The new First Minister must be honest and open with the people of Wales

Martin Shipton

After the disastrous decision to stand by Vaughan Gething for too long after any credibility he retained had drained away, Welsh Labour desperately needs to improve its image.

The outbreak of apparently spontaneous unity following months of toxic discord may be hard to stomach, but it’s fair to say that the First Minister-presumptive Eluned Morgan adopted the right tone when she acknowledged that her party had let Wales down in recent months and accepted there was a need to redeem itself.

That alone was a welcome change from the behaviour of her still-in-post predecessor, who continues to assert arrogantly that he’s done nothing wrong and that his downfall is the fault of everyone but himself.

Baroness Morgan’s choice of former Cardiff West MP Kevin Brennan as her chief special adviser is a good move too. He’s been around a long time, has ministerial experience at Westminster and was Rhodri Morgan’s right hand man as devolution dawned.

Much has been made of the idea that two Labour governments will be working in harmony together for the benefit of Wales, but unless the Welsh Government has someone shrewd in place to counter the centralising tendencies of Whitehall, Wales will be shafted.

Hostile

Two governments collaborating together on policy and delivery has the potential to bring improvements to the tetchy and sometimes hostile relationship that existed before the general election. Yet after some honeymoon mood music, it seems likely that the two governments won’t so much be working together to deliver public service improvements as collaborating on a new phase of austerity.

At Westminster there’s talk of a £20bn black hole in the public finances, while at a local level preparations are already being made for pip-squeezing cuts next year.

Explaining, for example, why free school transport is being cut, Bridgend council’s Labour leader John Spanswick said: “After 14 years of carefully managing shrinking resources and dealing with an overall budget reduction of £88.4m, the point has finally arrived where we can no longer afford to offer free school transport at its previous level. Nobody wants to make such reductions, but until the national funding crisis is addressed, further reluctant changes to popular council services are sadly going to be very likely.”

Cuts

The harsh reality is that cuts will be rolled out from Westminster, and the Welsh Government and those dependent on it for funding will have to suck them up. This isn’t exactly the kind of harmonious collaboration we were being encouraged to expect in the run-up to the election and the heady days after July 4.

There is, however, a positive initiative that Baroness Morgan can launch as soon as she takes possession of the First Minister’s office that will not break her government’s budget.

She can end the pervasive culture of secrecy and hostility towards any group that dares to hold the administration to account. Such an approach had early beginnings. In the first months of the National Assembly, before he was ousted in a no confidence vote, the body’s first leader Alun Michael would regularly lambast anyone, including opposition politicians, who criticised decisions made by him and other ministers for “talking Wales down”.

Elements of such an attitude persisted and were manifest during Mr Gething’s short period in charge.

The other day, campaign groups whose focus is the NHS expressed displeasure at the news that Eluned Morgan will be taking over as First Minister, criticising her record as Health Minister and accusing her of backing administrators as a default position, rather than being prepared to take on board the concerns of campaigners, who often have right on their side.

Contempt

At present there is a pervasive view that the Welsh Government holds its critics in contempt,and would rather see injustice continue than perform U-turns and show some humility. Baroness Morgan’s tacit admission that Mr Gething is – as Kim Howells eloquently put it – damaged goods could signal a new beginning. A little humility goes a long way, and an acceptance that mistakes have been made would be welcomed by all but the most recalcitrant tribalists.

Getting information disclosed by the Welsh Government about matters that may put it in a bad light – or embarrass ministers – requires persistence. I remember Rhodri Morgan proclaiming that he intended to lead “the most open administration in the western world”. Whatever his intentions, those at the Welsh Government who respond to freedom of information requests are, as at many public bodies, notorious for using the many exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act to withhold, often on spurious grounds, documents that should be in the public domain.

I am currently trying to get to the bottom of one aspect of the events that led to Mr Gething’s downfall.

After NationCymru had leaked to it the now infamous iMessage in which he admitted he was deleting messages because otherwise they could be captured by an FoI request, I became convinced that the screenshot we had been sent represented only a small part of a longer conversation.

Taking a cue from Mr Gething, I submitted an FoI asking for the whole of the “ministerial chat” to be disclosed. I was quickly told that no such documentation was held by the Welsh Government, leading me to the conclusion that all the messages had been deleted.

But that wasn’t the end of the matter. More recently it became clear that additional messages had come to light and that they had been handed over to the UK Covid Inquiry by the Welsh Government.

How could this be? I asked the Welsh Government and was told that the messages had come into its possession after I was sent the FoI response. I sent the following questions back: “Why hadn’t the material been disclosed? Who produced the messages in due course and why hadn’t they produced them earlier? When exactly did the Welsh Government become aware of the material’s existence and when was it passed to the UK Covid Inquiry?”

It will be interesting to see how detailed a response I receive.

Open administration

Eluned Morgan should ditch the secrecy-centred approach to the disclosure of information and revert to Rhodri Morgan’s intention to run the most open administration in the western world (why not the whole world?).

While she’s about it, she should shake up Welsh Labour’s press office, which has been useless, evasive and unresponsive for a long time. Continuing such an approach will do the party untold damage, especially in the run-up to the Senedd election in May 2026.

A healthily functioning government is one that is honest with its citizens, admits when things have gone wrong and shows leadership by explaining why it’s in the best interests of the country to make certain policy choices.

For the umpteenth time it seems that ordinary people will be expected to make do with poorer public services because the money won’t be made available to improve them.

Everyone sensible knows that if the UK rejoined the European single market and customs union, it would receive an economic boost of just the kind we need at the moment.

Yet Starmer won’t contemplate that because he’d rather placate the racists who oppose the free movement of labour. This is so self-defeating.

We at Nation.Cymru will tell truth to power. In the new era of two Labour governments working together for the good of Wales, so should Eluned Morgan.