By Rajiv Prabhakar
First Minister Mark Drakeford
Mark Drakeford stepped down as First Minister of Wales in March 2024. My first meeting with Mark Drakeford in 2010 was not auspicious.
When we first met, Drakeford was the head of First Minister’s Rhodri Morgan’s political office. We had both been due to travel to Washington DC to discuss the Welsh Government’s addition to the Child Trust Fund. But, the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökullerupted threw our travel plans into chaos.
The UK Labour Government introduced the Child Trust Fund, which provided £250 to all children and £500 to children from lower-income backgrounds, from 2002. The Welsh Government provided a Welsh addition to the Child Trust Fund. The Child Trust Fund was an early casualty of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government’s austerity cuts to public spending in 2010 and the Welsh Government had to follow suit and end its own Welsh addition.
The Welsh Basic Income Pilot
Forward to our second meeting. In 2010 Drakeford was preparing to run for election as an Assembly Member for Cardiff West. Drakeford is a social policy academic and was elected in 2011. After a series of ministerial appointments, he became First Minister in 2018. One of his last acts as First Minister was to oversee the launch with the then Minister of Social Justice Jane Hutt of the Welsh basic income pilot for care leavers in 2022.
In 2022, I chaired an Open University seminar attended by both Drakeford and Hutt in which they discussed the Welsh basic income pilot, which provides £1,600 a month (before tax) for two years to young people leaving care in Wales between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023.
Devolution: Opportunities and Constraints
Both the Child Trust Fund Cymru and the Welsh basic income pilot involve giving extra money to vulnerable young people. In my article I explore what the basic income pilot means for the relationship between devolution and social citizenship. There are concerns that devolution undermines social citizenship by allocating resources by geography and not need. But, devolution can also advance social citizenship if devolved nations act as laboratories for policy innovation and lessons are shared more widely. In my article I claim that successive Welsh Governments for the past 20 years have sought to expand the concept of social citizenship to include access to money as well as services such as health and education.
Drakeford has been central to this mission. He has long argued that progressive universalism should form one of the core principles shaping Welsh social policy. This involves a commitment to universalism in the provision of services and benefits. But, there is also a recognition that the most vulnerable need extra resources – hence the extra progressive top-ups for those in need.
Drakeford is a keen gardener. In my article I note that progressive universalism is not a principle that only grows on Welsh soil. Gordon Brown helped seed this idea more widely when he was developing the UK Labour plans on the Child Trust Fund when he was the Chancellor during the 2000s.
Of course, a range of principles can shape Welsh social policy. And policy is also influenced by other factors such as interest-group lobbying, electoral considerations, public opinion and party politics. But, the stress on extra money for vulnerable young people provides a thread that connects the Child Trust Fund Cymru to the Welsh basic income pilot.
My article also highlights however the constraints imposed by the current devolution settlement. The UK Government provides block grants to the devolved administrations that fund most of their spending. The Barnett formula is used to calculate annual changes to the block grant, but the Barnett formula is based on spending in England rather than the needs of the devolved nations. The upshot is that the Welsh Government is constrained by the UK Government. This seems to have a direct impact on the fate of the pilot: unless the UK Government provides financial support it is unlikely that the Welsh basic income scheme can be turned from pilot to policy, even if the pilot is deemed to be successful.
What of the future?
The Welsh basic income pilot was launched when there was a Conservative Government in Westminster. There is now a UK Labour Government headed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. This offers the potential for more fertile ground between the UK and Welsh Governments, yet this is not guaranteed. My article suggests that although Welsh politicians have used initiatives to build national identity by badging them as Welsh, building wider political support for schemes such as the basic income pilot involve showing how the principles that underpin them can extend beyond national boundaries and apply across the UK.
