114. The future of Wales (Eluned Morgan)

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0:48Welcome to The Restless Politics, leading with me, Roy Stewart. And me, Anistar Campbell. And we are delighted to have with us the First Minister of Wales, elinid morgan who i have known for many years who is a welsh speaker from cardiff who is somebody who's had several ministerial posts before this one in the welsh government and before that was a member of the european parliament which i think is when i first got to know you largely through our mutual friends the kinects and we've also been involved in mental health campaigns together because Sydney is a great mental health campaigner. And something of a reluctant first minister.

1:27Is that fair? Yes, a little bit. I did put my name in before, but I didn't put my name in the second time. So, yeah, it was an unexpected pleasure to become first minister in the summer after a little bit of a turmoil. Yeah, we remember the turmoil. And for international British listeners, tell us a little bit about the role of first minister and the powers that Wales has independent of the United Kingdom. So we've had a devolved government now for 25 years. Initially, there were actually quite few powers, but over the years, we now have lawmaking powers. We have a big budget. We have a power to vary taxation.

2:08And we have responsibility for things like health, education, aspects of the economy, transport. So actually quite a lot of areas that touch people's lives on top of obviously having an overview on what happens at the local government level. Do you think some of those powers should return to Westminster or you should take more powers from Westminster or do you think the balance is about right? I certainly don't think there's a need to take anything back because I've always been a believer in try and get politics as close as you can to the people. So subsidiarity, that's the big European approach, isn't it?

2:41I've always believed in that. And what's important is you don't just do subsidiarity from the UK to Wales. You should be doing it within Wales as well, making sure that you can get power decision making as close as you can to people. So in terms of where we're at now, I think the balance, I certainly wouldn't be giving any powers back. But I think there are little areas around the edges, things like youth justice, for example, where we have lots of the powers to make the difference because the infrastructure for, you know, apprenticeships and education and all of those things that are so important to getting people back on the right track.

3:19we've got the power over those and there's a disconnect with the home office and things so that is a problem that i think there's a few areas like that that need to be ironed out now can we go right back to the beginning 1967 when you were born in ely in cardiff and your dad was a vicar and so think about that we've had theresa may on the podcast angela merkel then you think about gordon brown you think about douglas alexander what do you think your upbringing in that kind of household gave to you that may have contributed to you becoming a politician i remember reading a book jeremy pax wrote a book a few years ago and said you know what kind of people go into politics and he identified vicar's kids as a group so you know we're obviously brought up with that sense of service you know so that's the example we're given in our communities.

4:14But often people rebel. They do and I think it's kind of which path do tread really and I've got to say I was a little bit more naughty than Theresa May who kind of ran through a field of wheat. Go on then you've set yourself up for that what was the naughtiest thing you've done? There is no way I'm going there on this program but what I did have was an upbringing you know is a council housing estate it was the largest council housing estate in europe there'd been a couple of riots there that's what has drawn attention to it my dad you know our vicarage was right in the middle of the estate and most of the things in the community were centered around the church it was the church that held a lot of it together so he ran a disco one of the first discos in south wales 800 people coming in every week way before health and safety He ran it, yeah.

5:05And is that not a bit embarrassing, like the trendy vicar in the disco? Well, it was a bit. Can you imagine him rocking up in his collar? But he was a real working class bloke and he used to love bouncing. He'd get in there and grab people by their hair if they were messing about. You know, he wouldn't take any messing and he was really respected. Shakin' Stevenson, people used to turn up to the disco. You know, we all had to muck in. So we had bingo every Tuesday and you had to go into the bingo and we all had to set it all up and you'd had to clear up at the end of the night and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face because of all the smoke, everybody was smoking and it was just an amazing upbringing but crucially it was a really poor area and there were a lot of people who were in trouble and we had an open house, I mean literally all times of the day and night we had people from, I remember there's a lad who walked from the other side of Cade if he was kicked out of his house by his mother at about age 11.

