Last October the MP for Monmouth David TC Davies was appointed Secretary of State for Wales by new PM Rishi Sunak. This made him the most senior Welsh MP in the UK Government.
Mr Davies is the voice for Wales in the Cabinet. Having direct contact with the most powerful decision makers in the land he is uniquely placed to be an advocate for Wales and our interests.
Given the huge range of challenges Wales faces such as poverty, climate change, cost of living and a creaking infrastructure, there were a lot of question to put to the new Secretary of State when he took office. I requested an interview, but time and again was rebuffed in my attempts.
In the end he did agree to an interview with WalesOnline, but refused to conduct it with myself. His exact words were: "I’m willing to be interviewed by anyone else who works for WalesOnline but not by you."
It is simply not acceptable for politicians to dictate who interviews, scrutinise and hold them to account. I decided to put on Twitter the fact that Mr Davies was trying to do just that. Within a day of doing so, Mr Davies local Conservative Association (Monmouth) had not only accused me of throwing my toys out of the pram for the temerity of highlighting what they were doing, they actually photoshopped a picture of me into a pram.
However, five months on from my first request there has been a breakthrough! I was finally able to interview the SoS in Port Talbot where he was inspecting the area of the new freeport that had just been announced for the area (which is combined with Milford Haven with a second on Ynys Mon). During the interview I spoke to Mr Davies on a range of issues and some of his answers were characteristically upfront.
On the UK Government reclaiming £155.5m from Wales
On the same day that WalesOnline interviewed David TC Davies the news broke that the Treasury had taken back £155.5m because the Welsh Government hadn't spent it yet Economy minister Vaughan Gething called it "extraordinarily frustrating". You can read the full story here. Mr Davies told WalesOnline, after some prompting, that he hadn't asked for this money to come back to Wales..
WalesOnline: A total of £155.5 million has been reclaimed by the Treasury because of a Welsh Government underspend. As the voice of Wales in Cabinet, what discussions have you had with the UK Government, if any, about that money being returned to Wales?
David TC Davies: Well my predecessor made sure that the money went to Wales in the first place and Wales was given clear instructions as to how to spend it and they decided not to. So the question really should be directed at Welsh Government as to why exactly they managed not to spend £155 million that was there for them to spend?
Their argument would be that almost every UK government department had an underspend and it's better that they roll that over or offset their capital spend, instead of just rushing into stuff like buying farms.
I think there may be a very good issue about some of the money that the Welsh Government have spent it on buying farms, or making plans for an M4 relief road that then they decide not to go ahead with, or writing off 9 million quid for a rather obviously foolish development idea to put a motor racing circuit or whatever.
There are clear rules when UK Government hands money over to any department and the department is expected to spend it and I'm not responsible for the fact that the Welsh Government, in the middle of the biggest health crisis for a century managed not to spend £155m.
Even if you accept that this is the Welsh Government's mistake, ultimately there's £155 million that would have been spent in Wales that now won't. Have you made any appeals to the Treasury for it to be returned to Wales?
Well, it would have been spent, it could have been spent in Wales and it wasn't spent in Wales. And it's no good sitting in a bank account. But I've no doubt when Welsh Government come forward with further plans to spend money in Wales, we'll be looking at it with great interest. My role as Secretary of State for Wales is to support the Welsh Government in any way I can and that's why I'm delighted to be here today, working with Welsh Government over this particular project, which is going to create up to 14,000 jobs and transform this area, which is very much in need of it
Just be clear that when you say you 'support Welsh Government in anyway you can', you haven't asked the UK Government to return that money to Wales?
I don't see much point in having £155 million sitting in a bank account with the Welsh Government, but I look forward to finding out why they managed not to spend the money.
On why Wales is missing out in billions of rail spending
The issues of Wales not getting a cut of HS2 or Northern Powerhouse Rail spending has been well documented. The decision to class both projects as "England and Wales" despite no track being laid in Wales has cost Wales about £5bn. You can read more about it here.
How does Northern Powerhouse Rail benefit Wales given that it's been defined as an England Wales project?
Well all rail projects are England Wales projects and people in Wales benefit from being able to travel around England and Wales on a railway.
Well with Crossrail there's a precedent set wasn't there? Crossrail was defined as an England only project so Wales received a consequential. You've previously defended HS2 on the basis that enabled people to get from North Wales to London quicker. So how does Northern Powerhouse Rail benefit Wales in a way that means it shouldn't get consequential?
You know I can't be responsible for the way the devolution settlement was put together, but basically heavy rail was not involved. But what I am responsible for is supporting other rail projects which are outside normal Barnett consequentials like the South Wales Metro, for example, which falls completely outside Barnett consequentials and is worth well over half a billion pounds and it's part of the UK/Welsh government growth deal.
