families have had to do all along,

live within their means. Quite frankly, we are a party of, we have

been saying all along, we have got to get things under control. We have

got to stop borrowing money off our grandchildren to pay for things

today. Way to you stand on devolution these days? Do you want

to scrap the assembly these days? Our policy has unfortunately has to

change and I say unfortunately because I was involved in the

anti-assembly movement but what we have said as a party is that we

believe in referendum. If the people of Wales, as they have now spoken

into referendum, they say they want the assembly, it would be very

hypocritical of us to say they are wrong and so we now support the

people of Wales. 's immigration is your big theme but

people of Wales. 's immigration is your big this is a different kind of

immigration. You live on Anglesey where Welsh is the language of the

street and it is changing to English. Should that they are

concerned, the integration of English into Wales? I am originally

from England and my wife is from America but our children go to war

Welsh language: They are learning Welsh. I spend an hour every night

listening to them reading their books to me. We fully support the

Welsh language but we think if you constantly use a stick to get people

to speak Welsh or use Welsh it will not work. We need more carrots to

encourage people to use this wonderful part of our heritage. How

will we measure the success of you as an MP over your first term?

Hopefully we will have a referendum and we will lose -- and leave the EU

and I will be out of a job. Is a Welsh Government flagship

scheme aimed at tackling poverty across Wales

delivering the changes it promised? Communities First was set up with

the aim of improving health, education and the economy of Wales?

most deprived areas. But over a decade on,

and nearly ?400 million later, As part of a BBC Wales season

looking at poverty in Wales, David More than 40 years ago, as a junior

reporter on the local evening paper in Swansea, I was acutely aware of

the effects of poverty and deprivation on a place they called

the hill. It had sprawling estates on the outskirts of Wales's second

city and it is still there. So other problems. Over the years it seems

there has been an insidious creep of an unwritten policy to lump and some

would say dump together the poor and those in need in places like this.

Mayhill is cut off from the rest of the world in subtle ways. An island

of deprivation surrounded by areas of welfare and well-being. According

to the statistics you will not see much of the good life here and you

never did and you will not any time soon. And yet, and yet, millions of

pounds of public money has been poured into black spots like this...

At this point a young man living on the street happened to hear what I

was saying, right outside his house, and initially came out to

remonstrate with me because he was understandably offended by the

thought that I was deliberately stood with -- deliberately

stigmatising people like himself. When you hear people like me walking

past your house and calling it an area of deprivation and poverty,

doesn't upset you? -- upset me? Yes, that definitely upsets me. I do not

smoke, I smoke cigarettes. Well, that is smoking! I thought you were

saying about drugs. Unpalatable though they may be, the latest

statistics relating to this area paint a grim picture. The gulf in

life expectancy between the richest and poorest areas remains one of the

biggest in Wales. Statistics suggest that the Mayhill community is one of

the poorest in Wales and the least healthy. The average life expectancy

of a male here is just 69 years, that is eight years left than the

average for Wales. 38% of households here have one or more people living

in them with long-term illness. The Wales averages just 30%. Stephen

Ellis is a statistic, although in reality he is much more than that.

Now volunteer at the local community centre, at the age of 14 he suffered

a major back injury which has left him permanently disabled. He is

often in pain and unable to work. Life is not easy for a disabled

person on an estate like Mayhill but Stephen remains remarkably positive.

