³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

I bring you news of (yet) another historic day in Welsh politics. The is to hold its first meeting this century.

Ann Clwyd, the longest-serving Welsh MP, has convened a meeting of the WPP for Wednesday, November 3.

This will be the WPP's first meeting since 1996. Paul Flynn has a detailed account of its history . Its last chairman was Allan Rogers and its secretary Ieuan Wyn Jones. Neither remains a member of Parliament.

The reason for its resurrection is anger among opposition MPs at Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition plans to cull one quarter of the 40 Welsh MPs. The equalisation of parliamentary constituencies will disproportionately affect Wales where, for historic and geographic reasons, constituencies tend to contain fewer voters than English seats.

The Conservatives have promised to hold more meetings of the Welsh Grand Committee, the main forum for Welsh MPs at Westminster.

But in government, the Tories are refusing to hold a meeting of the Welsh Grand on the number of Welsh MPs. Deprived of that forum, Labour and Plaid Cymru MPs are pushing for the WPP to be used to voice their views.

The former Cabinet Minister Alun Michael has also secured a debate in Westminster Hall, next Tuesday, to highlight the issue.

It's fair to say that "Save our MPs" has yet to rouse the public onto the streets but there is genuine anger among MPs who fear the redrawing of the boundaries will confuse voters and leave them short-changed.

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It's more a wishlist than a manifesto, but the Welsh Liberal Democrats have given an intriguing insight into what they hope to get from their coalition with the Conservatives.

A letter from the (Welsh) party's deputy leader, Roger Williams, to Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan contains a nine-point plan, ranging from repatriation of the Bank of Wales title to the transfer of several powers to the Welsh assembly.

I spotted in its redacted form on the Wales Office website and, in the interests of transparency, asked for a copy of the unredacted original.

The Brecon and Radnorshire MP writes: "Finances are obviously tight and I list below a number of policies that could be adopted at little or no cost.

• Redefining the Olympic spend as 'England only' so there is a Barnett consequential. [UK Government argues London 2012 has UK-wide benefit, some football to take place in Cardiff]

• Give the Assembly powers to introduce a St David's Day bank holiday. No cost. [A St David's Day holiday was once Welsh Tory policy, but now appears to have been junked. There would be a cost to public purse of extra paid day off]

• Not cancelling Independently Financed News Consortia pilot in Wales and allowing the trial to continue. Comes out of the licence fee. [Overtaken by events]

• Housing LCO revived and approved without amendment. No cost. [Delivered]

• Date for referendum on further powers, earlier and NOT on same days as assembly election 2011 with PM and DPM to come to Wales to campaign for a Yes vote. No cost. [Date set for March 3, PM to stay neutral and out of campaign]

• Immediate Commission into devolving policing and justice to the National Assembly. Minimal cost. [Little sign of progress on this one]

• Give powers on energy developments greater than 50MW to the Assembly. No cost. [DECC appear keen to retain powers and have suggested Wylfa could get a replacement nuclear power station]

• Repatriation of the Bank of Wales title. No cost. [An idea also found in the (Welsh Labour) leadership manifesto of Carwyn Jones. The Bank of Wales was taken over by the Bank of Scotland and ceased trading in its own name some years ago]

• Full planning and administrative support for a Welsh Stock Exchange in partnership between UK Government and NAfW. Estimated £million max." [An idea floated by his colleague as a way for companies to raise cash.]

I make that about one and a half ideas (so far) out of nine that could reach fruition. The appears to have rather more Scottish than Welsh input but Mr Williams's letter does reveal the lobbying that is going on behind the scenes.

I'll bring you Cheryl Gillan's reply when I get it.

UPDATE: A spokesman for the Secretary of State for Wales said:

"The Secretary of State met Mr Williams to discuss his letter in June and dealt with its contents there.

"The coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats sets out our joint programme for government over the next five years. It was agreed by both parties and has been published.

"The government has already delivered on the housing LCO, while Orders paving the way for a referendum on further powers for the National Assembly were laid before Parliament and the National Assembly last Thursday."

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Your starter for 10: Name the chair and the treasurer of the Welsh Parliamentary Party.

Give up? I thought so. The chair, when it last met, was Allan Rogers, who was MP for Rhondda until 2001.