6:04He walked the other side from the city, turned up at his father's house, who said, OK, you can come in with his new wife, but you've got to leave before we get up in the morning and you've got to be in bed after we've gone to bed. So he literally, you know, my dad found him in the back of the church and he came to our house every day. You know, he came for breakfast and, you know, there were lots of kids like that. And that was just part of what we grew up with. Actually, interestingly, we've recently interviewed Nancy Pelosi and Rosa DeLore, these kind of big figures of the Democratic Party in the United States.

6:38And they also grew up in houses with parents who had, in their case, they were sort of local councillors, mayors, had these amazing open houses. In their case, they're older than you, running through the 50s and 60s. But I think part of their formation as politicians seems to have been this sense of their family house being an amazing kind of meeting ground. Your mum and dad were both Labour councillors, weren't they? They were. So my dad just, I think, started off through, you know, being the local vicar. You know, he was always motivated first by his Christianity. But just praying for people who live in that community wasn't practical enough.

7:14So he got into politics and our house became an HQ for the Labour Party. so he became and it was a solid Labour area you know and it was a marginal seat so you can imagine election times everybody piled in but our house I mean you think back it was you know we had three first ministers who used to turn up all the time so Alan Michael was a youth worker in the area Mark Drakeford was a youth worker in the area and Roger Morgan became the MP and then we had And George Thomas was the MP before. Speaker. So the Speaker of the House of Commons. And Mark Rickford, your predecessor's First Minister. That's right.

7:56And George Thomas, for example, so he was the MP before. He's the one who, I think, helped to persuade my dad to go into politics. So you knew some of these people almost from childhood. It was almost like a family. Oh, definitely. And you were out on the streets, leafleting, campaigning. I was leafleting from six years old. We just mucked in. It was just part of what we did. And you were a Christian. Yeah. How does that frame and form your politics? I think it's shaped everything and the thinking and my motivation. You know, I think it's through that example that I saw through my parents. My husband, who has just retired as a GP, is also now a priest in the Anglican Church.

8:33So, you know, I'm absolutely surrounded by it. And, you know, for me, it's an important touchstone for me to just kind of check where I am in terms of decision making. in. It's like a little voice on my shoulder all the time, just making sure I'm in the right place, I guess. Last night, I bizarrely found myself speaking to 150 Anglican clergymen at a foundation called For the Education of London Clergy. It's like a 500-year-old thing. And sitting there was Liz Truss's uncle, the Reverend Truss. The clergyman? The clergyman, yeah. And I was thinking Thinking about the fact that at the heart of the Christian message is the idea of hope, the idea that when things are very, very dark, despite all the horrors of human nature, there is the possibility of redemption, there's the possibility of hope.

9:23Is that something that you feel when you look at all the very difficult, dangerous things that seem to be happening around the world and accelerating around the world? I think if you don't have hope, you're going to lose your motivation to do anything. So hope for me is fundamental. And hope for everyone, that's the other thing. It's got to be hope that touches the lives of people who currently are in despair and who struggle with their daily lives. Where's the hope that we can offer them as a society? And that's certainly, for me, something that motivates me and is in that Christian philosophy.

10:00What did your experience in the European Parliament teach you about your own relationship with politics and what you felt you could do? And then I guess related to that, what are your reflections about our leaving the European Union and how we've handled it since? So I went into European Parliament at a really interesting time. It was 1994. So the single market was just being developed, you know, trying to make sure we could all buy and sell goods across the nations. And, you know, what did that look like in terms of the impact on the social contract with society? All of those things were really important.

10:40also the structure of how it worked the only way you could get things done was by compromising with people you didn't necessarily agree with so that approach to politics which is you got to compromise you want to get something done you might inch ahead rather than you know march ahead that's an approach that I understood there it's certainly something that works as you know in the House of Lords and it's something that we have to practice as well in the Welsh Parliament. We've never had a majority in the Welsh Parliament. So that compromise to get things done even if you're not getting to the ideal that you want to get to I think is fundamental.

11:23And it was also almost the glory days of Europe wasn't it? So this was the Croatian single market it was also the run-up to the accession of 10 new countries Lithuanian Romania's economy's been completely transformed. It must have felt a very exciting moment. You were relatively young and you were seeing it through that the 90s, early 2000s when everything seemed to be going very well. It was. It was amazing. And, you know, I was 27 years old, youngest member of the European Parliament. And it was, it was a really exciting time. And then a couple of years later, we had the Labour government and that shifted the dynamic again.

