Labour hopes for Plaid deal
WELSH Labour leader and First Minister Mark Drakeford hopes to announce a co-operation deal with Plaid Cymru next week.
Labour won 30 seats in the Senedd election on May 6 – giving them exactly half the seats available and no overall majority – with the party governing without the formal help of any other Members of the Senedd.
The two parties have been in discussions since the summer about a potential deal.
It now appears they have concluded these talks and are preparing to put the details to their parties over the weekend.
It is believed that proposals to tackle second homes and look at reforming council tax are included in the deal.
Mr Drakeford, speaking to ITV Wales after hosting leaders including Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at the British and Irish Council meeting in St Fagans, Cardiff, yesterday, said: “Those discussions have been detailed, they have focused on a common policy program that might be agreed between us, and then machinery of government that would lay behind them.
“We have concluded those discussions, they are now being reported through our respective parties as they need to be, looking to see whether we can secure wider agreement behind them, but we’re in the middle of that process rather than at the end of it. If it succeeds, then there will be quite definitely things to report.”
When pressed on when a deal would be announced, he said: “Well, there are discussions to be concluded, I hope, over this weekend. If they’re concluded successfully, then my aim will be to put into the public domain for things that we have discussed and agreed in the early part of next week.”
Plaid Cymru was more tight-lipped about how negotiations were developing.
Speaking to the Western Mail, a Plaid Cymru source said: “Talks have been held with the Welsh Government about developing an agreement. Those talks have reached a conclusion and discussions are now ongoing with political groups and parties..”
Speaking in September about a potential deal, Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies MS criticised the plans, saying that both parties were “totally divorced from people’s priorities”.
He said: “You only need look at
Welsh Labour’s policy programme to see how out of ideas it is. But turning to nationalists with no mandate is an act of desperation and lunacy.
“Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru claim to be a party of change but always deliver for their Labour masters – just look at how little they vote against their budgets. The NHS in Wales is on its knees. Children have missed months of school. The economy needs support. Just watch as promises of Covid recovery turn into a nightmarish prospect of state-building and hoarding powers. They are both totally divorced from people’s priorities.”