TIME FOR ACTION ON COST OF LIVING

‘We were promised that things would be different under Labour, but the claim of change has failed to materialise’ - Liz Saville Roberts MP.

 

On Monday 1 September Plaid Cymru have called on the Labour UK Government to implement a number of measures as part of the Autumn 2025 budget to get to grips with the cost-of-living crisis.

As MPs return to Westminster today after the summer recess, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster Leader, Liz Saville Roberts MP says that although the cost-of-living crisis began under the Tories, “people aren’t any better off under Labour today either.”  

  

Plaid Cymru have outlined that in order to tackle this, the UK Government should:  

• Support households with the cost of energy and housing  
• Boost incomes and guarantee the basics  
• Fairly tax extreme wealth and bumper profit margins 

  

Energy and housing:

25% of households in Wales (340,000) are in fuel poverty. Current support like the Warm Homes discount has risen by only £10, while energy bills have increased by £500. Plaid Cymru is calling for energy support grants similar to the Energy Bills Support Scheme (2022/23) and targeted support for winter.

Around 70,000 households in Wales face a gap between rent and social security due to the bedroom tax and outdated Local Housing Allowance rates. Plaid Cymru urges the UK Government to scrap the bedroom tax and uprate the allowance to at least the 30th percentile of rents in Wales.

 

Income support:

Raising the personal allowance and unfreezing the basic income tax threshold would benefit the bottom 50% of taxpayers earning under £28,400. Plaid Cymru also calls for an Essentials Guarantee to ensure those on the lowest incomes can afford food, heating, and other essentials.

 

Fairer taxation:

Plaid Cymru opposes Labour’s increase in Employers National Insurance Contributions, which affects public sector recruitment, small businesses, and care homes, and is partly passed on to workers and consumers. The party urges a reversal and alternative revenue measures.

Plaid Cymru instead proposes a 2% annual wealth tax on assets over £10 million (£24 billion potential revenue) and equalising Capital Gains Tax with Income Tax (£12 billion potential revenue) to fund public services and reduce wealth inequality.

  

Plaid Cymru’s Westminster Leader, Liz Saville Roberts MP said:  

“The significant fall in living standards due to the rapid increase in the price of essential goods and services may have begun under the Tories, but people aren’t any better off under Labour today either. The increase in living costs continues to hit young people, families, and pensioners across every part of the UK.   

“But while ordinary people are struggling to make ends meet and to pay for the bare minimum such as food and housing, large corporations and the ultra-wealthy are racking up eye-watering profits. Energy network owners alone pocketed £3.9 billion in excess profits from high energy bills, money that came directly off the backs of ordinary people. And with further energy price increases expected this winter, the pressure on families and pensioners will only deepen, while those at the top continue to benefit.  

“We were promised that things would be different under Labour, but so far, the claim of 'change' has failed to materialise. Plaid Cymru has presented the UK Government with practical policies ahead of this year’s Autumn Budget that would truly get to grips with the rising living costs. These measures would provide direct support to households in our communities as well as tackle the growing wealth imbalance in the UK. It is time for those with the broadest shoulders to pay their fair share, and for communities across the UK to be given the security and support they need not only to get by, but to thrive.” 

- ENDS - 

THE OVERLOOKED ANNIVERSARY

Just in case your missed it, Saturday 23rd August 2025 was the 86th anniversary of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact signed by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union in 1939, the anniversary has become the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian Regimes. It was on that day in 1939 that an agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union opened the gate to Second World War and all kinds of totalitarian violence: from forced migration through slave labour and war crimes to genocide, including an event unprecedented in world history – the Holocaust. The 23rd August should rightly brings back the memory of millions those who fell victim to totalitarian regimes, including the inmates of Nazi concentration camps, death camps, Soviet gulags and Stalinist prisons. This anniversary probably passed unnoticed in the Russian Federation save behind closed doors.

LABOUR FAILING WALES ON HEALTH

Plaid Cymru MS, Mabon ap Gwynfor has criticised the Welsh Labour Government for never succeeding in hitting any of their Planned Care Recovery Plan targets. 

