“Everybody’s asking themselves, “What’s Andy Burnham going to do?” And I’m slightly surprised that they’re puzzled because if you spent any time watching what was happening in Greater Manchester, you’d have a very good idea about what Andy Burnham thinks. I think it’s just that our press is a little bit reluctant to get out of London and see what’s happening in other parts of the country. The story of the recent growth of Manchester’s economy is a real one. Manchester’s productivity has increased faster than any other big city, including London. And that’s all good, but it’s mostly been a city centre agglomeration story. Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein as the leader and chief executive of Manchester City Council were enormously successful at bringing in the private sector, working with private sector developers, creating a relatively permissive planning environment and making lots of investment in infrastructure. But when Andy Burnham came in as Mayor, the dynamics changed, because he was elected to represent all two million people in Greater Manchester. He’s very sensitive to the fact that you can see that growth in the centre of Manchester, but it’s much less obvious in Oldham or Rochdale - some of those outer boroughs of GM still have very weak economies. So Atom Valley was an early example of Greater Manchester thinking about what it could do to spread economic success outside the city centre to those deindustrialised places.”

“You should support manufacturing not because it brings jobs to communities, but because it brings value. I had loads of arguments with the people in Sheffield about this, including the investment teams, and my argument was usually along the lines of, “It would be better to get a Boeing factory to open here that employs 50 people than a Sports Direct warehouse that employs 500, because the former will do much more for your local economy in the long run than the latter,” but it’s a very difficult argument to make because it goes against our instincts, especially our political instincts to produce results quickly.”

Background

OB: Where were you born and raised?

RJ: I was born in Stamford in Lincolnshire. My father was in the Air Force so I had a childhood of being shuffled around military bases, mostly in the Midlands.

OB: So you had a fairly transient upbringing, then?

RJ: Yes, very much so. They also put me in various boarding schools as well, in an attempt to give me some stability, which didn’t really work. But it was only after I’d left home that my parents moved back to Wales.

OB: Were both your parents Welsh, then?

RJ: Yes, they were both from Aberystwyth proximally, although my mother’s family is from Pembrokeshire. But when they moved back to Wales, they first went back to Aberystwyth, then my father became a priest in the church in Wales, so he had a series of parishes, starting out in Aberystwyth, then Newquay, and then Newport in Pembrokeshire.

OB: Wow, so he was in the Air Force and then became a vicar? That’s quite a novel career trajectory.

RJ: Well, he claimed he’d always wanted to be one, but his mother hadn’t let him, but I’m not sure about that!

OB: So when people ask you where you’re from, what do you say?

RJ: Oh, I have a real problem with that. I’m conscious that I wasn’t born in Wales, and haven’t lived there very much, but I do identify as Welsh. Both my parents died in the last couple of years and leading up to that I spent a lot of time talking to them, and I’ve probably thought more about my Welsh background in the last two or three years than I’ve done for a long time. [To read more about Richard’s connection to Wales, read his blog post from 2015 here Land of my Fathers (and they can keep it) – Soft Machines, by Richard Jones [Soft Machine, incidentally, is also the name of an English pioneering psychedelic/jazz-fusion band from Canterbury in Kent, a member of whose was (Sir) Karl Jenkins, the legendary Welsh multi-instrumentalist and composer who joined the band in 1972 and eventually became its lead songwriter and steered its distinctive musical direction through the 1970s and early 1980s, eventually becoming the first Welsh composer to be knighted, whilst still maintaining his connections to jazz and rock (thank you Google)]]

OB: I’m sorry to hear about your parents.

RJ: They were both in their 90s, so they had had long and rich lives.

To read Richard’s obituaries for his parents, click here:

Robert Cecil Jones, 1932 – 2023

Sheila Howell Jones, 1934 – 2025

Career

“one of the most fantastic experiences during my time in Sheffield was being in a reception at the British Embassy in Japan and I was talking to my counterpart from the University of Tokyo, and the head of Boeing Japan said to him, “Why can’t you be like Sheffield and their AMRC?””

OB: You obviously have a very distinguished science background. How did you get into science? What was it that stirred your interest in the first place?

RJ: I was always interested in science growing up. I was probably quite a nauseating child. I started out being really interested in chemistry. I had chemistry sets and blew things up on my parents’ table and insisted on being bought chemistry textbooks at some ridiculously early age. But I never really thought I could have a scientific career and it was a bit of a surprise when I ended up in one.

OB: Could you give us a whistlestop tour through your education and career and how you got to where you are now?

RJ: My first degree was at Cambridge, which was in Natural Sciences, but I ended up specialising in Physics, which is what my PhD is in. I’ve always been very interested in materials, which is very much the grubby end of Physics, really, and I’ve always been very interdisciplinary in my work, and in Natural Sciences, you do Physics, Chemistry and Maths, so you get a really broad background in science. I stayed at Cambridge to do a PhD in Polymer Science, which was sponsored by ICI [Imperial Chemical Industries, the former UK national champion in chemicals], but I completely failed to do what I was supposed to do, so I ended up more or less choosing my own topic. After my PhD, I went to Cornell in the United States to do a postdoc with a brilliant scientist called Ed Kramer in the material science department, which was a fabulous experience, scientifically. That was probably the biggest thing that turned me into a scientist because Ed was just a fantastic example of one. And this was in the late 80s. I went to America in 1987 - it was a difficult time for British science because the Thatcher governments treated universities very unfavourably. [In a previous interview with Dr Lyn Evans, former Project Leader of the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, he similarly spoke of several times during the Thatcher era where funding for Britain’s membership in organisations like CERN was under threat. Read more at Finding the God Particle: From Little Valley to the Beginning of Time] And even though I was a student in Cambridge, I spent a lot of time in Sheffield, where I would later live and work, because that’s where all my friends were and also where I spent a lot of time pursuing my hobby of climbing, and unfortunately it was just really horrible place at the time during that period, with mass unemployment, as a young person, you just wondered whether there would be any kind of jobs for anyone ever again. So going to America was a bit of a relief, and in a way I was very pleased to get away from the country.

Nonetheless, by the end of my postdoc, I was really missing the UK. Despite everything, it’s my home and I liked living here. So I worked quite hard to try and find a job back home. Ironically, I applied for a job in Sheffield and didn’t get it, then I applied for a job in Cambridge and I did get it. So I ended up as an assistant lecturer there and stayed for about eight years. And although many things about Cambridge are fantastic and the physics department in the Cavendish Laboratory is just this brilliant institution, on the other hand there were things about the university that I didn’t particularly like. It was quite a difficult environment to try to do interdisciplinary work, and seeing as I was not really a totally mainstream physicist, that was a challenge. I also wanted to get out and start somewhere afresh, so a friend and colleague, a great chemist, Tony Ryan, who was at Manchester at the time, said, “Why don’t we just both see if we can get jobs in Sheffield and then we can work on an interdisciplinary chemistry-physics project?” So we both applied and ended up getting jobs there. We were recruited by that great Welsh vice-chancellor, Sir Gareth Roberts, who was an absolute star. He was somebody who took Sheffield from being a declining, second-tier provincial university into being a really strong, nationally competitive university. He had a background in molecular electronics and was at Durham initially and also worked for Thorn EMI [a British electronics company who Cylch alumnus Professor Steve Evans of Cambridge University’s mum worked for in its factory in Merthyr Tydfil], and then he became vice-chancellor of Sheffield and made a huge difference there. [Roberts was from Penmaenmawr in Caernarvon in North Wales. In his career, he specialised in semiconductors and molecular electronics, and was influential in British science policy through his chairmanship of several academic bodies and his two reports on the future supply of scientists and how university research should be assessed. He was a member of the Prime Minister’s Advisory Council on Science and Technology from 1989 to 1992 and was vice-chancellor of the University of Sheffield from 1991 to 2000. In 1997 he was made president of the Institute of Physics. Read the Guardian obituary of him here Sir Gareth Roberts | Science | The Guardian]

There were actually a few Welsh scientists in my life. One other one was [Sir] Sam Edwards, a brilliant theoretical physicist at Cambridge, who was from Swansea. He was really the founder of the more theoretical end of my field of polymer physics. He’d been a postdoc with Julian Schwinger [American theoretical physicist who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Richard Feynman and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga for their fundamental work in quantum electrodynamics (QED)], so he’d learned quantum field theory back in the 50s and then applied it to many problems in materials physics. He was very, very unlucky not to get a Nobel Prize, actually. His colleague Pierre-Gilles de Gennes was the other great theorist in my field and they worked together a lot. Pierre-Gilles got a Nobel Prize for his work, whereas Sam didn’t, which was a bit of an injustice in my view. [Edwards was Chairman of the Science Research Council 1973-1977 and between 1984 and 1995 was Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge University. He was knighted in 1975 and throughout his career he was variously awarded the Davy Medal and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society. He was also a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.]

But I stayed in Sheffield for 20 years or so and ended up falling into the world of administration. I became Pro Vice-Chancellor [PVC] for Research and Innovation, and that was a really interesting time for me because I learned a lot about translational research. Sheffield had, and still does have, this very fine translational research institute, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre [AMRC], led by a very visionary engineer, Keith Ridgway [current Chair of Industry Wales], and that turned out to be really important in driving the economy of Sheffield and Rotherham. The Vice-Chancellor at the time, [Sir] Keith Burnett [another president of the Institute of Physics] was another Welshman …

OB: He’s at the Nuffield Foundation now, right?

RJ: Yes he is. I became PVC at Sheffield in 2009, so the Global Financial Crisis had just happened, and there was this sense that the economy was in freefall, and particularly the economies in places like Sheffield, and Keith Burnett was very committed to the idea that the university should be supporting the economy of the city and its people, so that was a big theme during my time there. We wanted to see what the university could do to support industry in the city, and the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre was a very big part of that. In 2016, I stood down from the PVC role to do a bit more physics. But a few years later I was offered the opportunity to go to the University of Manchester. The Vice-Chancellor at Manchester at the time, Dame Nancy Rothwell, had seen what we’d tried to do in Sheffield and was eager to do something similar. The University of Manchester was very close to the city leaders in the region and I went over there with a mandate to deepen the links of the university and the city, and that’s how I’ve spent the last five years. And then I retired last September.

Local Growth

“You have to decide what you’re good at, don’t you? It’s like the famous Dolly Parton saying about strategy: find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

OB: Was the AMRC unique in the UK or even globally, perhaps? And what was its mission? What was its theory of change?

RJ: It probably wasn’t totally unique. The place that was the closest comparison in the UK would probably be the Warwick Manufacturing Group, but I think it is quite unusual worldwide. One of the most fantastic experiences during my time there was being in a reception at the British Embassy in Japan and I was talking to my counterpart from the University of Tokyo, and the head of Boeing Japan said to him, “Why can’t you be like Sheffield and their AMRC?” So it really did have world fame. It started with a particular piece of science. Keith Ridgway understood how to machine titanium, and machining titanium is a hard thing to do. There was a small local business called Technicut, which, like any good Sheffield company, made tools - cutting tools, and they wanted to sell stuff to Boeing. But Boeing told them that they needed to up their game, get better characterisation of their tools, and bring in better science and technology to go behind that. That’s where Keith Ridgway came in, bringing his scientific expertise and the facilities of the University to help out. And it effectively grew from that. It’s been very heavily supported by Rolls-Royce. But I think the key was to do applied research, but in a way that was very transferable to industry. There’s traditionally been a bit of a sense that university research tends to be people knocking things up in their lab with what they’ve got lying around and that the whole thing’s got a slight Wallace and Gromit air to it. Whereas the idea of the AMRC was that we’ll do this R&D using the same or similar equipment that industry uses and recognises, and therefore what’s developed can then be transferred into the factory right away because it has immediate industry relevance. So I think that was the key to it. It was about operating at industrial scale with industrial equipment but still having the backing of the full range of technology and intellectual tools that the university had at its disposal. So Sheffield’s now got the Rolls-Royce factory, it’s got a Boeing factory, it’s got a McLaren factory there. And then of course there’s the existing engineering business base as well. And one of the most powerful ways there is of upskilling an existing business base, in my views, is if apprentices from those smaller businesses can go and learn alongside apprentices from Rolls-Royce, which lifts the skill levels of the whole region. That experience taught me a lot about what you can do to try to develop regional economies, and I tried to use some of those insights in my work in Greater Manchester with the Combined Authority.

OB: Are you referring to Atom Valley, for example?

RJ: Exactly. Everybody’s asking themselves, “What’s Andy Burnham going to do?” And I’m slightly surprised that they’re puzzled because if you spent any time watching what was happening in Greater Manchester, you’d have a very good idea about what Andy Burnham thinks. I think it’s just that our press is a little bit reluctant to get out of London and see what’s happening in other parts of the country. The story of the recent growth of Manchester’s economy is a real one. Manchester’s productivity has increased faster than any other big city, including London. And that’s all good, but it’s mostly been a city centre agglomeration story. Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein as the leader and chief executive of Manchester City Council were enormously successful at bringing in the private sector, working with private sector developers, creating a relatively permissive planning environment and making lots of investment in infrastructure. But when Andy Burnham came in as Mayor, the dynamics changed, because he was elected to represent all two million people in Greater Manchester. He’s very sensitive to the fact that you can see that growth in the centre of Manchester, but it’s much less obvious in Oldham or Rochdale - some of those outer boroughs of GM still have very weak economies. So Atom Valley was an early example of Greater Manchester thinking about what it could do to spread economic success outside the city centre to those deindustrialised places.

OB: And did it sprout out of nothing or was there something in Rochdale, for example, that was already there that could be built on?

RJ: I think places always have something you can build on wherever you are. Rochdale and Oldham have quite a lot of good, small companies that are doing quite sophisticated things in areas like textiles and coatings, but they weren’t really linked up very much either with each other or with the research going on in the universities. So I think part of the process is identifying what those existing companies are and asking how we can support them with their innovation and skills. And then you’ve also got to consider what else a place has to offer. Well, in the case of Atom Valley, it’s got a lot of development land on a very big site and a combined authority that’s committed to putting in the transport infrastructure and links and building houses and everything you need to facilitate new investment there. And in terms of the university’s role, beyond supporting with science and innovation [the University of Manchester is opening an Innovation Centre in Rochdale], we work very closely with FE [further education] colleges. And that’s another area of Andy Burnham’s interests that he’s very keen on, and I can understand why. We’ve got an education system that’s very focused on universities and we’ve really let FE colleges down over the last 15 years, I think. So bringing FE colleges into the mix has been a really powerful part of the process and that’s how you’re going to get good jobs at all levels. So that’s the story. It’s still early days but hopefully we’re going to see that flourish.

OB: To what extent is it the role of government locally to look at the businesses that are already there and say, “We want to help you do what you do now, but do more of it and better?” Or is it more about nudging them in a direction that the local authority or the combined authority views as strategically advantageous?

RJ: I think it’s a bit of both. You have to decide what you’re good at, don’t you? It’s like the famous Dolly Parton saying about strategy: “find out who you are and do it on purpose”. I think that sums it up pretty well. And as somebody who’s been trying to get universities to work more closely with industry, what I’ve said to everybody who will listen is that you just cannot beat going to someone’s factory, walking around, talking to them and finding out what they do and what their problems are.

Industrial Strategy

“Catch-up growth is easier than frontier growth in some ways, and if you’ve got the kind of rates of catch-up growth that you see in Poland or Slovakia happening in the Valleys or Lancashire or South Yorkshire or the Northeast, that would be a really important contribution.”

“control goes with ownership. An extreme but interesting example is in South Korea when General Park took over the government in a military coup. He essentially locked up all the leading businessmen on trumped-up charges for a few weeks and then released them on the understanding that the way they ran their businesses had to support the national goals from then on. Now, I’m not advocating locking up all our business leaders on trumped-up charges, but there is a question about how can we get slightly more alignment between a company’s goals, how a company works, and what our national goals are?”

OB: And from your own career, when was it that you started becoming interested in industrial policy and industrial strategy beyond your own research? Was it when you got that role at Sheffield?

RJ: It was a bit earlier than that, actually. So as I’ve said, I work on polymers and in the late 90s I got very interested in some of the concepts of nanotechnology that were kicking around at the time. Some of these were based on what I think were flawed futuristic notions about taking conventional engineering and shrinking it down to the most tiny scale. This had become very fashionable at the time, and there were various studies done on its likely future impacts, and that was where I started thinking about the broader impacts of the science I was doing, and I spent a bit of time working with the research council.

OB: I did a bit of research and read some of your original blogs and in August 2004 you wrote, “while the Treasury lives by a rigorous creed of free markets and non intervention, the DTI is doing its best to formulate and implement what’s very reminiscent of an old-fashioned industrial policy.” So, how do you think both government’s thinking and approach towards industrial strategy has changed since then? Maybe, particularly from the Treasury side?

