Wales should stop comparing itself to England – and start looking at Scotland

When criticising Wales, praising Wales, wondering if Welsh policy is going in the right direction, it seems that the instincts of politicians, researchers and statisticians – both Welsh and English – is to compare what’s happening in Wales to what’s happening in England.

To say this is disproportionate is an understatement and does Welsh politicians an injustice.

Imagine you’re playing a card game with a friend – but you’re only allowed to draw a card when they draw a card. They can choose to draw a card whenever they need or want to.

That’s what playing politics with England can feel like.

Westminster has immense borrowing and spending capabilities – and choices. Their borrowing and spending powers actually increased recently with Rachel Reeves’ new rules on borrowing to invest. Meanwhile, Wales and Scotland rely heavily on a block grant from UK government, the size of which is determined by the size of England’s spending.

Both countries have some devolved tax powers, but not enough to make radical decisions that could lead to major investment.

If there was immense need for spending and investment in Wales and Scotland, but not in England, then that need might end up being ignored, no matter the will of Welsh and Scottish politicians. Meanwhile, if there is need in England, it can be remedied by the immense borrowing and spending powers in Westminster. Wales and Scotland will get a Barnett consequential, but this is not the same as targeted and intentional spending. One could say this was the reason that Wales “lost out” on £155.5 million in the 2020-21 budget. Wales underspent in comparison to England, and rather than be able to bank the savings for when a need actually arose, they had to give the excess money back to Westminster. This could also have been prevented by the Welsh Government at the time if they’d been more on top of things, but the issue only arose at all because of the strange financial arrangements regarding how Wales is funded.

Wales and Scotland are playing the political game with similarly restrictive rules, which are more restrictive than England.

To see if Welsh politicians are doing a good job, then, we should be comparing ourselves first with our counterparts in Scotland, not England.

However, this can be very difficult. Often researchers in the UK will focus on one nation, or they will group England and Wales, ignoring the other two UK nations. Even when nominally discussing “England and Wales”, often they are truly focusing on England. Some international measures, such as PISA scores that measure education, will divide the UK into its devolved nations, but other international researchers will simply treat the UK as a whole, even when the nations might have radically different policies and outcomes.

When we do get direct comparisons that include Scotland, we can ask much more specific questions about whether Welsh policy is working. In the 2022 PISA scores, England’s results came in clearly better than Wales in reading and mathematics:

Source: PISA 2022 Results (Volume I) (EN)

But how can you start to take a guess at why this might be? Does Wales need more funding at a base level from UK government to make up for higher levels of deprivation? Or is this indicative of a need for policy change driven by the Senedd? (Policy change is happening: In 2022 Wales was only just beginning a huge curriculum redesign – the Curriculum and Assessment Wales Act was passed in 2021 and has multiple years of implementation planned. Wales has also been criticised for a historic lack of phonics education.)

The only way to begin to answer these questions is to include other devolved nations:

These numbers suggest a split answer: in mathematics, all three devolved nations are lagging behind England, suggesting there might be a root cause that connects all three (but we could still ask ‘why is Wales at the very bottom?’). In reading, Wales seems to be the outlier. Seemingly other devolved nations can keep their reading scores high (though still not as high as England), so Wales’ devolved government should be able to improve these scores.

Without comparison with Scotland, Wales’ wins are also murky. Wales outperforms England with regards to water quality:

Source: Independent Water Commission Final Report

However, is this because Wales is uniquely good, or because England is lagging behind, whilst Wales is just moving steadily? (Considering that many working people in Wales still remember some rivers running black or orange with coal and industrial chemicals, this is a win either way – but how much of a win is it?)

On both of these metrics it seems England and Scotland are setting the UK average or baseline, and Wales is outperforming them. But without including Scotland in the mix, someone seeking to dismiss the achievements of Welsh policy could come up with excuses for Wales’ wins: ‘Wales is more rural, it has a lower population density, so of course their water is more untouched’. But Scotland also has low population density outside of its two major cities* – and their water quality looks just like England’s. So, the Welsh numbers are not organic – they can be credited to Welsh policy makers, and they are a genuine win for Wales.

*Source: Population estimates for the UK, England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, provisional – Office for National Statistics

Without including Scottish numbers, the decision as to whether to blame or credit Welsh failures and wins to the Senedd or to Westminster is purely down to ideology. Politicians will simply go with their gut when they have to decide whether to spend their energy on devising new policy for Wales or renegotiating with Westminster over what powers and funding Wales receives. This means that our chances of improving on these issues becomes somewhat random, and we risk wasting our energy. There is no point in asking Westminster to help us fix something it is already within our power to fix, but likewise trying to fix something when you are doomed to fail regardless without changing the rules of the game is pointless.