09 October 2023 , 15:06
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Welsh Labour leader Mark Drakeford today piled pressure on Keir Starmer over free school meals.
The UK party chief is resisting mounting calls to guarantee free dinners for all primary pupils when he publishes Labour’s election manifesto next year. The First Minister backed the Mirror’s campaign with the National Education Union for free school meals for all as Wales gears up for the full rollout of the policy next year.
Speaking exclusively to the Mirror, Mr Drakeford told how the original free school meals fight was launched at Cardiff City Hall by the centre-left think tank the Fabian Society 117 years ago when it published a paper called And They Shall Have Flowers On The Table. “The benefits are multiple - for a start they help children with learning because hungry children don’t learn well, and hungry children don’t help other children to learn well because they can’t settle,” said the First Minister.
The First Minister spoke to the Mirror's Deputy Political Editor Ben Glaze at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool (Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)But he added: “For us, it’s much more than a feeding scheme, it’s about socialising, it’s about saying to children, ‘you are valued’ - they shall have ‘flowers on the table’,”. He said while an incoming Labour government would “inevitably spend the first two years simply trying to deal with the worst of the damage that they will inherit”, it was “important for the party to articulate the ambitions it will have once that initial period is complete, once we’ve succeeded in putting the economy back on a path to growth”.
He hoped the Welsh experience could drive Mr Starmer to see the benefits of free meals for all primary pupils. “My message to him would be that an incoming government will be able to draw on the experience we’ve had in Wales and then to use that with all the other things that he and his colleagues will be having to weigh up,” he said. “By then we will have universal free school meals in Wales and we’ll have had it for a number of years.”
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But he added: “I never want to approach this on the basis I am there to teach somebody else what to do, but we are always really keen to say, ‘Our experience is available to you - if you want to see what we’ve done, how we did and what we think the pluses are’, that’s what we would like to do.”
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He attacked Welsh Tories for trying to block the 20mph default speed limit imposed on residential roads last month. More than 400,000 people have signed a petition opposing the new limit - by far the largest ever received by the Senedd.
But Mr Drakeford believed the initiative would be a long term success. “It is settling down as I would have expected it would, the change is relatively modest in many parts of Wales,” he said. “The evidence from the beginning was that whether people agreed with it or had hesitations about it, people were abiding by it - people were doing what was asked of them.
“As people see the advantages it will bring - which for us is about saving lives, preventing accidents, relieving pressure on our emergency services, making residential streets more liveable again - I have met nobody in those parts of Wales which were already 20mph who wants to go back having cars driven quickly through them.”
Mr Drakeford, seen with the Mirror's Ben Glaze, warned against complacency in the run-up to the general election (Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)Speaking to the Mirror on the margins of Labour's annual conference in Liverpool, he revealed English Labour figures demand to know how they can slash the speed limit in their communities. “When I have been meeting people - colleagues - here from England, I’ve been asked repeatedly by people, ‘What can we do to make the place where we live 20mph?’” he said.
The crackdown came just a week after the controversial expansion of the ultra-low emission zone in London. Rishi Sunak seized on the dual motoring clampdowns to claim he was “slamming the brakes on the war on motorists”.
But, quizzed about the Prime Minister exploiting the clean air policy in the capital and lower speed limit in Wales, Mr Drakeford said: “The Tories are desperate. I think they have lost the confidence of people in the UK - and no wonder given the dreadful mess they have made of so many things. They’ll grab on anything if they think they can extract the smallest amount of partisan advantage.”
He accused some Conservatives of using the 20mph row to “exploit the anxieties of some people, and the deeply-held prejudices of people, on the far-right”. He said: “Two hundred people turned up to a demonstration in Cardiff against 20mph and they represented every conspiratorial grievance you can imagine. These are the people who are against vaccination, who believe the ‘deep State’ is peering through their letter box. Conservatives in Wales have been, I think, have been culpably willing to pander to some of those tendencies.”
Analysts fear culture wars could dominate the next general election, due by January 2025 but widely expected next autumn. Polls point to a Labour victory, though Mr Drakeford warned against complacency.
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“Of course people are optimistic,” he said. “But there is caution about it as well - when you want something so much you can't take it for granted. People here have waited 13 years for a chance to have a Labour government. You get that sense of people absolutely buoyed up by the way the party’s chances have improved, but not wanting to take it for granted at all.”
Mr Drakeford, who became First Minister in December 2018, went on: “Nothing matters more to us than having a Labour government. I don’t feel like we are in any sense that we are above the battle - we are very much on the pitch and wanting to do everything we can.”
Labour lost five seats in North Wales to the Tories at the December 2019 general election and another in Bridgend as Boris Johnson romped to victory. But Mr Drakeford said: “We will be aiming to take back all those seats, they are absolutely top of our list of things we know we have to achieve. I remember saying in December 2019 those seats had been borrowed and we will be taking them back.
“We are very determined that we will do everything we can to bring those seats back to Labour. I don’t want to use the word ‘confident’ - that gives people the impression we have taken it for granted and we absolutely have not.”
Mr Drakeford, 69, previously confirmed he will step down as FM before the end of next year. He plans to quit frontline politics completely by leaving the Senedd at the 2026 election. Though he admitted he would “miss being at the very centre of affairs”, which is “a huge privilege”, he is looking forward to “not trying to fit so many things into the day”.
He hopes Labour will help to “entrench devolution so it cannot be rolled back” and endorsed Gordon Brown’s report on constitutional reform. Published last December, it recommended “new powers should be made available to the Senedd and Welsh government", including over youth justice and probation.
“The United Kingdom just doesn’t work as a voluntary association of four nations,” warned Mr Drakeford. “The report sets out a series of ways in which we can have a more respectable set of relationships so that people in every part of the UK are confident the UK is working for them.”
Labour has been in power in Cardiff Bay since the Assembly, now called the Senedd, was created in 1999. Mr Drakeford urged his successor: “Be bold, because being in power for 25 years, the risk is that you get used to it and you just settle back into it and I think the Welsh Government in this Senedd term is a genuinely radical and ambitious government doing things at the cutting edge of what’s needed.” He said Welsh Labour needs “to go on being that radical force, not a force that looks like we have just become used to being in government”.
In retirement, he is looking forward to spending more time on his allotment growing more raspberries and “extraordinarily good” runner beans - “the best for years and years”. He added: “My poor, neglected allotment might see me a bit more than it has.”