The treasurer was someone called Ieuan Wyn Jones, also an MP until 2001, and now deputy First Minister in the Welsh assembly government, where he wields a slightly larger budget.

The source of this information is the Newport West Labour MP Paul Flynn, who wants to bring back the Welsh Parliamentary Party.

In a letter to the other 39 Welsh MPs, he writes: "The WPP is probably more representative of the democratically expressed views of the people of Wales than the Welsh Affairs Select Committee or the Welsh Grand Committee. It may have a significant role in expressing views on issues of national importance.

"The WPP is a unique parliamentary institution that was formed in 1888. Membership traditionally has included all MPs representing constituencies in Wales. In recent years the body was responsible for making appointments of MPs to the Courts of National Library of Wales and the National Museum.

"The WPP in 1995 successfully proposed and sponsored a change in Commons Standing Orders to enable the Welsh Grand Committee to meet in Wales and use the Welsh language."

"Traditionally the senior Welsh MP convenes meeting of the WPP. That is Ann Clwyd. I am the only remaining officer as secretary. The previous chairman and treasurer are no longer Mps."

History lesson over, Mr Flynn holds out the prospect of the WPP being re-born: "If the senior MP agrees, a meeting may be convened in the near future."

The proposal to exhume the WPP is born out of the frustration Labour MPs feel in opposition to a government implementing plans to cut a quarter of Wales's 40 MPs.

The Conservatives have yet to deliver their manifesto promise to hold more meetings of the Welsh Grand Committee (no street protests as yet to report) and the Secretary of State for Wales, Cheryl Gillan, has rejected a request for a meeting of the Welsh Grand to discuss the cull of MPs.

Resurrecting the WPP would be one way of trying to persuade Mrs Gillan to change her mind - even if the WPP's chair and treasurer may have prior engagements.

Tune in to Sunday Supplement ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio Wales on Sunday at 8am to find out more.

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We are never short of committees in Wales, even if these days they are sometimes called task and finish groups or advisory taskforces.

Parliament's select committee on Welsh affairs shows no inclination to re-brand itself but it is breaking new ground at Westminster.

The committee now has two Labour frontbenchers - Nia Griffith and Owen Smith - among its membership. It also features Glyn Davies, the parliamentary private secretary to the Secretary of State for Wales. Or, to put it more concisely, the Minister who is supposed to be held accountable by the committee has her own "nark" on it.

A slight conflict of interests, then? No-one would suggest Glyn Davies is anything other than independent-minded, but if he strays from government policy he would lose his (unpaid) job. Cheryl Gillan has already publicly announced his neutrality on the referendum on the Welsh assembly's powers. He is not the first PPS to sit on the committee - Newport East MP Jessica Morden was a member while an aide to Paul Murphy in the Wales Office.

Should Mr Davies adhere to the convention that PPSes don't sit on select committees it would leave the Tories with a headache; they have already had to co-opt one English-based MP (Karen Lumley) and have few other Welsh options.

Few expect Owen Smith and Nia Griffith to stay long on the committee after their promotion to the opposition frontbench.

Vacancies have been advertised among Labour MPs although health and safety aficionados will be re-assured to learn that no-one has yet been trampled in the rush to succeed them.

UPDATE: report that Stuart Andrew, the Welsh-speaking Yorkshire MP, will replace Glyn Davies on the select committee. Mr Andrew grew up in Anglesey.

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Pick a number, any number. The chances are it will show that Wales has fared better than most/been short-changed/targeted for cuts in the Chancellor's spending review* (delete as appropriate).

The say the Welsh assembly government budget (WAG) will be cut in real terms by 11 per cent during the next four years, a similar percentage cut as the Scottish government, one per cent more than the Northern Ireland executive.

Not so, say the assembly government who use a different set of figures to suggest they face a cut of £900m from their £15bn budget next year - a 6 per cent cut in a single year (still rather less than many Whitehall departments).

WAG say the cuts are the deepest since World War II - not so, say the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who say they're the deepest since the 1970s.

Plaid Cymru, at Westminster at least, say the cuts will be barely more than those planned over the next three years by Labour. Plaid's parliamentary leader Elfyn Llwyd said: "Before the election, the Wales Audit Office said that Labour's plans for Wales would have cut £3bn over the next three years. Under the Tories and Lib Dems, it will be £2.9bn."

