Draft:Putting Wales First

Putting Wales First: A Partnership for the People of Wales (or simply Putting Wales First) is a policy document and coalition agreement signed by the Welsh Liberal Democrats and Welsh Labour in October 2000 which put forward the terms of their coalition government in the National Assembly for Wales from 2000 to 2003. It was negotiated by Liberal Democrat assembly leader Mike German and Labour leader Rhodri Morgan from August to October after Morgan's election as first secretary of Wales in February 2000. It was in effect until the 2003 assembly election.

n

b

b

b

b

b

Agreement
Morgan and German issued a joint-statement on 5 October 2000 announcing the agreement, which was set out in a policy document entitled Putting Wales First: A Partnership for the People of Wales (Rhoi Cymru'n Gyntaf: Partneriaeth ar gyfer Pobl Cymru) published the next day. It included some 114 policy concessions from the Labour administration to the Liberal Democrats, which mainly consisted of Liberal Democrat manifesto commitments from the 1999 assembly election. These included a freeze in prescription charges and the introduction of free school milk for children below the age of seven, free local bus travel for pensioners and financial support for students attending university. Significant policy concessions to the Liberal Democrats were made on the issue of education. The agreement also included a controversial commitment to implement proportional representation for local authority elections in Wales. Another notable concession in the agreement was the appointment of two Liberal Democrats to the cabinet, including German who was to become the first-ever deputy first minister of Wales. German's position as deputy first minister was guaranteed as a requirement of the deal. Further cabinet appointments were negotiated on 15 October.

Conferences

Constitutional and electoral reform
Under the terms of the agreement, the devolved administration of Wales was officially recognised as a government, with ministerial titles in the cabinet disusing the terms assembly secretary and secretary for the new term minister. A government statement explained that this was done to avoid confusion with members of the civil service, who were also known as secretaries, and to align Wales with the other devolved administrations of the United Kingdom. This was also viewed as reflecting the growing role of Wales' devolved ministers during this period. The office of first secretary was accordingly renamed first minister, with German taking the title of deputy first minister under Morgan as first minister. The new government also phased in the new term Welsh Assembly Government to refer to the administration in official usage, with the previous terms Welsh Assembly Administration and Welsh Executive no longer being used from November 2001. This coincided with an attempt from the government to change the official name of the National Assembly for Wales and rename it the Welsh Assembly, its more colloquial name. This move was vetoed by the assembly's presiding officer Dafydd Elis-Thomas on the grounds that it was incompatible with the Government of Wales Act 1998 and that the name Welsh Assembly had ethnic and linguistic connotations which excluded people who had been born outside Wales or could not speak Welsh.

Arts, culture, language and sports
The coalition agreement included a commitment to establish a cabinet post for art, culture, sport and language to reflect the importance of Welsh culture. Liberal Democrat AM Jenny Randerson became the new minister for culture and sports, a new portfolio in the cabinet, with responsibility for libraries and museums, the arts, sports and recreation, and the languages of Wales.

Education and lifelong learning
On education and lifelong learning, the deal included a commitment to merge the two education portfolios in the cabinet; Morgan's predecessor Alun Michael had appointed two education secretaries to his cabinet, one with responsibility for education up to the age of 16 and one with responsibility for education after 16. The Liberal Democrats criticised this arrangement, which was maintained following Morgan's accession to the premiership in February 2000, and it was agreed that the two posts be unified into one education portfolio under the terms of the deal. It was agreed that Labour's Jane Davidson would hold a newly merged portfolio as the minister for education and lifelong learning, with full responsibility for policies on education, training and lifelong learning. Huw Lewis of the Labour Party was appointed as her deputy minister.

The coalition agreement gave the Liberal Democrats significant policy concessions on the issue of education. Under the terms of the agreement, the coalition government agreed to fund a £1.3 million scheme to provide free school milk for infants, a Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment, which it said would acknowledge a link between learning and a balanced diet. This policy was implemented from January 2001. A target of reducing class sizes in primary schools to a maximum of 25 pupils was also agreed, another manifesto commitment of German's party, with £65 million pledged to fund the recruitment of 700 new teachers to help achieve this target. The deal also committed the government to offering free nursery education to all parents with three-year-old children who wanted this education by 2003. A commitment was also made to raise £200 million over the three years of the coalition to fund a school building programme to address the backlog of school repairs in Wales. The budget for teacher training would also be increased under the terms of the deal to £8 million from 2001 and £12 million from 2002 to fund training grants for primary school teachers to address claims that they worked under worse conditions than their colleagues in England.

On higher education, the coalition deal committed the government to increase funding by 15% to address student hardship. This would fund an inquiry which would investigate the issue as well as access to higher education, including the impact of tuition fees, with a pledge to make further modifications to funding in line with the findings of the Cubie Commission in Scotland. Chaired by Teresa Rees, the inquiry published its recommendations in June 2001, advocating for the abolition of upfront tuition fees in Wales and the introduction of a new £2,000 maintenance grant for poorer students. In response to the report, the coalition in February 2002 decided to introduce new means-tested maintenance grants for students in higher education and also further education, which on tuition fees would cover up to £1,500 in costs for each student who were in receipt of a grant. German said he expected the new grants would "be used to put an end to the worst of student hardship". The coalition deal also committed the government to introducing a new further education qualification which would aim to put equal emphasis on vocational and academic education called the Welsh Baccalaureate. The government agreed to oversee a £600,000 trial of a new curriculum in 19 schools from 2003 to offer the new qualification in a bid to help improve exam results in further education.

Health and social services
On health and social services, the agreement included financial commitments to increase the health budget in Wales to over £1 billion, to invest £5 million in the Welsh Ambulance NHS Trust and to raise the Children's Commissioner for Wales's budget from £100,000 to £700,000 to ensure that the officeholder could fulfill their functions once the office had been established in 2001. Most of these policies had already been pledged by Morgan's Labour administration. The Liberal Democrats secured a new commitment to provide free dental checks for people aged 25 or below and 55 or over to improve poor dental health in the country, as well as a new commitment to freeze all prescription charges in Wales. For the under-25s, the agreement provided for free prescriptions and eye tests, two Liberal Democrat manifesto commitments; the Labour administration had already pledged to introduce free eye tests from October 2000 under Morgan's predecessor Alun Michael as part of a deal with Plaid Cymru which allowed its proposed budget to pass in 1999.

Termination
Ahead of the 2003 assembly election, German said he would consider forming another coalition with Labour or Plaid Cymru after the election.

Reception
The announcement came as a surprise to the media and members of the Welsh Labour and Welsh Liberal Democrat groups in the assembly, which had not known about the negotiations between Morgan and German beforehand.