Cai Parry-Jones, Reform UK Member of the Senedd for Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf and the party’s shadow Finance and Government Efficiencies Minister, argues that Reform has redefined what opposition in Cardiff Bay can achieve.
In May, Welsh voters made Reform the official opposition of the Welsh Parliament. 34Reform Members were elected to the newly enlarged 96-seat Senedd, second only to Plaid Cymru’s 43. This result shattered the 26 year Labour domination in Welsh politics. Both the new government and the new opposition had never held their respective roles. It was clear that Wales demanded change.
While there is plenty to say about the initial effectiveness, or lack thereof, of Plaid Cymru’s government, the focus of this article is on the performance of the opposition, my party, Reform.
I believe there’s a strong case to be made that no opposition party has had a bigger impact in its first three months of a Senedd term than Reform. Of course, I would say that, so let me present the evidence and let you make up your mind instead.
Syniadau uchelgeisiol, awdurdodol a mentrus.
Ymunwch â ni i gyfrannu at wneud Cymru gwell.
Collaboration
A notable element of the election campaign was the constant and clear refusal from other political parties to collaborate with Reform. Plaid Cymru’s leader in an interview with Times Radio said “We won’t work with Reform in any shape or form”. Welsh Labour invested in digital ads with the main message of saying only Labour could stop Reform.
Yet despite this rhetoric, we have been able to convince all groups in the Senedd to vote in favour of some of our motions and manifesto pledges. On occasion this has led to headlines that have, I will admit, made me chuckle, such as last month’s headline from the BBC: “FM defends voting with Reform despite criticising Labour for doing same”.
There are two particularly noteworthy Reform motions I’d like to highlight, which gained a majority of support in the Senedd. The first, tabled in June, called for a statutory register of lobbyists in Wales, a key manifesto pledge of ours. Scotland and Northern Ireland both have statutory registers, and Westminster has one covering consultant lobbyists. Yet Wales, remarkably, has had none. The people of Wales have a right to know who is seeking to influence the laws and decisions made in their name, and it took Reform to put that principle to a vote. It passed with support from every corner of the Senedd, including the government benches.
I believe there’s a strong case to be made that no opposition party has had a bigger impact in its first three months of a Senedd term than Reform.
The second motion was on a stronger approach to tackling bovine TB, through wildlife control. Having grown up on my family’s beef cattle farm, I have seen first-hand the toll TB has taken on Welsh farmers for decades, the herds lost, the livelihoods strained, and the pressure on families that is rarely spoken about. The Welsh Government took targeted wildlife controls off the table in 2012 and never looked back, even as the Bovine TB Programme Board warned that Wales is not on course to meet its own 2041 eradication target. Our motion, passed by 79 votes to 9, means evidence-led wildlife controls recommended by the TB Technical Advisory Group must now be given full consideration. Another key Reform manifesto pledge.
Compare this to the previous Senedd (2021-2026). The official opposition were the Welsh Conservatives. In the first three months only one of their four motions passed, and only after Labour deleted half of it and added several of their own points. A similar story happened with other oppositions in every Senedd term since Welsh devolution in 1999.
Scrutiny
Of course, opposition is not all about working with other parties. Strong, analytical scrutiny of the government’s actions should be the main objective of any opposition, and we have made history doing just that with the recent defeat of the Welsh Government’s supplementary budget.
Coming back to our comparison of official opposition, I strongly believe the scrutiny of budgets has been woefully inadequate, with poor, if any, reasoning for opposing.
This was the first budget, supplementary or otherwise, to be voted down in the history of the Senedd. Inadequate funding for additional learning needs (ALN, the equivalent of SEND in England) was the key issue that collapsed the budget, with Labour, who Plaid Cymru hoped would support the budget, claiming this as their reason for opposing the budget. The lack of funding for ALN in the budget was an issue I had first raised as Reform’s finance spokesperson. Furthermore, Reform was the first opposition party to give Welsh Government our red lines* needed to support their budget. They were clear, constructive, and delivered early, precisely so the government had every opportunity to act on them. They did not.
Coming back to our comparison of official opposition, I strongly believe the scrutiny of budgets has been woefully inadequate, with poor, if any, reasoning for opposing. For example, on the first annual budget in the previous Senedd term the Welsh Conservatives provided one amendment simply saying:
‘Delete all (the draft budget) and replace with:
To propose that the Senedd: Believes that the Welsh Government’s Draft Budget 2022-23 fails to deliver on the priorities of the people of Wales.’
No details on why it fails to deliver, just a seemingly opposition-for-the-sake-of-opposition argument. Rest assured, the scrutiny of the next annual budget will be much more rigorous, and that will partly be down to Reform’s clear and detailed amendments.
Constituents
Outside of the Cardiff Bay bubble, Reform Senedd Members have shown we are serious about listening to our constituents. We are taking advantage of the latest technology to speed up the process of responding to constituents’ requests, such as a wholesale use of Caseworker, as well as capitalising on social media to get the word out on how we can help our constituents. For my part, at the time of writing, I have already closed 159 cases, many of which have helped people with very serious issues, from risk of homelessness, to e-bike crime, to fighting for justice in NHS failings. A number have also noted a lack of adequate response from Senedd Members from other political parties.
For anyone in Wales with an issue, big or small, I highly recommend reaching out to your local Reform Senedd Member (we have at least one in every constituency).
These first three months have demonstrated that we take the role of opposition seriously. And Plaid Cymru are already running scared, in one such case, almost literally. During a Reform-led debate in the Senedd on international spending, there was a mass walkout, initiated by a Plaid Cymru Senedd Member. Rather than speaking up to argue against our views, most of Plaid Cymru, including a government minister, simply walked out. They must have taken President Harry S. Truman’s advice: if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
Although Reform in Wales has done a lot, be assured we aren’t close to top gear. Most of the new Reform Senedd Members have come from the real world: business owners, teachers, data professionals (that’s me), so naturally there is a learning curve in the first few months. But we are learning fast. And while other parties take the summer off, we are using this six-week recess to plan and prepare for the rest of the Senedd term and beyond, to a Reform Wales Government in 2030.
*Our red lines were 1) ALN funding routed directly to councils, 2) guaranteed jobs for newly qualified nurses and paramedics, and 3) an end to overseas spending from a devolved budget already under strain. The government met none of them, and it paid the price.
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