FIRST minister Mark Drakeford’s “insults” about prime minister Boris Johnson are “not helpful”, a Gwent MP has said.

The leader of the Welsh Government criticised Mr Johnson during a speech at the annual Aneurin Bevan Memorial Lecture, hosted by the Aneurin Bevan Society in Westminster on Monday.

During the speech Mr Drakeford spoke about the scrapping of the £20 Universal Credit uplift, and said: “The Cameron and Osborne era saw the poorest bear the greatest burden of austerity, with benefits frozen and children forced into the front line of welfare cuts in child benefit and the despicable family cap.

“We might have thought that the bottom of the barrel had been scraped, but we had not reckoned with Boris Johnson. The recent £20 cut in weekly Universal Credit is the single most savage reduction in benefit support for more than 70 years.”

Conservative MP for Monmouth David Davies told the Welsh Affairs Committee in the House of Commons on Thursday: “We wouldn’t want to respond to insults. They’re not helpful.”

The under-secretary of state for Wales responded to a question from Rob Roberts, the independent MP for Delyn in North Wales, about inter-governmental relations, saying: “The secretary of state and myself have always sought to build a good relationship with the first minister and his ministers.

“He has a different political view but we rise above that and we want to work with the Welsh Labour Government.”

He added: “If that’s how the first minister wants to conduct himself that’s up to him. That’s not how we conduct ourselves here.

“We want a good, professional, mature relationship with the Welsh Labour Government.”

In March this year, Mr Drakeford said the prime minister “really, really is awful” after a meeting with him.

The comments emerged in an S4C documentary which filmed the first minister’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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