In a week that began with little hope of meaningful progress in the continuing UK-EU negotiations, Prime Minister, Theresa May and European Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, appeared at a news conference early this morning to announce that discussions had been fruitful enough to progress to the next stage.
Dominated by what was initially the unease of the Northern Ireland border issue and the rather concerning admission that there are, actually, no sector-specific impact assessments, Wales also dipped its toe into the Brexit fray.
Amendments to the EU (Withdrawal) Bill were debated in Parliament and alongside submissions from the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government’s amendments honed in on what First Minister Carwyn Jones has labelled a “hijack of devolved powers”. Essentially, this concerns 64 policy areas returning from Brussels – matters over which the Welsh Government currently has devolved control - including environmental regulation and aspects of economic and transport policy.
Cue the stalemate.
The Welsh Government has long argued that these should be automatically devolved to Cardiff after Brexit, while the UK Government believes that they should be treated to a little pit-stop in London before being devolved, all the while insisting that Wales isn’t losing any powers.
The chance of the amendments’ success was always slim, and ultimately on this occasion, it was 1-0 to Westminster. Prior to this, the First Minister had last week expressed optimism that the Bill may be amended following behind-closed-doors discussions with the Prime Minister’s second-in-command, Damian Green. While the Welsh Government has subsequently said that it is still engaging with UK ministers, it also confirmed that it would “continue this fight in the Lords” if changes are not forthcoming.
Meanwhile, one of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy policies is set to come to an end in Wales by 2021, as the Welsh Government succeeded this week in its bid to scrap the ‘right to buy’ scheme.
Introduced in the early 1980s, Wales follows in the footsteps of Scotland, which ended the scheme last year, although several Welsh local authorities had already suspended it.
The debate has largely come down to a game of numbers.
The number of social housing schemes being developed in Wales hasn’t kept pace with the numbers buying their own council or social home, and figures suggest almost 140,000 council and housing association homes have been sold in Wales as part of the scheme. Forty years on from its launch, the housing stock is now only 55 per cent of what it was.
The shortage of social housing has been widely recognised as a problem in Wales, and Community Housing Cymru (CHC), which represents social landlords, has said that more than 4,000 new homes are needed each year in the social sector in Wales to meet the demand of a growing population.
In an effort to help stem the shortage, some local authorities have taken the creative step of setting up their own development companies, most recently, Carmarthenshire County Council. Commonplace across the border, these types of schemes could well become a more familiar feature of the social housing landscape in Wales amid the challenge of trying to keep pace with demand.
That there is recognition of the problem is to be welcomed, as government, local authorities and housing associations continue to work together in finding more solutions.