Summary
SIR - Further to your story, "Treasury ignores political consensus by ruling out changes to Barnett formula", (Dec 17) regarding the the current method of apportioning funds by Westminster in Wales, I can appreciate the methodology being based primarily on population but surely it's not rocket-science to understand that in doing so by including the total working population in the calculation produces an unfair bias towards the better-off with vastly lower u nemployment figures to be found in England.
Would it not be better to make a simple adjustment to the existing formula so that the total population figure used in the calculations just includes: the number of unemployed plus the number on short and long-term sickness benefits and the number of registered disabled plus the number of schoolchildren and persons in further education and training? I am sure there are national statistics readily available to facilitate this and in doing so I am sure a very much fairer apportionment of funds to devolved administrations would be arrived at and be more realistically indicative of needs-based requirements by big budget spending categories such as employment, health and education.See the full content of this document
Extract
Barnett Rules Can Be Made Fairer to Wales ; Letters
Transportation fund...
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