DURING the 2011 Welsh referendum Carwyn Jones and his Assembly Members explicitly denied that a Yes vote would lead to tax-raising powers or the devolution of policing and criminal justice.

They refused to debate those issues, insisting that it was merely a ‘tidying-up exercise’. Anyone who dared to raise the subject was accused of ‘misleading the people’. Now just two years on Carwyn is demanding control over policing and criminal justice, energy, water, ports regulation and electoral administration (which would involve responsibility for boundaries, voting systems and terms of office for councilors). He also wants tax-raising and borrowing powers.

Politicians should have come clean about all this before the referendum. People have a right to expect their elected representatives to be truthful. The Welsh Assembly has had control over the Welsh economy, health, education, ambulance services, etc for the last 13 years, yet Wales consistently lags behind the rest of the UK in all of these areas. In these straitened times Welsh Assembly Government politicians continue to be obsessed with power-grabbing, as they cut one by one every tie that binds us to the UK.

D Banner Orchard Farm Estate Trevethin, Pontypool