The latest data on waiting lists have shown that the targets for decreasing waiting lists set out in the Planned Care Recovery Plan have been missed once again. 

Five targets were set in the Planned Care Recovery Plan, created in 2022, to reduce or eliminate certain waits within the NHS in Wales. 

The targets in the Planned Care Recovery Plan are as follows: 

• No one waiting longer than a year for their first outpatient appointment by the end of 2022. 
• Since setting the target, it has never been met. 
• Eliminate the number of people waiting longer than two years in most specialities by March 2023. 
• Since setting the target, it has never been met. 
• Eliminate the number of people waiting longer than one year in most specialities by Spring 2025. 
• Since setting the target, it has never been met. 
• Increase the speed of diagnostic testing and reporting to eight weeks and 14 weeks for therapy interventions by Spring 2024. 
• Since setting the target, it has never been met. 
• Cancer diagnosis and treatment to be undertaken within 62 days for 80% of people by 2026. 
• Since setting the target, it has never been met. 

Mr ap Gwynfor explained how the statistics released today saw an ‘see-sawing of data [that] is completely unsustainable’. He referred to the fact that the percentage of cancer patients meeting the 62 day target had fallen this month, from 61.3% to 60.2%, both substantially below the 80% target.  

The Plaid Cymru health spokesperson said Labour were at fault for ‘normalising low expectations’, by celebrating the fact that the NHS is missing ‘already diluted’ targets, such as the First Minister’s target to reduce two year waits to 8,000 by Spring 2025, after failing to eradicate them by 2022 as originally hoped in the Planned care Recovery Plan. 

Mr ap Gwynfor went on to explain that Labour’s failure to reduce waiting lists are having adverse effects on the rest of the Government’s actions, with increasing amounts of money being spent on attempting to, and failing to reduce waiting lists - a total of £1.5bn in this Senedd term alone. 

In response to the waiting lists announced today, Plaid Cymru health spokesperson, Mabon ap Gwynfor, said: 

"Any progress is welcomed, but this see-sawing of data is completely unsustainable. The Government's response is to put an extremely expensive sticking plaster on a very deep wound.  

“The truth is that the waiting lists are a symptom of deeper problems within the health service, and until they get to grips with these problems - governance, social care, and primary care - then we will continue to see the figures see-saw up and down. 

“This is why Plaid Cymru have put together comprehensive plans Co-designed by clinicians and NHS managers to tackle the waiting lists in the short term, and fix the foundations for the long term. 

“The failure to meet the cancer targets again is especially concerning as we know that early treatment saves lives, which is why we need a comprehensive Cancer strategy for Wales, rather than the current muddled approach". 

On the Welsh Government failing to meet any targets since first set, Mr ap Gwynfor added: 

“Labour have never hit any of the targets for our NHS. Even worse, if you were to backdate the statistics to before the targets were set, they haven’t been hit for over a decade.

“Labour have had countless opportunities over decades to reduce waiting lists, but they continue to fail, even when compared against already diluted targets.

“People are waiting longer for treatment across Wales and are living in both physical and mental pain, yet Labour have attempted to normalise low expectations and are somehow claiming wins for non-existent progress.

“With over £1.5 billion spent on tackling waiting lists over this Senedd term and record numbers still waiting for treatment, it’s clear that Labour’s time is up after 26 years of failure. 

“The people of Wales deserve better, they deserve an NHS fit for purpose, they deserve new leadership. 2026 offers the people of Wales the chance for new leadership under Plaid Cymru, that will take seriously the challenges faced by our NHS, for a healthier Wales.”

- END - 

PRAGUE 1968

Thursday 21st August 2025 was the 57th  anniversary of the Soviet led invasion of Czechoslovakia, it’s an anniversary that increasingly passed unnoticed,  save perhaps by some people in Prague, although the spectre of Russian intervention inn Eastern Europe, remerged following Russias attack on the Ukraine. 