11:55So all of that was really exciting. And, you know, I watched as those new countries came in, first of all, I think Finland and Sweden, And, you know, the language changed. The language of the corridors when I started was French. And after those three other countries came, it switched to English. So it was really interesting. And then, of course, Eastern Europeans came in and that really switched it entirely again. So it was a really exciting time to be a part of that. But the story came to an end in a really sad way. I'd left the European Parliament by then. But, you know, I was devastated by the vote, particularly in Wales.

12:31You know, very, very disappointed after Wales had received massive sums from the European Union. And, you know, that was a tragedy, I think. And I think we will pay a big price for years to come. What are your reflections about why it happened, where the debate is now, and what you've learned from it? I think we were never great at connecting what was happening there with the lives of people in our communities. Although, ironically, in Wales, of everywhere, everywhere you look, the flag was everywhere. I remember, you know, straight after the referendum, you know, there's this interview with this guy standing in Lein-Aguent saying, hey, he didn't do anything for us.

13:13He's standing in front of a college entirely paid for by the European Union, all the courses paid for by the European Union a leisure centre next door paid for it you just think my god you know so we obviously didn't do a very good job at telling people how the European Union was touching their lives but what was interesting for me was at the time I was in the House of Lords and I was leading for Labour in the House of Lords on the Brexit referendum bill and you know I just remember thinking god they're being complacent here You know, I remember speaking to people from the FCO, there was no sense of panic or preparation.

13:53And, you know, I was going home to Wales every weekend and canvassing and it was bad. It was really bad on the streets. And it was that utter disconnect from the people making policy here in London, cosmopolitan, you know, multicultural from the kind of societies that, you know, I represent mid and West Wales. It's a long way from London. And, you know, even Cardiff, you know, you've got to get out of Cardiff to get a sense of what people on the streets were thinking. And, you know, it wasn't good. Stepping back, one idea might be that this is the result of a fundamental breakdown of the whole liberal market model.

14:382008 financial crisis, the crises that followed in Europe after it, wages that have been stagnant since the late 1970s, a sense that Western economies, not just Britain, but Europe, United States, facing really fundamental problems with the way that the financial system works, the way that incomes work. Do you feel that? Look, I don't think austerity helps because, you know, the first places are cut. So the things that touch people's lives and, you know, they've been feeling it. And, you know, for that to happen for a couple of years or something, but for it to happen for a decade or more, that is really hurting people and it's affecting people.

15:17And, you know, that whole build up to Brexit, I think where people get their information from, you know, what they're hearing. I think all of that stuff is all come at the same time. So I do think we've got a challenge in terms of how we communicate and how we reach into people's lives now. But am I detecting that you're not quite going as far as I am? You're not quite saying there's something fundamentally wrong with this economic system? No, I don't. I think there was something wrong with the way the Conservatives managed the economic system. It's incredible, you know, that people like Liz Truss wanted to go even further.

15:51You know, I believe in intervening in the market. I believe that actually we have a responsibility and the market's got to work for the people. It's not got to be the other way around. So I'm very clear that the model is okay. How you manage the model is the challenge. Are you not frustrated as I am that despite all three of us agree that Brexit has not gone well and it's done fundamental damage to us as a country, there's no real sense of, it's not even just about revisiting the big decision, but even revisiting debate about the consequences we don't seem to be having and I just wonder if in Wales you've got more freedom maybe to do that.

16:30I think as political leaders in Wales we've always made it clear we were really disappointed with the result you know the people in our country also voted against now I'm not sure if they would today but I'm still not sure if they would understand the connection with their lives and I remember on the day of the referendum itself you know finally you know going into a shop and asking the guy behind the counter you know if you voted he said yeah i voted and he said um i voted against and i said what are you that for and he said well it's not going to impact on my life and it just made me think it just made me put myself in his position and i thought actually lots of the things we sold the referendum on you know freedom of movement you know being able to use your mobile phone all of this he wasn't going to do any of those things and so it's very difficult it's a complicated argument to demonstrate to that bloke in the shop how it was going to affect his life you're looking now at some very significant reforms to the way the electoral system work to the composition of the senate And one of the possible consequences is that it could give space to the Reform Party, the ex-Brexit Farrak party.

