Why was Welsh Secretary absent from Wales investment Summit?
Martin Shipton
Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens has failed to give an explanation about why she didn’t attend the Wales Investment Summit organised this week by First Minister Eluned Morgan,
While the event at the International Convention Centre in Newport included speeches by Chancellor Rachel Reeves and UK Business Secretary Peter Kyle, Ms Stevens was in London.
Addressing Ms Stevens during Welsh Questions on December 3, Shadow Welsh Secretary Mims Davies said: “On Monday it was delightful to observe the Chancellor and First Minister enjoying themselves in one of Wales’s premier hospitality venues, but an invisible Secretary of State for Wales once again. It’s this type of business that must be thriving if this government has any chance of achieving anything other than anaemic growth and growing unemployment lines.
“I enquire if she’d been there, what the hospitality sector would have said about the minimum wage rises pressures, huge business rates and energy costs, tourism tax, NI hikes and how it’s strangling the economy in Wales – the bloated red tape and wanton spending from the Labour- run Senedd as well?”
‘Outperformed’
Ms Stevens responded: “Britain outperformed growth forecasts this year. Growth upgraded from 1% to 1.5%, and it’s on course to achieve the second fastest growth rate among G7 countries. The Bank of England has cut interest rates five times since the election. The positive impact our UK and Welsh Labour governments are having is clear in how the Welsh economy is changing. Last year in Wales, wages have increased faster than inflation, employment has risen, inactivity is down and inward investment is up.”
Ms Davies then said: “So clearly something more important than economic growth in Wales came up for Labour’s Wales Office. Can the ministers explain? And yet the biggest rise in unemployment in the UK was in Wales of 1.4%. Frankly, no surprise, their joint refusal to build the M4 relief road, the North Wales main line, is not exactly matching the world class infrastructure boast from the Chancellor at the Summit. So I ask, amongst the hobnobbing and backslapping, did any ministers there spare any thought for the desolate owners and workers of businesses in tatters in Monmouth and wider? And did they work on the ask for extra help to save their livelihoods?
‘Invisible’
Ms Stevens replied: “Well there was a smorgasbord of questions there. I think I will just say to her that her party wrecked the economy, starved our public services and exacerbated the cost of living crisis. Our Labour Budget is reducing the cost of living. Investing in public services and shrinking the national debt which they increased whilst at the same time lifting thousands of children out of poverty that the Tories created.”
After the exchange Ms Davies said: “The Secretary of State for Wales has truly taken her invisible profile to an all-new level this week.
“It’s absolutely staggering that the Secretary of State team chose to skip an important summit in Wales, rather than be right at the helm of it, where UK ministers could have been drumming up trade and promoting Wales to the wider world.
“The Secretary of State for Wales did not even attempt to justify her non-appearance in the House of Commons Chamber – because there is clearly no valid justification.”
“The people of Wales rightly deserve to know what could be more important to the Secretary of State for Wales that she could not bear to show up.”
A Wales Office spokesperson said: “The Wales Office was represented at the Welsh Government’s Investment Summit by Minister Anna McMorrin who carried out a series of meetings with businesses and potential investors.
“The UK Government was also represented by Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Business Secretary Peter Kyle as well as by a number of officials, including from the Wales Office.”
We asked the Wales Office what Ms Stevens had been doing in London that was more important than going to the summit, but did not get a response.
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Stevens is wrong about Child Poverty, Child Poverty reached record levels under Blair and Brown.
Obviously being part of Starmers inner circle hasn’t rubbed off on this clown.She could have taken a leaf out of Starmers book as he is always attending summits.Of course in his case all of them are outside the UK.
She doesn’t care. She hasn’t cared for a long time now about Wales and she stopped fighting for us a long time ago.
She has always seemed to me as someone who regards Wales and it’s responsibilities as an impediment and a fractious irritation, rather than something to be advanced, despite her title. Very like the leader of her own party. The Labour party, Wales and UK , now seems to go out of its way to be as deliberately alienating to as many as possible. It’s an “interesting” strategy.
The position of Secretary of State for Wales is defunct since devolution but continues as a corpse sat around the cabinet table in London. The role is to try to justify Wales being within the United Kingdom. A kind of skivvy to the Prime Minister. The assistant tasked with justifying why Wales is robbed of it’s fare share of treasury receipts. The incumbent, Jo Stevens MP, has to explain what part of HS2 is in Wales (none) and why the cost of a new rail line between Oxford and Cambridge has to be part paid by Welsh taxpayers. Then kiss… Read more »
The SoS should be jointly appointed with the devolved parliaments. Perhaps the PM can select three candidates to be grilled by members of the respective devolved administrations who vote for their pick.