All very confusing for those of us who lack accountancy qualifications, with the rhetoric given added spice by the fact that different parties are in power in Cardiff and Westminster and the prospect of Welsh elections next May.

Labour blame the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats; the Tories and Lib Dems blame the last Labour government, and Plaid Cymru blame everyone.

What is beyond dispute is that for the first time since devolution, WAG Ministers are going to have to implement spending cuts, even if the Treasury say public spending by 2015 will only be back to the levels of 2008.

It's possibly time to dredge up Disraeli's old quote about lies, damned lies and statistics.

The political lexicon can be challenged at times like these. Elfyn Llwyd accused the UK Government of re-arranging the deckchairs - a point he also made about a Gordon Brown carried out last year.

As the late put it, eight years ago, it may be time for the deckchairs to be packed off on a long holiday.

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Almost one year ago I put together some notes for a hosted by a thinktank on "Life under the Tories".

I suggested then that several "big ticket" projects proposed by the last Labour Government could be vulnerable under a Conservative administration.

Given the economic climate, then as now, you didn't have to be Mystic Meg to predict what was likely to happen.

I questioned the viability of the St Athan project (ditched today), was sceptical about the Severn Barrage (ditched yesterday) and electrification of the London to Swansea rail line (ditched tomorrow?). I also wondered whether reviewing the way more than half of public spending in Wales is decided would be a priority; the Barnett formula review is some way away.

Today, St Athan bit the dust, or more accurately the Metrix consortium's preferred bidder status on the £14bn project was terminated. Anti-Metrix campaigners estimate that around £100m of public money has been spent in preparation for the project.

Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan, who told us recently that "I remain committed to our military activity and the programmes that were put forward for St Athan and continue to do so" told us today there is a good future for St Athan: "The MoD is reviewing its training and estates requirement and has confirmed it still hopes to locate the training facility at St Athan."

In the two hours it took the Wales Office to publish her reaction to the news, Labour politicians had hit the phones, the web, and the airwaves to warn of "undisguised anger" at the decision. Of course, had Labour stuck to the original timetable on the St Athan project, which had been delayed by more than a year, it could have been under construction by now. (Rather like those aircraft carriers whose cancellation was too expensive to cancel.)

So it may not be the end of St Athan, but it is the end for Metrix and its expensive lobbying operation, seen out in force at the recent party conference season. As that Swansea ex-pat Michael Heseltine put it in another context, never have so many crustaceans died in vain.

I'm now back in Westminster, refreshed by my road trip across south Wales. The second leg, featuring encounters with a headteacher, a multi-millionaire and the good citizens of Newport, is due to air on Wales Today this evening.

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It was the hottest ticket in town, the first chance for the new leader to make his mark.

But as Ed Miliband made his bow at Prime Minister's Question Time, I accompanied the into Ramsey Sound off the Pembrokeshire coast - and more than 250 miles from Parliament.

I'm spending a week away from Westminster, talking to people in the real world about next week's comprehensive spending review. My visit to St David's coincided with a poignant anniversary.

One hundred years ago today, the then St David's lifeboat, Gem (shown above in an RNLI photograph), was wrecked in Ramsey Sound. Its crew had rescued the three man crew of the ketch Democrat. Three crew from Gem lost their lives - the coxswain, John Stephens, and lifeboatmen Henry Rowlands and James Price.

This morning, the current coxswain David John lowered a wreath into the water to mark the anniversary. A memorial service at St David's Cathedral followed, along with the dedication of a plaque in the city's Memorial Gardens.

The RNLI say that in its 141 years the St David's lifeboat has deployed more than 420 times, saving a minimum of 360 lives.

Today's calm weather could not have been more different from the storms of a century ago, and the current lifeboat, Garside is rather more high-tech than Gem, which relied on sails and the rowing power of its crew for power.

My reports on a journey from West Wales to Westminster will air on Wales Today early next week in the run-up to the spending review on October 20.

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Day three of the Tory conference in Birmingham and a 6.55am chat with the Prime Minister on the conference stage.

The gist of it? The child benefit changes are fair, the Tories have to win the arguments for spending cuts before the Welsh assembly elections and he won't be campaigning in the referendum on the assembly's powers next March.

