{"id":662619,"date":"2026-06-28T10:58:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T10:58:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/662619\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T10:58:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T10:58:15","slug":"where-will-andy-burnham-take-wales-and-welsh-devolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/662619\/","title":{"rendered":"Where will Andy Burnham take Wales and Welsh devolution?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current Labour government has faced criticism from many Welsh Labour colleagues in Cardiff for resisting calls to devolve <\/a>more powers, including over policing and justice. <\/p>\n

“I think Andy has a more instinctive understanding of devolution than perhaps Keir Starmer did, and perhaps some other politicians in the UK government have,” Lord Brennan added.<\/p>\n

And yet, Burnham seems to have already U-turned on his position that the funding formula used to determine how much money the devolved nations get from Westminster – and which critics say short-changes Wales because it’s mainly based on population share – should be replaced.<\/p>\n

In his book, Burnham makes the case for a new formula where “funding would be allocated based on social factors and levels of need”.<\/p>\n

“If we don’t do something like this,” he warns, “the North-South divide will only widen in the decades ahead.”<\/p>\n

However, this week a Burnham spokesperson told BBC Wales that, while he would “put Wales at the centre of any government he runs”, he had no plans to reform <\/a>the funding formula. <\/p>\n

Dr Ed Poole from Cardiff University wasn’t surprised by the change in tone.<\/p>\n

“There’s been lots of political parties and political leaders of every stripe who’ve wanted to go to Westminster to reform the Barnett formula [but] that has always been put on the back burner the closer a leader gets to Number 10 or, perhaps even more importantly, Number 11,” he said.<\/p>\n

“If you were to scrap the Barnett formula overnight, you’d be taking many billions of pounds out of the Scottish budget.<\/p>\n

“That’s levels of austerity that would be really pretty unthinkable, particularly in the context of the constitutional debate in Scotland.<\/p>\n

“It’s a Pandora’s box that any new government – particularly one that’s not coming in with a new electoral mandate – would not want to open.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The current Labour government has faced criticism from many Welsh Labour colleagues in Cardiff for resisting calls to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-662619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}