How to save Wales
Plus, the UK Gov shafts Cymru again
Morning and welcome to the new subscribers.
This newsletter will be a bit different and I would be interested in your thoughts so feel free to comment.
Last week the Welsh Government announced their “priorities for culture” and it fell so short of what is needed I felt compelled to put something together on it.
However, it is very easy as a journalist to crap on everything. I therefore want to also try and set out how we can actually make things better.
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The Welsh Government’s cultural priorities: A word soup which makes a mockery of the mess they have presided over
The Welsh Government have recently announced their “Priorities for Culture” in Wales.
Upon first reading my initial impression was that this was a woolly and vague list which will have no real bearing on Welsh culture except to enable the Welsh Government to say “look we are doing something, promise”.
However, conscious that I may have a slightly cynical edge, I wanted to take some time to speak to people in the arts and culture sector and properly digest the contents before I judged it. Well I have, and on reflection, I was far too kind to it.
Sorry to be flippant but it is like someone went on ChatGPT and wrote:
“Please can I have a list of wanky sentences that will sound really good in isolation but will have no application to real life. Oh and please also make sure that it is in no way quantifiable or measurable as well as ensuring absolutely zero accountability, scrutiny or benchmarks to success. But to make us seem really serious about this could you sprinkle in some generic images of people doing vaguely ‘artsy’ things. Diolch!”
Don’t believe me? You can read it here. I challenge you to find a sentence that elicits a response that isn’t “well obviously”.
Can’t be bothered to do that? I don’t blame you. As an example, I counted from one to five while randomly scrolling up and down the document. This was the paragraph I landed on when I stopped was:
“Wales is fortunate to have a deep and broad cultural and creative offer that we should celebrate, enjoy and share with others. We want our cultural organisations and services to support the people of Wales to be collectively, individually, and uniquely Welsh. Innovation and excellence should be fundamental to our aspirations for developing and celebrating culture.”
It’s like placeholder text written by candidates on The Apprentice.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying the priorities are, in and of themselves, bad ones. They set the parameters by which the Welsh Government will approach culture and, taken in isolation, they are all fine. It is just at no point during the 18 pages does it acknowledge:
The current terrible state of arts and culture is within Cymru.
Any meaningful way for these priorities to become a reality.
As one senior culture leader in Wales said to me:
“It is incredibly disappointing. There is nothing statutory in there at all. Not a thing”
As we have covered time and time again in this newsletter, the Welsh Government has been outstanding at talking a good game but when it comes to delivery it simply falls short. Whether this be support for carers, climate change, nature recovery or health, they are all about the “what” and never about the “how”.
Extra cash
To be fair, alongside the priorities, the Welsh Government announced how they were going to be using £15m of extra cash from the recent budget for the “culture sector”.
Better than nothing right? Well the “cultural sector” is incredibly broad. The document defines it as:
The arts (this includes but is not limited to dance, music, theatre, literature, drama, drawing, sculpture painting, filmmaking)
Museums
Libraries
Archives
The historic environment sectors in Wales.
This is a huge area and £15m, for a nation, is not a lot. For context, Arts Council Wales has received a 40% cut in funding in real terms since 2010 up until 2023/24.
This problem is also worse in Wales than any other country in the UK. Research commissioned by Equity (the performing arts and entertainment trade union) shows that since 2017, funding in Wales has fallen 30%, whereas in England it is 11%, and in Northern Ireland 16%. It has increased in Scotland by 2%.
I have shared this graph in previous newsletter but it bears reposting:
Even with the extra £15m Wales is only up to £74 per head.
This is why I found the “cultural priorities” so enraging. They completely ignore the context in which they are operating. There is no acknowledgement that the arts in Wales are in serious crisis and something drastic is needed.
It reads very much as business as usual. Let me demonstrate this…
Same s***, different day
Because I am a diligent journalist/complete loser I went back and read a report the Welsh Government released on culture back in 2016 called “Light Springs through the Dark: A Vision for Culture in Wales”.
Some of the similarities to their most recent release are, frankly, hilarious. Take digital for example. Each document had a section for “digital”.
In 2016 they said:
“Digital technology represents a huge opportunity for the creative and cultural sector. It needs to do more to promote and share its offer.”
“Encourage the culture sector to be more proactive in pursuing new forms of income, in developing their business and marketing skills, and in exploiting digital technology.”
“Work to..fully exploit the potential of digital technology.”
Now in 2025 they are saying:
“We need to formulate a more strategic, collaborative and co-ordinated approach to the opportunities and challenges of operating in the digital world.”
