Slugger O'Toole

Rhodri’s Legacy

Yesterday the ONS published it’s Regional, sub-regional and local gross value added report for 2008

Highlights in GVA per head

England £21,020
Wales £15,237
Scotland £20,086
Northern Ireland £16,188
Some extraordinary deviations within nations also:

For the NUTS2 sub regions:

Bottom five GVA per head
Merseyside £14,155
Lincolnshire £13,972
Tees Valley & Durham £13,787
Cornwall & Isles of Scilly £12,681
West Wales & the Valleys £12,617

And for NUTS3 lower regions we have:

Bottom five GVA per head
Conwy and Denbighshire £11,910
Central Valleys £11,604 (Central Valleys of Glamorganshire I presume)
Gwent Valleys £11,397
Wirral £11,257
Isle of Anglesey £10,998

(For info:

The Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics (NUTS) provides a single uniform
breakdown for the production of regional statistics for the European Union. There are three
levels of NUTS in the UK:
• NUTS1: Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Government Office Regions of
England.
• NUTS2: 37 areas – mainly groups of counties and unitary authorities; can be referred
to as sub-regions.
• NUTS3: 133 areas – principally individual counties and unitary authorities; also
known as local areas.
• Some areas appear at more than one level, for example Northern Ireland appears at
NUTS1 and NUTS2 level.)

The National Assembly for Wales set a target of achieving a GVA per head of 90% of the UK average by 2010 – we ended up at 74.3% – and in a declining trend.

The strongest argument for completing the process of devolution envisaged in the Government of Wales Act 2006 is this:

If, under such a byzantine system of governement, it can take 4 years to transfer the powers to suspend council house sales from Westminster, how on earth can an economic strategy with multiple levers be implemented in a strategic coherent fashion?