Welsh politics in need of less talk and more action

SINCE devolution, Wales has never been short of economic strategies, but what we have lacked is a government that turns policy into outcomes such as higher productivity, higher wages and more growing firms.

- DYLAN JONES EVANS

Wales goes to the polls on May 7 in what could be a seismic Senedd election

Over the next few weeks, political parties will reveal their plans, and yet there is already an uncomfortable truth behind the Senedd election debate if previous manifestos are anything to go by - we can keep announcing new initiatives and calling them "economic action" or we can finally build something that makes a difference.

So what should a manifesto for the Welsh economy look like if we were serious about changing the trajectory rather than managing decline?

First, Wales must make productivity the north star of economic policy.

Every programme should pass a simple test: how does it raise output per hour, and how will we measure it? If it can't answer that, it should not be supported.

We should also publish a monthly 'Welsh economic scoreboard' because if you can't see it, you can't manage it, and if you never publish it, you don't really intend to be held accountable for it.

Second, entrepreneurship has to stop being a warm paragraph at the back of an economic strategy and become a national mission.

Wales won't build resilience and prosperity without more people starting firms, more firms getting through the hard early years, and far more firms growing into large employers.

That means a pipeline designed around the founder journey of starting, surviving and scaling.

Third, Wales needs to simplify the business journey by creating a single front door that actually works and stops entrepreneurs from spending time navigating programmes instead of building businesses.

Start by taking the Development Bank of Wales, which has largely failed to make a real difference, and integrating its debt functions into Business Wales as was originally intended, so there is one joined-up journey from diagnosis to support to finance.