Lee Waters MS

Speech in the Senedd on 12th February 2025 The Universal Free School Meals policy is a progressive policy we can be proud of. As well as feeding children, how can we leverage it to develop the Welsh food system? This is a key opportunity for foundational economy thinking. How do we harness our spending on wellbeing critical goods of services to also benefit local grounded firms? Only about 6% of the fruit and veg used by the Welsh public sector is made up of products grown in Wales. We’re buying and transporting food from other countries. Schoolchildren and hospital patients are routinely eating apples from France, tomatoes from Spain, courgettes from Chile. What’s stopping us from supporting Welsh farmers and buying local? Well we don’t grow enough veg for a start. We talk a lot about lamb but not about veg. There’s an opportunity for farmers to embrace horticulture to create new sources of income. There’s also a challenge of what’s called aggregating demand. The Fresh Local Produce...

How do you respond to populism? How can a Government of the left combine an ongoing sense of insurgency with the reality of making the compromises necessary with being in power? Wales offers something of a case-study in these universal dilemmas. The Labour Party has been the dominant party for 102 years, and for the last 26 years has been the main party of Government in our devolved parliament. Next year there will be elections under a newer more proportional system and for the first time Welsh Labour’s position as the largest party is being seriously questioned, and polls sugges t that we are within the margin of error of coming third.  The Reform Party has the wind in their sails. It seems to matter not a jot that they don’t have a policy platform, an organisational network, or any local leadership.  And this is not a uniquely Welsh phenomenon. As the FT set out in a series of end-of-year charts the trend across the developed world in 2024 was for incumbent governments to be...

Speech in the Senedd, November 6th 2024 Llywydd, Rachel Reeves inherited a broken economy and has begun the work of repair. This was a necessary budget. Necessary, because austerity failed. And again it has been left to a Labour Government to repair the damage. And let's remember the policy of Austerity was a political choice. Other choices were available in 2010, but the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Government chose an approach that history will show caused real harm to our country. They not only shrunk the State, but they shrunk the economy - a fall in GDP of 2% Their austerity policy made us poorer. And made key services poorer. Spending fell in real terms, per person, every year between 2010 and the start of covid. At the time an ageing population demanded greater investment in the NHS and social care, Tories flatlined spending budgets. And it was the key workers who had to absorb that through frozen wages. This Labour budget has thrown a lifeline to our frontline service...

Speech to Senedd on 25th September 2024 Llywydd, a year on I think it’s fair to say that the 20mph policy has been much criticised, but it is a policy that is succeeding in achieving its objectives. The data so far shows that  average speeds are down, as we said they would Collisions on all roads are their lowest since the Covid lockdowns  Casualties are down by 32% - which is the single most effective road safety intervention that has been made And lives have been saved - six fewer deaths in the first six months compared to the year before The Conservatives say the policy has been disastrous. I think these are results we can be proud of.  That’s the difference. Has our approach been perfect? No it has not. I commend the Cabinet Secretary for all his work in the last 6 months to engage with communities to apply common sense where it is needed. Once that process is complete I hope the police can start to enforce those areas where speeds are not coming down, and we can all...

Well, it's been a bumpy ride. It was always going to be, this is a massive change, but the statistics are showing the policy is succeeding in saving lives.  In the first six months there's been a 32% drop in casualties, which is staggering. We expected to save between eight to 10 lives in the first year; in fact the lower speed limit saved six lives in the first six months. So it's at the upper end of projections. Casualties are down by a third - saving heartache for families, easing pressure on the NHS, and improving streets for people. So I think overall, it's been a huge success, but clearly it's been difficult and it's been unpopular, but it was always going to be. It would have been better if the consultation that we've now seen had come in advance, that would have made life a lot easier. There was flexibility for councils to exempt some roads, and that hasn't been used in the way it could have been done. But let's not make the perfect the enemy...

As a background note to my keynote address to AITPM National Transport Conference and Speaker Tour in August 2024 I have set out some of the key themes for the reforms that have been carried out in Wales that I had a role in developing as a Minister in the Welsh Government Transport Department, 2019 - 2024. I hope to add to this as I reflect on the conversations I have on my visits to meet policy makers and professional in Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide and Melbourne. I'd really value any comments or challenge you have to any of the chapters. My thoughts are structured around the following themes (click to open each): 1 INTRODUCTION - Lessons from Wales 2 START AS YOU MEAN TO GO ON 3 SAYING ALL THE RIGHT THINGS 4 …DOING THE RIGHT THINGS 5 DON'T FORGET THE HIDDEN WIRING 6 REWIRE