He sidestepped a question about the proposed £14bn defence training academy earmarked for St Athan in South Wales.

Removing child benefit from higher-rate taxpayers has annoyed many Tory supporters in Fleet Street and led the Children's Minister to suggest the changes could be revised. I suggested the policy was unravelling: "I don't think so. It's a difficult decision to make a tough choice to make but I think it's fair as we confront this enormous deficit as we pay down our debts we have to ask better off people to bear a fair share of the burden and obviously child benefit will be kept for 85 per cent of people"

I asked why a family with an income of £80,000 a year should get more state handouts than one on £45,000 a year. "We have this situation in the tax system - if you have one earner on £50,000 they pay top rate tax, but if you have two on £25,000 they don't pay top rate tax.

"The alternative would be to means test every single family in the country and set up an incredibly complicated and expensive and intrusive bureaucracy and I think it's better just to say if there is a top rate taxpayer in the house they don't get child benefit."

The Conservative attacked the benefits system for rewarding couples who split up - haven't the Tories just done the same? "I don't think that's right - the child benefit will be there for the vast majority of families."

David Cameron has already suggested the spending cuts will create a tough background against which the Conservatives will fight the assembly elections next May. A hospital pass?

"I think we'll have to make the argument in Wales that it's right to deal with the deficit, it's right to do so straight away, it's right to tackle this problem and the alternative, the Labour alternative, is to put off the decision-making. Now we all know with our debts it doesn't get better, it gets worse and the interest mounts up. I think we can win that argument and that's what we have to do before the Assembly elections."

He denied spending cuts would put Wales with its relative dependence into recesssion - "all the forecasts are for economic growth".

David Cameron has the "logic" of the proposed defence training academy at St Athan but is the £14bn cost affordable in the current climate?

Cue sidestep. "You're going to see all of the decisions made in the strategic defence review which will be announced in the next few weeks. Obviously difficult decisions have to be made but the key question we have to answer is how are you going to protect and defend Brititain in the modern age from the threats to face and that's the question we'll answer."

Mr Cameron told Scottish Conservatives that he'd campaign in any referendum on independence for Scotland - a vote that has yet to be fixed. So will we see him during the campaign for the referendum on Welsh assembly powers next March?

"What I was saying about Scotland was I want to keep the United Kingdom together and I don't want to see it break up, and I was talking about a referendum, if there was one, I hope there won't be one, on independence. The same would apply to Wales I want to keep Wales in the United Kingdom.

"The issue about whether or not the Assembly should have more powers is a question for people in Wales I don't live in Wales so I don't have a vote in Wales and I know that the arguments will be put strongly on both sides.

"You'll see me in Wales, you'll see me in those Assembly elections but I think the issue
of powers for the Welsh Assembly that's one for the Welsh people".

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What is is about Wales that makes political leaders so camera-shy?

Labour allowed us to film Ed Miliband arriving at the party's Welsh Night reception in Manchester, but not to record his speech.

The Conservatives went one step further and banned journalists from their Welsh reception until David Cameron had left the room. He even entered and exited via a side door. I didn't count him all in and I didn't count him all out.

Except......there was one door around the back used by the waitresses serving the assembled Welsh Tories - and the Prime Minister's speech did carry rather well through that open door.

So what did he say? There was praise for the party's improved performance in last May's general election: "We can say the Welsh dragon of Conservatism has awoken in Wales again."

But there was a cautionary note to what he said about elections to the Welsh assembly next May: "There will be a tough background to them because of decisions taken in the national interest."

Mr Cameron praised the party's performance in the general election in May, when it won a total of eight seats in Wales: "We can say the Welsh dragon of Conservatism has awoken in Wales again."

He found some warm words for the Liberal Democrats and highlighted several coalition policies, including free schools in England and NHS reform, also in England. He suggested the new policy on benefits would lead to "the biggest reform of the welfare state in 70 years."

The chairman (as she likes to be known) of the Welsh party, Catrin Edwards, told her members that after next year's elections the Tories could find themselves in a coalition government led by Nick Bourne.

Once they let us into the room, I suggested that a rainbow coalition led by the Conservatives doesn't look too likely in the current climate. "It's possible," said Mrs Edwards. They're all optimists now.

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