Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has refused to answer questions from Welsh and Scottish journalists.
The PM was in Newport on Friday for the Welsh Tory conference but journalists were told that there would be no interviews allowed with him or the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. It is usual for journalists to be able to put questions to senior politicians at party conferences with this scrutiny seen as a key part of holding our elected officials to account.
WalesOnline has wanted to question the Prime Minister about the decision to class HS2 as a Wales project despite there being no track laid in Wales (a decision that will likely cost Wales struggling rail network over £5bn). However we were told that they would be no opportunities to speak to the PM.
Read more: Rishi Sunak says the people of Wales are 'guinea pigs in Labour's socialist experiment'
It seems that it is not only in Wales that Mr Sunak is trying to dodge questions. At the Scottish Conservative conference on the same day, only six journalists were originally invited to a press conference with the PM - from The Daily Telegraph, The Scottish Daily Mail, The Scottish Sun, The Times, The Press and Journal and the Scottish Daily Express. The rest of the journalists simply walked in to the presser causing Mr Sunak’s team to attempted to cancel the Q&A and said they would do only one pooled broadcast clip with no newspaper questions allowed.
The attending journalists unanimously rejected this plan and the No 10 team U-turned and agreed the huddle would go ahead as planned. His team did however request that all journalists delete tweets about the row which was reportedly greeted with laughter by the attending journalists.
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