Wales’ new Deputy First Minister is responsible for many of the policy areas that Nigel Farage’s party has attacked in the early days of the new Plaid government
It is still only a matter of weeks since the ballot boxes were tipped onto tables at leisure centres and venues across Wales and Plaid Cymru knew the threshold it had set itself had been crossed to form a minority government led by Rhun ap Iorwerth.
His second in command is Sioned Williams. The 54-year-old is a former BBC journalist who previously worked for the party in communications. In both of those roles she crossed paths with her party’s now-leader but the pair go further back than that having met when she was 17 at the Cwrs ddrama Urdd.
“I’ve known him as long as my husband,” she laughs, as we meet in the Senedd. Yet she says she never expected he would appoint her as Deputy First Minister.
“Our paths have crossed many times and we’ve known each other a long time so we’ve got a very good relationship and it was the honour of my life to be asked and I’m absolutely delighted to be able to support him,” she says.
Her chance to get to take that role came as a result of a historic win for the party she has been a member of since she was a student.
Plaid Cymru won 43 of the available 96 seats.
“There was a long preparation period for us running up to this election,” she says.
“We were working extremely hard on policy development knowing that it was going to be a four-year term, knowing that finances were going to be constrained [and] we weren’t going to able to do everything that we’ve been talking about for the last 100 years so getting that really tight focus on what we thought really mattered what was important,” she says.
“We also knew that this was going to be an election like no other for all kinds of reasons so we fought the campaign of our lives.”
The result was, she admits, at the “top end” of the party’s expectations and she was personally thrilled it would not only mean they had representation all across Wales but there was a good gap between them and the second-placed party, and official opposition, Reform UK.
Reform UK has dominated the early days of the Senedd. An exchange between one of their new members, Joe Martin, with the First Minister about the Nation of Sanctuary followed by their choice of cutting all international spending as topic for an opposition day debate led to a walkout of politicians from Plaid, the Greens, and Labour.
Equality, community cohesion, and Wales in Africa are all things that fall under her brief and she is already hearing concerns about the topics and tone being used in this seventh Senedd. Is she surprised?
“I’m not surprised that Reform are latching onto things that they know will be inflammatory, things which I think that they’re misrepresenting, policies they’re misrepresenting, expenditure that they are misrepresenting, and missing the wider point of the effect of some of the rhetoric,” she says.
Aside from those two issues Reform UK did scrutinise the new government’s flagship childcare bill, which is “absolutely their job as opposition”, although she says “it did feel rather strange that they’d pick that when they hadn’t even mentioned childcare in their manifesto”.
There is, she says, “much that needs to be done” to help people in their everyday lives. “To be choosing those issues for debate I would say is rather missing the point of an effective opposition,” she says – but adds the party will stick to its own values.
“The decisions we make, the policies that we’ll enact, will show those values and those are the values that have been supported by the majority of people in Wales who elected us as their government.
“That’s how we will demonstrate where we sit on those issues. I understand, having said that, the strength of feeling [that led to the walkout].
“It is shocking to many members, especially perhaps newer members, but to all of us the level and the language and the rhetoric that has been used.
“I hope that the Llywydd will be able to make sure that we don’t see a continuation of the type of language.
“I personally was accused of something which is completely untrue, my position completely misrepresented. This has real-life impact obviously for us as politicians, especially as female politicians online, but also more broadly about people who are minoritised, who are marginalised, and who are impacted. Their lives and their safety is impacted by this type of rhetoric.
“As the First Minister said we are all about uniting our communities, strengthening our communities, celebrating the diversity in our communities – that’s the Wales we want to see. So we will demonstrate that through our actions but also, yes, I think we have to make sure that we don’t see a type of rhetoric allowed to become normalised in our national parliament.”
The things she wants to talk about are the things that drive her to be a politician. In the last Senedd regular viewers would regularly see her passionate contributions to debates about children and poverty and holding onto the brief she had when she was in opposition was non-negotiable.
“This is really the reason I’m in politics,” she says.
Elected for the first time aged 49 she had been a member of Plaid Cymru since she was a student. Her political journey came via her community council before being chair of her local Cylch Meithrin, then chair of school governors, and campaigning on local issues.
“I wasn’t really active in the party until Leanne Wood became leader 14 years ago because I saw a passion in her and coming from the South Wales Valleys as I do that’s where my politics comes from,” she said.
Both her grandparents were miners while one grandmother died at 50 from asthma, likely from the conditions she lived in, and the other was an uncertified teacher.
She and her sister were the first in their family to go to university.
“So I understand the impact that poverty can have in and just closing off those opportunities. That’s where my politics comes from so this portfolio is really why I’m here. Without these issues to fight on I don’t know if I would be here in elected politics.
