Welsh Labour leader asks PM for ‘fair share’ of funding ahead of spending review
The first minister of Wales has asked Sir Keir Starmer for “a fair share for Wales” at a meeting in Downing Street.
Labour’s Eluned Morgan, who was attending the Council of Nations and Regions meeting alongside metro mayors and fellow first ministers, says she made the case for more funding ahead of the spending review next month.
Baroness Morgan says her meeting with Sir Keir was “constructive” and she was “grateful” to him for listening to the public on winter fuel payments.
On Wednesday, Sir Keir said he would ease the cut to the winter fuel payment, something Ms Morgan previously called for.
“I’ve made it clear I’d like the vast majority of people who have received it before to receive it again,” she said.
It remains unclear where exactly the payment threshold will be.
Baroness Morgan described the meeting between her and the PM as ‘constructive’
She also said the controversial two-child benefit cap was an issue “lots of people brought up”, and the government is thinking about when and how to change it.
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The meeting comes as Welsh Labour prepare for a challenging set of elections in the Senedd next year. Labour have been in power in Wales since devolution began in 1999, but polls currently predict a three-horse race between Plaid Cymru, Reform UK and Labour.
The first minister accepted Reform could win power, saying they are a “genuine threat” to her party that they “need to take seriously”.
She said she understands the desire for change. “They’ve never had the opportunity to vote for a female first minister before, that in itself is a big change”, Baroness Morgan said.
Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth, who, according to recent polls could be in power in Wales next year, said the first minister left Downing Street with “nothing more than a photo with the prime minister”.
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Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips has told Sky News that councils that believe they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs are “idiots” – as she denied Elon Musk influenced the decision to have a national inquiry on the subject.
The minister said: “I don’t follow Elon Musk’s advice on anything although maybe I too would like to go to Mars.
“Before anyone even knew Elon Musk’s name, I was working with the victims of these crimes.”
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Elon Musk. Pic: Reuters
Mr Musk had called Ms Phillips a “rape genocide apologist” in one of a series of inflammatory posts on X in January and said she should go to jail.
Mr Musk, then a close aide of US President Donald Trump, sparked a significant political row with his comments – with the Conservative Party and Reform UK calling for a new public inquiry into grooming gangs.
At the time, Ms Phillips denied a request for a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham on the basis that it should be done at a local level.
But the government announced a national inquiry after Baroness Casey’s rapid audit on grooming gangs, which was published in June.
Asked if she thought there was, in the words of Baroness Casey, “over representation” among suspects of Asian and Pakistani men, Ms Phillips replied: “My own experience of working with many young girls in my area – yes there is a problem. There are different parts of the country where the problem will look different, organised crime has different flavours across the board.
“But I have to look at the evidence… and the government reacts to the evidence.”
Ms Phillips also said the home secretary has written to all police chiefs telling them that data collection on ethnicity “has to change”, to ensure that it is always recorded, promising “we will legislate to change the way this [collection] is done if necessary”.
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Operation Beaconport has since been established, led by the National Crime Agency (NCA), and will be reviewing more than 1,200 closed cases of child sexual exploitation.
Ms Phillips revealed that at least “five, six” councils have asked to be a part of the national review – and denounced councils that believed they don’t have a problem with grooming gangs as “idiots”.
“I don’t want [the inquiry] just to go over places that have already had inquiries and find things the Casey had already identified,” she said.
She confirmed that a shortlist for a chair has been drawn up, and she expects the inquiry to be finished within three years.
Ms Phillips’s comments come after she announced £426,000 of funding to roll out artificial intelligence tools across all 43 police forces in England and Wales to speed up investigations into modern slavery, child sex abuse and county lines gangs.
Some 13 forces have access to the AI apps, which the Home Office says have saved more than £20m and 16,000 hours for investigators.
The apps can translate large amounts of text in foreign languages and analyse data to find relationships between suspects.
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