As if you didn’t already know, last week Labour and Plaid Cymru announced a co-operation agreement in up to 50 policy areas. The full agreement is available here (Cymraeg – pdf; English – pdf).
The agreement will last three years and guarantees the Welsh Government will be able to pass their budgets during that period.
It’s not a formal coalition and is similar to previous budget agreements. Plaid Cymru won’t have ministers and neither will they be expected to back Labour in every Senedd vote.
As Labour doesn’t have a majority in the Senedd, it’ll add a bit of stability and certainty to decision-making in those areas where both parties have agreed to co-operate.
If you’ve been on Twitter the last few days you could be forgiven for thinking this is the most important development in Welsh political history. It’s not, but it’s significant enough to take a closer look; and it needs a closer look because it’s perhaps not quite as transformational as the puff pieces suggest.
- Provide free school meals to all primary school children within three years.
- Expand the free child care scheme to cover 2-year-olds.
- Take “immediate and radical action” to address second home ownership, including reforms to the planning and licensing system.
- Support the principle of increasing the size of the Senedd to between 80-100 members, gender quotas, and a more proportional voting system.
These are the stand out clauses in the agreement.
Helped by a better-than-expected projected budget settlement from the UK Government, the Welsh Government have miraculously found the money needed to extend eligibility for free school meals. We were told during the tail end of the Fifth Senedd that universal free school meals for primary pupils would cost up to £92million a year (it’s probably more now) and was therefore unaffordable. There are a lot of details to work out on this – and there could be unforeseen issues – but at the very least you would expect the current level of service and menu choice to be kept.
Even if it’s not going to come in immediately and will seemingly be phased in over the next three years (a point many people have missed), it’s a significant commitment and one fewer thing for parents to worry about.
The free child care scheme has proven to be popular – if a little complicated – and extending it to 2-year-olds makes sense and something the Welsh Government have previously been reluctant to do. It’s a bigger win than is being made out, but is still a long way from being a less complicated, universal childcare scheme.
The debate around second homes hasn’t been particularly sophisticated with dog whistles blown by campaigners for and against them. It’s clear though that events over the last year or so have even made Labour sit up and take notice of the damage second homes do to rural and coastal areas.
There’s a debate to be had over whether changes to the planning and licensing regime for second homes and holiday lets count as “radical action”. That said, it’s probably the furthest the Welsh Government can realistically go short of bans or moratoriums on new second homes.
It’s pre-empting the work of the (yet another) committee set up to consider electoral reform, but the agreement is as sure a sign as any that the Senedd we elect in 2026 is going to be very different from the one we elected in May.
It’ll be 20 years overdue of course, but the big sticking point will be the voting system. I doubt Labour are on board with full STV – and that’s reflected in the wording of the agreement (“as proportional” a Senedd or “more proportional”; not “wholly proportional”). I just hope we don’t end up with another one of these badly thought through “compromises” that plague Welsh politics.
