First Minister says she is proud of Welsh Government’s record ahead of elections

The First Minister has spoken of the pride she has in her Government’s record over the last five years as they head into May’s Senedd elections.

Labour has been in power in Cardiff Bay since the Welsh Parliament was first established as the National Assembly for Wales in 1999.

But, if opinion polls are to be believed, the May election could see more than two decades in power ended.

Reform UK and Plaid Cymru have topped recent opinion polls in Wales, and Plaid won last year’s Caerphilly by-election as Labour dropped from first to third.

Baroness Eluned Morgan became First Minister in 2024 when Vaughan Gething quit after only 138 days, after becoming mired in rows over donations to his leadership campaign.

“I must say that I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved over the past five years,” she told MSs.

“If you think about the context of how we went into this session, we weren’t even allowed to campaign right in the beginning, we couldn’t knock doors, we were still just coming out of the pandemic.

“That feels like a long time ago now but since then we have been contending with Brexit and the fallout of that.

“We have had four or five prime ministers, we have had global instability, we have had massive inflation as a result of the Ukraine war.

“We are now in another really volatile global situation.

“What I think is quite extraordinary is the fact that despite that context, despite the inflationary pressures, despite all of that volatility, we have delivered on the vast, vast majority of our programme for government.

“I just think that is something that we should be proud of. Since I’ve come in, I’ve been really, really focused on delivery.”

Rebuilding trust

Baroness Morgan, who was appearing before the Senedd’s Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister, said she was rebuilding trust in politics by focusing on delivery.

“We always want to do more. But in the context of what we were working with, I think we can be incredibly proud of what we’ve managed to deliver,” she said.

Plaid Cymru’s Llyr Gruffydd questioned whether Wales had “good governance” in the last five years with a high turnover of ministers.

“I’m just wondering because over the course of this Senedd we’ve had three first ministers, we’ve had three secretaries for health, we’ve had four secretaries for the economy etc,” Mr Gruffydd asked the First Minister.

“Do you think that that level of ministerial turnover actually makes for good governance?”

She replied: “Wow. Well, it’s nothing compared to what we saw in England and the changes we saw there.

“There was a difficult period for the Labour Party. There’s no question about that. I think we’ve overcome that.

“Mark Drakeford was in power for not a short amount of time.

“He was there, thank goodness, during the pandemic leading us through and got rewarded by the public with a significant vote in the last election.

“I’ve come in and taken an approach that is absolutely focused on delivery above everything else, to make sure that we get things done that we said we were going to get done.

“If you compare the stability we’ve had in Wales to the UK…”

‘Low bar’

Mr Gruffydd injected: “That’s a very low bar, though, isn’t it, First Minister?”

The First Minister replied: “What you have had is consistency in terms of policy as well, and that makes a difference.

“It makes a difference to investment, and it makes a difference to our ability to get things done.

“Chopping and changing, people wanting to restructure all the time, reorganise, redevelop, all of that stuff, causes…

“Sometimes it absolutely has to be done. It’s a distraction from the day-to-day delivery on the ground.”