The Wales Transport Strategy published in 2021 put modal shift at the heart of our policies. For the first time, we’ve set a target on increasing the number of trips made by sustainable modes of transport from 32% to 45% by 2040. Grand declarations are important to signal system change. However, as we've seen in the past, transport strategies often say all the right things in the narrative but the delivery mechanisms are programmed to deliver business-as-usual. In spite of the new targets the bible for highway engineers, the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges , still prioritises traffic flow; the bible for economists and finance officials, the UK Treasury Green Book, still insists on monetising notional journey time savings when it comes to transport investments; rather than reduce speeds to save lives, orthodoxy suggests we upgrade highway design to increase capacity and allow faster speeds under the guise of road safety. Unless the system wiring is reconfigured to delive...
Speech in the Senedd on 16th July 2025 Let me start with the obvious: Farming is hard. I am proud to come from a family of farmers, and I understand the vital role that farmers play. We need them, and we value them as key workers. Not only do they feed us, but they are an important part of our cultural mosaic, and at their best are stewards of our environment. I think it's important to re-state this because the debate around farming is in a bad place. It has become dragged into the culture wars. And those divisions are heightened through our political debate. I’ve heard my colleagues make the point that farming contributes less than 1 per cent to the GDP of the country. But that’s a bit like saying a washer contributes less than 1 per cent to the functioning of a tap. It may be true, but it misses the point. On the other hand, it feels like the main farming unions are fixated on a grievance narrative - and the opposition parties in this Senedd compete with each other to amp...
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...
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