“It’s a huge honour and that’s why I am absolutely determined to achieve what I can for those people in Wales who, through no fault of their own, don’t have the same opportunities as everybody else,” she says.
Since the election there have been murmurings that Plaid was backing down on its flagship policy and then there was a very public row after an attempt to force them to release their costings backfired in the Senedd.
So I ask her to spell out what is the government’s position on childcare. By the end of this four-year term, in 2030, what is her aim? “I want 20 hours for every child offended from the age of nine months to four years,” she states simply.
“I am absolutely thrilled to be talking about childcare.
“I have been wanting to talk about childcare – as a feminist, as a female politician, as someone who believes in social justice and equality and also believes that the children are the future of our nation and we need to be supporting them and condemning them to high levels of child poverty in Wales – for years and years and years.
“We understand that this is an intervention that is fully in the power of the Welsh Government to make.
“It more than pays for itself. It is a complex policy because of the system we’ve inherited, which committee report after committee report, anti-poverty organisations, equality organisations have demonstrated in report after report, isn’t currently working for children and families in Wales.
“What I want to do, and we have to do this in a phased way because it’s so complex, is make sure that we have a uniform, universal offer funded for all families between nine months and four years,” she says.
She would have said that before the election, I put it to her, so now she is in office and has spoken to officials, has seen the books, is it still realistic? “It is realistic,” she says, pointing to a recent announcement about extending childcare. But surely that was that something that would have happened anyway?
“This was a programme that was initiated, first of all, under the cooperation agreement [with the last Labour government] because we put that first and foremost as one of our policies, along with free school meals.
“It was initiated in the last government. It wasn’t completed. It didn’t have adequate focus or funding. So what we saw [is] it wasn’t achieved so the first step that we wanted to do was make sure that that was achieved because the local authorities already have plans in place for that. They just haven’t been given the direction or funding that they needed in order to be able to complete it,” she says.
She references one of the key questions, aside from finding the money, which is finding a workforce.
“This is one of the work streams that we have obviously. We absolutely know that the workforce are key to this expansion,” she says.
“But there’s also other things that we can do. We know that at the moment people have to move settings, for instance, in order to be able to access their entitlement under the two years so what we want to do is look at the whole system. I’m not just talking about adding hours here and there – I want to transform this system so it is one system and that it is in the best interest of the children and families who need to access that system.”
“I couldn’t just announce funding and say: ‘There will be more hours’. We absolutely recognise that. It is about working in partnership with local authorities. We’ve got a skills audit happening.
“My colleague Cefin Campbell is looking at post-16 education making sure that we are preparing the pipeline. But we also know that it is about giving assurance to providers and to local authorities – all the partners that are key and fundamental in this, the education sector – bringing people in who currently their qualifications aren’t recognised for instance,” she says. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here
She adds there is nothing she has learnt since getting into office that makes her think she will deliver a policy different to what was spelled out in the manifesto.
The new government has been criticised for ordering data, reports, and audits. “I think it’s about doing things sustainably and responsibly and there is a lot of data gaps.
“We’ve got a certain focus on our key priority areas as a party and in order to make progress on those we need to have an absolutely comprehensive view of what we’re dealing with.
“We need to work to better understand what some of those data gaps are,” she says.
“We have made it very clear we want to work on the basis of evidence. We also want to work transparently and we need to work responsibility, ground all our policies in the reality that is in front of us, not make empty promises”.
The childcare policy will, she says, make a difference. “This can help all children get the best start in life and get the best start towards their education journey.
“We know that’s not a level playing field. It can also help families who are currently in poverty to be able to increase their income, that’s economic inequality, and then we know of course gender inequality.
“This mainly impacts women and I’ve had experience of this myself. I was earning more than my husband when we had children. I didn’t catch up until I was 49 and I had my first when I was 30. So we know that this impacts women mainly and I’m really clear about the effect that it can have on our society broadly and especially obviously our children, the difference that this policy can make.”
She has already spoken in the Senedd chamber about Cynnal, a Welsh child payment, providing £10 a week for children aged from birth to six in households claiming universal credit. “Evidence has shown that this is one of the key interventions that can be made.
“Scotland has shown the way on this – it’s undeniable evidence. So we want to show the difference that a policy like this can make. Because of the fact that we don’t have the same powers as Scotland currently over the benefits system and welfare payments we have to do this as a pilot but I think that we can demonstrate the impact this can have and it’s about reaching those children who are in the deepest poverty,” she says.
She hopes it will help 15,000 children across different backgrounds and areas of Wales. For some families it will mean being able to go to a cinema or theatre, to have swimming lessons, to be able to say yes instead of no to a birthday party because you can’t afford to buy a present.
“Those everyday childhood experiences that every child should have this hopefully could just make an impact around that and we know it’s those direct cash payments that make the difference,” she says.
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