RJ: It’s really flip flopped, I think. Industrial strategy went very much out of fashion in the Thatcher years and there was a very distinct view that governments intervening in the economy just led to square steering wheels and Concorde and that it was all a disaster. The late Thatcher years marked a very significant moment in science policy because there was this very distinct pullback from the government supporting applied research. All the applied R&D institutions that the government ran at the time, often defence-related, were really shrunk back, and some of the money that was previously earmarked for R&D was put into more fundamental science. There was this sense that the government should only do the basic science part and the private sector should do all the applied stuff. The trouble was that the private sector didn’t step up to do more applied stuff; the opposite happened. Companies like GEC and ICI that used to fund research like mine all declined and ultimately broke apart, so much of that private sector capacity for funding applied R&D disappeared. I think the nanotechnology example is quite interesting because, in retrospect, it was a bit of a disaster. The government did put quite a lot of money into the technology but chunked it up into tiny little bits and spread it all over the country, but nothing was really big enough to make a difference. An interesting contrast is if you look at Belgium, it had this thing called IMEC [Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre], headquartered in Leuven, in the north, which was basically a nanotechnology research centre focused on nanoelectronics, and that really supported the development of the region’s semiconductor sector. You look at neighbouring Netherlands and ASML, which is one of the most important and valuable companies in the world now- that benefited a lot from its proximity to IMEC. We just totally missed out on that. The Blair government wasn’t very keen on industrial strategy either, and I think the big change came after the Global Financial Crisis when Peter Mandelson [yes, that Peter Mandelson] came back from Europe after being an EU commissioner and was put in charge of this new department called the Department for Trade and Industry, and he wrote a paper called New Industry, New Jobs, which was in effect a formal admission that not having an industrial strategy had been a mistake. That then continued when the coalition government came in, with Vince Cable and David Willetts in DTI, who actually did do some useful things. They created the Catapult centres and AMRC became part of the Catapult network. They identified technology priorities - the Eight Great Technologies as they were called. So there was the sense that industrial strategy was more in favour, but it was never consistently applied, and over the five years of the coalition and the subsequent years of the Conservative government, it just changed all the time. Greg Clark launched a formal industrial strategy white paper in 2017, which I think was actually a good document with a lot of good stuff in it, but as soon as Theresa May was replaced, it fell out of fashion and was dropped. Then we had Boris Johnson for a few years and then the Liz Truss madness, of course. So we just had this constant churn. Nothing was ever sustained for more than a year or two. What’s interesting now is that this government produced an industrial strategy white paper, which again I thought was quite good. And I think in this case, the crucial thing now is the Treasury is actually more behind it than it was in the Clark-May years, which is invaluable, so perhaps there is some hope that the effort may be sustained for a bit longer.

OB: You mentioned the eight great technologies, and now we have the IS-8 sectors. Which do you think is a better way of organising an industrial strategy: technologies or sectors? Or are they not mutually exclusive?

RJ: It’s a really interesting question. I think it has to be a mix of the two. Some technologies are sectors in and of themselves. For example, if we’re going to make quantum work, that’s a bunch of technologies that have to be developed. On the other hand, you always need to think about what the market is, and I think framing a strategy through the lens of sectors gives you a bit more commercial discipline in your thinking and your work, and forces you to think about what you’re making it and who’s going to buy it, which is the crucial question.

OB: And what are the criteria by which you should select a technology or a sector? What are the characteristics that they have to meet in order to be worthwhile focusing on?

RJ: I think there needs to be something to work with in the first place. Someone I’m hugely influenced by, though I don’t always agree with everything he says, is the historian David Edgerton. He’s got a lovely line about the UK. “The UK is a big Canada, not a small USA”. The UK is somewhere between two and three per cent of the world’s high-tech economy, and that means that there’s huge swathes of technology that we’ve just been left behind on and we’re probably never going to catch up on, so we have to focus on what we can compete on.

OB: And how do you think regionality should intersect with industrial policy?

RJ: I think you need a very strong regional dimension to industrial policy because the economy of West London looks a lot different from the economy of Lancashire, and what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other. Chemicals is a great example of this, of a sector that’s incredibly important for the UK but doesn’t get the attention it deserves. If you draw an oval starting somewhere in Flintshire and ending up in Teesside and the Humber, you’ve captured quite a lot of that sector, so there clearly is a regional element to all of this. And, frankly, in order for this country to start growing at a meaningful rate again and for productivity to improve, the regional imbalances must be corrected, quite apart from anything else. Catch-up growth is easier than frontier growth in some ways, and if you’ve got the kind of rates of catch-up growth that you see in Poland or Slovakia happening in the Valleys or Lancashire or South Yorkshire or the Northeast, that would be a really important contribution. I think the three problems that you have to solve are, firstly, what do you do about your underperforming core cities? Whether that’s Sheffield, Swansea or Newcastle, they’re experiencing similar challenges. So that’s probably a story that involves agglomeration, knowledge-intensive services and support for universities. Then there’s the problem of what to do with your deindustrialised communities. That’s South Yorkshire, the Valleys, Northeast Derbyshire, for example. There are lots of similarities there, and that’s a different problem. And then what happens in the coastal and rural peripheries? I’m very conscious of the fact that my father’s last parish was in Pembrokeshire, and Pembrokeshire is where my mother’s family’s from and it’s an idyllic and lovely place, but its economy is very weak, really. In terms of its productivity, West Wales is amongst the lowest, and it again has a different set of problems to the Valleys or Swansea. So I think a more focused, analytical view about what the different needs of different places are, and then empowering local places to work with the centre to address those is the answer.

OB: You’ve discussed the role of local government and the regional aspect of industrial strategy. How do you view the role of central government in delivering an industrial strategy and how should it work with local and regional government?

RJ: We’re seeing this unfold at the moment. One of the things I worked on with the data scientist Tom Forth was a paper called ‘The Missing Four Billion’, which highlighted how R&D spending in the UK is very regionally imbalanced. Tom’s a great thinker and he has very trenchant views. I think he’s a proper classical liberal and he thinks I’m a bit of a terrible statist, which I sort of am, but his view is that we’ve got to devolve everything, whereas I still have the residual antibodies that I got from my time working with the Research Councils and the Royal Society and I think, “Oh no, we can’t possibly devolve it to the cities and regions. They don’t know how to make good decisions. They’ll spend it all on roundabouts or hanging baskets” - genuine things I hear from people at the Treasury, by the way. But I think you have to tackle that challenge that head on. It’s clear that local and regional government does lack capacity currently, and that’s not an accident. It’s been really squeezed of money and it’s had its capacity taken away in many ways. So I think you do need to involve regional and local government. You need that on-the-ground expertise that they have, but you need consciously to build that capacity to make good decisions about innovation. Again, I’m going to sound like I’m kind of praising the last government, which goes terribly against the grain, but the Levelling-Up White Paper did recognise this. It was not a bad document. The only trouble with it is that it didn’t carry a lot of conviction across government, and it got slightly scuppered by the Liz Truss interlude, but it did recognise the imbalance in R&D spending as being part of the levelling-up agenda, and it produced this pilot programme of so-called “Innovation Accelerators” in three cities across the country, including GM. A big part of my time in Greater Manchester was supporting the city in building an organisation, Innovation Greater Manchester, which brought together the private sector, the universities, local industry and local government to start to think about what Greater Manchester’s priorities for innovation should be, and how we should spend the Innovation Accelerator funding, and I think that worked pretty well. It was bumpy at times, as these things always are, but it worked. The current government extended that programme by one year and they then introduced the “Local Innovation Partnership Fund”, which extends the idea to ten different city regions, one of which is Cardiff, and there’s been this process of co-creation between each city, the combined authorities and UKRI on their programmes to identify innovation funding priorities. And I shouldn’t say too much about that because it’s midstream and I am actually on the panel that’s reviewing those proposals, but one of the things that Liz Kendall did as Secretary of State at DSIT [the now-defunct Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which has since been merged with the Department for Business and Trade to form the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade] was announce that the next round of Local Innovation Partnership Funding would be fully devolved. So we tried it out in three places, we extended it in this co-creation model and, hopefully, next time around, this process will have given places enough capacity to be left to deliver this programme on their own. I think this can be a huge opportunity for UKRI as the central coordinating body. It just needs to change its mindset from viewing itself as being the marker of regional and city authorities’ homework and simply deciding that it’s not good enough, to asking how they might be able to work together to make proposals really good.

OB: You’ve written a bit about overseas ownership. How important do you think it is to have strategically important companies in the UK be owned predominantly by UK shareholders? For example, does it matter that Arm [the most valuable UK-headquartered company] is majority owned by a SoftBank [a Japanese company]?

RJ: I think it does matter, and I think that was a mistake, because control goes with ownership. An extreme but interesting example is in South Korea when General Park took over the government in a military coup. He essentially locked up all the leading businessmen on trumped-up charges for a few weeks and then released them on the understanding that the way they ran their businesses had to support the national goals from then on. Now, I’m not advocating locking up all our business leaders on trumped-up charges, but there is a question about how can we get slightly more alignment between a company’s goals, how a company works, and what our national goals are? And that does have some connection to ownership. You look at Rolls-Royce, the government has a golden share in Rolls-Royce. No one’s going to sell Rolls-Royce. And that’s right, actually. The government, of course, did take big stakes in lots of big companies during the Global Financial Crisis, and weirdly we’re now seeing the American government start to take stakes in companies like Intel. Maybe that’s helpful.

OB: And of course Reform has spoken about taking golden shares in other major companies in the UK, which was fairly unexpected. You also previously wrote, “We have a new form of government globalisation that followed from abolishing capital controls, together with a conviction that one doesn’t need to worry about the balance of payments, even though the persistent trade deficits the UK has run since then has meant ownership and control of national assets has moved overseas.” How worried are you about the balance of payments and the UK’s trade deficit? Because it feels like people are now waking up to the fact that there is a huge deficit with countries like China and even between the UK and the EU. Do you think that’s a problem?

RJ: I think it is, because it’s the other side of the coin of the ownership issue, isn’t it? So if you run a current account deficit, you have to attract capital in. So that’s the deal. We buy laptops off China and then China buys our companies because we’ve got to sell them something. And there’s an important insight, which is that you cannot say you don’t have an industrial policy if some other country’s got an industrial policy. So, if China’s industrial policy is to corner the market in all kinds of high tech manufacturing sectors, if you don’t do something in response to that, you’re just saying, “That’s fine, we’ll just buy that stuff off you, and we’ll have to sell you our assets to keep things in balance.”

OB: Do you worry that China will eventually just consume ever single sector in the world and leave nothing for anyone else? And what do you think our response should be?

RJ: As a three per cent economy, as I’ve already described the UK, we can’t do everything, so I think we just need to try to identify our niche where we can compete. We can’t compete on everything, or even most things, so we just have to figure out where we can and then focus on that.

OB: Zooming in more locally again now, you mentioned Andy Burnham earlier, who’s going to be the new PM, and reindustrialisation is something he’s mentioned a couple of times in speeches. You said that his model is likely going to be strongly influenced by what’s going on in Greater Manchester. You’ve also written before that you think that a jobs target for manufacturing is the wrong type of target, and actually all that matters is productivity growth. Do you worry that Andy Burnham is too focused on increasing jobs in manufacturing as opposed to actually just making the sector stronger and more productive?

RJ: This is a very easy trap to fall into, and lots of people have fallen into it. I saw this in Sheffield and I see it in Greater Manchester. It’s very tempting and intuitive to want to set a jobs target. But you should support manufacturing because it has high productivity growth, and if it’s going to have higher productivity, by definition it will employ fewer people. You should support manufacturing not because it brings jobs to communities, but because it brings value. I had loads of arguments the people in Sheffield about this, including the investment teams, and my argument was usually along the lines of, “It would be better to get a Boeing factory to open here that employs 50 people than a Sports Direct warehouse that employs 500, because the former will do much more for your local economy in the long run than the latter,” but it’s a very difficult argument to make because it goes against our instincts, especially our political instincts to produce results quickly.

Welsh Industry

OB: What are some things that you think Wales could be doing better to improve its economic prospects?

RJ: One thing that comes to mind is exploiting the fact that FE and HE in Wales fall under the same umbrella [MEDR – the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research], so you can have a truly joined up higher skills system. I think that has huge potential, but it’s probably not being realised for the moment because the HE sector is in such a dire state that they haven’t really got any headspace to do anything about it.

OB: I was at an LSE event earlier this year and Rhun ap Iorwerth was on the panel – this was before Plaid won the election – and I asked him about whether he was interested in an industrial strategy for Wales, and he said that he was, which was good to hear. But for me, it’s concerning that Wales has this niche this it’s carved out for itself in compound semiconductors and it’s got all these interesting businesses that seem to be doing well – for example, I read that IQE is the fastest growing company in the UK at the moment – but as far as I’m aware, Wales has never had a strategy for the semiconductor sector in South Wales. I’m sure they’re working with the businesses there, but it feels negligent that they’re not taking advantage of this opportunity in the fastest growing sector in the world. It is basically the strategic sector and they haven’t really seemed interested in doubling down on it, whereas conversely, Ireland have got their sector strategy and they’re ploughing ahead with that and they announced they’re attracting investment from Intel in a new fab. So to me, it just feels like the Welsh government needs to do something on that and have some sort of strategy at least. Do you think that there is an opportunity there that the government’s missing as far as you can tell?

RJ: I do. The comparison with Ireland is really interesting. And Andy Burnham coincidentally seems to be quite interested in Republic of Ireland. He’s been over a few times and there have been quite a few GM-Ireland links. I think it’s a failing of Whitehall and London-centric culture that nobody there would think to look at Ireland because it’s just their former colony, or something like that, but the fact is that it’s now richer than the UK is per head. This is something people just don’t believe, or they think it’s the figures being distorted by the big corporations. The figures are distorted, it’s true, and no one believes the GDP numbers, because of the transfer pricing issue. But there is an underlying reality, which is that Ireland has developed a really strong high value manufacturing economy. In pharma and electronics, it’s chosen the route of attracting high value manufacturing and I think it’s benefited hugely from that, so I think it would be good if the Welsh government looked across the Irish sea a little bit to learn from that.

Quickfire

OB: What’s a book you’d recommend?

RJ: How Asia Works, by Joe Studwell.

OB: What’s your favourite Substack?

RJ: I read the Sam Freedman one because I think it’s very well-informed about British politics. I also like Dan Davies’s writing. Everything that Dan Davies writes, I think, is brilliant.

OB: I’ve interviewed Dan for this series, actually. He was one of my first interviews. But I completely agree. He’s a very interesting guy. If you had to choose one sector or technology that the UK should focus on, what would it be?

RJ: One obvious answer is pharmaceuticals, but it’s not without problems. I wrote a relatively controversial paper about the life science sector with James Wilsdon, The Biomedical Bubble, in which I said that we were focusing far too much on elite bioscience and not enough on public health and wider determinants of health and I still think we were right. When I was writing that, I talked probably the most respected expert on pharma industry productivity, Jack Scannell, and he said to me, “You know, the trouble with the British life sciences strategy is it’s essentially a bet on the United States healthcare system not being reformed.” And now, seeing all the shenanigans now with the US forcing the NHS to spend more on drugs, that was such a prescient remark. But it’s still so important. In terms of the sector that we’ve neglected, and that we should we take much more care of, it’s the chemicals sector.

OB: Richard Jones, thank you very much.

Follow Richard on LinkedIn here and read his blog, Soft Machines, here Soft Machines, by Richard Jones – Science, innovation policy, economic growth, nanotechnology.

And watch some of Richard’s online lectures here:

And to listen to a discussion with Richard on the Productivity Institute’s Productivity Puzzles podcast, click here

“What can we do to give people another chance? The answers to that are relatively straightforward, right? You’ve got to give them a home, you’ve got to try and give them a job, and you’ve got to try and give them some self-worth. It’s a difficult thing to do, but it’s a fairly straightforward formula. And for me, two of those come together. It’s very difficult to have self-worth without having anywhere to call your own. And you can’t really fix anything else in someone’s life if they don’t have a home.”

Housing and justice are two seemingly poisoned chalices in the UK Civil Service. Two fundamentals of society that present seemingly intractable problems. They are what you’d call the front-line of public sector delivery, and a core aspect of the foundations of society that are bellwethers - or indicators - for how government is performing more broadly. Neither are areas of public sector delivery that people would consider “sexy”, necessarily. As I say, they are the meat and potatoes of government, and if you have experience of either, you’ll most likely have a very good sense of the challenges that Britain faces when it comes to solving some its most longstanding challenges, and the challenges of communicating from the ground of policy delivery to the centre of government.

