The True Cost of Devolution: How Wales Went Backwards

A factual account of 27 years of one-party rule and its impact on the people of Wales

Burnham reveals plans for “biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”

Overview

When Wales voted for devolution in September 1997, the margin was razor-thin — just 6,721 votes, on a 50% turnout. That meant the Welsh Assembly began its life with the explicit support of barely one in four Welsh adults. Supporters promised a new era: homegrown policies, a stronger economy, better public services, and a government that understood Wales in a way Westminster never could.

Twenty-seven years later, the verdict is in. Wales has the weakest economy of any UK nation or region, the worst NHS waiting times, the worst school results in the UK, some of the highest poverty rates in Britain, and a layer of government that has cost hundreds of millions of pounds to build and expand — at the direct expense of the services it was supposed to improve. The Welsh Labour Party has governed continuously since 1999, frequently propped up by Plaid Cymru when it should have been holding Labour to account. The result has been, in effect, one-party rule without meaningful opposition for more than a quarter of a century.

This is the story of what that has cost the people of Wales.

Building the Machine: The Cost of Devolution’s Bureaucracy

A 63% Civil Service Surge in the First Term Alone

Within the first four years of devolution, the Welsh civil service grew by 63% — from around 2,300 staff in 1999 to over 3,700 by the end of the Assembly’s first term, according to UCL’s Nations and Regions analysis. New ministerial private offices, a Central Policy Unit, a Wales European Funding Office (200 staff alone), expanded legal teams, and absorbed quangos all drove headcount upward — and with it, costs — at a time when that money could have gone directly into schools and hospitals.

The Senedd Building: A 580% Cost Overrun

The Senedd building in Cardiff Bay was originally budgeted at £12 million in 1997. By the time it opened in 2006, the final bill had reached £69.6 million — a 580% cost overrun. It was the first, and far from the last, sign of how devolution would handle public money.

Expanding from 60 to 96 Politicians — At Enormous Public Expense

In one of the most expensive and unpopular decisions of the devolution era, the Welsh Labour Government and Plaid Cymru voted to increase the number of Senedd Members from 60 to 96 — adding 36 more politicians to an institution that had already been struggling to justify its cost. The financial consequences are substantial:

The Senedd Commission’s budget rose by 21% to £102.7 million for 2026-27, itself up from £84.6 million the previous year and £72.1 million the year before that
MS basic salary is now £80,199 per year, with each member also entitled to up to £110,600 in staff costs, a £23,300 annual office allowance, and £5,000 in set-up furniture costs
Refurbishing the debating chamber alone cost £4.22 million — 30% over the original estimate
Wales Online calculated the total eight-year cost of the expansion at between £100 million and £120 million

Overseas Offices

While residents waited years for NHS treatment, the Welsh Government was spending £4.7 million on overseas offices — described by the Welsh Conservatives as “pointless” — diverting further funds away from frontline services.

The Economy: 27 Years at the Bottom

Productivity and Wages in Freefall — Relatively Speaking

In 1997, Wales was the least productive region of the UK. After 27 years of devolved government, it still is — and the gap has widened. According to BBC’s Reality Check, Welsh productivity fell from 86.8% of the UK average in 1997 to 80.6% by 2017. Welsh wages have fallen further behind in relative terms — in 1997, average earnings in Scotland and Wales were equal; by 2017, Scottish workers were earning £42 a week more.

The GDP Gap with England Has Grown to £10,500 Per Head

The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) found that by 2022 the gap between Welsh and English GDP per capita had grown to over £10,500 — compared to a gap of around £3,500 between Scotland and England. Wales’s economy was 1.8% smaller in 2022 than in 2019, making it the worst-performing of any UK region or nation over that period. In 2023 it contracted further. Welsh GDP per capita remains more than £1,100 below pre-pandemic levels as of 2024.

