Mark Drakeford still has not been able to speak to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, four days after asking for an "urgent phonecall" to discuss thousands of job losses at Port Talbot's Tata plant. The steel giant confirmed plans on Friday to axe 2,800 staff.
As a result, the First Minister asked to speak to the Prime Minister. Four days on, there has still been no phone call.
Mr Drakeford told MSs he was "genuinely baffled" that Mr Sunak didn't find time to call him. He said a conversation is "necessary" because it needs to be a combined effort between UK and Welsh governments to save jobs. Mr Drakeford said he requested the call as soon as it became clear Tata would announce a plan which would result in job losses, but was told by 8.30am - three hours before the confirmation came from Tata - that the Prime Minister didn't have time to take a call.
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Mr Drakeford told the Senedd that one of his predecessors, Theresa May, called on the same day as Ford announced mass redundancies at its Bridgend site and they discussed a joint approach.
Wales' economy minister Vaughan Gething is today due to meet Nusrat Ghani, a minister in the UK Government's department for business and trade. Speaking in a Welsh Government press conference, Mr Gething said that after initially being unable to make or take a call, there had still not been contact between the two leaders. "There hasn't been a call. I have seen David Davies [David TC Davies is Welsh secretary] in between media interviews. There's been no meaningful conversation, partly because David Davies has gone out of his way to claim that the Welsh Labour Government has not lifted a finger which is simply not true."
He went on: "We have a transition board meeting coming up at the start of February. I have been offered a meeting with a minister in the business and trade department. We sought a meeting urgently on Friday, and we were offered a meeting today. So I look forward to the conversation that I will have with minister Ghani in the department to see if it is possible to secure an alternative future and to recognise the sovereign risks as well as the economic harm the current decision would deliver."
He criticised the Prime Minister for continuing with political campaigning over the weekend but not speaking to the First Minister. Mr Sunak was campaigning on the south coast on Friday, according to the BBC. He said: "We plainly don't think they've done everything possible. But when the Prime Minister was speaking from Southampton Football Club, he could instead have taken 10 minutes before that to speak to Mark Drakeford. It would have been a different sort of conversation we could have had.
"When Ford closed Bridgend, Prime Minister Theresa May took a call from Mark Drakeford on that same day, so it's not unusual of a choice of this significance of scale for the First Minister to want to engage directly with the Prime Minister, or indeed for the Prime Minister of the day to recognise their own responsibility to do so. I still want to try to get the UK Government to a position where recognises this isn't just a matter of angry and upset people in their thousands but this is actually an issue with economic harm. is also a challenge about our future."
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