Amy Rees has had a remarkable career. Former Governor of Brixton Prison, latterly Chief Exec of the entire prison and probation service, and now the Chief Exec of Homes England, the social housing delivery arm of government, in charge of tens of billions of pounds of funding to help the government hit its housebuilding target and attempt to alleviate the longstanding housing crisis. She is a remarkable example of someone with deeply held values, resilience, belief, and a real sense of public duty, and, I hope she doesn’t mind me saying, a welcome example of a senior Welsh female in public life, which is a group that is unfortunately still underrepresented across both the public and private sectors - but hopefully not for too long.

In a previous interview with Tim Williams, former New Labour SpAd and now regeneration expert, and also, coincidentally, one of the masterminds behind the Homes and Communities Agency in the mid-noughties, the predecessor to Homes England, which Amy now heads up - a real full-Cylch moment - Tim bemoaned what he perceived to be the lack of talent in the Welsh civil service and the lack of high-quality potential leaders. Well, I’m about to make a bold prediction. I think Amy will be a leading candidate for future Chief Exec of the Senedd. Her track record of working both on the front line and within the centre of government is impeccable. Her belief, drive, charisma and personability are undeniable, and she has the understanding of policy delivery and Whitehall influencing that are integral for getting things done in a devolved administration, and I think she would be an invaluable asset to the Senedd should the opportunity ever arise. After reading this, I’m sure you’ll agree. I’ll await the odds from the bookies.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Amy.

Background

OB: Where were you born and raised?

AR: I was born and raised in Llantwit Major and went to Llantwit Major Junior School, where my mum also taught briefly. We then went to Australia for a couple of years and when I came back, I went to Howells School for girls in Llandaff.

OB: Oh right! I actually grew up just down the road from Howells. So your mum was a teacher, and what did your dad do? And where were they from?

AR: My dad was in IT. His family were from Cardiff and my mum’s family were all from Merthyr Tydfil. My mum’s family are all still there, actually.

OB: I interviewed Steve Evans who’s a professor of Industrial Decarbonisation at Cambridge and he grew up in Merthyr, so it’s great to see Merthyrians being represented!

AR: I have a little story for you; last April I was awarded a CB – a Companion of the Bath – and obviously you go to Windsor to receive it, so I took my husband, my two kids and my mum. And the way they arrange the line is in strict order of how senior your honour is, and first in the queue was a guy getting a knighthood for his services to the Armed Forces, who just happened to be from Merthyr. My mum was very, very chuffed.

OB: That’s brilliant. I have been looking through the honours lists the last couple of years to find more people to talk to, so I’ll have to look him up. Staying on your time in school for a bit, how did you do in school? Did you enjoy it?

AR: I loved school. I went to fantastic schools with brilliant and very dedicated teachers. My mum is still friends with some of them - a few even live on the same road as her or in the same neighbourhood, and they ask after you even decades later. I did very well in my A-levels, but that I think that is largely because I did go to a fantastic school and I received a really good education. But when I look back now, and my dad used to have this saying, which was “Education is wasted on the young,” I definitely agree with that in hindsight. If you gave me the same opportunities again, I would have paid much more attention and made far more of the opportunities I was given, I think.

OB: Oh my God, yeah. Absolutely. I always say I wish I’d done at least a gap year between secondary school and university. I think I would have just appreciated university a lot more. And I think, if I did a degree now, I could probably absorb a lot more information and engage with the substance far more than I did when I was in my late teens and early twenties. But hindsight’s 20:20!

AR: I know, imagine if someone told you now that your job was to go and listen to world-class professors and read a few books. That would be a luxury wouldn’t it? Whereas at the time it felt like I could barely pull myself out of bed to do it!

OB: Did you have any clear ambitions when you were in school?

AR: The trouble with these sorts of questions is that when you look back, I wonder how much you’re superimposing what you know now, and what you’ve ended up doing, on what you thought and hoped then. But I do credit Howells with this. Howells gave you the sense that, first of all, you could achieve absolutely anything you wanted to, which I know sounds kind of trite, but I don’t think all schools do leave kids with that same impression that anything is within their grasp. And I did genuinely believe that as a result. But also two other things that I got from being at a girls school particularly was that, one, women can do anything and that we weren’t to be put off by anything because we thought it wasn’t the type of job a woman should have, and I was just surrounded by these brilliant women, many of whom I’m still friends with today, who went off all of these amazing jobs and career. And secondly, that you should do something useful with your life – that you should do something that contributes to society and that it’s not just about making money and being great in your field or whatever. And those lessons all really penetrated my subconsciousness and stuck with me, much more than I thought they might or realised that they had at the time. I genuinely felt like I could do anything, that being a woman was no barrier, and that I had to do something useful with my life. I think that’s the thing they instilled in me more than anything else.

OB: I completely agree. I’ve seen and heard from people who’d experienced different sides of that messaging. Some people who were told explicitly at a young age that they should lower their expectations, and other people, such as yourself, who were given all the confidence in the world to go and conquer it. And it clearly has an impact on impressionable young minds. Some who are given the less positive feedback obviously go on to defy those expectations, but clearly there are a lot of people, and I’ve met a lot of them, for whom that feedback is definitive, and completely determines their life trajectory. So we definitely need to develop more of a national culture and environment that gives young people the confidence they need and deserve to go out into the world, take opportunities and be resilient. So what did you do after school?

AR: I went to Sussex University and got a BA in Politics and Public Policy and then I also did a master’s, which I managed to get a full scholarship through the European Union. That master’s was a collaboration between the University of Sussex and LSE and it was fantastic, but by the end of it I was itching to be in the working world. And in fairness, the course was more aimed at people who wanted to go into an academic career, which I already knew I didn’t. But, my degree did end up giving me a decent grounding for the work I’ve ended up doing over the last few years.

HM Prison and Probation

“It was this guy with his feet up on the desk in this small office smoking a pipe. You almost had to physically move the smoke, it was that thick. And amidst it there’s all sorts of people mooching about. There must have been about 12 people in this small office, just standing around. It was my very first day, day one in the job, and as you know, I went on to run that service 20 years later, but he lifted his eyes above his glasses and looked over at me and said, “I don’t think women should be in men’s prisons, they should have kept the height restriction and I don’t believe in the graduate scheme, so stay the **** away from me and I’ll stay the *** away from you.” It was incredible.”

“I sat down at a big table, and sat at the other end was Lord Charlie Faulkner with a linen tablecloth, eating his lunch, and he said to me, “Do you think I’m f***ed with the prison crisis?” And I said, “I think we’re in real trouble with the capacity.” And he said, “You’ve got the job.” Genuinely, on my honour, I had no idea I was applying for a job, I didn’t know there was a job, and I didn’t know what the job was… unbeknownst to me, Charlie Faulkner had asked for the most senior, grizzly prison governor they could find him to come and sit in his office to tell him how it was and what was going on. I wasn’t senior. I hadn’t even been a governor by then. I’d only been an acting deputy governor. And I wasn’t old and I was only grizzly very early in the morning. So I didn’t fit the bill at all. But what my boss, the head of the prison service, knew was that no old, grizzly prison governor was going to do private office work in a central government department, nor would they be equipped for it.”

OB: So what has your career looked like from then to the role you’re doing today? And why did you join the prison and probation service? Was it something you knew you wanted to do?

AR: I’m not religious but I tell this story and it is true; it’s the closest thing I can say I ever had to a calling. There were loads of things I was thinking I might do, one of which was accountancy. Not because I had any interest in it at all but because I was thinking maybe if I go into business, that would be a useful skill and grounding to have. I’d thought about maybe joining the police because I liked people and I wanted to do something socially impactful, and I also knew that I had innate ability. So when I was a student we had this thing called the milk round, where employers would come around to universities and advertise to prospective applicants. And I saw the advert for the prison service and I just immediately knew that was the thing for me. I don’t know why. And genuinely, and this was not from arrogance, but it just never occurred to me that I wouldn’t get in, even though the graduate scheme was really competitive, because I just knew that was the thing for me. It was really funny.

OB: Wow, so you just had that really clear innate sense of purpose?

AR: Yeah, it was a funny thing, and also such an unusual choice given what people in my family had done for work. So I ended up joining the graduate scheme for the Prison Service, before it was called the Prison and Probation Service, and before it was part of the MoJ [Ministry of Justice], and was assigned to HMP Lewes [in Sussex], which, if you asked a child to draw a prison, they would draw HMP Lewes. It was two Victorian pillars and crisscross gates. Just exactly what you’d imagine a prison would look like at the time. So on my first day, I was 22, I’d just finished my masters, I looked young, I was a small female, tripping up the stone steps into HMP Lewes. And the graduate scheme was really hard to get on, really competitive, and they really put you through your paces. It was a full year process almost. It’s one of the reasons why I did the master’s, to be perfectly honest, because the whole process took so long. So I was like delighted to be there. So as I’m tripping up these steps, I walk through the gate into this big, radial Victorian prison with a small centre office in the middle and the main wings radiating outwards like segments in a pie chart. It’s been added to now over the years in various bits, but that was the basic design of the prison. And so I got there about 8 o’clock in the morning, at the time of the shift change, with night staff going off, day staff coming on and handing over keys. There was this small office, no bigger than the office I’m sat in now, and I walked in and I saw the principal officer. Governors like to think they run the prison, but at that time the principal officer was the most senior uniform grade. They really ran the prison. They are the orderly officer. And unless there’s a massive problem, they sort it out. But I can see him now. It was this guy with his feet up on the desk in this small office smoking a pipe. You almost had to physically move the smoke in the room, it was that thick. And amidst it there’s all sorts of people mooching about. There must have been about 12 people in this small office, just standing around. It was my very first day, day one in the job, and as you know, I went on to run that service 20 years later, but as I walked in, he lifted his eyes above his glasses and looked over at me and said, “I don’t think women should be in men’s prisons, they should have kept the height restriction and I don’t believe in the graduate scheme, so stay the **** away from me and I’ll stay the *** away from you. Got it?” It was incredible.

OB: Wow. What a lovely introduction on your first day! And you weren’t put off by the fact that the environment was so male-dominated? I’m sure they were trying to get more women into the workforce there, but presumably it still would have been a very different environment to most workplaces?

AR: It was unbelievably different, and this is how recently prisons had changed: when I was first deployed, I worked with the very first woman who was allowed to work in a male prison in Britain. I liked her very much and she was very close to retirement by the time I joined, but that’s how recently the process of women working in male prisons had begun. Women had worked in women’s prisons, but not in men’s for centuries until very recently in the 1980s.

OB: And what was the environment like?

AR: It was unusual for me in the sense that I stood out because I was female, obviously, and because I was very young to be in the service. But the thing that’s unique and unusual about the environment compared to the vast majority of workplaces is the constant state of being physically at risk in the job. That is not something that most people encounter in their roles. So it does change your relationship with work and your relationship with your colleagues. It’s a very different world. It’s obviously true of the police as well and it’s often true in bits of medicine now, like A&E, but it does change you and it’s an intense environment. And there’s something about that 24/7 thing as well. It causes a blurring between work and your personal life that is much more significant than it is in other jobs, I think.

OB: I suppose there must be an emotional aspect to it, where, because the environment and the work is so intense, it just bleeds into your personal life in terms of what you’re thinking about when you clock off, your mood, and the way you interact with people.

AR: One hundred per cent. You genuinely see things in prisons and engage with parts of society that are very challenging and shocking, which most people, if they’re lucky, never have to engage with, and they change you.

OB: I’m sure you’ve had some pretty traumatic experiences, which I won’t pry about, but it’s certainly an environment that I can’t reimagine working in, because you must feel at risk constantly. You’re engaging with hardened criminals and potentially unpredictable individuals on a daily basis. I’m sure you become somewhat inured to it after a while, but I’m sure there’s nonetheless this low-level anxiety that is constantly present in the back of your mind.

AR: I have had some pretty traumatic experiences, yeah. But the thing I felt most acutely, particularly as I became more senior, is that all of that is your responsibility. You are responsible for people’s lives in a way that most people just never have to be. And I really felt that both for prisoners and for staff,

OB: So how did you end up in your role of Chief Exec of the entire prison and probation service? Did you stay at HMP Lewes the entire time until that role?

AR: Not quite. I did stay at HMP Lewes but I regularly interspersed it with various ops roles. But the turning point really was when I’d been in the sector for about six years. I was in Bristol prison at the time, where I’m speaking to you from now –

OB: Not the prison, presumably?

AR: No, not anymore! But I got a phone call from the then head of ops for the whole service. And prison service is a bit like the army, it’s very hierarchical. You’re not expecting to get a phone call from your boss’s boss’s boss’s boss, or whatever he was. And he said, “I need you to come up to London, Amy.” So I did as I was told. This was back in 2006, and it was at the time of the creation of the Ministry of Justice as a standalone department from the Home Office, and what happened was, probation used to be a local authority matter, so there had never been such a thing as the Ministry of Justice. There was a small department called the Department for Constitutional Affairs, which handled judges and points of law, but it didn’t have anything to do with big dirty ops like prisons or probations. But at that time, there was both an immigration and a prison capacity crisis, so they wanted to try and separate some of these. So I got called to an office in Victoria Street [just down the road from Parliament, where several government departments have been based over the years] and was sat down at a big table, and sat at the other end was Lord Charlie Faulkner, the Lord Chancellor, with a linen tablecloth, eating his lunch, and he said to me, “Do you think I’m f***ed with the prison crisis?” And I said, “I think we’re in real trouble with the capacity.” And he said, “You’ve got the job.” Genuinely, on my honour, I had no idea I was applying for a job, I didn’t know there was a job, and I didn’t know what the job was. It turned out that what had happened was they had decided to create the Ministry of Justice literally two weeks before, and to spin it out of the Home Office from the Department for Constitutional Affairs. And I had experienced the sharp end of the prison and probation crisis because we were running out of prison places. But the problem with this new department was that there was no institutional understanding of what was actually going on in prisons at the front line and what it meant in practice, because policy people were not used to it. They’d never run a prison before. So what had happened was that they were phoning up prisons from ministers’ private offices [a minister’s immediate support staff, who are civil servants, not politically appointed special advisors] and asking, “What does this mean? What’s the impact of this?” And our most senior people were trying to manage all of that. And so, unbeknownst to me, Charlie Faulkner had asked for the most senior, grizzly prison governor they could find him to come and sit in his office to tell him how it was and what was going on. I wasn’t senior. I hadn’t even been a governor by then. I’d only been an acting deputy governor. And I wasn’t old and I was only grizzly very early in the morning, so I didn’t fit the bill at all. But what my boss, the head of the prison service, knew was that no old, grizzly prison governor was going to do private office work in a central government department, nor would they be equipped for it. So what he’d done was looked at his bright young things and thought, “Who would like this experience?” And as it turned out, that was career-defining for me because, first of all, the principal private secretary to Charlie Faulkner was no other than Antonia Romeo, who is now the Cabinet Secretary [the most senior civil servant in all of government]. So I started a journey working for her and working with Darren Tierney, who’s now the Permanent Secretary at the ONS [Office for National Statistics, based in Newport]. He was Antonia’s deputy at the time. So, having gone from university to proper, dirty ops in prison, worked my way up from an officer to acting deputy governor, I went from looking after and dealing with prisoners on a daily basis to being catapulted into the complete opposite end of the government spectrum at the very centre of it, which was strategy and private office. And after a while, I found that I had an aptitude for it and enjoyed that work as well, and I have basically made a career ever since of combining ops with understanding strategy and the way ministers really work and operate at the centre. And most people in the Civil Service never switch between those worlds. They don’t get to experience what it’s like either side.

OB: That must benefit you when you’re thinking from a strategic perspective what the actual implementation of policy will look like – what the reality of delivery on the front line will be.

AR: One hundred per cent. And whenever I tell people this story, people always think exactly as you’ve done about the benefits for policymaking of having that frontline experience, of understanding how things actually work on the ground, which is absolutely true. But I can honestly tell you, I was also better as an ops leader when I went back into the prison service to govern Brixton Prison after leaving private office. I was better at that job because I understood what pressures politicians were facing, what they were thinking, what they were looking at, what the context of the decisions they were making was, and how things that you do in the prison affect the media, which affects policy et cetera. It made a huge difference.

OB: And did it help you also push back and negotiate when there were changes being made or proposed?