“Our sectors need support to innovate and to grow their digital capacity. We want to strengthen the use of new technologies to enhance how people connect with and create culture in Wales.”
Putting aside the fact that even in 2016 the idea that “digital technology was a huge opportunity” was hardly a new idea and they were already a decade behind, it goes to show how meaningless these “priorities” are without actual measurable outcomes. It is just rehashing the same stuff.
At least in 2016 they also had a section called “What more needs to be done? How can we monitor progress?” and a section called “Monitoring and evaluation” which said:
“It will be important to monitor and evaluate the progress being made in implementing the goals set out in this Statement. Almost by definition, some cultural activities, and the outcomes from them, are difficult to measure objectively. Nonetheless, we recognise the need to improve the evidence base on the effectiveness of cultural interventions, especially where these contribute to key policy areas such as health, education and the economy.”
In my opinion, the absence of this section in 2025 underlines the absolute afterthought that culture is for the Welsh Government as well as a seeming aversion to accountability. It reads like a script for an amateur production of a play called “cultural governance” (not that you would be able to get funding to put that on).
In a statement a Welsh Government spokesperson told me:
“Our new Priorities for Culture clearly state we want to ensure culture in Wales is thriving and properly resourced. We have an ambition to enhance culture budgets but this will be dependent on many other factors, including the UK Government’s Spending Review.
“We have already made a positive start – our culture and arts sector has seen an 8.5% revenue increase this year, on top of a £18.4m increase in capital funding to ensure the longevity of Wales’ cultural assets. This capital funding is three times that of a decade ago.
“Our focus for the remainder of this term is on progressing with the implementation of the Priorities for Culture.”
Reasons for hope - A vision for how the arts can help save Wales
I am conscious that this newsletter can be, at times, a bit bleak.
Some politicians in Cymru often tell me that I am too negative. While I think that is a ridiculous statement from a political class who don’t know they are born when it comes to proper scrutiny, I do believe that endless misery leads to news fatigue.
This in turn means people stop engaging with politics for the sake of their own mental well being. Apathy is one of the biggest obstacles to Wales flourishing so I want to try and bring some hope from time to time.
To do this I want to imagine how the arts could become Wales USP. Bear in mind this is not a manifesto or a detailed policy document.
Let’s use the example of music.
I recently had a conversation with some leading professionals within music in Wales. They gave me some really interesting insights:
Some instruments, like the bassoon and oboe, are in strong decline.
Others, like the piano and guitar, are doing pretty well. Musical theatre is also significantly oversubscribed.
Because fewer schools are providing musical instrument tuition, anyone who wants to learn has to do it at home.
This means that learning a musical instrument is becoming more and more the purview of the well off.
This, in turn, means that this part of the arts is more elitist.
But what if, and stay with me here, Wales decided to push to make its arts elite? I am not saying elitist, I am saying elite.
Wales is a small country. That has disadvantages but it also has huge advantages if we can seize them. Namely:
You don’t need to convince/influence that many people to make a big change.
It should be far easier to connect different organisations to create a clear pathway for excellence.
You can create a strong brand around culture, especially when you have your own unique language.
When you are a small nation next to a much larger one, you need to find ways to stand out. England has also been slashing its arts and culture spend massively for a decade and a half. So why not position Wales as the place where elite music and the arts can thrive? There are a lot of very talented people in England who are really depressed at the state of arts and culture. Offer them an environment where their skills are valued and nurtured.
Rather than treating the arts and culture as a “nice to have” the Welsh Government could treat the arts and culture as a vital industry. Imagine if, rather than paying lip service to Wales being the land of song and stories, this became our entire brand.
We could aim to get to the point where, if you are a British person with real talent and ambition, you have to come to Wales. Whether this is through subsidies, tax breaks, grants, professional development or international partnerships, the Welsh Government could make Wales the best place to be a creatively talented person. At a time when Britannia has never been less cool, Cool Cymru 2.0 could be a huge USP.
Wales has done this to a certain extent with its film and TV industry. But there is a real opportunity for something wider and more broad with regard to culture.
At present the arts and culture industry in Wales has a turnover of around £1.64bn and employs around 36,000 people, and this is on the back of long term cuts. Think what it could be.