Wales Has Never Left the Bottom of the UK Table

Wales has remained bottom of the UK’s Gross Value Added (GVA) table for the entire devolution period, as confirmed by multiple BBC reports. Despite receiving more public money per head than almost any other part of the UK — £15,601 per person in 2024-25, 12.2% above the UK average — Wales consistently underperforms economically. The money is there; the management of it is the problem.

The NHS: A Healthcare System in Persistent Crisis

Waiting Lists That Shame the Nation

NHS Wales waiting times were already a concern before the pandemic. The crisis since has been severe and sustained. By early 2026, around 666,700 patient pathways were waiting to start treatment — meaning roughly one in four people in Wales was on a waiting list. Not a single headline recovery target set in 2022 was met by the end of the Sixth Senedd.

The British Medical Association found that the number of people waiting over 36 weeks is now 22.2 times higher than pre-pandemic levels. It used to be unheard of that a patient would wait over two years from referral to treatment. It is now routine.

Cancer: A Persistent Failure

Only 60.2% of cancer patients in Wales began treatment within 62 days of first suspicion of cancer in March 2026 — far below the 80% target set for 2026, and below the interim 70% target set for 2023. The Welsh Government’s own cancer pathway target has never been met since records began in 2019.

A&E: Getting Steadily Worse

The 95% target for patients to be seen in A&E within four hours has never been achieved under devolution. In June 2015, 84.96% of patients were seen within four hours. By June 2025 that had fallen to 66.3%. The proportion waiting over 12 hours rose from 1.91% to 10.5% over the same period. The mean time spent in an emergency department has increased by 89.9% over the past decade, according to the BMA.

NHS Dentistry: A Collapsing Service

Access to NHS dentists in Wales has collapsed. Families have reported going four years or more without seeing a dentist. The British Dental Association has warned that new contract reforms, introduced in April 2026, are “untested” and risk deepening the access crisis further rather than resolving it.

Education: Bottom of Every Table

Consistently the Worst Results in the UK

Wales has recorded the worst education results of any UK nation in the international PISA rankings — the globally recognised measure of school performance among 15-year-olds — for over a decade. In the 2022 PISA results, Wales again finished bottom of all UK nations in reading, maths, and science.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies found high and persistent inequalities alongside the sliding results and called for a fundamental rethink of Welsh education policy. The cross-party think tank report Devolved to Fail concluded that more than 25 years of Labour governance in Wales has produced continuous deterioration in school standards — and that the gap between Wales and comparable nations is projected to widen further.

The Promise That Was Never Kept

The 1997 Yes campaign promised that devolution would produce policies tailored to Wales’s needs and close the educational attainment gap. In the words of the Wales Centre for Public Policy: “Sadly, the answer is: not yet.” Health inequalities are not narrower. The educational attainment gap has increased relative to comparator countries. Welsh GDP relative to England has barely moved.

Policy Failures That Cost Wales Dearly

The 20mph Disaster

In September 2023, Wales became the first nation in the UK to impose a blanket 20mph default speed limit on residential and built-up roads. The policy was introduced at a direct implementation cost of £32 million to taxpayers, despite the Welsh Government’s own assessment estimating the economic disbenefit of longer journey times at a central figure of £6.4 billion over 30 years, with a worst-case estimate of £8.9 billion. The largest petition in Senedd history — signed by 469,571 residents — was ignored. Over 130,000 drivers, representing 34% of all Welsh licence holders, have since been fined, according to The Guardian.

The M4 Relief Road: £114 Million Wasted

For over three decades, the congested Brynglas Tunnels near Newport have strangled traffic on the M4 — a critical artery for Welsh commerce. Three times plans were drawn up and then shelved. After a public inquiry concluded the case for a relief road was “compelling,” First Minister Mark Drakeford cancelled the project in 2019, having already spent at least £114 million of taxpayers’ money on preparatory work, design, land purchases, and a £44 million public inquiry. The tunnels remain a bottleneck today.

