Wales needs funding review, says First Minister Eluned Morgan | UK News

Wales’ first minister has called for a funding system change, saying she does not want to “continue to go cap in hand” to Westminster.

Eluned Morgan said that she wanted to see the way Wales received funding overhauled, but did not indicate if this was something the UK government was considering.

In the chancellor’s Spending Review, the UK Labour government pledged £445m for rail projects in Wales, £118m for restoring coal tips and extra cash for the day-to-day spending of the Welsh government.

The UK government has been asked to comment but Rachel Reeves has defended its spending plans for Wales, saying she had delivered what the Welsh government had asked for.

Welsh government ministers and Welsh Labour MPs have pressed the UK government for more money for Wales to demonstrate the benefits of having two Labour governments either side of the M4.

Opposition parties have said Wales still was not being funded fairly, and there have been long-term calls for the formula used to decide that funding to be changed, so Wales gets a fair share of funding automatically.

On a visit to south Wales on Friday, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she had given the Welsh government “everything they’d asked for” which prompted Plaid Cymru to accuse Eluned Morgan and Welsh Secretary, Jo Stevens, of lacking ambition for Wales.

Joe Rossiter, co-director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs, said: “Decisions on allocation of spending should be apolitical and represent a technical way to derive Wales’ fair share of funding.

“This should not be about the secretary of state for Wales having to fight for fair funding.”

Morgan told Sunday’s Politics Wales “underpinning the economic future of Wales, that’s what I’m interested in because I don’t want to continue to go cap in hand” to Westminster.

She said: “We’ve had an unfair system for a very long time. We need to catch up. There’s a long way to go, so this is the beginning.

“We’ll be fighting for a lot more to come, but do we need to make sure that there is a better system so that we can be assured of getting our rightful percentage? Absolutely.”

Morgan was asked whether or not those systemic changes were likely to happen, but she did not answer that question directly.

The vast majority of the Welsh government’s funding comes from the UK government, in what’s known as the block grant.

Its size is determined by the Barnett formula which is based on how much the UK government spend on devolved issues such as health and education in England.

Morgan also said future economic plans could be “knocked off course” by events in the Middle East.

Responding to developments over the weekend in the conflict between Iran and Israel, the first minister said “it’s very concerning to see how that instability could spiral out of control”.

She added: “The implications are grave not just for the Middle East but for us as well. There will be a knock-on effect, for example on the price of petrol.

“We are not immune from what’s happening in the Middle East. This is a very concerning situation and comes on top of the difficult situation in Gaza which is completely unacceptable.”

Infrastructure projects and one-off developments are funded in a different way but there are long-standing calls for the system as a whole to be reformed.

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Darren Millar MS, said: “It’s an insult to the people of Wales to be awarded just £445 million to transform the rail infrastructure when we know that the previous UK Conservative government over the previous 10-year period awarded over £1.1billion.

“It’s not something that the Welsh government should be popping the champagne corks about.”

Plaid Cymru’s Heledd Fychan said it was disappointing that there seemed to be no imminent review of how Wales was funded, despite that being a UK Labour manifesto promise.

She said: “Not even asking for what we’re owed has been a failure of this Welsh government.

“They lack ambition, they lack vision, and they lack any kind of fight.

“In terms of just being willing to settle for less, 10% of what we’re owed and Welsh Labour are celebrating, that’s not something to celebrate about.”