‘I think we should have done more to prepare the ground for 20mph’
MARK DRAKEFORD has admitted his government made mistakes with the 20mph law. He said they “should have done more” to explain the law before it came into force.
Speaking after he announced his resignation he accepted it was the thing during this calendar year which hadn’t gone as expected.
He said, though that it is not the topic about which his government receives the most correspondence and that is in fact animal welfare, which includes this year’s ban on glue traps.
Mr Drakeford admitted the 20mph law attracted more attention than he expected but when it was put to him it hadn’t been handled right he said they “should have done more to prepare the ground” for the legislation.
The Welsh Government, working with PR firm Golley Slater, budgeted £1.6m for communications with relation to the policy with £1m towards its campaign and £500,000 for councils. The leaflet it sent to all homes in Wales and some in England explaining the policy was criticised by a watchdog over claims it used in the text
We asked him his highlight of the year, what he thinks could have been done better, about the controversial universal basic income pilot and how there will be a review after six months – which will be March and the date his successor is set to take over.
RM: Looking at this year what was your highlight?
MD: Let me have a think because trying to find just one thing out of a year isn’t easy, ever, is it? I think there are some legislative things, the fact that we’ve got a social partnership council – I’ve just been meeting some new members for it. That was a long ambition and Covid interrupted our ability to do it. So that’s an early highlight in the year – pressing ahead with some of the other things in our manifesto. Something that doesn’t get much attention at all, but actually in terms of correspondence and public reaction, the fact that we have banned glue traps.
Is that the item you’ve received most mail about?
Yes. Animal welfare is enormously important... The correspondence is very heavily skewed towards wanting us to be interested in animal welfare. It’s one of those in the political world there’s a little bit of argy bargy about it but the popular public reaction you get loads.
I saw you at the event with the young care leavers. It’s a policy you’ve pursued, and they were really interesting young people, but what was it like sitting there and seeing a policy that has been a longheld dream for you?
I worked, when I was a probation officer, with young people in the care system, right the way through the time that I’ve been in Cardiff, and they get some of the rawest deals of young people and you hear terribly heartbreaking stories from children who’ve not got families of their own. So to be able to have a pilot, it’s hugely exciting. And the difference it’s already making to the lives of those young people, I think, is very encouraging.
We will properly evaluate it – you have to be prepared for the fact that the answer might be that it didn’t do what you hoped it would do. But the idea of it is, as you know, young people leave the care system – whereas other young people are able always to rely on their families. If you’ve got a week between renting one flat or renting another most young people know that they can go home for a week. It’s not a crisis is it? You know, it’s manageable. Not for the young people in care.
Is that the sort of policy or the sort of event that makes this job worthwhile – sitting in that room with those young people?
It’s always most worthwhile when you meet people, really, and hear from them about the things that they are facing and things that we can sometimes do to help with it. And those young people need the help of government the most because the state has become their parent – the state has taken over that role and almost done that duty.”
On the flip side what hasn’t gone either as well as you expected or what was something that you’d have liked to have delivered on?
We should talk 20mph shouldn’t we? Because in terms of the attention that it has attracted I think it’s been more than I would have expected, than anyone expected, and the trajectory of it is probably what I would have expected. We were told that by the new year it would be getting better. It isn’t getting more popular. I don’t think we’re meant to get more popular necessarily. It’s just that the heat of the issue would have, you know, people will be getting more used to it and I think that.that has happened. I think it has taken longer than I would have expected but I think that it is happening.
Was it handled right? I think back to when it was organ donation or some of the other big policies, that there were billboards everywhere telling you it was coming in. There wasn’t that with this – did you get that wrong?
Looking back with the benefits of this [hindsight] I think probably we should have done more to prepare the ground for it.
In terms of communications?
More to explain to people, to just normalise it a bit more because, you know, it’s been presented by some people as this enormous change in people’s lives. But, you know, I’ve lived in Cardiff where we’ve had 20 miles an hour...
In Cardiff we’re used to it – we’ve seen it for a long time, we know it, but then that feeds into that narrative of north versus south and rural versus urban and ‘of course Cardiff is okay because it’s Cardiff’.
It was a policy designed for built-up residential areas. It played into those sort of narratives. We could have normalised it more not just by pointing to our own direct experience here but just the sheer huge number of cities in England that have adopted this already.
I was in Chester earlier in the summer before we introduced ours at all and it is 20mph, everywhere, right on our border. So I think we might have done more to just help people to understand that it wasn’t some huge, strange, unusual thing we were doing.
We are going with the grain of the way things are going everywhere. We are in the frontline of it because it’s the only place so far where it is national policy. Scotland said last week they will be following it. Ireland said earlier the autumn they would be doing the same thing. This is a policy but the tide is flowing in this direction. Wales will not be at the front end of the tide. That makes change more difficult. I think we could have done more.
Does it surprise you that this is what is always going to be used in the same breath of what this administration has done?
Well I’m not sure that it will. With a slightly longer lens of history I think this will become one of the things that a Welsh Government has done in that sort of basket of progressive measures that we are pursuing here in Wales and have pursued throughout the whole of devolution and many of these things were very controversial.
This has been the biggest backlash though?
Well maybe but, you see, we forget the intensity. You forget. I remember being told at the time when we banned smoking in enclosed public places how it would lose us seats and people would never agree to it. We put £2m or £3m aside to deal with those people who wouldn’t comply with it and it never happened did it? Other things have been like that along the way and time goes by and you forget how controversial they were. This one might take longer. Lee Waters said by the new year things [opposition] would have eased – it’s going to take longer. It has eased off.
What’s the revised estimate on that?
If you measure public concern by correspondence then it’s already disappeared. We get very little correspondence on it now compared to what we did in the first month.
I can tell you we still do.
We will have a review point after about six months because one of the things that I think does merit investigation is there are some local authorities in Wales who have exempted less than half of 1% of their roads and there are some local authorities that have exempted more than 10% of their roads. I think we need to look to see whether we need to bring decisions a bit closer together so there is more consistency. I think six months is fair – we’ve got experience of it, we should look to see, ask local authorities who are keen to do it whether they would need to fine-tune it.
That’ll be a nice item in the tray for your successor.
I think, I hope, we will show people that this the policy is being properly implemented, that we are prepared to look at it and make those adjustments. Most questions I am asked on the floor of the Senedd are asking me to lower speed limits and that’s from the Conservatives as well.
They stand up time after time: ‘I’ve got this village in my constituency. They should have a 30mph not a 40mph. Please will you come and arrange for the speed limit to be lowered?’
There’s more than one side.