But frankly railway infrastructure will get built sometimes in England or Wales. We've had £340 million worth of infrastructure. You could argue that the improvements to the Cardiff train station aren't going to benefit people much in the north northeast of England, although of course, they may well travel here and make use of that.
And of course, lots of people in my own constituency are going to benefit hugely from the works that are taking place at the moment in the Forest of Dean to enable railway trains run more reliably between South Wales and the Midlands, even though that's taking place fully in England, it's going to benefit Welsh passengers.
Given the 2% of Welsh track, do you think the Wales is getting a good deal out of the UK Government's management and its railways?
But if you take the electrification of the South Wales route, I think that there were obviously issues about how that was done and the the cost overruns, and some surprising things came out of the reports into that. But the reality is that Welsh passengers now benefit from the fact that they can travel along an electrified route between here and London, or English passengers going from London towards Wales.
In terms of electrification further from Cardiff, towards Swansea, that was looked at very carefully, it would have cost a huge amount of money, but it wouldn't have decreased journey times because the track because of configuration the track. In simple English, it was too wiggly, to allow the trains to accelerate in a way that would have allowed them to get a benefit from it. So we would have been a huge amount of money for something that wouldn't have given us shorter travel times.
Wales empirically has had less rail investment than England proportionately. So as Secretary of State for Wales does that frustrate you?
Well I always want to see money coming in to Wales. But I mean, a lot of people refer to this report, where there was a suggestion that Wales was receiving 1% or something like that in infrastructure spending. But then the very same report further along said that if you took a different dataset, then you could have put it in around 4%, or just over, which is about what you'd expect any way on a population basis, that was in the same report. So you'd have often quoted one set of figures from one report. And yet nobody wanted read through it and find out what the other figures also said in same report.
But rail infrastructure in Wales isn't where you'd want it to be is it?
Look I want the best for Wales, I want the best for Wales in all in all things, including rail infrastructure.
Climate change
WalesOnline has previously written about accusations of climate change denial being levelled at Mr Davies. You can read more about it here.
They are going to be building floating turbines here that are going to be a key element of getting us down to our net zero targets. You've said you now fully accept man-made climate change but historically you haven't...
That's not true
Well you did say that climate change might not exist.
I've been very clear in virtually every speech I've ever made, that carbon dioxide is a global warming gas, and that there's been more of it since industrialization, and therefore it had an impact on climate. I made an absolute point of saying that every time I spoke, so when people say you deny climate change, they don't know what they're talking about and haven't done their research.
It was in a blog that you wrote where you said it 'might not exist'. But what I wanted to ask you is, what was the point that made you that convinced you that climate change was manmade?
I don't have to because if you actually look at what I've said directly and use the direct evidence, you'll see that I've already been saying it. In fact, I found one speech where I hadn't made that clear but I took that offline, so all of the other ones, I've looked at them going back several years. So I invite you to have a look at what I've said.
Brexit and standing up for Wales
Mr Davies has been a vocal supporter of Brexit. However, the economy is 4% smaller than if the UK had remained in the European Union, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has said. We put these figures to Mr Davies.
There was some figures yesterday that said the economy was 4% smaller because of Brexit. As a vocal advocate for leaving the EU, do you Brexit is working well, for Wales?
Yes, I think it's worked extremely well. and I doubt very much whether there's any basis for those figures. It will be impossible to say what impact Brexit has had, because we've had the double shock of the Covid health pandemic, followed by the invasion of Ukraine, which has caused inflation and energy prices to go up. But what I do remember is that prior to the referendum on Brexit, people were coming out saying that house prices were going to collapse, there's gonna be no jobs, there'll be no fresh fruit and veg on the shelves, and that we're going to run out of everything. None of this came to pass.
We have had shortages of fruit and veg...
We had a shortage of tomatoes because of a drought in Morocco. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit.
So do you accept there have been any negative impact of Brexit?
We've had lots of positive impacts, for example we managed to get a vaccine scheme rolled out in Wales before anywhere else in Europe as a result of the fact that we weren't part of the the European Medicines Agency
So has there been negative impacts? You've cast doubt on the credibility of the figures, but these are senior and well respected economists who are saying this.
Were the senior well respected economists who opposed Brexit in the first place?
They opposed it and they are now saying that they have been proved right.
The first thing I would do as a journalist is just check whether or not the people who were making these sorts of claims had any sort of prior interest in it.
Interesting as this is I am here to actually discuss 40,000 jobs and half a billion pounds worth of investment for Wales.
Just one more question if I may, in terms of being Wales is voice in cabinet, can you give us some examples of when you've stood up for Wales when something has happened and you've said, around the Cabinet table, 'Wales needs this'?
Well on this, for example, I wanted to have two freeports in Wales, not one, we were actually promised one, we've now got two. So that's a very good thing, which I'm sure you'll be celebrating Will.
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