When Plaid Cymru asked for funding parity with Scotland during the 2015 General Election, we were met with gasps of disbelief and the occasional chuckle at the apparent naivety of the party. Even when Leanne Wood pointed out that it was widely accepted among political parties that Wales had been under funded since around 1978, the then Leader of the Labour Party Ed Milliband still would not accept that the additional funds were a reasonable and valid request, instead refusing to be drawn into promising additional funds for Wales. Indeed, the general consensus among the opposition parties during the 2015 Election was that this was an unrealistic expectation.
But in order to gauge whether this request is, in fact, unreasonable, it is first necessary to consider what the UK Government deems fit to spend “vast” sums of money on.
As we are all aware Westminster is in need of repair, with the cost of its renovation estimated to be between £3.9 billion or £7 billion. £1.2 billion for one of the most deprived regions in Western Europe is laughable, but £5 billion for a building it seems is quite reasonable. A smaller figure is how much the Queen annually costs the taxpayer, with the Sovereign Grant being raised again in 2016 to £40 million. £1.2 billion a year for a country that boasts rampant unemployment and some of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe? Ludicrous! Spending £40 million for the Monarch to maintain her luxurious lifestyle and maintain her many mansion? Totally reasonable!
However, even these examples of the monstrous hypocrisies in public spending at a time of supposedly necessary austerity pale into insignificance in comparison to the following. In 2008 the UK Government announced a massive bail out of the countries banking industry, with over £200 Billion being initially made available to help with the recovery. A single industry is worth crippling the economy of the United Kingdom, but when considering a far smaller sum for Wales it’s hardly worth a serious debate.
Lastly, our beloved Nuclear Deterrent (Trident) will soon come to the end of its service to the Crown, with talks of renewal estimating a cost of over £100 Billion. This, a weapon that we will never use, that is in reality nothing more than a status symbol is deemed indispensable, while Wales is clearly seen as quite the opposite.
The principle that can be gleamed from the information above is that when the privileged require assistance, the money can be found. Mountains will be moved in order to accommodate their needs, with a single industry, blatant status symbol and building all clearly considered far more important that a purported member of this so called “Community of Nations”. When considering what areas require more funding, the UK Government evidently views Wales as “un important”, meaning any request for a fair deal is deemed automatically unreasonable. But hey…we all have our priorities.