AR: Absolutely. It helped me do two things: push back on something and say, “No, I’m not doing that.” And it also gave me a lot more strength and belief in my own views. And actually, what ops leaders often don’t realise when they haven’t seen things from the other side is the power of their position. Ops leaders really can say no to policy proposals because of their expertise in their domain and the authority they have as a result. But the other thing it gave me is that it made me very good at sniffing out opportunities and things like pilots and to bring resources into our very closed world.

OB: So was the role in private office always temporary? And were you always planning on going back into the service?

AR: The private office role was a permanent role but it was never intended for me to stay they longer than two or three years But again, going back to what we talked about earlier, about how much you can credit yourself with foresight in hindsight, but something in my gut was always pulling me back and told me that this experience would come in handy when I returned. I wouldn’t have been able to articulate it like I’m about to, but I think I did know it at the time and realised that my experience in private office was a distinct advantage when going for promotions in the prison service, and that it would be an advantage to be able to say, “I really know how to run things and I really, genuinely understand the centre and can work with ministers.” There were then, and there still are now, just so few of those people with that experience, and I gradually came to that realisation in the two years I was in private office, and that’s been my USP ever since. And I’ve turned down very good jobs on both sides since then because I’ve also very deliberately and clinically swapped so that no one can ever say, “She’s not really in ops anymore, is she? She’s spent ages in the centre,” or vice versa. I can never be pigeon-holed.

Homes England: Solving the Other Side of the Equation

“my record was I released a prisoner at 8 o’clock in the morning. I had him back in time for lunch, having committed an offense, gone to a magistrate and come back to prison in the space of less than four hours.”

OB: So after such a long career in prison and probation and justice, what inspired the transition to Homes England?

AR: Almost from the first time I got a management job at the age of about 23 when I was a senior officer in charge of people, I really felt that sense of responsibility and I took it very seriously. And what I’d come to understand over time is that, in the prison system at any one point, there are in my view fewer than 1000 people who have such extreme conditions or circumstances that they’re never going to able to reintegrate properly into society. The vast majority of prisoners will have to and be able to engage with society again once they’ve served their time, whatever you think about what they’ve done before. And for a lot of us, it’s very easy to read headlines or articles, or hear about their crimes and say, “Oh, that’s a terrible thing they’ve done. They must be awful people. They should stay locked up for good.” But if you had their backgrounds, there’s a good chance you and I would be be doing something very similar. And that’s the truth. And in my old line of work, you do spend a lot of time thinking about a) what’s wrong with society that crime is such a big issue? And of course the UK’s not unique, and b) what can you really do to give people another chance? And the answers to that are relatively straightforward. You’ve got to give them a home, you’ve got to try and give them a job, and you’ve got to try and give them some self-worth, right? It’s a difficult thing to do, but it’s a fairly straightforward formula. And for me, two of those come together. It’s very difficult to have self-worth without having anywhere to call your own. And you can’t really fix anything else in someone’s life if they don’t have a home. And so genuinely, from early in my career, I started focusing on housing and we did quite a lot of things on temporary accommodation. I do have one story that really stuck in my mind. I was working as governor of Brixton with a very good, active Lambeth Council at the time. I’d studied economics at university and my favourite definition of economics is the limited cascade of resources and division of resources against an unlimited number of people. And if you ever wanted to see that played out, Lambeth was the place. They had an absolutely finite budget and almost unlimited calls on any of those budgets in a way you can’t imagine. Housing was acutely under pressure and we were part of something then called the Diamond Initiative, which was a concept brought over from America where the idea was that there were streets in American cities that were costing the state a million dollars a year because of all the interlinked social problems that the families living in them faced. They called them million-dollar blocks. The idea was that if you could help those families, not only could you help them personally, but you could save a fortune in other public expenses because the same families were calling on several other public services as a result of their complex needs. So Lambeth was one of the councils trying to do it, and the local prison was part of it. And I was saying, “Look, I understand you’ve got all these people to help into housing, but why aren’t you bloody helping the prisoners?” Literally all of my cases were something like this, and this is a true story, my record was I released a prisoner at 8 o’clock in the morning. I had him back in time for lunch, having committed an offense, gone to a magistrate and come back to prison in the space of less than four hours.

OB: Oh my god!

AR: Yeah, they were literally walking down Brixton High Street. I don’t know how well you know Brixton, but the prison is right next to Brixton Hill, right near the centre. He had started doing drugs and dealing it as soon as he’d left and had been picked up and brought straight back. So my argument and what I was telling the people on the committee of this Diamond Initiative scheme was that we’ve got to start getting them into housing sooner. And I knew it was, and still is, difficult to prioritise single men, let alone ex-offending single men, but if you don’t do that, look at what happens. They just end up going all the way back through the system again. Luckily, the council leader at the time was very smart and he said to me, “Okay, Amy, I’ll put you on the housing sub-committee.” And of course, when I got there, it was the most depressed I ever remember being because who would give my guy a bed and a home when you have mums with six kids with nowhere to go?

OB: I suppose politically it’s a bit of a non-starter.

AR: But even with your own conscience, it’s difficult to justify. But two things I realised while on that board was that one, someone has to advocate for prisoners because no one else will, otherwise the cycle will continue forever, and two, there is a huge housing problem in Britain, which stuck with me ever since. But I really do believe that if you want to give people life chances you need to get to them before prison, because the trouble is we can help people in prison – I don’t want to be fatalistic about it – but by that point it is quite late and loads of the things we’ve talked about are already bedded in in lots of ways. But I really believe that, if you can give people a home, a solid, stable home, and the aspiration and possibility of buying and owning your own home, that’s an enormous thing we can do for society. So in some ways you might think, “These worlds of prisons and housing are so different.” But I don’t think they are. And the work I did in the MoJ is very similar to what I spend my time doing now, which is partly looking at how you move a very complicated government machinery that has lots of other things to worry about. To try to help a prisoner or to try to build a house, what you need is loads of other parts of government and society, for which I am not directly responsible, like water and schools, to move in the same direction in a coordinated way, which is very difficult, and which you have to do by influence. And then you need to try to manage tight budgets and complex stakeholders. So loads of what I do is really the same. But the reason I love working with my staff in Homes England is the same reason I loved my staff in HMPPS. They are genuinely wired to the mission. And both of those groups could have found better-paying jobs, but they choose here because they believe in the purpose of these organisations.

OB: That’s great to hear. And that resonates with my experience of working in the DfT and HS2. Government and the civil service is constantly criticised, and often for understandable and very legitimate reasons, but what you see internally is people who do care and who are trying their best, often against adverse circumstances. But moving on properly to Homes England – what is it? And what does it do?

AR: Homes England is essentially the government’s housing delivery arm, reporting to MHCLG [the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government]. We try to help mayors, developers and local authorities, among others, to make it easier to build homes. Now, quite often that’s with money and it can either be by making grants or loans. So we actually have a bank, the National Housing Bank, which does loans, guarantees and joint vehicles with equity. But what we really try and do is things where the private sector alone wouldn’t be able to act. A classic example of that is brownfield development. So if you’ve got a flat greenfield site with all the utilities already connected, there’s no need for the government really to get involved. A private sector developer will pick it up and sort it out, but the problem is there are hardly any of those left nowadays. So if you want to build where an old factory used to be, which can be great, the trouble for a private sector developer is they don’t know what they’re going to find when they dig in the ground. They might find asbestos and other things, which can be very expensive to remediate and possibly completely uneconomical and make the development unviable. Or you might need it linked to a road, which they have very little control over whether that’s going to be approved or over whether they’ll get planning permission. So they could be stuck with a piece of land that they can’t develop for various reasons. But the other massive thing is that we help build social and affordable homes. So I have £39 billion of funding, £27 billion of which I control directly and £12 billion of which London manages on its own, and we disburse that to developers to build social and affordable homes, of which 60% will be let at social rents. So we’re massively trying to improve the stock of social and affordable housing. That’s our mission.

OB: What are some of the stats guiding your work?

AR: One of the most striking for me is that there are 176,000 children alone growing up in temporary accommodation, which is not where they should be. And we’re exacerbating that problem all the time because temporary accommodation is very expensive for councils. So money that they could have been spending on other services is going round in an endless loop and it’s affecting those children’s life chances.

OB: One thing I find interesting about Homes England, is that, given that housing is local, why is there a Homes England and not a Homes Manchester and Homes Birmingham, for example? Why do we need a national agency?

AR: It’s a good question. So first of all, we work very closely with local councils and mayors and homebuilding is done locally and it’s done through the local council and the ESMAs – the established strategic mayoral authorities, who do loads on housing. First of all, we try to help them with funding and grants, but also we have expertise that can be very helpful to them. I’ve got 1,500 staff made up of brilliant planners, absolutely fantastic architects – people with real experience of how you bring a housing development forward, and even a big local council wouldn’t have all those people all the time because it’s just not cost-effective. So we loan in resources, both in money and people, to try and help bring forward much-needed housing developments.

OB: And how do you prioritise where to allocate the money, and what are the criteria by which you make those decisions?

AR: First thing to say is that we are the delivery arm of government, so some of how we prioritise is set by government policy, made by ministers and their departments. But once you’re within that envelope, take social and affordable homes for example, where government has been very clear about how that programme of £27bn that I’m responsible for should be allocated, after that’s been taken into account, how do we prioritise? First of all, we try to ensure a fairly equal share around the country, and we do that by giving indicative budgets and then looking at proposed plans from local and mayoral authorities and consider how deliverable they are, how much help we can provide and what difference that will make to the likelihood of being able to make it happen, and the plans that have the best chances of succeeding are the ones we back. And then of course we review what we’ve done, the developments we’ve supported and the ones we’ve not supported and try to learn lessons to take forward in the future. And different regions and local authorities face different challenges. The challenges in the Northeast, for example, are very different from the challenges in Kent, so they require different solutions and sort of different allocations.

OB: I read in one of your papers that new development is too often poorly matched to local needs. Does that mean that we’re building too many flats and houses that don’t match the socioeconomic need of the areas that they’re being built in, or does it mean something else?

AR: There are two things that we mean really by that. One is, exactly as you say, that we’ve got to have the right number of social and affordable homes. So we try to support lots of measures, like Section 106 [an agreement between a local authority and a housing developer to build a certain amount of social housing or infrastructure or mitigate environmental impacts] to ensure social needs are being met. The other thing it means is that in a very densely populated country like ours, we often don’t build the infrastructure to accompany new housing developments and enable successful communities, and that’s one of the things that Homes England really tries to do. We try to take a master developer approach, where we bring forward at the same time all of the planning and all of the infrastructure that will be needed in order to make the development successful. And back to one of my earlier points, that’s where my job feels very similar to my role at the MoJ in that what we’re trying to do is get DfE [Department for Education] and DfT and all these other government departments to lean in to make sure that we are building proper communities, not just boxes.

Quickfire

OB: Do you go back to Wales often at all or?

AR: I live in Wales! Just outside Monmouth.

OB: That’s where my grandparents used to live! They lived in the Narth. Well that’s great to hear.

AR: Oh, I knew it off really well. Good tennis and cricket club there.

OB: Exactly! Is there a book you’d recommend?

AR: I’m reading a very interesting book at the moment called I May Be Wrong and Other Lessons from a Monk. It’s about a guy who was a bigtime economist for a bank in Europe and gave it all up after a life event and decided to go and be a Thai monk for 10 years and then comes back into normal society. I’m so far from being a monk it’s laughable, but what I find so interesting about the book is it’s not really about that I’m trying to show people how to be a monk, it’s about how you should try to slow down your mind and be more mindful. And some of his lessons after a decade of practice is that one, you don’t need to engage with every thought that goes through your head. You can just let some go by. And two, you may sometimes be wrong, as the book is called. And I think those are really tangible lessons that we could all take on board. But I think the first one in particular is quite relevant for my line of work. I remember teaching prisoners when I was quite young. I was an assistant on a course about enhanced thinking skills. These were cognitive behavioural courses, where we would try to get prisoners, who are often very impulsive and after a frustrating experience or interaction might be more likely to resort to violence, and so these courses would be about how you control that. And I remember we used to teach them that you can just let these thoughts pass you by. You don’t have to act on them. And I remember when I was young and thinking slightly sceptically, “Well, I understand the logic of that, but it’s a very difficult thing to do in practice, isn’t it?” And as I’ve got older and read this book, I understand more and more what it means. You don’t have to engage with every thought that goes through your head, and it’s not all rational and true. And sometimes the best thing is to let a thought disappear.

OB: And on that note, Amy Rees, thank you very much.

Follow Amy on LinkedIn here, and watch an interview with Amy here from her time as Chief Executive of HM Prison and Probation

“in theory, there’s enough energy in a glass of water to power a city if you can do fusion... It could be the last source of energy the planet ever needs.”

“we have the second largest pulsed power machine in the world…when we discharge it, the electrical current generated is the equivalent of the entire US national grid.”

As a former Chief Engineer at Rolls-Royce, a former CEO of a world-leading hypersonic engine company and now the CEO of a nuclear fusion company, Mark Thomas may have had one of the interesting careers of anyone in the world.

He’s been there and done it at all at the cutting edge and the highest level of precision engineering, both within a world-class, industrial stalwart, heritage brand, but also within smaller challenger organisations looking to devise completely new types of engineering.

In this conversation, Mark and I discuss the engineering behind jet engines, the trials and tribulations of working in a cutting-edge science and engineering company, and what the UK needs to do to retain and nurture world-class companies so that they don’t either go abroad or wither on the vine and die.

I really enjoyed talking with Mark and I hope you enjoy the conversation too.

Background

OB: Where were you born and raised?

MT: I was born in Cardiff and grew up in Cowbridge, which was a fantastic place to grow up and a lovely town, and lived there for 18 years until the end of school.

OB: Did you go to Cowbridge Comp?

MT: I did. I went to all the Cowbridge schools. Cowbridge Comp was, and still is, I believe, a great school.

OB: What did your parents do?

MT: My father was in the Air Force, which is how we ended up there in the first place here is based at RAF St. Athan. And my mother worked for a shipping line called Geest that operated out of Barry Docks. They were basically the banana boats that came in from the Caribbean, so I have a lot of fond memories of bananas and Barbados rum being brought home, which I’m still a big fan of.

OB: And presumably you studied engineering at university?

MT: I did – I went to Queens’ College, Cambridge and studied engineering and what piqued my interest was actually a taster course at Swansea University. Before that I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. I had some aspirations of being a pilot but that didn’t work out for various reasons.

Rolls-Royce

“these engines just get very, very big. Big enough that you could walk through a civil engine and hold both your arms out and they still wouldn’t touch the sides. Nowadays you can almost fit an aircraft fuselage through the engine itself.”

OB: And what was your first role after university?

MT: I joined Rolls-Royce Defence in Bristol. I remember the first day vividly. I signed the Official Secrets Act and for a pension at 18 years old, which felt like a completely bizarre experience at the time but of course in hindsight I’m very glad I did. I joined a team that was doing aircraft operational analysis – which was analysis of our own aircraft that the RAF operated and aircraft operated by, let’s say, less friendly states, looking at how we compared and what we could do to improve our performance and capabilities. It was the most amazing team to land in and it was pretty unique, even within Rolls-Royce.

OB: Did you apply to be in that team specifically?

MT: No, I landed in that team initially just as part of my experience going around the company, and they really welcomed me and I developed a real affinity for them. They had an incredible team leader who I had, and continue to have, just a huge amount of respect for. So I was very lucky.

OB: How would you investigate enemy planes if you didn’t have access to them?

MT: Funnily enough, we actually got gifted some stuff, but a lot of it was based on grainy photographs and information from third-parties. And then we had to construct, from first principles, models of these things using computers. Bearing in mind these were the very early versions of computers. So we would develop aerodynamic models, performance models and run mission analysis on a computer that was in this big refrigerated room to keep it cool. So you would set it running in the morning and then it would be finished by the end of the day. Contrast that with the computers and models we have today, particularly in the age of AI, and it’s night and day.

OB: It sounds like something from the Imitation Game at Bletchley Park.

MT: Oh, totally. It was very much like that. We were all in a very secure area so it felt really secretive and really exciting. And in fairness it was. The information we were developing was going to the MOD [Ministry of Defence] and to various other agencies and government teams. So it was very cool. Very fond memories from that time.

OB: And what year was this that you started?

MT: This was 1989. And that was before I went to university, actually. And you had to do various rotations like workshop training and tour around different parts of the business. But that’s where I had the most fun, and then when I rejoined after university in 1993 that’s the department I landed back in.

OB: Oh wow. Was it quite common to go into Rolls-Royce – or industry generally for that matter – for a year before university?

MT: It wasn’t common actually, but it became a thing, these year-out in industry sponsorships, so I ended up being sponsored by Rolls-Royce. So even though I couldn’t fulfil my ambition of becoming a pilot, I ended up being close to all of the air forces around the world and serving them, just from the other end, so it all worked out.