I am optimistic and I believe that if people get off their bums and

make an effort and do things and manage their lifestyle better, food,

exercise, etc, what we need is people to take charge of their

lives, take charge of the hill that they live on. I am hoping that this

is a look of the past. The local surgery for the GP has a look and

feel of a place under siege, not just because of the external

security wire. Inside the medical staff are firefighting on a whole

range of fronts. As GPs we have got to tackle what we can tackle and we

can do better is to do more of the stuff like having more appointments

with bigger buildings and more consulting rooms and more staff and

more worker bees and giving people as much time as it takes because now

we are stretched. I see 50 or 60 patients a day and that whittled

down to having ten minutes to see me and saw the problem out and that is

all. That is why we need more of us. There have been various attempts to

change the depressingly repetitive position at the bottom of clinically

calculated health tables. Publicly funded schemes like Communities

First, aimed at reducing inequalities was launched 13 years

ago by the Welsh government as a flagship programme to reduce poverty

and inequality. It is being trumpeted by successive

administrations and almost ?400 million of public money has been

poured into supporting the policy. The focal point of this scheme used

to be this community centre and this was the man who steered it for it --

through its formative stages. More recently it has been taken over by

Swansea City Council. Now there is real concern that the move has added

an unnecessary level of bureaucracy at the very time when the scheme

seemed to be working well. We have been working with a large

bureaucracy with the Welsh government through many tears all

the way down to grassroots level and that is a big issue that we have. We

need to see the will of the ministers and their policies in the

big policy documents and then we need as few layers as possible to

get down to the grassroots so we need to be looking at really

targeting resources at the front line and not taking that tiered

bureaucratic approach to changing someone's life at a grassroots

level. 18 months ago Swansea City Council took over the running of the

community's first project here. I wanted to speak to somebody down

there about how they were getting on up here. Or not. It would seem that

there was plenty to talk about. Swansea has been given health city

status by no less an outfit than the world health organisation. The aim

is to improve health for all in this city. Despite our repeated requests

for an interview nobody from Swansea City Council was prepared to talk to

us on camera. What they told us off camera was that they had only been

running the first initiative -- in the Communities First initiative for

ten months and it was impossible to reflect the true impact of their

work on health inequalities in the areas concerned. Any comment on

health inequalities the council people told us should be taken up

with the health board. So we did. The health board is confident that

it is influencing communities -- Communities First by supporting big

projects instead of a lot of smaller ones and focusing on communities

finding their own solutions to their own issues. What about the big

picture? The overall responsibility for the running of Communities First

projects in this area? The council said that that is a matter for the

Welsh government. Those who know, those who deal with the problems

associated with poverty and health inequalities on a daily basis, tell

me that it is not just a question of money and it is certainly not about

adding another layer of bureaucracy in the hope that it will do the

trick. If there is to be any change in the depressingly familiar cycle

poverty and deprivation in places like Mayhill then people here need

to to be listening to what people out there are telling them.

David Williams reporting. Joining me now is Vaughan Gething from Labour.

Are you listening to places like this? Yes, since I was appointed I

have been given primary responsibility for the tackling

poverty action plan that draws together all of our resources.

Communities First is one of those and it covers the deprived

communities that make up one in four people in Wales. It is a big

footprint. Communities First is not the only agent and cannot be solely

responsible for tackling poverty. Let us look at Communities First. We

are talking about ?400 million in the last four years, what is to show

for it? It will not tackle poverty on its own. What has it done? The

most important thing it can do is to change the life chances of people so

we are getting big services into our poorest communities, for example the

way that health and education work in these particular communities and

the way job opportunities work. It has done a number of things but it

is not just Communities First on its own. We are looking at that this

evening. It used to be 157 partnerships and now it is right

down. You heard in the report the gentleman running the community, who

set it up in Mayhill, saying there is too much bureaucracy and they do

not know who is in charge. Are you listening to people like that when

you are reforming Communities First? It was reformed because of a number

of different concerns about having too many different organisations

running a Communities First partnership which is why bigger and

more robust clusters are in place and some have a model like Swansea

where the local authority is the lead delivery body and manages the

service and others like Anglesey have the local authority as the lead

body but there was a community interest Company. Effectively the

community are running Communities First directly themselves. There are

a range of different models that are all trying to get to the best

outcome and that is what I am interested in, what is going to

improve out -- outcomes for people and I am interested in what works.

You have to have the health board on board and have services in there to

help people find work and you need a focus on educational achievement as

well. That is why I want a Communities First to have a more

joined up relationship with flying start where they exist together as

well. It is drawing together all of these interventions to make the

biggest difference possible for families and communities. It is only

one pillar, isn't it? Looking at the big picture and this morning we have

a report out from Save The Children suggesting that the target of

eradicating child poverty right across the UK, including here in

Wales, will not happen by 2020, it is not, is it? Isn't it time to

readjust the target? No, we're not moving away from the target, I said

this when I was appointed and I will keep on saying it. We will maintain

the target and the ambition we have to eradicate child poverty. We

recognise it is a huge challenge and what Save The Children were saying

today recognises the impact of tax and benefit reform and the fact it

is making people poorer and not wealthier. We need a significant

turnaround in the economy so that work pays much more and we need to

see a different direction on tax and benefit because the deliberate

policy being followed is actually making people in the lowest bits of

income is poorer and not wealthier and that is a really big challenge

for all of us. Just to be clear, you think that child poverty in Wales

will be eradicated in six years time? I think it is a really big

challenge to reach that and achieve that but I see no benefit whatsoever

in changing the target or removing it. There must be a really collect

-- a real collective will and effort to achieve the target. If we pull

back from the target and say we will not achieve it I think people will

take their put off the pedal and that is abandoning people to their

feet -- fate and we will not do that. I want to get to Twenty20 and

do all that we can to which you that target and if we don't we need to

honestly reflect about what we have not done and what we need to do more

of. Thank you very much. If you?d like to get in touch

about the issues discussed please