Nothing to raise Wales from the bottom of the prosperity league

Mar 23 2006 Tomos Livingstone, Western Mail

WE'VE become accustomed to Gordon Brown wrapping himself in the Union Flag of late.

But in his tenth Budget to date he went one step further and donned the Cross of St George, mentioning the England soccer and cricket teams - plenty of good news if you are a high-rolling champagne drinker in the southeast of England but very little cheer for ordinary working people and pensioners in Wales.

With the unemployment rate in Wales now increasing at double the UK average, and a net loss of 7,000 manufacturing jobs in Wales over the last year - and that's before the awful news at Panasonic - there was nothing specific to raise Wales from the bottom of the UK prosperity league where we've slumped to under Labour.

Instead, what did we get?

A new initiative to boost the financial services sector in London where the average wage for men is already over five times that in Wales.

There were two reports on regional policy: one on the labour market in London and the other on economic development in English cities. Wales, along with Scotland and Northern Ireland, were relegated to footnotes in the Chancellor's 61-minute title bid for the premiership.

Not a penny more, either, for the long suffering workers at Allied Steel and Wire.

The Chancellor is happy enough to dip into the unclaimed assets at banks and building societies to fund his own pet projects - the national youth community service - but not to return to these workers their pensions stolen from them through a combination of private greed and government deception.

Like the Labour Party, and most people under this Government, the Chancellor is massively in debt.

The £11.4bn of net borrowing for this year is double the figure forecast a year ago.

And this is not forgetting the billions of pounds of extra PFI deals which will finance much of the Chancellor's plans for investment in English education - money that won't be available in Wales, driving the funding gap for English and Welsh schools even higher.

The Chancellor's oblique reference to integrate tax and National Insurance is a signal of tax rises to come.

And the "early warning system" on disruption in the financial markets is a worrying echo of recent discussion in the US on the need for a mechanism to prevent a stock market crash in the event of an American or Israeli attack on Iran. But it's good to know in the event of a catastrophe those City bonuses will be safe."