OB: Having that experience of industry and the world of work probably enriches your ability to enjoy or get the most out of your degree as well. I often regret not having taken a year out myself before going to university precisely for that reason.

MT: It was incredible. So I was basically working every summer holidays for the company, and that bonded me to the business. And of course back then it was common to stay with a company for your entire career, particularly with a company like Rolls-Royce, it was the kind of place you imagined you’d be for your whole life.

OB: Rolls-Royce now has obviously got the reputation of being the jewel in the crown of British industry in many ways. Was that the case then as well?

MT: Yeah it definitely had a hugely powerful brand. It was one of the top aero engine companies in the world, doing amazing business. But there was a very distinct difference between the defence and the civil [passenger or commercial aircraft] parts of Rolls-Royce. The civil of course being in Derby and the defence in Bristol. And it was very much a domestic business at the time, but in the time I was there we expanded into Germany, the US, India – all sorts of other interesting places, which, for me, was really appealing. You’d go and visit these places and work with customers in different parts of the world and a lot of our programmes were international, which was a great experience. So from being almost exclusively domestically focused it became a truly global business.

OB: And you eventually wound up working on the engine side.

MT: Yes, I eventually became a Chief Engineer there. I remember when I was starting out and you’d see these chief engineers walking around the building, and there were a very small number of them – they were these iconic figures. And I would think to myself, “One day I want to be a chief engineer.” And of course it took hard work to get to that position. It was a real privilege, but it’s a tough job. I loved it, but it was a super tough job. You have big teams, big programmes. You’re accountable for everything technically, particularly safety. That was the big factor. But off the back of being Chief Engineer for the military fast jet engines in Rolls-Royce and then one of the civil engines and then Rolls-Royce’s technology and future programmes, I basically got to see everything about the company. I worked with some incredible people.

OB: I’m sure it must have been an amazing experience. And just to rewind slightly – firstly, what is a jet engine? I think people understand roughly what engines are, but what’s a jet engine?

MT: Yeah, a jet engine is a curious thing. Well, to start with, a jet engine is one of the most complex machines ever created by mankind. And it sits at the intersection of so many different types of engineering: aerodynamic, mechanical, structural, materials, everything. So it’s a very, very hard thing to build. But a jet engine’s a type of engine that we call a reaction engine, which is an engine that produces thrust and that propels the engine in the other direction. It’s based on Newton’s third law of motion, which is that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So the engine sucks in air, compresses it, combusts it [burns it], and exhausts it at a higher velocity, and that is what gives you the reaction that makes it move forward.

OB: And is there a difference between a civil and a military jet engine?

MT: In the early years there wasn’t too much difference between military and civil engines, but over time they’ve become very, very different. I suppose the main difference is military engines aim for higher specific thrust, which is basically as much thrust for the smallest possible amount of air going through the front of the engines, so they’re performance machines, basically. And they also have to fit inside the fuselage of an aircraft [the main body of the aircraft] so they tend to be quite streamlined.

OB: Which is you don’t see them on the wings like in commercial aircraft?

MT: Exactly. And they will sometimes add to their thrust with afterburners – you know, the flames that come out the back of the engine. So they’re trying to get as much thrust as possible. Whereas civil engines are designed to move a greater mass of air more efficiently so they have these bypass systems that get bigger and bigger. Most of the air in civil engines is going around the outside of the engine and only a small amount goes through what we call the core. You might have ten times as much air going around the engine as going through it. But that massive amount of air being moved and its velocity being changed gives them really high efficiency and low fuel burn and makes them ideal devices for commercial aviation, where it’s all about cruising for long periods of time as efficiently as possible. And these engines just get very, very big. Big enough that you could walk through a civil engine and hold both your arms out and they still wouldn’t touch the sides. Nowadays you can almost fit an aircraft fuselage through the engine itself.

OB: Is it still fair to say that Rolls-Royce is a world leader in jet engines or are we ceding that ground?

MT: Rolls-Royce has always been one of the top three in the world. So it’s Rolls-Royce and two American companies, General Electric and Pratt & Whitney, which became UTC [which later merged with Raytheon Company in 2020 to form RTX Corporation]. It’s always been top three, jostling for first place. And Rolls-Royce is in a really strong position in what we call widebody aircraft, so big civil, long-haul airliners. Rolls-Royce is probably number one there. And that’s off the back of a family of engines called the Trent family, which was a super smart innovation. In fact, the Rolls-Royce chairman at the time, Sir Ralph Robins, who sadly passed away in the last couple of weeks, he was the inspiration for the Trent family of engines, and that family concept has stayed with Rolls-Royce ever since. The design and development of an engine is hugely expensive and it takes a long time. But if you can use that as the basis of a whole family of engines that serve civil aviation, military transport, helicopters, that’s a huge advantage, and that’s really been Rolls-Royce’s strength.

OB: And now they’re looking to get into the single-aisle, shorter-haul aircraft market, which is the bigger market, is that right?

MT: Yeah, single aisle’s the big prize, like you say. Rolls-Royce exited the single aisle market a while back, which is the mass market, which of course means there’s more money in it, but it’s now actively looking to get back into it, and will be successful.

OB: They’ve got the UltraFan in the works, is that right? Which is supposed to a step-change in fuel efficiency, from what I understand.

MT: Indeed. My last job at Rolls-Royce was actually working on flight testing UltraFan technologies, funnily enough.

OB: So these development cycles are pretty long, then?

MT: Oh yeah, they’re huge. From materials development, data collection, to engine certification, it could be a 20-25 year journey. And lots of investment obviously.

Reaction Engines – Flying Close to the Sun

“It was a very ambitious concept, which was a space plane that took off and landed like an aeroplane, single-stage to orbit, went to orbit, delivered a payload, came back to the runway, refueled and restocked, and then repeated that mission over and over again.”

“And it all came out of a conversation with my head of the US business where we sat down and sketched something out on a napkin. We basically said, “What we need is a big hair dryer – something produces a lot of heat. What produces heat? Well, jet engines.” We ended up actually acquiring a stockpile of about 20 jet engines from the US Air Force…old fighter jet, F4 Phantom engines. In fact, the one we used had actually flown in the Vietnam War”

OB: Obviously, you did eventually leave your dream job at Rolls-Royce and move onto a very exciting new chapter in your career, and in many ways, equally interesting, which was becoming the CEO of a company called Reaction Engines. What’s the story of Reaction Engines and how did you end up becoming its CEO?

MT: So Reaction Engines was truly a lifechanging experience. I mean, I had tremendous fun at Rolls-Royce, I worked with some incredible people, did some amazing projects, and travelled the world, and I have to pinch myself thinking about some of the opportunities I was given, but Reaction was truly lifechanging. But the way I got involved was I had a phone call from a headhunter on Christmas Eve 2014, and their opening words were, “Are you seriously going to work for that company for the rest of your life?”, and it really made me stop and think. And they basically said, “There’s this small aerospace technology business in Oxford that’s doing fascinating work and has big ambitions. We think you can help it take the next step. Come and take a look.” And I wasn’t sure, of course. I was very happy where I was, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to take a look. But when I walked into Reaction, saw what they were trying to do, the ambition, met the people who were extremely smart and did a little bit of interrogation into it, I thought, “Yeah, there is really something to like about this. And when will I get the opportunity to take on a small business and grow it ever again in my life?” So I felt emotionally compelled to do it. And it was a big issue at Rolls-Royce that I was leaving, but I have no regrets. It was an amazing experience. I went on the journey with Reaction for ten years and we just did some incredible things.

OB: Did Reaction have a large profile before you joined? I guess you hadn’t heard of them before the recruiter contacted you?

MT: Weirdly, it was pretty well known for a small company of about 70 people because of a particular engine concept they had called SABRE, which stands for Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine, which is a super-efficient rocket engine that would enable reusable access to space before Musk was even thinking it. It was a very ambitious concept, which was a space plane that took off and landed like an aeroplane, single-stage to orbit, went to orbit, delivered a payload, came back to the runway, refueled and restocked, and then repeated that mission over and over again.

OB: And it was air-fuelled in the sense that the fuel was actually a gas, not liquid?

MT: The fuel we used was liquid hydrogen, but the beauty of the engine was that for the first portion of the flight to orbit, it could reuse air with that hydrogen rather than having to carry liquid oxygen on board.

OB: And I guess fuel accounts for most of the weight of an aircraft?

MT: Yeah, it’s the heaviest thing on a launcher. Liquid oxygen is super dense.

OB: Wow, liquid oxygen? How cold does it have to be in order to preserve oxygen in a liquid state?

“we briefed the Under Secretary of Defense, and honestly, his first words were “I cannot think of another company in the world that could have pulled this off.” So I was thinking, “Write that down!””

MT: Everything is cryogenic, which is the other challenge. So with SABRE, you could, in theory, breathe air, and save that payload and that weight, and then convert that to useful payload, and you did that up to hypersonic speeds, which is about five, five and a half times the speed of sound, and then you switched that very same engine to a pure rocket, so it was a multimode engine. Conceptually, it was super elegant. It was taught at universities. Everyone, including the US government, agreed that if it could be pulled off, it would revolutionise access to space. But of course it had to be demonstrated, and when I arrived the company, it was at that point of needing to do some key demonstrations of the technology.

OB: So I suppose they’d proved it could work in theory but hadn’t yet demonstrated it in practice?

MT: Exactly. The science had been proven conceptually through modelling and simulation, but we had to go and do some actual hardware testing, but that wasn’t an easy thing to test because nobody had a rocket we could use and nobody had a test site we could use, so we had to raise money to invest in those types of facilities. So we went on a demonstration journey, which was incredibly exciting. We were doing building block technologies and we were integrating experiments and exciting potential customers and investors about that, and thereby attracting more and more investment. But it was really challenging stuff, and a particular technology the company had to demonstrate was that you could supercool hot air, because when you go through air at hypersonic speeds, it gets very hot, like a thousand degrees centigrade hot. It’s like molten lava temperatures. You cannot use that air in the engine unless you cool it down. So we had to demonstrate the ability to cool it, which meant that we ended up building a high-temperature test facility in the Colorado prairies to do just that. We eventually had a test facility that was unique in the world that simulated hypersonic flight, demonstrated our cooler tank at full scale, and got everyone to believe that this was possible.

OB: I saw a clip before this that said you cooled the air down from a thousand degrees centigrade within one tenth of second, or something ridiculous like that.

MT: Yeah, one tenth or one twentieth of a second, so much less than the blink of an eye. And we proved that. We proved it to the satisfaction of the MOD, the UK Space Agency, the Pentagon [the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense (DoD), or as it’s now known, the Department of War], DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – an agency of the DoD], and the US Air Force, and off the back of that we got US Air Force and MOD contracts, but we took it in a slightly different direction. We realised that the rocket engine was a long play and that there was a more immediate demand, which was hypersonic aircraft for military applications, so we pivoted to take that tech and combine it with a jet engine to effectively make a hypersonic engine.

OB: So the major innovation was the cooling technology?

MT: That was of most government and commercial interest. And we realised partway through that that was the more valuable capability and technology, at least in the short-term, and the innovation that we were able to monetise most rapidly.

OB: Just going back to the testing quickly – you can obviously do some initial simulation testing to see if it works in theory, but how do you actually test something like that in practice? Because surely the technology itself and the materials are extremely expensive, so you don’t want to lose it all in one test? And of course you need an actual plane to attach the engine too, which can’t be cheap.

MT: So we had to take a cooler that was a metre in diameter, a couple of metres long, made up of thousands of micro tubes that had supercooled helium flowing through them and subject it to a huge amount of thousand-degrees centigrade air. And the way we delivered that air was using a fighter jet engine on full afterburner, pumping hot gas into a chamber and then diverted that gas through our cooler. And the test was super successful. I’ve done loads of testing over my time in Rolls-Royce and this was by far the most successful out-of-the-box test campaign I’ve ever been involved in. It was incredible. Just incredible. I mean, the feeling when it was validated was amazing. Because everything had to be built from the ground up: the test facility, the cooler…We had to ship the cooler from the UK to the US. We had to install everything. It had to fit and then we had to get this facility to work. I had a US team that created the hot gas, and my UK team that managed the technology experiment. And all of this came together and ended up being a huge success. And it all came out of a conversation with my head of the US business where we sat down and sketched something out on a napkin. We basically said, “What we need is a big hair dryer – something produces a lot of heat. What produces heat? Well, jet engines.” We ended up actually acquiring a stockpile of about 20 jet engines from the US Air Force.

OB: Wow. Just old jet engines that were out of commission?

MT: Yeah, old fighter jet, F4 Phantom engines. In fact, the one we used had actually flown in the Vietnam War.

OB: Wow. So, what was the feeling when it was validated? It must have been euphoric.

MT: It was amazing. I remember going back to the Pentagon with that same guy, my old head of the US team, he’s an incredible guy, Dr Adam Dissel, who now works in the space sector in the US, and we briefed the Under Secretary of Defense, and honestly, his first words were “I cannot think of another company in the world that could have pulled this off.” So I was thinking, “Write that down!” So I we thought we were off to the races, but unfortunately the reality with government funding is that it typically comes in stops and starts. We actually had a big gap before the Air Force took on our contract from DARPA, who had moved really quickly when we had applied for funding from them. Unfortunately, the Air Force was a bit slower to move, so we had to carry the company through a good 12 to 18 months after that experiment with other sources of funding before we saw the next contract.

OB: And was that reserves that you had from previous fundraising?

MT: Exactly, but then every one of those periods where we had to carry the business between contracts, we had to dig into those reserves, which made them shallower and shallower.

OB: And what’s the reason for these government contracts being stopped?

MT: I think some of it’s cultural. It’s just the way they do business. You have to go through a new procurement cycle, you have to work with new people. Sometimes it’s competitive, even if you’ve got the only technology in town. But I think it’s just that the handoffs are not slick enough, unfortunately. So DARPA did an amazing job with us, an amazing job. They loved the technology, they helped get us to that point alongside our own funding. When it came to the handoff to the Air Force, for some reason, something was dropped in that process and we had to go back, almost several steps to get the contract, which obviously slowed things down and created uncertainty, and reduced the depth of our reserves for the future. And unfortunately it’s a similar thing in the UK where, rather than taking a long-term view on a technology, everything is broken up into 12 to 18 month chunks, which is very short in the grand scheme of development cycles for technologies such as this, as we discussed. And that’s a major problem. Fortunately, though, I think it is changing, largely because of things like the situation in Ukraine, which has meant speedier procurement and fast-tracking of certain capabilities, but the more conventional procurement still goes through a life cycle that can be painful and can, I’m sad to say, kill small, innovative companies, because you just can’t just keep carrying a company through those periods indefinitely, and that’s unfortunately what happened at the end of Reaction Engines, a series of events where we were digging deeper and deeper into the company’s reserves until we realised we weren’t going to be able to bridge the next gap.

OB: And what would the next stage have been?

MT: On the hypersonic side, we had an engine tested and we were planning to put a vehicle around that and fly it. And on the cooling technology side, we had actually started that commercialisation journey with big customers and won multiyear, big figure contracts with Formula One and other industries. It’s quite sad, really, I walking around our offices at First Light one day with a notebook and a piece of paper fell out, and it was the sales pipeline from Reaction Engines, which showed we had an order book of over a hundred million pounds in sales, but that wasn’t enough unfortunately and the company went into administration regardless.

OB: Oh my God. That doesn’t seem to make any sense.

MT: Because of our cash flow and because we couldn’t bridge to those contracts and honour those sales, sadly it went the other way quite quickly.

OB: Clearly there was interest from government both in the UK and the US and you must have been in dialogue with various departments. Did they not sense any urgency?

MT: I think they did, but it was a classic situation where everyone was pointing at everyone else. We were very well-known to the UK government and the US government and I valued the conversations we had with both parties as we were going through that time, but I think the expectation was that our industry shareholders who had deep pockets would help us through it.

OB: So BAE Systems?

MT: Yeah, BAE systems and Rolls-Royce of course. We were talking about bridging to a fundraise and bridging to these contracts, and sadly, when we needed them most, they chose to sit on their hands. Perhaps they thought they could get what they needed through the administration process.

OB: Right, so pick off the scraps from the carcass?

MT: Yeah. It’s a sad statement, but I learned a lot of lessons from that experience. And it’s still a company that is often spoken about every time I go into government – somebody always talks to me about Reaction and how sad it was that it came to an end. And the technology continues, it’s still in Formula 1 cars, the technology is in other applications.

OB: And does anyone own the intellectual property now?

