Burnham’s devolution plan won’t work in Wales, ex-minister says

Former Welsh local government minister Alun Davies told Radio Wales Breakfast on Monday he was also not sure that Burnham’s plans to devolve more powers to English councils would work in Wales.

Davies, who lost his seat at May’s Senedd election, had attempted to force mergers between Wales’ 22 councils in 2018 in an attempt to reorganise and empower the local authorities.

After robust opposition from the Labour-dominated Welsh Local Government Association, Davies ditched the plans.

Davies said on Monday that he had been “stopped at every step of the way” by Labour MPs.

Davies said he was also disappointed by the recent £30m rail investment for Wales announced at the UK government budget, suggesting they were “crumbs off the table”.

He said Burnham had brought in a new “approach”, and he urged the current Welsh Secretary Stephen Kinnock to “read that memo and to understand what it means, because it doesn’t mean delivering the same powers of a Manchester mayor to my local authority Blaenau Gwent”.

Davies said that “you cannot pretend… that you can equate the tiny local authorities that we have in Wales with the big mayoral regions of England”.

In a later interview with Dros Frecwast on Radio Cymru, Davies said: “In the same way that Stephen Kinnock’s dad stood up to negative attitudes in the Labour party in the ’80s and transformed the party, the son has to do the same thing today.”

He said Kinnock should “stand up to his fellow members and say that Wales will be part of the process [and] part of the devolution journey”.

“The important thing for me is that devolution doesn’t come to an end at Offa’s Dyke, and that Wales is treated the same as Northern Ireland, Scotland and England and we have the same powers as exists in the other countries of the UK,” he added.

It was the last time the Welsh government tried to reform local government, which has a structure that dates back to the 1990s and includes some very small local authorities.

On Sunday Kinnock told Radio Wales’ Sunday Supplement that the UK government fully respected the devolution settlement.

“We are absolutely not in the business of prescribing how this should work in Wales,” he said.

“That’s up to the Welsh government to draw that map, if you like.

He said that it was a “collaborative process”.

“It’s got to be UK government, Welsh government, local authorities working together to figure this stuff out.” he said.