Recognition of the Cornish as a national minority was not worth the paper it was written on

On this day April 23rd, last year the government announced that they were recognising the Cornish people under the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. This was widely welcomed including by myself, that the Cornish were now recognised as a nation. However 12 months on, what has really changed?

I became concerned back in February when people contacted me to say that they had registered to vote online and did not have the option to identify themselves as Cornish, as this screenshot of the website shows:

This situation prompted me to contact the Liberal Democrat ministers and ask them what had actually changed since the fanfare of the announcement? Why situations like this were still occurring, let alone things more ambitious than adding a 7 letter word. That was back on the 11th of February and the reply? a deafening silence. 

This is the problem with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, they'll put out grand press releases about devolving power to Cornwall, Cornwall getting it's own minister and fair funding for our public services, but when it comes to the crunch they just don't deliver. The time has come for Cornwall to stop looking to the same old leopards in the vain hope they'll change their spots and vote for Mebyon Kernow- the Party for Cornwall. We are not interested in propping up minority governments and other political shenanigans but are solely focussed on doing what is best for Cornwall.  

 

debunking the myth of the Lib Dems commitment to fair funding for Cornwall

At the Mebyon Kernow conference, Dick Cole said in his speech

"Members of the London based political parties may time and time again stampede onto the political ground that we have served with honour, but they have so often failed to remain true to those causes they have  espoused for short term political advantage. They've so blatantly co-opted the policies of MK,they've said one thing to people in Cornwall totally different thing to people in London. they've given their support to local campaigns and then they've blatantly backtracked when told to by their Westminster masters."

See that video here on the Cornish Republican blog,

There are a great number of examples to illustrate this point, one came this week with the announcement by the Coalition government that public sector workers pay will reflect local pay levels. Yet again the Liberal Democrats co opted the MK policy of securing fair funding for Cornwall at the last election, yet are in a government that believes Cornish policeman, Cornish firefighters, Cornish nurses, Cornish teachers to name but a few should be paid less than their up-country counterparts. So because we are a low pay part of the UK our civil servants will be paid less than elsewhere. This will only further undermine the Cornish economy and will take millions of pounds of Cornish taxpayers money out of our economy. 

It also presents another problem as Stuart Roden from Unison rightly points out:

"We could see teachers, nurses and local authority workers head for the Home Counties. Cornwall in particular has for a long time seen young people leave the region for better paid jobs. We could see another exodus."

Quote from This is Cornwall news site.

It absolutely beggars belief that the Lib Dems can stand for election promising to provide Cornwall with fair funding, or at least to fight for it, then the only thing their government does is introduces more unfair funding. To right this wrong these MPs should fight to reinstate the equal worth of Cornish workers to English, Welsh and Scottish workers. To save the one parity of funding we currently have.

For an extended litany of broken promises see the Cornish Lib Dem's Programme for Cornwall

A Minister for Cornwall and the politics of empty promises

In my previous blog post I copied the letter that I had received from the Prime Minister about whether Kernow was due to receive a dedicated  Minister for Cornwall as was promised before the election. The This is Cornwall site picked up on my blog post and rehashed it into an article and was further rehashed by the Falmouth People website. It was very nice to see that somebody had been reading my blog, but I couldn’t help thinking that the articles did not move the debate on further. So I asked myself what I would do if I was a journalist...

I came to the conclusion that I would seek more clarification from the Prime Minister about the issue, as I did not feel the issue resolved in my previous letter from David Cameron’s office. So below, is my reply to the PM asking categorically if Cornwall will receive a dedicated Minister and outlining some of the reasons why I think Cornwall deserves more political attention from the ever distant political process. I plan to publish any replies that I receive and as courtesy have sent this same message to the Deputy Prime Minister and Cornwall’s six Members of Parliament and will post any of their replys also.

Dear Prime Minister,



Firstly I would like to thank you for the reply to my question about a Minister for Cornwall, sent from your office on the 16th of August. I hope you do not mind but I copied the letter onto my blog, seeing as it was a q & a meant for a public forum (the Prime Minister Direct event in Newquay) I thought this was appropriate, and I will also publish any reply that might be sent to this letter.

It certainly was a meaningful gesture that Cornwall was chosen as one of the first places to hold the PM Direct and hopefully this was a sign that we have moved on from the Labour years when interaction between politicians of the governing party and Cornwall was a very low priority. I was however a bit puzzled by the intent of the letter sent to me, my question was really quite simple: “are we going to get a Minister for Cornwall?” and the reply was somewhat ambiguous:


“We are now part of a Coalition Government and, as such, we are considering the best way to determine non-portfolio Ministers like this with our coalition partners.”

I can only conclude that this was a diplomatic shrug off and we will not be getting a dedicated minister. I sincerely hope that this is not the case, the Conservative candidates in Cornwall at the General Election made a lot of capital from your significant move, to create Mark Prisk as Shadow Minister for Cornwall.
There is very much a feeling in Cornwall that politics has to change, we remain in a poor economic state and in comparison to the United Kingdom and Western Europe we sadly under perform. Despite the intentions of European Union Objective One funding there has been little increase in real terms wealth. It seems obvious that Cornwall deserves a lot more attention politically and economically for this situation to improve. In this regard, personally and across the Duchy, your support for a Cornwall and Scilly LEP was greatly welcomed.

However, politically too we need to be making more decision ourselves, providing Cornish solutions to Cornish problems, if the Labour years taught as anything it was that Cornwall’s voice is not represented by offices in distant Bristol or indeed by south west ministers. The widespread rejection of the Labour party at the polls in the local, Euro and General elections in Cornwall confirms that Labour never got to grasp with Cornwall nor represented our interests satisfactorily. Many in Cornwall recognised that Cornish Conservatives were speaking sense when they argued that Cornwall needs MP’s at the heart of government and that decisions should be made in Cornwall not by regional bodies. They too looked to your now coalition partners the Liberal Democrats and their promises to deliver a Cornish Assembly with great relish. Both parties performed well at the General Election on differing promises that both echoed the need to bring more power to Cornwall and to make our voice heard better. People in Cornwall were very expectant that politics had finally changed and we could look forward to no longer being the poor relation of our neighbours.

It is therefore with a mixture of puzzlement and dismay that despite these concrete promises of more political power, that we know actually face less, with plans for a cross-Tamar Devonwall constituency. This unpopular move really undermines the electoral promises of both governing parties and leaves many wondering the utility of having politicians at the heart of government.

I feel I have made my points clearly, so now I have a number of questions:



When will Cornwall receive a dedicated Minister?

When will Cornwall start to have more say in our own affairs?

When can we expect to see the benefits of having politicians at the heart of government?



Yours sincerely,



Robert Simmons
CC to:




Nick Clegg



Andrew George



George Eustice



Sarah Newton



Stephen Gilbert



Dan Rogerson



Sheryll Murray