MT: Well, weirdly, the administration process has only just completed, so it’s not publicly known who’s acquired the IP. It looks likely to stay in the aerospace sector.

OB: It instinctively feels quite unjust. The people, the teams who are working on it, they won’t see any benefit from it, right?

MT: No, but that’s the thing we all collectively agreed on, which was if this was the end of our journey with this company, we just hoped the technology would go on to do useful things.

OB: Was it difficult to get people with that sort of skill level in the UK?

MT: It wasn’t a problem for Reaction because the company had such a high profile and the work was so exciting, but in my new sector, which is nuclear fusion, it is a challenge because fusion is highly competitive. There’re some really big companies out there that are well-funded with strong brands and PR, and there’s a real talent war at the moment.

OB: So, closing off that chapter, were your lessons, both in terms of managing a business but also in terms of reflections on the UK industry and the environment?

MT: It became apparent to me in Reaction that we needed to do the commercial bit sooner. So if I had the time again, I would have pushed the button on the commercial applications earlier on because we needed to get a commercial revenue stream in order to be less reliant on fundraising, and at least buy ourselves more time. That was one lesson. And then the other was that, although it would have been hard to do because I knew everybody personally and they were great people, as soon as the government funding became gapped – say an MOD contract ended – as much as I wanted to keep the people, I think I should have let some people go sooner and then hoped that we could get them back later, because it became a real burden to the company’s finances to maintain a full headcount, which ultimately contributed to the whole thing not working out, so it was a bit of a false economy ultimately. Because one other lesson for me was that I had 250 super talented people and I worried about them every single night. And actually, I didn’t need to because they all landed in amazing jobs very rapidly after it all came to end because they were so talented, so in hindsight they would also have been fine if the company had downsized before then. But like I say, it was an amazing experience.

OB: Lastly on Reaction, without wanting to get into unhelpful counterfactuals, but do you think things would have worked out differently had you been headquartered in the US, for example?

MT: I think, unfortunately, they would have done, yeah. The US government was desperate to help us. We just felt unable to reach over the water and really do what they needed us to do, but I do feel this business would have been so much more successful in the US, as much as it pains me to say.

OB: It’s a tale as old as time, it seems.

MT: Exactly.

First Light Fusion: The Next Chapter and the Promise of Permapower

“It’s the equivalent of a thousand lightning bolts striking simultaneously in the space of one-and-a-half microseconds. So we get all of the current that flows around the national grid in the US for one and a half microseconds”

“I think here we spend too long trying to understand what the safe bets are and by the time we work it out, we’re too late…On something like this that’s strategic that has the potential to be a sovereign capability with real national and energy security implications and potential, we have to be prepared to take more risks.”

OB: But now, First Light Fusion, an extremely exciting company. Firstly, what is the promise of fusion? Why is there so much hype around it?

MT: When I explain fusion, I always start with something that causes my scientists to raise their eyebrows, but fusion promises abundant clean energy, and in theory, there’s enough energy in a glass of water to power a city if you can do fusion. The fuel actually comes mostly from seawater, and it’s clean, safe, and secure. But you basically have to produce the sun on Earth, and it’s unbelievably difficult. It’s the extremes of everything – literally. Everything from pressure to temperature, to get to the conditions you need to achieve a fusion reaction, and then you’ve got to get more energy out than you put in, which is a huge challenge. There are very few companies that can pull this off at the moment, but there’s an entire industry of effort working towards it. It could be the last source of energy the planet ever needs.

OB: It very much feels like the Holy Grail of all scientific innovations.

MT: It is, and the old adage I still hear it today is that fusion’s always 30 years away. Well it’s actually not 30 years away anymore. There’ve been incredible breakthroughs in the last few years and a massive emergence of the private fusion sector, incredible amounts of funding, some very smart technology solutions and the conversation’s moving from the science and the engineering to the commercialisation and actual construction of fusion power plants now, which is crazy.

OB: What is the technology that First Light is pioneering and how did you become involved in the first place?

MT: There are many different solutions for fusion, but the two top-level categories are magnetic confinement fusion and inertial confinement fusion. So simplistically, magnetic confinement fusion is like a superheated plasma that operates like a furnace and is held in place with magnets. You have to run it continuously and it’s very challenging. And then with inertial confinement fusion, you actually shoot pulses of energy at pellets of fuel to provoke a fusion reaction, and we’re in that inertial space, so we are the inertial fusion company in the UK. We use electrical pulsed power, which means creating, storing and discharging energy rapidly, creating large amounts of current, and that converts to electromagnetic forces that can crush capsules of fuel and hopefully get a fusion reaction. And as you can imagine, that’s really hard. You need to put a huge amount of power in. So we have that capability, but the other invention the company has is a technology that increases the likelihood of a fusion reaction by intensifying the power that is generated at by the fuel. So we convert energy into power very effectively and we call that technology amplifier technology because it amplifies the effect and therefore we can use lower power and still get the same result.

OB: So, to me, amplifying sounds like you’re creating something from nothing.

MT: Well, we kind of are, actually. It’s a super smart device and totally fascinating, and we do that by basically manipulating shock waves. Shock waves are very powerful on their own as they are, but if you can reshape them and get them to interact with one another in a certain way, they can magnify and intensify. So we basically take planar shock waves and we intensify them and reshape them to wrap around fuel capsules to cause them to collapse with even greater force. Ultimately, fusion needs temperature, density, and confinement time to happen. And you can get that effect using our technology.

OB: And what is the fuel in the capsule?

MT: We use hydrogen. There are other fuels, but we use two hydrogen isotopes – deuterium and tritium. Deuterium comes from seawater, so that’s great, there’s lots of that around. Tritium however is really hard to source and it’s one of the most scarce and valuable isotopes on the planet.

OB: Our old friend hydrogen, back again!

MT: Indeed. But there’s only about 30 kilograms of tritium on the planet, and everyone needs it. But actually it’s a relatively short-term problem. Once fusion power plants start operating they’ll also produce tritium as a byproduct.

OB: Oh wow, so it’s self-perpetuating, in a way?

MT: Yeah, but somebody needs to get it started! So whoever controls that is in a very strong position. But these are basically tiny, and I mean truly tiny, capsules of hydrogen fuel, like a couple of millimetres in diameter, that release more energy than a barrel of oil –easily more energy than a barrel of oil. But you have to repeat the process over and over again. And at the moment, the maximum people can achieve is once a day.

OB: So, engineering-wise, what are the constraints at the moment?

MT: Well even before the engineering there are still science problems, particularly the gain challenge of producing more energy than you put in. So we’re focused on achieving maximum gains. We want to get a gain of something like a thousand times more energy out than in at the fuel. And then you’re into the engineering challenges. You’ve got to build a reactor that operates multiple times a day. Maybe that reaction happens once every 10 or 20 seconds. You have to recycle material, you have to remove waste, you have to extract the energy. So one of the slightly odd things about fusion power plants is that it’s some of the most extreme, sophisticated, cutting-edge physics and science, but around that reaction, you have a standard steam power plant with conventional generators. So it’s almost like a marriage between technology as old as the industrial revolution with the next generation. But given how many companies are in this space, people are now putting serious effort into the system design and the engineering and there are first-of-a-kind fusion power plants being built. Those first-of-a-kind are going to be very big and very expensive, they’re not going to be required for power plants, but they will do a lot of useful stuff and they will really derisk that next step for everyone else. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the places to watch at the moment are the US and China. China’s building four of the biggest fusion reactors on Earth right now.

OB: Wow. And what is the dominant technology globally at the moment? Is it inertial fusion or is it magnetic?

MT: Globally it’s split 50:50 at the moment, but there are different flavours of the two. The interesting thing about China is that they’re hedging their bets and building one of every type. We can’t afford to do that in the UK, but I think we’ve gone too far the other way by only really supporting one technology and one project. I am behind the national endeavour, but not exclusively. I think we should be doing other things because there is no clear winner yet. It’s too early, and there’s too much at stake. Strategically, it’s a huge prize, and we need to be part of it. So, I would say complement the national endeavour with some other things, including First Light, of course!

OB: And what are the respective strengths and weaknesses of both technologies?

MT: Well they’re effectively on a par at the moment. They’re both very technically challenging, and they both will meet, I believe, the ultimate objective of continuous clean energy. But I suppose if you break it down, magnetic confinement fusion is probably best suited to continuous supply of power. Whereas with inertial you can switch it on and off very quickly, so it’s best-placed to provide a solution to intermittency [when renewable energy sources aren’t producing energy, for example when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing]. What you need is something that’s additive to the grid, that’s more agile. The other thing I will say is that inertial confinement is dual-use [has both civilian and military applications]. The work we do is in aid of both energy and National security, and that’s less the case with magnetic, which is much more of a pure energy play. So we consider ourselves a dual-use company. We’re already working in space, defence and other areas.

OB: Can you give us a sense of the scale and the magnitude of the power that the machines you’re working with are capable of?

MT: Going back to what drew me to First Light, I walked in expecting to find a lab or people at computers. And I did find those things, but what I also saw was some really impressive, almost globally unique machines that worked in these enormous facilities, and it was all joined together, including the data science, the computational figures, modelling, simulation, manufacturing, testing – it all just worked. It was a real surprise to me that this company had these machines that only otherwise exist in multi-billion dollar facilities in the US. So, as an example, we have the second largest pulsed power machine in the world, and the largest sits in New Mexico and is actually near Los Alamos [where the Manhattan Project, which developed and built the atomic bombs used in WW2 was based], in a place called Sandia National Labs near Albuquerque [also the setting for Breaking Bad]. And that machine does work for the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. We have the next biggest machine in Oxfordshire. And our machine, when we discharge it, the electrical current generated is the equivalent of the entire US national grid.

OB: I can’t even begin to fathom that.

MT: And that just gives you an idea of the extremes you have to go to to make this work. It’s the equivalent of a thousand lightning bolts striking simultaneously in the space of one-and-a-half microseconds. So we get all of the current that flows around the national grid in the US for one and a half microseconds, and that converts to electromagnetic force to create the reaction. And we do all sorts of things with that machine. We do fusion experiments, we do materials research, we do radiation experiments, and a whole host of other things.

OB: And are those experiments to complement the development of the technology?

MT: Exactly right, and to develop new versions of our amplifier that have different applications. Added to that, we have gas guns that can fire projectiles at hypersonic speeds, which is another way to impart energy into something. So our projectile has about two megajoules of energy going at 15,000 miles per hour, and these are big guns and they’ll impact with a material sample or an amplifier. So, in summary, in our relatively modest facilities in Oxford, we’re now able to reproduce conditions that only exist in multi-billion-dollar facilities in the US. There is a facility in California called the National Ignition Facility that has achieved a positive gain of just over four, and that uses 192 lasers to achieve that gain. It’s massive. It’s the size of several football pitches. It’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen in my life, actually, in terms of the scale of engineering. But it also a very clear reminder of just how hard fusion is, and also that’s not a viable basis for a power plant. So somebody’s going to have to take that scientific facility and work out how to engineer a power plant using similar principles. And that work is going on at the moment.

OB: You mentioned carrying out simulations earlier. I noticed that AI features prominently on your website as a key feature of First Light’s offering. What does AI allow you to do? And the models that you’re using and developing procured or are they proprietary and in-house?

MT: The AI-fusion synergy is really strong. It’s a virtuous circle, really. AI hyperscalers are driving the need for energy, and energy can’t be satisfied easily, but fusion can help bridge that gap, which creates a mutually beneficial arrangement, and AI is accelerating everybody’s fusion plans. Ours is developed in-house and it’s used to carry out our simulation optimisation because these are super complex problems – we have maybe 50 parameters that we’re trying to optimise. It’s beyond human capability to do that, so we do dial in AI to help us. And then going forward it will speed up that whole process, so we’re looking to see how we can move from using AI for discovery to helping us improve our productivity throughout our entire workflow.

OB: Is there any way that you could potentially end up automating the experiments using AI?

MT: Yeah, I think so. I do think we can get it properly closed loop. Yeah, so we do most of our work on a isolated secure networks and we can’t tap into some of the frontier models at the moment because our work is too commercially sensitive. So right now it’s all in-house and what we’re looking for is a sovereign solution. We’re trialling something currently that we think looks potentially really good so we’re likely to be announcing more partnerships in that area.

OB: And have you got milestones that you’ll be held to by funders?

MT: Yeah, we signed up to some pretty tough milestones in our last fundraising. Ambitious ones, which to be fair we knew we had to do. It’s nice to have them now with investor support and seeing the investors see the value over the remaining ten months. We have three big scientific milestones, a big commercial milestone, and then a strategic partnership milestone. The scientific milestones are where most people’s eyes are drawn because they’re chunky, they’re meaningful, and they really do underpin our fusion plan. And the good news is we can do that work in our own facilities, so we’re not hostage to somebody else’s plans.

OB: What are the lessons that you’re applying from your time at Reaction to First Light? Are you trying to commercialise some science or technologies or applications of the technologies you’ve developed?

MT: Definitely. We pushed the commercialisation button early, so that’s definitely a lesson learned from Reaction. And I’m really glad we did because we’re now getting traction and we’re looking forward to growing commercial revenue in space, defence and materials science. And it’s a long process. So from first contact with customers to a contract being signed is about 12 months, so we needed to start early. We did also restructure the business. It became very apparent that we had to lay down a cash runway to give ourselves a fighting chance to survive, so hard as it was, we did the restructuring bit early. And then I think it was about building a relationship with the investors, but also storytelling, because there’s been lot of change in a short space of time. We’ve had to really work on our storytelling and still are, so I still go out to investors, to partners, to customers, to government and they’re still a little bit unclear about what we are and what we’re trying to be, so more effort on storytelling is a big part of what we’re now doing.

OB: How much skepticism do you still encounter from people who say “Oh this has been promised for ages and it’s never been delivered”?

MT: Often. I had one literally two hours ago. But I think you can now point to stuff that’s real evidence: scientific achievements, papers, publications, growing investment, companies delivering milestones. There’s real, concrete momentum behind this now. This time it really is different.

OB: Are most of your investors are private or public?

MT: Yeah, our investors are almost exclusively private. 95 plus per cent private investors. We do now have a government stake in the business and that was in the last round.

OB: £25 million was it?

MT: Yeah, we did £25 million in the first close of the current fundraise and £5 million came from the government through the Atomic Energy Authority, and that’s great. It’s increasingly difficult to raise private money for this stuff if you don’t have government support because that causes people to raise their eyebrows and wonder why the government’s not behind it. And it’s different in the US, it’s different in Germany, it’s different in Japan. So for me, it wasn’t about the quantum, it was just about the vote of confidence, and I can then take that out to the private community.

OB: And going back to my question about Reaction, are there any pressures to relocate to the US?

MT: We’re talking to the US a lot, we’re very well understood in the US, and we will put something in the US. But we’re a UK company and our majority of our people, although we’re very diverse, multinational group, are UK-based. They live in or around Oxford so I wouldn’t want to ask them all to move. It’s basically impossible to relocate all those people. So we’re staying here for the foreseeable.

OB: Do you think the government is moving fast enough in this area? Do you think the investor community is where it needs to be in order to realise the ambition and for the UK to be a leader in this?

MT: I think the UK will be in the top five in the world in fusion, but I suppose the slightly sad fact is we have the science lead and we might be letting go of the commercialisation lead and losing that race. I think the commercialisation race is going to be won by the US or China, probably followed by Germany. In the last couple of years or so, I would say Germany’s developed elite status, and I think they’re on a charge now. So the UK goal for a prototype reactor to be connected to the grid by 2040 really needs to be revised and accelerated.

OB: And how have Germany made that leap? Have they just translated the research more effectively?

MT: They’ve taken a much more strategic approach and they’ve really brought together government, academia, innovators with big, highly credible engineering companies and they’ve tapped into new sources of funding, most notably the funding that was allocated for nuclear decommissioning, which has supercharged their efforts. So going back to the capital question, we just don’t have that access to capital here. A two-and-a-half-billion-pound commitment over five years from DESNZ [the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero] for STEP [Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production – the UK’s national, flagship programme for bringing government and industry together to develop fusion energy] is a big commitment and I’m totally behind it, but it’s very hard to see where the other pockets of capital are, and it’s dwarfed by what’s happening in the US, obviously.

OB: Why is that? What is the gap there? Why are we just not able to access that capital?

MT: Our investors in the UK just aren’t as patient and are more risk averse. We don’t have the risk appetite of some of the US investors. The US investors will back the companies that say they’re going to go big and they’ll take the risk that they may fail, whereas I think here we spend too long trying to understand what the safe bets are and by the time we work it out, we’re too late. And continuity is important as well, you want to see investment building over time. On something like this that’s strategic that has the potential to be a sovereign capability with real national and energy security implications and potential, we have to be prepared to take more risks. And we probably more cross-departmental coordination because, as I’ve said, fusion is more than just energy. In several respect it is a dual-use technology. It’s about security, defence, and absolutely about prosperity.