A Prague street scene in 1968

While the Soviet Union is history, although Russia on the rise in the east, people have lots of other things to be concerned about.  It’s been 57 years since Soviet troops and most but not all of their Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia on August 21st 1968. The Warsaw Pact invasion crushed the political and economic reforms known as the Prague Spring, led by the country's then new First Secretary of the Communist party Alexander Dubcek.  

Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet hard-liners in Moscow, probably correctly in the light of later events between 1989 and 1991, at least from their narrow perspective, saw the reform movement as a serious threat to the Soviet Union's hold on the Socialist satellite states, they decided to act. In the first hours on the 21st August 1968 Soviet planes began to land unexpectedly at Prague's Ruzyne airport, and shortly Soviet tanks would soon be trundling through Prague's narrow streets.  

Prague 1968

The Soviet-led invasion established the Brezhnev Doctorine, which allowed the U.S.S.R. to intervene in an country where a Communist government was perceived to be under threat. The Soviet backed occupation of Czechoslovakia lasted until the velvert revolution brought an end to the Communist dictatorship in November 1991 as the Cokd War ended. It was always contested - the reformist communists were finally defeated in the mid 1970's just as detent created the Helsinki accords which insoired Charter 77. Russia's attitude to the invasion still touches raw emotions, even in the Czech and Slovak republics. 

Tensions in the relationship between the Czechs and Slovaks (and other nationalities) had re-dated the establishment of the first republic in 1918. The perception (and reality, especially if you ask the Slovaks) was that Prague (and the Czechs) ran the republic touched a raw nerve in different parts of the republic. Ironically the Communist dictatorship which was resisted by dissidents, former reformist communists and ordinary citizens, kept the lid on internal tensions within Czechoslovakia between Czechs and Slovaks. 

The West's focus on Prague, the Czechs and the former Czech dissidents meant that tensions between Prague and Bratislava were mostly, but, not entirely missed. The welcome regular pronouncements about curbing the arms trade and arms exports did not go down well in Slovakia were a significant portion (but not all) of arms production was based. With the dictatorship gone, it took only a few years for the former state to split into the Czech and Slovak republics - both of whom became independent states on January 1st 1993, joining the the EU in May 2004 as they returned to Europe.

Now the Velvet revolutionaries are well into middle age, as are the rest of us who watched the fall of the wall and the communism in Eastern Europe. Now the visible symbols of communism are long gone, the unemployed and the homeless, invisible under communism are back as are the gleaming shopping centres and the well stocked supermarkets are part of normal life rather than the preserves of the communist elite. 

In Prague the Communism museum is increasingly difficult to find, and healthily irrelevant to younger Czechs. A generation or two of Czech and Slovak voters have grown up with democracy and no fear or a personal understanding of the fear of the secret police, the knock on the door in the night, or border guards and informers. They also don't have to worry about any consequences of expressing their opinions in work, education or at leisure and they have also have no limits on their no freedom of movement (beyond costs) within the EU - all of which has to be the ultimate positive. 

Remembrance is important, as is history, forgetting is very human and is part of life. Selectively forgetting the past and erasing our collective history is a more dubious practice ( especially in Hungary, Russia and the Peoples Republic of China, etc ) but also within these islands, especially when it comes to the perceptions of and the realities of Empire, etc. Creating a rose tinted view of the past, is neither history nor remembrance, its manufactured / peddled nostalgia - and that too is both dubious and dangerous. 

LABOUR ARE NOT EVEN TRYING

Plaid Cymru have revealed that there has been no official correspondence between UK and Welsh Government on East West Rail

A recent Plaid Cymru FOI request has confirmed that there has been no official correspondence between the Welsh Government and the UK Government regarding the reclassification of the East West Rail project.

The response to the FOI request, which requested ‘all ministerial correspondence’ on the reclassification of East-West rail, revealed that the information ‘is not held by the Welsh Government’.

