Yahoo Finance The decline of Wales under Mark Drakeford in five graphs
Mark Drakeford announced he was stepping down as the first minister of Wales on Wednesday.
But after five years in power, key public services have actually got worse, when compared with England.
The median wait has been consistently longer in Wales than it has been in England through Mr Drakeford’s tenure.
The difference was less than two weeks before the pandemic, but the latest figures show the gap has more than doubled.
The NHS has been one of Labour’s go-to attack lines as Sir Keir Starmer seeks to pave a way to No10, with concerns over record-high waiting lists playing a major role in the party’s narrative ahead of the next election.
But to counter this, the Tories have repeatedly pointed to problems across the border.
Earlier this year, they claimed Labour’s “failed” leadership of the NHS in Wales has driven a near 40 per cent rise in the number of patients seeking treatment in English hospitals.
A separate analysis found that Welsh residents were nearly twice as likely to be stuck on an NHS waiting list than their English neighbours.
Since 2018, Wales’s average score in international league tables of pupils’ performance has fallen, putting it on a par with Vietnam in maths and Slovakia in reading.
The gap between England and Wales in the Programme for International Student Assessment scores the widest for a decade.
Britain as a whole is one of the least numerate countries in the Western world, with around a third of young people failing to pass GCSE maths.
Rishi Sunak has said fixing the problem is of “personal” importance to him, making it his ambition for all pupils to study the subject until the age of 18, with “extra help for those who struggle most”.
But the reforms will only directly affect English students. Education policy is fully devolved to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish administrations, meaning they can decide whether to adopt a similar approach.
Overall crime has increased more quickly in Wales since June 2018, just before he took over.
Levels rose by 15 per cent in Wales compared with England’s 12 per cent.
Policing is not devolved in Wales, as it is in Scotland and Northern Ireland, but the nation does have its own elected police and crime commissioners, all of whom represent either Labour or Plaid Cymru.
Mr Sunak has made law and order a staple of his plan for a “better Britain”, putting the issue at the heart of last month’s King’s Speech.
Plans include forcing defendants to attend their sentencing, harsher punishments for killers, rapists and grooming gang ringleaders, and stronger police powers to raid properties to seize stolen goods.
The Welsh economy has declined by 1 per cent since 2018, while England’s has risen by 2 per cent.
However, Wales has seen higher wage growth.
Earlier this year, Mr Sunak claimed the Welsh people were being used as “guinea pigs for Labour’s socialist agenda”, adding: “Keir Starmer calls Wales a Labour blueprint for the rest of the country - that’s a scary thought.”
Mr Drakeford’s tax policy has proved particularly controversial, with reforms affecting tourists and second homeowners drawing criticism from Tory ranks.
During her brief tenure as prime minister last year, Liz Truss accused Mr Drakeford of being part of the “anti-growth coalition”, citing the cancellation of road-building projects.
Council tax has risen higher in Wales – although average bills are still lower.
They increased by 32.4 per cent since 2018, compared to 29.8 per cent in England.
In May, Labour was accused of plotting to bring in a “widow’s tax” over the border by scrapping the single person discount for council tax payers.
And it recently emerged that homeowners in Wales face an effective “mansion tax” under plans to increase council levies on the most expensive properties by £1,000 a year.
