LABOUR LEADERSHIP ELECTION: Five questions with Mark Drakeford

What is your position on the M4 relief road?

My position on the M4 has to be the position I occupy as a member of the Welsh Government.

We have had an independent public inquiry. The inquiry report is complete and has been handed over to the government, but ministers haven't seen it, at least ministers who don't have a decision-making role at this time have not seen it.

It is in the hands of the first minister at this minute for him to make decisions and, because there will inevitably be a great deal of legal focus on the decision-making, it is very important I don't say anything that makes it look like I'm trying to influence what he's going to do.

After he has played his part the part I play in it will probably become more significant because, as the finance minister, it will be my job to look at the affordability of it all. That's something I will do as and and when that point arrives.

The important thing to say from my point of view is the choice is not simply between 'do we do the M4 relief road or do we do nothing'. If, for any reason, the M4 relief road is not the final outcome, that means a different set of solutions will have to be supplied.

The challenge facing people who live in and around Newport will not have gone away.

I definitely don't see it as this, or we don't do anything.

What is your position on Brexit? Do you support a so-called people's vote? Or do you want a second referendum?

I am absolutely foursquare behind Labour's policy, and Labour's policy, as agreed in our conference at the end of September, is this that you follow a process through a series of questions.

The first thing is the prime minister should do a deal which is in the interests of the UK, which which meets Labour's six tests, and then Labour will vote for that on the floor of the House of Commons. That is what (shadow Brexit secretary) Keir Starmer has said, that is what Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The deal is there to be done, we believe, and if the prime minister strikes that deal Labour will support it because then we will leave the EU, but we will leave it on the least possible damaging terms.

If she doesn't do a deal which meets the six tests, and she brings a deal back to the House of Commons which Labour cannot support and the House of Commons cannot support, then there should be a General Election.

That is the right answer. In any other circumstance you can imagine where a government fails to discharge the key responsibility that it will have during its time in office a General Election will follow.

The House of Commons will not have discharged its responsibility - so another House of Commons will follow.

But the Fixed Parliament Act means that governments can lose major votes of that sort and still engineer it that a General Election doesn't follow - in than circumstances the Labour Party's policy is clear - the people must decide.

So, I don't go straight to a people's vote, I think there are two intermediate steps we should go through first.

If neither of those comes off then this is too big a decision for people not to have a voice in determining it.

But the terms of a peoples vote are unclear.

What will people be asked to vote on?

It's quite likely it will be a 'preferendum' rather than a referendum, in that people might be offered a choice of take the deal, leave without a deal, stay in the EU, or go back and negotiate a better deal - there are at least those four options which could be on a ballot paper.

I definitely do not accept the argument of some Tories that either you take what Mrs May negotiates or the only option is to crash out without a deal.

That certainly does not have to be the case - we would rely on the EU being willing to extend the Article 50 period, but I think there's every indication from them that, if they thought that would lead to a better outcome for everybody, they would find that flexibility.

Council reform, including whether to force local authorities in Wales to merge, is an issue which has occupied Welsh politics for a number of years now. What would your approach be as first minister?

I don't think the rest of this Assembly term should be taken out in a further round of falling out between the Welsh Government and local authorities over a map.

I am content that the 22 local authorities remain in place as the front door of council services in Wales.

These are organisations which have had 30 years of being in existence now, and there is a collective memory about them all and familiarity in that way.

But behind that front door should lie a system of systematic and mandatory regional working.

If you go through the door of Blaenau Gwent Council today as a potential adoptive parent, it's a local authority member of staff you will meet and talk about it with, but its a regional service - you don't know that as the person going through the door, but now you are part of a service which means, potentially, you could be matched with a child not just from Blaenau Gwent, but from the whole of the greater Gwent area. I think that's a pretty good model of a way we could provide a lot more services in the future. Not necessarily the very big ones - education and social services, quite a lot of that can still be done locally, but planning, transport, the things we know have been squeezed during the period of austerity - organising those on a regional basis would be my preference for how we move things forward.

How will your leadership as first minister be different from that of Carwyn Jones?

It is very important to build on what Labour governments have achieved in Wales.

I don't see a huge clashing of gears and setting off on a different direction because I've been part of Labour governments here during the period of devolution.

But there are things I would want to put a new emphasis on.

I am keen for a more collective sort of leadership at the Welsh Government end.

I am perfectly happy to understand that in the early period of devolution, in order for people living in Wales to get a sense of it, that having individual first ministers who very much represented the assembly - Rhodri, Carwyn - has been important.

As we move into the third decade of devolution, I think it is important people begin to understand there is a whole government here with ministers responsible for different parts of it, and having a slightly more collective sense of, not a presidential style of first minister, but a more Parliamentary style.

I would be very ken if I was first minister to bring on other cabinet colleagues to make sure they have a profile and a recognition and that people know the government is more broadly based.

And I am keen to have a greater emphasis on dealing with child poverty.

It's one of the outstanding issues of our time that there will be be 50,000 more children in poverty at the end of this Assembly term than when it started because of benefit freezes and Univeral Credit and all those other things.

The Welsh Government doesn't have the levers which create child poverty in that way - that is the benefit system and micro-economic levers, but we do have lots of things we can do to knock the roughest edges off that experience.

Children have only one chance to be a child - they cannot wait for some distant economic future - and we have to do more to try and use the levers we have to try and make that childhood as happy and productive as we can help to make it.

I am keen we put a greater emphasis on renewable energy - I think that is a really important part of Wales' future.

We are very lucky to have the raw material we need - the wind, the water, the waves, all those things.

Wales was first into the Industrial Revolution in the Gwent Valleys and other places, and in some ways first out here because the tide receded on coal, iron and steel in Wales earlier than in other places.

We have the chance to be at the forefront of the next energy revolution where, if we can create those new technologies here in Wales we will be creating technologies which will be needed throughout the globe when oil runs out, as it will sometime this century.

We need new ways of doing things, Wales has the chance to be at the forefront of this, we need to capture the jobs which will go with that, long-term jobs.

And I want to bring housing into the cabinet. I am very keen we make housing a key portfolio issue.

My surgeries are dominated by housing, and the impact of austerity on housing has been huge.

So I think, when the cabinet is making decisions housing needs to be at the table to make sure its right up there with everything we discuss and debate.

If there is one thing you could achieve as first minister what would it be?

It is very difficult to come down to just one.

But if I had to go down to just one, providing for children who otherwise would live in very difficult circumstances of genuine poverty and making a difference in their lives would be it.

• Vaughan Gething and Eluned Morgan are also running for the role.

MARK DRAKEFORD FACT FILE

• Born and brought up in Carmarthenshire, he is the oldest of the three candidates at 64 years old.
• He has worked as a probation officer and youth justice worker, as well as a lecturer.
• Serving on South Glamorgan County Council from 1985 until 1993, he worked as a special advisor for Rhodri Morgan while he was first minister.
• He succeeded Mr Morgan as AM for Cardiff West in 2011.
• He was health and social services minister from 2013 until May 2016, and later finance and local government secretary.
• He was given sole responsibility for finance in November last year, and has also been acting as Wales' defacto Brexit minister.
• He was first to confirm he would stand to replace Carwyn Jones, announcing his candidacy just days after the first minister announced his resignation.
• Mr Drakeford received by far the greatest number of nominations, with 16 AMs backing him. Among them are Newport's Jayne Bryant and John Griffiths and Islwyn's Rhianon Passmore.