No apology from Welsh secretary over town centre cash row

A UK minister has said she will not apologise over plans to fund town centre improvements without involving the Welsh government.

Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens spoke after Labour Senedd member Alun Davies said ministers in Cardiff were being “humiliated” by the UK government’s stance on devolution.

Davies was one of 11 Labour backbenchers in Cardiff Bay who signed a letter attacking how funding for the Pride in Place scheme was going directly to local councils, bypassing Welsh ministers.

But Stevens said “my job is to make sure that we get more in Wales, not less, and I’m not going to turn money away”.

Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth used a debate in the Welsh Parliament on Wednesday evening to accuse Sir Keir Starmer of “an abject lack of delivery for Wales”.

The UK government, he argued, was “bypassing devolution altogether”.

In the debate Davies criticised how the country is funded and disagreements over powers with Westminster, saying it was “not fair that Wales is treated the way it is”.

There is a split within Labour between Westminster and Cardiff on where power should lie in devolved areas.

A visit to Port Talbot on Thursday by Jo Stevens was the first opportunity for a member of the UK cabinet to respond to the criticism from Labour Cardiff Bay politicians.

Stevens said Pride in Place funding was “about making sure that people in Wales get what they need and what they deserve in order to make improvements to their lives”.

“So if you open your door in the morning and there’s a bus shelter that’s broken or you haven’t got enough bins in your town centre, people want these things fixed,” she told BBC Wales.

“That’s what they want, that’s what their priorities are.

“And there is money going to every single local authority in Wales in order to do those sorts of things.”

Stevens was asked what her message was to Labour Senedd members “causing her a bit of a headache”.

“I met with all the Labour MSs last week, actually, and I spend a lot of my time out and about with Labour MSs all over Wales,” she said.

“We are doing a job of work for the people of Wales, and I will be absolutely fully behind the First Minister, Eluned Morgan, as we go into the run-up to the elections next year.”

Davies told the Senedd on Wednesday he wanted “equality for our country within the United Kingdom”, having earlier argued that policing powers should also be devolved to Wales.

“It is not fair that Wales is treated the way it is, and it is not fair that Welsh ministers are humiliated – and we saw it this afternoon – having to run to catch up because they don’t know what’s being said from London,” he said.

“It’s not fair that Welsh ministers need to try to explain that rail funding is fair when it’s self-evidently not, that Barnett is fair when it is self-evidently not.”

The Barnett formula is used by the UK Treasury to set funding for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The Welsh government has said the formula should be changed because it does not meet Wales’ needs.

Pride in Place uses a law that gives the UK government powers to spend money in areas that are usually controlled by the Welsh government.

Another signatory to the letter criticising Pride in Place, Jenny Rathbone, said the policy was “pitting one deprived area from another” and that the money had been “top-sliced” from funding to the Welsh government.

“So, that is why this is so devastating and it is absolutely about the everyday affairs of the people I represent,” she said.

Conservative Senedd member James Evans, meanwhile, said arguments about the devolution settlement “are not only tiring, they are actively distracting us from the serious challenges that the people of Wales face”.

Responding to the debate, Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies repeated Welsh government calls to devolve powers over the Crown Estate and the justice system.

“The strength of our record as a Welsh Labour government and as a Welsh Labour party is that we stand up for devolution and we deliver for the people of Wales,” he said.

Stevens was in Port Talbot announcing an additional £22m from the UK government for a transition fund to support 2,800 redundant Tata steel workers and to help local businesses adapt to a move to greener steel production using a new electric arc furnace.

It takes the total funding pot to £122m, including £20m from Tata, for training courses, to start and expand companies and for investment in new equipment.

Stevens visited engineering JES group, whose academy is training dozens of steelworkers.

She said the money was to “support people coming out of the steelworks”.

“This is to support businesses who need to diversify and grow, it’s to re-skill people,” she said.

“Here at JES they’ve been taking on lots of people from the steel works to retrain them for jobs that are going to be available through the investment that we’re making into Wales and across the UK.”

Additional reporting by Teleri Glyn Jones