What should the Valleys Taskforce do?

Economy A row of houses
ViewsJuly 18th, 2016

Victoria Winckler reacts to the announcement that there is to be a Valleys Taskforce.

I had three main reactions when I read Alun Davies AM’s announcement that there is to be a ‘Valleys Taskforce’.

Deja vu

First, an overwhelming sense of deja vu, as memories of the then Secretaries of State for Wales’ efforts came flooding back. Peter Walker’s Valleys Initiative ran from 1988 to 1993 and was a masterpiece of spin and re-packaged moneys, swiftly followed by David Hunt’s equally opaque 5-year Valleys Programme. A good idea and good PR undoubtedly, but the impact was highly questionable – the main legacy was a derelict garden festival site and a chain of Wetherspoon pubs across the region.

Ten years later and along came Welsh Labour’s Heads of the Valleys programme, which delivered rather more but still less than promised and it too faded away

So, if there is to be a revival of government-led action for the Valleys I very much hope it is more effective than past efforts.

Gritted Teeth

Second, a gritting of the teeth as ‘the Valleys’ are once again labelled as ‘the problem’.  There are three reasons why this is unhelpful and in some ways untrue.

  • On many measures the Valleys are not a ‘problem’ at all.  Look at the employment rate for people of prime working age in Merthyr for example, and you’ll find that it is higher than many other areas. Any ‘initiative’ aimed at helping this age group into work will fail because it’s simply not needed. So the taskforce needs to get to a sophisticated understanding of the issues when it starts.
  • The averages so loved by league tables hide huge diversity within the Valleys’ population. We are not all unemployed/unqualified/sick or disabled as is so often assumed – doctors, head teachers and lawyers live in the Valleys, some school leavers go to top universities and, yes, there is culture beyond brass bands and Sky TV.
  • The real challenge is less about place than about the fortunes of Wales’ least well off – and they live everywhere. However,  this is hidden by the way we like to use geography rather than socio-economic group to analyse Wales.  But if you look at the fortunes of the less well off groups, they do about the same in the Valleys as in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea.  It’s just that Cardiff in particular has a much greater proportion of better-off people than other areas so tops the league. So it’s not so much place as class that matters.

The Valleys Taskforce won’t get past first base if it doesn’t move beyond conventional thinking to get to the underlying issues.

Hope

My third reaction to Alun Davies’ announcement was hope – hope that at last someone will take a fresh approach, recognise the underlying opportunities as well as problems, stop thinking we’re all hillbillies and do something that makes a difference to people’s lives. This will mean different solutions for different places within the Valleys, dumping the narrative about coal, steel and deprivation, and achieving  a modern, positive and different future. Doing so without  EU funding will make it harder but not impossible.

So, here’s to the Valleys Taskforce – with the right approach it might just make a difference.

Victoria Winckler is Director of the Bevan Foundation. 

Tagged with: South Wales Valleys

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