Since the revelation that the UK Labour Government have re-classified the East West rail project, Plaid Cymru have consistently made the case that the Labour Welsh Government is taking Wales for granted on the issue - given that they have failed to challenge Keir Starmer’s decision to ‘take money away from Wales’.

The Labour UK Government decision to reclassify the rail project between Oxford and Cambridge as a ‘England and Wales project’ means that Wales will lose the Barnett consequential funding for the project, projected to be around £360 million in this new spending review period.

Plaid Cymru’s transport spokesperson, Peredur Owen Griffiths has accused the Labour Welsh Government of prioritising party loyalties over fighting for ‘the millions of pounds that Wales is owed’.

Plaid Cymru transport spokesperson, Peredur Owen Griffiths, said:

“The Labour UK Government have chosen to take hundreds of millions away from Wales by reclassifying East West rail as an ‘England and Wales’ project – and this FOI only further confirms that Labour in Wales have chosen to do nothing about it.

“Geography dictates that this project won't benefit Wales - it’s yet another blatant example of how we’re being denied the funding that we’re owed.

“We were told that two Labour governments would mean a ‘partnership in power’ delivering for Wales. Yet, when Keir Starmer actively, consciously, takes money away from us, Labour in Wales is silent – in another case of putting party loyalties and their Westminster bosses before the people of Wales.

“At risk of rocking the Labour boat, it appears that Eluned Morgan won’t even send an email to ask for the millions of pounds that Wales is owed.

“Time’s up for this Welsh Labour Government that has taken Wales for granted for far too long. 2026 offers the people of Wales a chance to elect a government that will be relentless in standing up for Wales – that is a Plaid Cymru Government."

- END - 

VJ DAY

Today Friday 15th August 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of Victory over Japan Day (VJ Day), which signalled the end of the Second World War.

While VE Day (Victory in Europe) marked the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, many thousands of Armed Forces personnel were still engaged in fighting in the Far East. 

And after VE Day many thousands of Allied service personnel ( including some of my relatives and family friends ) were transferred to the Far East to join the ongoing  war against Japan.

Victory over Japan come at a heavy price, and VJ Day marks the day Japan surrendered on 15th August 1945, which effectively ended the Second World War.

 

Fighting in the across the Asia Pacific region took place from Hawaii to North East India. Britain and the Commonwealth’s principle fighting force, the Fourteenth Army, was one of the most diverse in history – more than 40 languages were spoken, and all the world’s major religions were represented.

 

The descendants of many of the Commonwealth veterans of that army are today part of communities around the world, a lasting legacy to the success and comradeship of those who fought in the Asia Pacific region.

 

VJ Day is of immense historical significance, and we believe it is crucial that this anniversary is honoured and remembered in a meaningful way as we remember the courage of those who fought tyranny across the globe.

5 THINGS A PLAID GOVERNMENT MEANS FOR WALES

Here are 5️⃣ things a Plaid Cymru government means for Wales.🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿💚

1️⃣ A fresh start and new leadership for Wales.

After 26 years of Labour failure, Wales needs new leadership. Plaid Cymru is offering bold ideas and a new direction for our nation!

2️⃣ A stronger, fairer economy.

Plaid Cymru will build a Welsh economy that works for everyone - where money stays in our communities, wages are better, and small Welsh businesses can thrive.

3️⃣ An NHS that works for everyone.

Plaid Cymru will tackle the health and care crisis from day one - cutting waiting lists, investing in staff, and making care more local and accesible.

4️⃣ A fair start for every child.

Plaid Cymru will give every child the best start in life - by raising standards in our schools, backing teachers, and introducing Cynnal payments to help families with the cost of living.

5️⃣ A pro-Wales government that will always stand up to Westminster.

Plaid Cymru is the only credible, progressive choice - a party that puts Wales and our communities first, always.

While Labour refuse to challenge Keir Starmer, Plaid Cymru will always stand up for Wales and fight for the powers and funding we deserve.

✨ A fresh start and new leadership for Wales is possible - vote Plaid Cymru on 7 May 2026! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿✨