Senior Plaid Cymru figures have criticised the UK Government Budget, calling it the "worst for Wales in years" and a "real-terms cut dressed up as a windfall".
Plaid Cymru Treasury spokesperson Ben Lake MP said the Budget was a chance for UK Labour to show Wales was "more than an afterthought", but the Treasury had instead "delivered the worst funding settlement for Wales in years". Treasury documents show Wales will receive £450m over the next three years, which Mr Lake said "falls well short of keeping pace with inflation".
Finance Minister's Reaction
Finance minister Elin Jones echoed the criticism, saying it left Wales' financial position worse than before the Budget. However, Labour's Welsh secretary Stephen Kinnock said he did not recognise the numbers from Plaid Cymru.
In the lead-up to the Budget, Ms Jones had asked the UK Government for £1bn of the £14bn that Keir Starmer promised for rail in Wales. The only financial pledge towards rail was £30m towards a new Cardiff Parkway railway station. "Wales has been ignored again," the finance minister said.
Mr Lake said: "Plaid Cymru called for £1 billion of rail investment in this Budget to begin delivering the UK Government's £14 billion commitment to Wales. Instead, Wales has been offered just £30 million. A £14 billion promise has, in practice, translated into £30 million in this Budget."
Ms Jones said the amount being promised to Wales is a "real-terms cut dressed up as a windfall". "The UK Government will try to present today's budget as a win for Wales. It isn't. Once you account for inflation, this is still a real-terms cut to our funding, not new money that improves our position. Today's budget hasn't shifted the dial. Our fiscal position is worse than it was before the Chancellor stood up, and that has direct consequences for our own Budget on November 17. On rail, fiscal flexibilities and public services, Wales has been ignored again."
Labour's Response
Mr Kinnock said that of three specific schemes mentioned by the Chancellor for Wales, only the £11m for the bridge in his Aberavon constituency and the £2.5m for M-SParc is new money. The £30 million for Cardiff Parkway is from a previous promise of £445 million made in the 2025 Spending Review.
"The really good thing about the £30 million is we've now got a very clear business plan approved, and feasibility study and planning process signed off, and that's why the £30 million is really a very concrete commitment that can lead to spades in the ground. The reason I say that is because it relates to my broader answer to your question, which is the fundamental problem we have is that industry, as is, just can't absorb the kind of numbers that Plaid Cymru are talking about. It's all very well having numbers on a spreadsheet and commitments, and maybe that makes a nice press release, but the reality is what matters is feasibility, it is development plans, it's engineering studies, feasibility studies, the enabling works that you need to make this stuff happen and get spades in the ground. That's my top priority on rail, is to really make these projects happen, so we've got to get the Burns stations up and running, and my number one priority is to focus in on that rather than spend our whole time talking about big numbers, which actually, unless they translate into concrete and tangible progress, don't really mean much," he said.
He said even if the UK Government had given £1bn to the Welsh Government for rail, it would not be able to be spent in this financial year because other schemes are not yet ready. Asked why the equivalent work is not ready to begin at the so-called Burns stations, he said: "That is the fundamental question. I've got a meeting coming up very soon with the Welsh Government transport minister and with Peter Hendy, the Department for Transport Minister, and we really do need to sit down and just get into the weeds of this issue and look specifically at each one of the Burns projects: why haven't they got as far as we need them to get? What do we need to do to remove the barriers? Let's roll up our sleeves and start getting this stuff moving."
Funding Dispute
Asked to respond to criticism from Plaid Cymru that this was the "worst funding settlement in years," Mr Kinnock said: "I just don't know where they're getting those numbers from, because we are clearly delivering a £450 million uplift in the block grant for Wales over the spending review period. That is of course building on the record-breaking, unprecedented increase that we saw in the block grant in the 2025 budget, which led to Wales having the biggest and best settlement since devolution began in the late 1990s. When you put all that together, I just seriously am struggling to understand where Plaid Cymru are getting their numbers from."
Asked about suggestions this conservative Budget was a sign Labour is planning for an early election, he said: "I think that the budget's a really good balance of those short-term here-and-now measures, abolishing gas standing charges, axing tariffs on 100 food products, removing 64,000 Welsh pensioners from tax on their pensions, removing the 4% tariff on heating oil which will benefit 105,000 homes in Wales, particularly in rural areas. Those are really important breathing space measures, and we need that in a budget where people are really struggling with the cost of living, but it did also set out long-term plans around how we're going to deal with artificial intelligence, how we're going to rebuild the British manufacturing sector, how we're going to deal with the fact that you've got tariffs coming in from Trump, you've got the long-term impact of the war in Iran and all these other global headwinds. I think it's a budget that does both the here-and-now and looking to the longer term and setting a direction for the future of the country, and of course the Prime Minister will be setting more out on that in the 10-year plan coming in the coming weeks and months."
Asked explicitly if he expects an early election he said "No, I am not."