17:46Because it's a more proportional system. Nigel Farage has just been in Wales and seemed to get pretty good turnout at his meetings. How do you think about this? Because it's a big thing that Alistair and I often talk about, whether more proportional systems are better at dealing with populists or whether they actually provide routes in for populists. Look, if you don't provide a platform for them to at least be able to express their views and then you can take them apart on it, you finish up with Trump. So, you know, you can't ignore the elephant in the room. I think you've got to take it on. And, you know, we're going to have a change of a system now that means that we'll go from the least well represented parliament in Britain to being at least middle tier.

18:35So what does that mean? So we're going from 60 members to 96 members because actually we've had all of these additional powers and we just don't have enough people to actually run the parliament to do the scrutiny and things. There's a really practical issue there. So more people? So we've got more people. But yeah, on the new system, it will be a proportional system. We have a semi-proportional system at the moment. I'm elected as a regional member proportional basis. And so, you know, we had UKIP members in the parliament. they fell apart the moment they walked in there you know there were three different parties by the end of the five years they were in there so giving them the space to make a fool of themselves you know I mean it's difficult because you don't want them to get in in the first place but at least between now and then and the election we're going to have an opportunity to really scrutinize them to look at what are they going to do they give simple answers to really complex questions and I think you've got to take them on and the fear of course is that Alistair and I after the elections might be looking at a situation where reform get the second highest number of votes.

19:40Is that possible? I don't know whether that's possible. I think they're not really perceived as a Welsh party. They seem very much as a British-English party. So it's probably a bigger threat. But first of all, it's not impossible, is it? It's not impossible. It's not impossible, and we've got a lot of work to do between now and then. Do you think, both in relation to Brexit and maybe in relation to the then decline of Scottish Labour, that there's a danger that in all those places where Labour has been traditionally very, very strong, that there's been an element of taking for granted. I don't think we've ever taken them for granted in Wales.

20:16And don't forget, we've been a winner in Wales for 102 years. Yeah. 102 years. This is a successful machine. But one of the things I've done since coming in is the first thing I did is I did this big listening exercise. I just got out on the streets all around Wales and literally just asked people what they wanted. What did they think we should prioritise? And it was raw and it was dirty and it was, you know, what do you want us to do? And, you know, I've come back now before I appointed anybody to the cabinet. I said, you've got to sign up to these priorities because this is what the public told us.

20:48What was the message that maybe we wouldn't know? Well, we wouldn't expect. I think the message is not unexpected. It's focused on the things that matter to us in our lives day in, day out, and don't get distracted by the other stuff. And what are those? Well, you know, make sure the health system works properly. You know, they were really upset with us at the time about the introduction of 20 miles an hour in certain places. It's all that kind of stuff that really upsets them day in, day out on their streets. You know, they thought some of our town centres were scruffy. those kind of bread and butter issues that we're sometimes distracted from.

21:24And, you know, when you've been in power for 25 years, you can see that you might get distracted. So I've said, come on, let's get back to bread and butter. And that's what we're doing now. Put those two things together. So number one, priority health. You've been in power for 25 years. And I guess that's interesting because Wes Streeting is now taking over and he's got these very bold ideas about what he's going to do in health. He's going to go analog to digital. He's going to go hospital to primary. He's going to go from cure to prevention. And I guess I feel, having been part of a government that's just stepped down, those things are actually more difficult in practice than they seem in theory.

21:59And presumably that's what you found over 25 years, that health reform is not that easy. Can you talk a little bit in a way that the public can understand about why in practice health reform is often less easy than it sounds in theory? Well, we're about seven years into a strategic health plan, which does exactly that. It's shifting the balance from hospitals into the community. It's getting into the prevention space. It's moving to digital. The real challenge is, you know, at the same time as you're doing that, your waiting lists are going up. Okay. And that's where the public focus. And that's because in moving money from hospitals, primary care, it means there's less money to deal with the waiting lists.