The Sustainable Farming Scheme: Threatening Welsh Agriculture

The Welsh Government’s Sustainable Farming Scheme, designed to replace post-Brexit agricultural support, triggered mass protests by Welsh farmers outside the Senedd. The Welsh Government’s own impact assessment found the scheme could result in a £199 million reduction in farm business income, a loss of 5,500 rural jobs, 122,000 fewer livestock units, and an 11% decline in on-farm labour. Average livestock farm incomes were already down over 30% year-on-year before the scheme launched. Farmers on less favoured upland areas — the heartlands of Welsh rural life — saw income fall by 37% in a single year.

Poverty: 27 Years of Standing Still

Despite receiving among the highest levels of public spending per head in the UK, Wales has made almost no progress on poverty over the entire devolution era. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2025) found that over 700,000 people — more than one in five — live in poverty in Wales, a rate that has hovered at 21–22% for two decades with little meaningful change. Nearly half of those in poverty are in “extreme” poverty, driving foodbank use, inability to heat homes, and rising rates of temporary accommodation.

Council Tax: Residents Pay More for Worse

As public services deteriorated and Senedd budgets swelled, Welsh households were handed some of the highest council tax increases in a generation. Wales recorded one of the biggest council tax rises in two decades in 2025, placing further financial strain on residents who already earn less than the UK average and receive fewer and slower public services for their money.

The Opposition That Wasn’t

The single most important structural failure of Welsh devolution has not been any individual policy — it has been the collapse of effective opposition. Welsh Labour has governed Wales continuously since 1999. When Plaid Cymru should have been the primary opposition, it instead repeatedly entered formal cooperation agreements with Labour — most notably the 2007-2011 One Wales coalition government and the 2021 Co-operation Agreement — providing Labour with votes in exchange for concessions, but never offering the sustained challenge that a functioning democracy requires.

The result: bad decisions were not reversed, poor performance was not punished, and accountability was replaced by consensus. The 20mph policy, the M4 cancellation, the expansion of the Senedd against public opinion — all of these were made possible by a voting arithmetic in which two parties that agreed on most things controlled the chamber together.

The Burnham Warning

In June 2026, Andy Burnham — shortly to become Prime Minister — pledged what he described as the “biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”, built around a major expansion of devolution across England, with deeper devolution also planned within Wales and Scotland. He even acknowledged that “the people of Dundee and Bangor feel just as distant from Holyrood and the Senedd as they do from Westminster” — an implicit admission that devolution has not delivered the closeness to power it promised.

Yet the lesson of Wales appears unlearned. Burnham’s model — “Manchesterism,” driven by the mayor of a large urban conurbation he controlled for a decade — carries the same risks as Walesian devolution: entrenching one party indefinitely, creating a new bureaucratic layer that consumes resources, and producing accountability deficits that allow poor performance to go unchallenged for years.

Conclusion: More Money, Worse Outcomes

Wales is not a story of underfunding. It receives £15,601 per person in public expenditure — 15.4% more than England. It has its own government, its own parliament, its own laws. It has had all the tools of self-governance for 27 years.

What it has not had is effective accountability, genuine political competition, or a government willing to make difficult choices rather than popular ones. The Wales Centre for Public Policy’s assessment is measured but damning: health inequalities have not narrowed, educational attainment has fallen relative to comparator countries, and the economy has not converged with the rest of the UK.

The true cost of devolution in Wales is not simply financial — though the financial costs are enormous. It is measured in the 800,000 people on NHS waiting lists, the children leaving school with qualifications that leave them at a disadvantage, the farmers facing ruinous income cuts, the families who cannot find an NHS dentist, and the drivers crawling through the same Newport bottleneck that has been unresolved since 1991.

Wales was promised a government that would understand it better and serve it more effectively. It received instead a government that has become very good at surviving, and rather less good at governing.

All facts and statistics in this report are drawn from published sources including the Senedd Research Service, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the British Medical Association, the Wales Centre for Public Policy, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Centre for Economics and Business Research, BBC News, Wales Online, and the Welsh Government’s own impact assessments and accounts.