Transcript of Carwyn Jones interview

PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED

On Sunday 20th February Andrew Marr interviewed First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones.

ANDREW MARR:

Next month the people in Wales will be voting in a referendum on whether the Assembly in Cardiff should have some more powers. It's twelve years since devolution was introduced, and throughout that time Labour's been the main party in power - mostly in coalition, first with the Liberal Democrats and currently with the Nationalists, Plaid Cymru. The Welsh Labour Leader and the First Minister is Carwyn Jones and he joins me now from his party's conference in Llandudno. Welcome Mr Jones. Can I ask, first of all. There's a referendum coming up, of course, but after twelve years looking at things like inward investment, employment, even educational attainment in Wales, many people might say that devolution has not brought the people of Wales anything much at all.

CARWYN JONES:

Well good morning, Andrew. Well in fact we've made some real strides forward. If you look, for example, at … I'll give you one example: the ProAct Scheme where 12,000 people are in work today because of a scheme we introduced two years ago. Now of course we know that our students will be able to afford to go to university as well, which isn't the case elsewhere. And there are people the length and breadth of Wales who've seen the benefits of devolution, whether it's through things like free prescriptions or free bus passes or indeed through the things I've mentioned such as tuition fees.

ANDREW MARR:

And yet inward investment, employment and therefore issues of sort of poverty have been at least as bad as before devolution and in many respects worse.

CARWYN JONES:

No, that's not right.

ANDREW MARR:

(simultaneously) You've lost a whole lot of big companies.

CARWYN JONES:

Have we? We've lost one or two.

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Bosch.

CARWYN JONES:

We've also managed to manage attract investment in as well. Bosch is one. We also had investment and new jobs in places like Airbus, in places like Tata. It's not all bad news. It's been difficult, of course, and it's been difficult for the whole of the UK. The UK economy is shrinking, we know that, but what we've done is put in place a whole raft of policies to get our economy to grow. But the one thing I have to emphasise very, very strongly is the GVA in Wales has risen over the past twelve years - we haven't gone backwards, far from it - but of course there are parts of the UK that have moved forward even more quickly. Even now, of course, we see that the economy is shrinking and we're determined to do all that we can to make sure that our people are shielded as much as possible from that economic downturn.

ANDREW MARR:

And you have particular pockets that are really, really grim in employment terms, in particular. I'm thinking of places like Merthyr Tydfil. What's the answer for those particular black spots where you've maybe got 30 plus percent unemployment?

CARWYN JONES:

Well there are a number of answers, I think. First of all, the last thing you do is remove schemes like the Future Jobs Fund. At a time when youth unemployment has gone through the roof, taking away the scheme that helped them the most seems ridiculous to me. So one of the things we're going to do is to introduce, if we win after May, a Wales Job Fund to provide 4,000 job placements for young people. I've met people who've gone into employment because of the Future Jobs Fund and we can't afford to let our young people be cut adrift. That's why we want to make sure that we help them.

ANDREW MARR:

One big difference between what the government in Westminster's doing and what you're doing is that you have decided not to ring-fence NHS spending and you're increasing spending instead on schools. So explain to us what the thinking is behind that.

CARWYN JONES:

Well first of all I don't believe for one moment that health has been ring-fenced in England. You see time and time again stories of trusts that are just not performing operations in order to save money. Social services spending has also been included in health spend in England, and in Wales that's counted separately. So I don't believe that health spending has been ring-fenced in England. We've managed to freeze the health budget over the next three years. Now bear in mind that that's off the back of a 7.5% decrease in our own revenue budget. So that's the best we could do - to freeze the health budget rather than cut it - while at the same time of course we're looking to increase spending in education. But we can only do what we can with the money that we get.

ANDREW MARR:

Now when it comes to your sort of strategic approach to the government - I mean you're obviously a Labour led administration in the Assembly - is your attitude that you have to work with Westminster, you have to make these cuts as successfully as possible, and that in some respects you have to march in step?

CARWYN JONES:

Well first of all we have a businesslike relationship with the UK government, you'd expect that, but there are many things which we would disagree with them on. But in Wales our position is that we want to shield people as much as possible from the worst effect of the cuts even though we think those cuts are too deep and too fast. But we do things in Wales not because we want to be different for the sake of it or to be awkward, but because we think we're doing things that are better for our people.

ANDREW MARR:

Well let me ask you about one other big issue, which is tuition fees you've mentioned already. You're keeping tuition fees to £4,000. For many English universities, it'll be £6,000, some £9,000. And some critics say that that will produce as it were a second class tier of universities in Wales. You will be the sort of pound saver universities, the cheaper universities that will lure people purely on price, and that that's not good in the long-term.

CARWYN JONES:

Well our universities will be able to look at charging up to £9,000 if they meet certain criteria in the longer term. But we took the view that we didn't want students to be priced out of university and we wanted to make sure that our students - same in Scotland of course - were able to go to university if they had the talent to do so. Sadly, of course, I think the situation in England is that many, many talented young people will no longer be able to go to university and we didn't think that was acceptable.

ANDREW MARR:

Alright. Carwyn Jones in a mild looking Llandudno, thank you very much indeed.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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