Quickfire

OB: What’s the most memorable moment from your career?

MT: I suppose there are two things that stand out for me. One was at Rolls-Royce where the programme I was most heavily involved in and for which I was Chief Engineer and Technical Director, which was the EJ200 engine for the Eurofighter Typhoon, a Four Nation programme. And I vividly remember like it was yesterday the day we stood up the first RAF Typhoon squadron at RAF Coningsby, which was in 2006, and being there on that day. It was just the most amazing experience to see this come together as a squadron of aircraft that went out to do a mission over the North Sea and came back. There’s a thing called the Typhoon Grin that pilots get after they’ve flown one of them where they can’t stop smiling because they’ve had so much fun. So that was amazing because it was a really hard programme and ran for many years, fighting loads of obstacles, including political ones, but standing up that first RAF squadron was just the most amazing experience. And then probably the second one was at Reaction when we built our test facility in Colorado and switched that on for the first time. It was awesome – standing in the Colorado prairies, looking at the Rocky Mountains, knowing that you owned a hypersonic test facility that was unique in the world.

OB: What’s a book that you’d recommend?

MT: I’m an avid reader, I read all the time, and I particularly read military nonfiction and anything by Max Hastings. I’ve got every single one of his books. Many of them have been signed because he lives in the next town over to me. But actually I would recommend the book I was recommended to read when I joined First Light, called The Making of the Atomic Bomb by a guy called Richard Rhodes.

OB: Funnily enough, he was going to write a book about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, whose project leader was Lyn Evans from Aberdare, who I interviewed, and he said that Richard Rhodes had come to Geneva to interview him for it, although he wasn’t sure if he’d ever finish the book because he was in his mid-90s. But the book’s been on my list for a while.

MT: It’s excellent. It’s a Pulitzer Prize winner. Not an easy read. 750 pages. It’s like the Oppenheimer story plus and it’s all about the origins of atomic physics right through the 1900s and all the early work that was done, culminating in the Trinity Test [the world’s first nuclear weapon detonation]. It’s the most incredible book, and I was actually recommended to read it by my lead scientist, who said, “If you really want to understand scientists in this fusion world, read this book.” And I read it cover to cover during a business trip, and it’s stuck with me since.

OB: A fun fact about you?

MT: I was born on the actual day Rolls-Royce was famously declared bankrupt, on the 4^th of February 1971.

OB: No way! What are the odds of that? There must be some sort of cosmic alignment there.

MT: Possibly! [Listen a two-part series on the collapse and recovery of Rolls-Royce on the A Long Time in Finance podcast below]

OB: How do you start your day normally?

MT: I’m first up in the house when I’m home and I go and have breakfast with my three dogs sitting at the table, I’m afraid to say.

OB: The dogs are at the table as well?!

MT: Yep, they’re three pugs, they’re all individual characters, so the one time they’re allowed to sit at the table is when I’m having breakfast and then they get a small piece of toast for keeping me company while I’m doing my emails, watching the news and readying myself for the day. But that’s my guilty secret.

OB: Are you an early riser?

MT: Yeah, I am.

OB: What time are we talking?

MT: Well, the dogs get me up early so I wouldn’t say I’m naturally an early riser, but they’ll be barking from about 5:30/6am. I think they know they’re on to a good thing.

OB: And what’s your favourite invention?

MT: I’d love to say the jet engine. It’s obviously changed the world, but my favourite is probably the coffee machine. I’m an absolute coffee addict and I get tremendous pleasure from a well-made coffee.

OB: Maybe you guys should spin off a side company where you design the world’s best coffee machine.

MT: Well, I’ve had a challenge from somebody’s daughter to design a fusion-powered air fryer so she can have chips anywhere in the world at a second’s notice!

OB: I think that would give you a good revenue stream to keep First Light going for a while. Mark Thomas, thank you very much.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn here.

To watch a lecture on Reaction Engines’ science delivered by Mark at the Royal Aerospace Society Bristol branch, click the video below:

Every country needs a bit of hope for the future - hope that things will continue to improve, or as it stands currently, just not continue to get worse. And often, those hopes are placed on to the next generation. It’s them we look to for signs of vitality, ambition and confidence. Often, if we see some sparks of potential on the horizon, it gives us a modicum of reassurance that things might just be okay in the end after all.

Part of the reason I started Cylch in the first place was to spotlight Welsh contributions to the world, and a smaller but very specific part of that was to spotlight young Welsh talent who have the potential to be the next generation of Welsh industrialists, business tycoons and captains of industry, who can serve as inspirations for future young Welsh people and help to give Wales the international standing and esteem that it so dearly needs and deserves, which is the point of this article.

As with every country, Wales does not lack talent, but what it does seem to lack by and large are a sufficient number of channels and mechanisms for finding that talent, cultivating it, and giving it a platform to launch from.

I’m sure things are getting better, and of course the founders I’m about to introduce are counterexamples to my previous argument, but the problem is that I think they are notable by their apparent rarity. Wales can and should punch far above its weight. Yes, we are still a relatively poor nation, which makes everything more difficult, but there’s no reason we can’t have 100, 1000, or 10,000 of the kinds of people who feature in this article. All we need is the political drive and the cross-society and cross-economy coordination to identify young people’s talents, put them on the right path, and give them the tools, the environment, and the mindset to thrive, and to go out into the world and conquer it.

Hopefully the people below can inspire some other younger people coming through the system back home to pursue a career of ambition and optimism. Collectively, their start-ups have raised over £75m, and only one of the 10 has gotten to series B, so there is potentially much more to come. So watch this space.

1. Cai Linton – CEO at Multus, London

Based in London’s White City, Multus was founded as a spin-out from Imperial College London, where Cai and his co-founders were studying. During their master’s, they recognised that while cell engineering and bioreactor technology had advanced significantly, most cell culture media used for developing biomanufactured products today still relied on formulations developed over 60 years ago. This is largely because media development is intrinsically hard. Cell culture media are liquid or gel solutions designed to support the growth, survival, and multiplication of cells outside their natural habitat. A typical media formulation contains 60+ interacting ingredients, meaning there are a practically infinite number of possible combinations of varying concentrations. Conventional approaches lack the infrastructure to capture performance data at this scale, forcing researchers to test only a tiny fraction of possible formulations, and without systematic data generation and analysis, most formulations remain massively under-optimised, making media a source of significant untapped potential. With its novel approach and unique platform, Multus is now accelerating biomanufacturing breakthroughs with AI, robotics and expertise-driven, cell-specific culture media solutions. Multus has built the first data-driven design process for cell culture media. Unlike conventional approaches, it can generate rich performance data at scale. Its machine learning models extract insights from thousands of parallel experiments, while machine learning algorithms optimise formulations across multiple objectives with unprecedented speed and efficiency. Applications include life-extending medicines to climate-resilient foods, To date, Multus has raised $23.8m across four funding rounds.

Multus - Home

Cai Linton | LinkedIn

2. Fred White – CCO at DEScycle, London and Teesside

DEScycle is a company, spun-out from the University of Leicester, that is using a novel class of chemicals called ‘deep eutectic solvents’ to energy-efficiently recover critical minerals and precious metals from electronic waste. The goal is to improve the UK’s economic and national sovereignty and security, by strengthening domestic supply chains and allowing us to be less reliant on imports from potentially adversarial nations such as China, who have a chokehold over critical minerals, which are essential for so many technologies that modern life and industry is dependent on. Fred, also an Imperial graduate, originally from Cowbridge in South Wales, helped found the company after joining from Medea Capital Partners, which was looking to fund the commercialisation of the technology. Fred and his colleague found the idea and its potential so exciting that they decided to help co-found the company and join its executive team. This year, DEScycle announced over £10m in funding for its series A, and recently opened its demonstration plant in Wilton Park in Teesside, on the old Imperial Chemical Industries site, where the then-Minister for Industry, Chris McDonald, joined them for the unveiling. DEScycle also recently featured in The Telegraph given concerns about the lack of support being provided by government, and the number of other countries trying to tempt them to relocate. To read my interview with Fred, follow this link White Heat: Securing Britain’s Critical Minerals Future at Room Temperature.

DEScycle - Home

Fred White | LinkedIn

3. Dr Tom Heenan – CEO at Gaussion, London

Gaussion is a battery performance spin-out from University College London, co-founded by Dr Tom Heenan, its CEO, a PhD in Chemical Engineering who is originally from South Wales, having attended Olchfa school and was at one point Visiting Foreign National at NASA. Batteries already are, and will increasingly consolidate their position as, one of the key strategic technologies of the future, and given the increased demand for batteries and for electricity, and the demands placed on batteries by energy systems themselves, getting the most from our batteries and improving their performance will be both a strategic and economic priority. Using sophisticated magnetic technology, Gaussion’s innovation is that it is able to manipulate the movement of ions in batteries in such a way that it reduces electronic resistance at the particle level, thereby helping batteries charge faster, generate less heat and perform better — supporting longer battery life without requiring a redesign of the cell. The possibilities are transformative, and have applications across several key industries. Gaussion recently raised £21m in its series B funding round.

Gaussion - Home

Tom Heenan | LinkedIn

4. Dr Sioned Fôn Jones – COO at BoobyBiome, London

Some facts: over 50% of a baby’s microbiome is seeded by their mother, with breast milk providing the largest contribution. 20% of the sugars in breast milk can’t be digested by babies, rather, they exist to feed the “good bacteria” in the infant gut, helping shape gut health. Finally, the very first bacteria babies acquire after birth can halve the risk of hospitalisation with lung infections in early childhood. It’s clear therefore that the microbiome found in breast milk is critical for infant health. The company was founded by Sioned and her co-founders Lydia and Tara after realising how understudied breast milk microbiome was and learning that the benefits of breast milk extend past nutrition. BoobyBiome transforms cutting-edge breast milk microbiome research into safe, innovative solutions to give every baby the foundation for lifelong health. They have developed a suite of products that ensure every baby has access to the beneficial bacteria found in breast milk. Sioned and her colleagues are supported by a team of skilled scientists, world-leading advisors and academics from the renowned UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health. Last year, BoobyBiome secured £2.5m of funding in its seed round.

BoobyBiome - Home

Dr. Sioned Fôn Jones | LinkedIn

5. Owain Pryce-Jones – CTO at Archangel Lightworks, Oxford

Space is the final physical frontier of human expansion - although its horizons are admittedly infinite - and markets are now waking up to the potential that space holds as a commercial prospect, hence the hype around and resulting valuation of Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Archangel Lightworks is looking to capitalise on that opportunity. Archangel Lightworks is a laser communications (lasercom) company building high-volume, secure, wireless technology to create the space-enabled networks of the future. The challenge they’re trying to solve is that the standard technology of radio frequency connections between satellites and terrestrial networks are bandwidth-constrainted and finite, with the result being that, today, nearly three billion people are still not connected to digital networks and many more are under-connected, as well as radio frequency being insecure and vulnerable to interception and disruption from bad actors. Furthermore, subsea cables, the backbone of global network infrastructure, are also increasingly at risk from climate disaster and political sabotage. Laser communications, however, offer the possibility of more resilient connectivity, wherever it is needed, helping to address some of Earth’s most critical challenges, from economic inclusion to climate change monitoring. However, adoption of the technology has been slow due to availability concerns, lack of interoperability standards, and high production costs. Archangel is solving the problem by driving down the size, weight, power and cost of optical ground equipment to make space-ground lasercom affordable and therefore more accessible. Furthermore, compared to traditional networks such as radio, Archangel’s product allows more data to transmitted at low probability of detection (LPD) and low probability of interception (LPI), and its deployable optical ground stations allow for connectivity in regions without existing infrastructure or where existing infrastructure is vulnerable. The company argues that its product is the most convenient way for cloud providers, network operators and governments to immediately deploy secure, high-volume connectivity to and from space. In 2021, Archangel won Start-up of the Year at the British Engineering Excellence Awards, and earlier this year announced the successful close of an oversubscribed £10 million Series A funding round to accelerate the commercialisation of its deployable optical ground station, with investors including the government’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund. Owain, the CTO, is from North Wales, having attended Ysgol y Berwyn in Bala and graduated with a master’s in Aerospace Engineering from Manchester University.

Archangel Lightworks - Home

Owain Pryce-Jones | LinkedIn

6. Llŷr Anwyl – COO at WASE, Bristol

With energy prices as high as they are, and businesses and governments looking to increase their resilience to international energy shortages and supply chain shocks, and increasing concerns about minimising waste, or at least better utilising it, WASE has developed a solution that taps into the opportunity presented by the intersection of those challenges. Founded in 2017 by Llyr the COO, and his colleagues Thomas and William, WASE maximises biogas production through a waste-to-energy solution. Traditional waste-to-energy technology uses anaerobic digestion which can be slow and inefficient. WASE has developed a small, modular, plug-and-play electro-methanogenic reactor, using specially designed bio-electrodes to produce biogas for energy generation, which can boost energy production by 30%, treat waste 3-10x faster, all while leaving a 70% smaller carbon footprint. The company raised £8.5m in seed funding in 2024 from investors such as Hitachi Ventures and Engie. Llyr himself has a background in agriculture and as a civil engineer, he previously led the implementation of bioenergy facilities for farms in Wales.

WASE - Home

Llŷr Anwyl | LinkedIn

7. George Smithies – innDex, London (and worldwide)

Construction is an industry whose productivity has stayed nearly flat for decades - in many ways defying the physics of economics and business. We’ve seen some of this borne out in catastrophic delays and cost overruns on infrastructure projects, not just in Britain, but around the world. However, one company is looking to change that. George, who studied at Ysgol Gyfun Aberdaugleddau, founded innDex in 2018 in partnership with his co-founder, Aaron, after meeting at Cardiff University during their Civil Engineering degree. innDex is a toolbox to digitalise, centralise, streamline and surface site management comms, documentation and project management tracking, by cutting out outdated paper-based systems and simplifying complex workflows so that they become intuitive and seamless. innDex also connects the dizzying array of stakeholders across modern infrastructure projects who otherwise would be operating in their respective silos, to ensure that disparate teams stay aligned, project sequencing happens optimally and nothing project-critical is missed by anyone who needs to know it. Furthermore, innDex connects the whole site and supply chain with secure, auditable data to provide a single-source of truth and improve data reliability and decision-making. To-date, innDex has supported over 25,000 companies and over 2,000 active sites with a combined project value of £155bn. That’s nearly as much as one whole HS2! (I’m joking! For now…) Remarkably and uniquely, innDex has run a bootstrapped funding model so far, and has funded its operations and significant domestic and international growth and expansion entirely through revenue generated from its work. Well done, innDex!

innDex - Home

George Smithies CEng MICE | LinkedIn

8. Talfan Evans – CEO at Cursive, London

Cursive is a brand new AI lab building frontier intelligence, having emerged from stealth mode very recently. The company is developing AI agents that learn and improve continuously from real-world use, building foundation models for behavioural prediction and long-horizon reasoning. This is arguably one of the most important frontiers in AI research, although apparently currently pursued by only a handful of labs globally. Started by senior DeepMind (one of the world’s leading AI labs, bought by Google and responsible for Gemini and the revolutionary protein-folding algorithm AlphaFold) alumni, including the CEO Talfan Evans, who helped build some of Google’s most advanced AI systems, Cursive was founded to build a new infrastructure stack for generative AI, moving it from early experimentation into something embedded across real software systems. This requires fundamentally new R&D, and the ability to test ideas at scale. Earlier this year, Cursive was one of only a few British AI companies to be given access to sovereign compute (chips that allows AI models to train and learn) on the UK government’s supercomputer, Isambard, based in Bristol, by the UK’s AI venture capital fund, Sovereign AI - thereby providing critical support to Cursive in achieving its ambitions and supporting future scaling. Cursive’s belief is that the future of AI will not be decided by raw capability alone, but by systems that make intelligence useful, inspectable, adaptable, and aligned with human judgment. As well as being a DeepMind alumnus, Talfan is an Oxford and UCL grad, still studying for a PhD at UCL in Computational Neuroscience, Space and Memory (a similar path taken by DeepMind founder, CEO and Nobel Prize winner, Sir Demis Hassabis). Alongside Cursive and his PhD, Talfan also remarkably runs Clay VC, an angel syndicate investing in early stage startups in the creative AI space, as well as being a personal investor, having been a first round investor in now-superstar companies including ElevenLabs, Mistral, Lovable and Cusp AI. So he’s got a track-record…

Cursive - Home

Talfan Evans | LinkedIn

Talfan Evans

See also Talfan and his co-founders with Minister for AI and MP for the Vale of Glamorgan, Kanishka Narayan in the photo below:

9. Rhiannon Rees – CEO at PlantSea, North Wales and Liverpool

Plastic pollution as we all know is a major problem, and there have been major efforts to reduce consumption of plastic or replace it with alternative materials, all of which are noble, and some of which have been successful. The reality is that plastic is in many ways a miracle substance, extremely versatile, cheap to manufacture, and also has characteristics that make it indispensable for many modern applications. So something that is going to replace it has to have both cost and performance-parity. This is precisely what PlantSea is aiming to do. Co-founded by Dr Rhiannon Rees, PlantSea is developing plastic-free laundry capsules by replacing traditional films with water-soluble polymers derived from abundant and rapidly regenerating seaweed. (Its polymer is a blend of several seaweed species grown in Scottish and Irish waters) And unlike many companies in the past that have relied largely on the good will and guilty consciences of consumers to purchase more sustainable but more expensive products, PlantSea is acutely aware of the challenges of consumer adoption and industrial integration. Their work currently is highly focused on compatibility with existing manufacturing systems and ensuring that their product provides a seamless, drop-in solution. It has already tested its seaweed-based film on existing production lines and proven it runs smoothly. With funding from the Henry Royce Institute and the Centre for Process Innovation, PlantSea is now scaling from 450 litres of production to 5,000 as part of the Industrial Collaboration Programme, with CPI delivering the biorefining scale-up and Royce Manchester analysing and characterising the polymer at every volume, to demonstrate exactly how the material behaves as production grows. This ensures that when a film manufacturer asks how PlantSea’s seaweed-based polymer performs at industrial scale, the answer will be backed by data. To-date, PlantSea has raised £1.8m in funding from a mix of crowdfunding, private investors, and public grants.