22:37So the slack is always, you know, where's the bit that you can cut? And the bit you can cut is the planned care side of things. But that's what then leads to a change. But I tell you what, the amount of work that's done in the health service in Wales is quite remarkable. You know, we have 2 million contacts a month in a population of 3 million people a month. It's just quite, quite remarkable. So, you know, the vast majority of people are getting a really good service. But because we've started to do that shift, then your weight and this do start to go up. And, you know, it's a balance. But if you don't do it, you're never going to fix the problem.

23:18Just on the new political system, you're going to have a lot of politicians in Wales. Is that a problem at a time when people are a bit negative about politics? you're going to have if you take in parliament the senate local authorities you talk about 300 politicians for a population of three million yeah look we've already taken one tier of government out and obviously you know we don't have any euro mps anymore we've also just had a number of mps cut from wales from 40 to 32 so you know and actually the power now a lot of the power is in the Senate. So it makes sense for us to make sure that it grows.

23:57You're right, we've got real challenges around quite how many local authorities we have. But again, that's very difficult not to crack. Do you think it's going to change the nature of campaigning this new system? Will you have to campaign in places that maybe you have taken for granted? It's going to change entirely our method of campaigning. And nobody's done this in Britain in the way. So we're, you know, We're talking to our continental allies about, you know, how does this work? What's the best way to win these elections? Because it's a new system. But I think it should invigorate the party in those communities that are all sent out to the marginal seats in an election.

24:35So, you know, I think they're all ready to get going on their own doorsteps for a change. And I think that'll be a great thing. So just to ask, why are you doing this? I mean, you already had something that felt a bit less Westminster and a bit more like, I suppose, Scotland or New Zealand or Australia, a sort of hybrid system, which is the kind of system that tends to appeal to us. Why did you decide to push one stage further? Well, because it was really difficult to get our Senate to function properly. You know, you literally had four people on a committee and they had to serve on three different committees.

25:08But you're not talking about the numbers, I'm talking about changing to a more proportional system. Oh, the system. Oh, well, some of that was about compromise. if we're honest. We wanted to expand the Senate. If you want to make those fundamental constitutional changes, you need two thirds majority. And we had to do a deal with Plaid Cymru. So that was part of the reason why we did that. Practical politics. Can I have one more bite at the NHS Apple? And obviously you're taking a risk as a politician being honest and open about this, but this is central to what's happening now in England. This is probably the number one issue that people are worried about.

25:42And I'm so struck that what West Streeting is saying is almost identical to what Rishi Sunak was saying before the election and it's almost identical to what you've been doing for seven years. In other words the entire country agrees on what ought to be done. The problem is doing it. Can you just develop a little bit more so people can understand what the next four or five years is likely to feel like in England if you start pursuing those policies because you're seven years ahead of us right? Yeah. So already things like, for example, we've changed the GP contract. So it's very difficult in England, I understand, to get a GP appointment.

26:17We've changed the contract in Wales. So that 8am bottleneck has largely disappeared because we've changed the contract. dentists we've changed the contract for dentists so you know we've already introduced about 380 ,000 new nhs dental appointments we've shifted so optometry you can go to your local optometrist and not just get your eyes tested but they're checked for lots of health conditions pharmacies so we started on that journey with pharmacies a long time ago you can get help for 27 different conditions in the community now in your pharmacy I think it's about seven in England so all of those things are helping to keep people out of secondary care.

26:59So that's brilliant for the long term but in the short term waiting list and what are the other when you're being attacked by other parties in the short term what are the short term problems that you went through over the last seven years which people can point to and which is likely in England people will say hey this is happening while the long-term improvements are happening. So part of the problem is you need to ideally run two systems at the same time while you're doing a transition and for that you need a lot of money and that's the challenge and I know health just had a big uplift but actually once you take inflation to account people's pay 65 % of what we spend on health certainly in Wales go straight into people's salaries 10 % on medicines price of medicines going through the roof all of these things and in Wales don't forget you get free prescriptions so waiting lists go up cancer the survival rates can sometimes go in the wrong direction.