Why this is preferable to simply extracting resources
We talk about how floating offshore wind will be a great industry for Wales with regard to jobs but the direct benefit it will have on people within Wales beyond those jobs is limited. If Wales was THE place in the UK for elite music and arts the benefits for wider society would be huge beyond merely the jobs it would attract.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that we shouldn’t be promoting green energy generation in Wales - we should. But history has taught us that prosperity for the people of Cymru won’t come from extracting the resources under their feet or above their heads, but from developing the people themselves.
A thriving cultural Wales will bring with it all the additional benefits that the arts provide:
Better health outcomes
Better mental well being
More engaged young people in education
A stronger tourism industry
Better community cohesion
That last point I think is significant. Our world is becoming more divided. The arts are so good at bringing communities together. It has the power to engage young people like no other. It can be the perfect counter to the far-right. A booming cultural scene in Wales is a vaccine against division.
Imagine the young men the far right are targeting at the moment. They lack confidence, self-esteem and the feeling that they have a future. Promoting artistic expression, whatever form that takes, is one way to stop our young men turning to hate.
But this can only happen if the arts boom is “elite” not elitist. One of the biggest frustrations with music in Wales is that there are not well defined pathways for nurturing talent. We are a very small country, because we have fewer people we need to be really effective in identifying and cultivating our talent. If that young person happens to be from a family living in severe poverty there needs to be proper pathways in place to make sure that household income is as small an obstacle as possible to that development.
This will not just benefit the young person in question, it will help all of us. Wales can simply not keep squandering its greatest resource - its people.
I appreciate that this has been a bit different from my usual tone. I also appreciate that this isn’t exactly a fully formed strategy. I am not an expert on policy delivery (as a journalist I am pretty much not an expert on anything) but I do feel it is an example of how politicians in our country need to be more ambitious in how they plan to make Wales better and take people with them.
We can’t just carry on as we have been, tinkering around the edges and vaguely mirroring what is happening in England. We have to try doing things truly differently.
UK Government (almost) helps Wales…
At the start of April I wrote a piece where we looked at how Wales was being uniquely shafted around employer national insurance contributions.
As a reminder this was the situation:
Last year, Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced that on April 6 this year, employers will have to pay higher National Insurance contributions.
Obviously this will hit public sector employers as well as private sector ones.
To make up for this, Ms Reeves had said that the UK Treasury would cover the increased public sector costs for public bodies.
However Wales has a proportionately larger public sector than England.
Why is this a problem? Well it wouldn’t be if the Treasury were simply going to give Wales the cash to make up the shortfall.
Alas, they are not.
Instead they are calculating the amount of money using the Barnett formula.
Under this, Wales only gets an increase in funding proportional to England which means…
Because England’s public sector is smaller, Wales proportionately gets less money.
If you want this in plain simple English then here it is:
“Every council and NHS body in England will not lose out because of the NI rise, whereas in Wales there's a £65 million shortfall.”
Mark Drakeford said he was going to lobby the Treasury to reverse what he called their “wrong decision”. However it appears he has been unsuccessful. In a statement last Friday he said:
“The UK Government has provided £185m in funding to Wales following its decision to increase employer NICs in the autumn UK Budget. However, this falls significantly short of the £257m devolved public sector employers in Wales need to meet the increased NICs costs they face.
“This shortfall, of more than £70m, is a result of the UK Government decision that Wales should receive a Barnett consequential of the additional costs to devolved public sector employers in England, rather than the actual costs.
“The £185m will be passed on in full to devolved public sector employers in Wales. I will also provide an additional £36m from the Wales Reserve. This creates a total package of £220 million to support our public services, including further education, with increased NICs costs.
“The Welsh Government faces significant financial challenges and drawing down £36m from our limited reserves reduces our ability to respond to other emerging pressures throughout the year. However, we have concluded that providing additional support for essential public services is necessary to minimise the impact on Welsh citizens who rely on these services.”
So basically, Wales is going to have to go into its reserves to make up for this shortfall (when no other part of the UK public sector is going to need to do this).
The UK Government was unapologetic about this decision. A UK Government source told me:
“The Welsh Government’s spending power has been boosted by the UK Government’s decision to waive their reserve drawdown limits for 2025/26.
“This increased spending power came on top of more than £180m extra to compensate for public sector national insurance contributions, and a record £21bn financial settlement at the Autumn Budget, the largest in the history of devolution.
“UK Government did this to help the Welsh Government invest in public services and drive down NHS waiting lists. Together, we are delivering our Plan for Change in Wales by fixing our NHS, creating thousands of well paid jobs, boosting the minimum wage, and investing billions in our high streets and public services.”
A “partnership in power” indeed…
The Welsh Tories are simply not acting like a serious party
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