PlantSea - Home

Rhiannon Rees | LinkedIn

Can seaweed solve our plastic problem? - CNN

10. Stephen Cowley - CEO at Pharosyn, London

Particularly with the advent of AI, the pharmaceutical landscape is becoming extremely competitive and evolving rapidly. Businesses looking to maintain an edge in the sector have to maintain awareness of competitor and sector developments to ensure they remain at the cutting edge. Stephen Cowley from North Wales, having attended the famous Ysgol David Hughes, graduated from Cambridge in the top 5% of his class, gone through the esteemed Entrepreneurs First programme, and joined a neurotech start-up for whom he built their first AI models, founded Pharosyn last year to address this problem. Pharosyn is an AI platform for biopharma competitor intelligence. It uses AI to continuously write strategic reports on clinical, regulatory and commercial events involving competitor organisations, empowering pharma and biotech teams with full competitor visibility. Pharosyn raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funding last year from backers such as Stephen’s alma mater, Entrepreneurs First and Transpose.

Pharosyn | Home

Stephen Cowley | LinkedIn

Honourable Mention: Ffion Llewellyn – Founding Engineer at Oshen, Plymouth

With increasing numbers of decentralised assets in the ocean, such as offshore wind turbines, which require frequent monitoring, inspection and maintenance, as well as increasingly unpredictable and extreme weather which requires more accurate data to analyse and predict, and rapidly rising global tensions and the ocean once again being used as an arena for greyzone warfare, also requiring continuous monitoring, having better tools to do all of this is essential, and crucially, to be able to do so at scale. Oshen produces ocean robots that can navigate the harsh conditions of the ocean autonomously and stay deployed for months on end without human intervention, all the while staying connected and reporting in real-time, operating as constellations of fleets, all interconnected. As offshore projects scale to ambitious levels, the current data supply chain has become a bottleneck for reliable environmental intelligence. Currently, the data needed to forecast hurricanes, protect critical infrastructure, and detect undersea threats arrives too sparsely, too late, or not at all, thereby reducing the ability for fast decisions, or well-informed decisions, creating an intelligence lag that costs millions in avoidable downtime. Most ocean monitoring relies on costly, static buoys and crewed vessels, leaving massive gaps in ocean data. Oshen closes the gap with swarms of one-metre robots that sail themselves across oceans for months at a time and stream weather and acoustic intelligence in real time. Scaling single-unit platforms to constellation-levels would unlock a completely new level of ocean intelligence. Founded in 2022, Ffion Llewellyn, in Imperial College graduate from Cardiff joined as the Founding Engineer, and has been with the company every step of the way. To date, Oshen has received small pots of funding from UKRI and Defra, however, most significantly it received £2m in grant funding from the UK government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) to build a climate early-warning system in the North Atlantic.

Oshen | Home

Ffion Llewellyn | LinkedIn

“Your phone, your laptop, even down to the electronics that underpin your fridge and ovens and large goods like that, they all contain a large amount of precious and critical metals. And at the moment, most of that actually goes to landfill. So we saw that as a huge, untapped opportunity…In terms of market size, the sky’s the limit. What we’re competing against and where we’re looking to capture market share is replacing a multi-billion dollar capex investment infrastructure piece, which is smelting, which runs off 1,400 degrees Celsius temperatures, massive energy costs, not the most environmentally friendly by any stretch of the imagination, and replacing that with something that costs orders of magnitude lower. We can build these DEScycle recycling facilities for as low as £20, 30 million. So it’s a massive step change. And where we’re coming at it from is a decentralised network of recycling infrastructure, rather than a globalised central hub, which is the current model. And the only way we can achieve that is, typically you’ve never been able to build a small enough smelter because you need massive economies of scale, whereas we don’t need those economies of scale with DEScycle. So we can start actually really, really small with just a few thousand tons of e-scrap throughput a year, and then scale to almost any size.”

Background

OB: Where were you born and raised?

FW: I was born and raised in Cowbridge in South Wales, so just outside of the Valleys. I spent all my life playing rugby around there and went to school at Cowbridge Comprehensive all the way up until I was 18.

OB: Cowbridge were always a handy side. Did you guys ever win the Welsh Cup?

FW: Not in my year but a few years above and below us did, so they always had the bragging rights unfortunately!

OB: What did you do after school?

FW: I went to Imperial College, at the Royal School of Mines there, where I studied Geology for four years on an integrated master’s course. I was really drawn to the natural resources side of things, rather than fossils and older rocks, even though I do have a passion for those, to my wife’s dismay.

I had a great experience in industry there and went out to Zambia for a while, working for a company called First Quantum Minerals. It was basically a research internship in a big copper mine, and I was looking for a platinum resource under the copper deposit. It was a really interesting learning curve going from the mean streets of South Kensington, where Imperial’s based, out to the middle of the bush in Zambia, and trying to run a drill team. Then when I graduated in 2014, it was right at the point where commodity prices crashed so the mining industry was on a downturn, so I decided to go into the City, rather than into industry again. Painfully, all the guys two years ahead of me who’d done the same job out in Zambia were now buying their second homes back in the UK. So I went to work for a hedge fund called Sapien Capital, which is a commodities-focused hedge fund, specialising in African markets. The reason they hired me was because, historically, all these hedge funds had maths graduates going out to look at all of these metals operations in mining projects and not really knowing what was what. So they thought having someone with a geology background who could at least smell test some of the things going on was would be useful. I spent five years with Sapien and then joined a mining and metals-focused investment group called Medea Capital, and that’s where I really got my teeth stuck into mining and what turned out to be the origins of DEScycle.

DEScycle

“So sometimes we mix two solids together and then without adding any heat we form a liquid, and it’s the eutectic point dropping the melting point, which is why it’s called deep eutectic solvents. But what you have is a very electroconductive liquid, which is very, very good at dissolving metals in completely different ways. And very simply put, metals behave differently in these DES salt-based liquids than in any other system in use today. And because of those behaviours, that’s how we can achieve these extremely efficient recoveries at very low costs, temperatures and energies.”

OB: How did DEScycle come about? What was the idea? And what made you think it would be a viable proposition?

FW: So Medea is run by two partners, Leo and Jeff, and what they were doing through their private equity fund was founding businesses. Most of these were actually mining businesses where we’d find an interesting asset, vend it into a company, insert a management team, track it towards a listing, and then list it on the public market. With DEScycle, we came across this chemistry out of the University of Leicester that was completely novel. Leicester had been playing around with it for around 15 years at this point and it was this whole new class of chemistry with a million different applications. For example, it can be used in aerospace, pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and they were looking into applying it into metals and mining. The university had tried one or two spin outs and had their fingers burned and didn’t really have the resources behind them to deliver success. So we came along with an initial partnership and commercialisation concept, where we brought the funding and the commercial connections and they brought the science and the R&D. Eventually, one of the partners from Medea, Leo, and myself went full time from Medea into DEScycle because we really believed in this opportunity – enough so that we wanted to run it ourselves. We also restructured how we worked with the university and brought in key academics, most notably our CTO and inventor of the technology, Dr. Rob Harris, and then started creating our own IP as a company. This was all during lockdown, which was kind of a blessing in disguise for us because it gave us the time to focus on the business strategy of the company. We initially founded it as a mining-focused technology with the investment thesis of recovering gold and replacing cyanide in the mining process. We thought we’d go after hard-to-recover gold deposits because we believed our chemistry could unlock and recover gold where cyanide couldn’t. So it was both environmental and economically advantageous. But we then realised that licensing into the very big mining companies and being a technology licensor is actually really, really difficult. Even at that stage, we were already working with two or three of the world’s largest mining companies, so it had good traction, but it wasn’t a model that worked for us. And it occurred to us that, rather than solve someone else’s problem, why didn’t we look at this opportunity as a way be an owner-operator rather than just a technology licensor? And the big two markets we were honing in on back in 2021 were EV battery recycling and electronic waste recycling. Recycling makes a lot of sense for us because we don’t need to build a mine, we can acquire the waste and the scrap, and then we can treat it ourselves and produce our own metal. So that’s the direction we went in the very early days.

OB: How big was the minerals recycling sector at the time? Was it quite nascent?

FW: The recycling sector as a whole is very, very large, but dominated by some pretty old-school technology, largely a process called smelting. But at the time, EV battery recycling was the hottest ticket in town. There was Britishvolt, Northvolt, Lifecycle, all these companies popping up with these huge valuations and everyone was terribly excited because in 2021 everyone thought that by 2026 we would all be driving EVs and there wouldn’t be an internal combustion engine car left on the roads. It hasn’t exactly panned out like that yet, at least not on the timelines people were expecting. We were fortunate enough to decide to not get too caught up in the hype of EV batteries and we went after recycling electronic waste as our beachhead market for this technology.

OB: And why was that?

FW: Your phone, your laptop, even down to the electronics that underpin your fridge and ovens and large goods like that, they all contain a large amount of precious and critical metals. And at the moment, most of that actually goes to landfill. So we saw that as a huge, untapped opportunity. The market itself is worth over $100 billion annually. At current rates, that’s going to grow to around $130 billion by 2030. It’s a huge growing market and it’s currently the world’s fastest growing waste stream. So as well as being a massive environmental problem, it’s also a huge commercial opportunity for us. So that’s where we decided to focus.

“what’s really great about Rob is that he’s a very commercially minded scientist, which is pretty rare to find, and he wanted to take all of this work that’s locked up in academia and put it out into the real world. And I can tell you now, there are so many amazing technologies and ideas that are effectively just locked up in universities, and getting them out is something we’re unfortunately not great at in the UK.”

OB: So what is the chemistry that DEScycle has commercialised? The chemistry that Dr Rob Harris developed at Leicester.

FW: So the DES in DEScycle stands for ‘deep eutectic solvents’, and the way I describe it in terms of its impact is, imagine someone has just discovered acids for the first time. There are millions of different acids that do millions of different jobs. That’s what we have with DESes. They are this whole platform chemistry. And what we’ve figured out at DEScycle is how to use that chemistry in the right conditions on the right feedstocks to achieve very high metal recovery rates at very low temperatures and energy rates. So what we’ve now created is this technology that can not only outperform everything else in terms of just total recovery, but we can also outcompete on unit economics and we can also build the plants very, very cheaply. So this is opening up a complete paradigm shift for us in how metals are recovered and recycled.

OB: And what are DESes? What are they made of?

FW: It’s really interesting actually. You can make DESes out of a lot of different things, but they’re essentially liquid salts. So they’re not a water-based liquid, which is a bit of a weird concept, but bear with me, and quite often they’re made of these biodegradable and quite common compounds in chemistry. So a really good example is we use something called choline chloride, which is actually vitamin B, which is sprayed on corn husks for chicken feed in the chicken industry. And we use something called ethylene glycol, which is also known as antifreeze. So we basically take antifreeze and vitamin B and we combine them in a certain way. And what happens in that system is you have a hydrogen bond donation reaction occurring and the melting point of the system drops. So sometimes we mix two solids together and then without adding any heat we form a liquid, and it’s the eutectic point dropping the melting point, which is why it’s called deep eutectic solvents. But what you have is a very electroconductive liquid, which is very, very good at dissolving metals in completely different ways. And very simply put, metals behave differently in these DES salt-based liquids than in any other system in use today. And because of those behaviours, that’s how we can achieve these extremely efficient recoveries at very low costs, temperatures and energies.

OB: Were DESes known at all prior to their discovery in Leicester? Or was it simply a case of the applications that you’re now using them for not being known?

FW: DESes were completely unknown and invented by the University of Leicester in the early 2000s. So Professor Andy Abbott is the original author and his young PhD at the time, Dr. Rob Harris, who’s our CTO and inventor, has been there from day one. So Rob’s been working in the field of deep eutectic solvents for over 20 years now. So he’s definitely a world-leading expert. And what’s really great about Rob is that he’s a very commercially minded scientist, which is pretty rare to find, and he wanted to take all of this work that’s locked up in academia and put it out into the real world. And I can tell you now, there are so many amazing technologies and ideas that are effectively just locked up in universities, and getting them out is something we’re unfortunately not great at in the UK. The US is better, but there’s still so many opportunities here. So that’s something I’m keeping my eye out for in the future too. But that was one of the big advantages for us in bringing Rob onboard and making him a part of the team that can and is actually commercialising this technology.

OB: Are there other particular metals that you’re targeting in addition to gold, or is it all critical or precious metals?

FW: The metals we’re first targeting from electronic waste, or e-scrap, as it’s known in Europe, are gold, copper, silver, palladium and tin. Why we’re targeting those as the kind of big five is they’re the ones most prevalent in the feedstock we’re currently treating. But really e-waste is the first wedge for us on our journey, and it’s the first vertical in the metals industry that we’re attacking, where we’ve already proven our technology can work for solar panel recycling, for EV battery recycling, even rare earth magnet recycling. So we can process all of these different metals right now, but as a company we’ve taken a very strategic direction of let’s focus on e-waste, get one technology right, commercialise it, and then expand outwards.

“We’ve managed to attract some major strategic partners, namely Cisco, the US telecoms company, and Mitsubishi Corporation”

OB: And where are you right now in your commercial journey and what major milestones have you hit so far?

FW: 2026 is going to be a huge year for us and quite transformational. Since founding the business, we’ve raised around £24 million in funding. The last funding round we did was an £11 million Series A that was led by BGF and co-led by Vorwek Ventures here in the UK. We managed to attract some major strategic partners, namely Cisco, the US telecoms company, and Mitsubishi Corporation, the Japanese conglomerate. Both have been fantastically supportive of the business, and their support has really separated us out from our peer companies globally. We’re the only one with this major strategic backing, and the uniqueness of DESes and what they can do is a big part of the reason why. We’ve also been backed by European Union Horizon funding, which was a 5 million euro grant for a 7.5 million euro project, which we’re leading. We’ve also recently announced that we’ve received funding by the German government’s innovation agency, SPRIND, for 1.5 million for one year, which is super exciting. But to date, what we’ve done is taken the technology from test tube scale through to beaker scale through to bucket scale. Why 2026 is going to be such a big year for it is that we’re now building a demonstration facility on commercial scale equipment for a plant that’s going to be up in Wilton in Teesside. This will be the first time we’ve got out of a lab environment and proven it in a commercial environment, which is such a big milestone for the company, and that should be commissioning in May. We’ve got fantastic support both on the commercial side and actually from the government side as well coming in behind this project, which has been really, really beneficial. And for once in my career, I feel like I’m really at the right place at the right time, rather than when I graduated at the complete wrong time for metals and mining. Now for metal recycling, it seems to be a real boom time with lots of tailwinds.

OB: How scalable is what you’re doing? Obviously, you’re building the new pilot plant his year, but are there limits to sort of how much you can expand?

FW: In terms of market size, the sky’s the limit. So what we’re competing against and where we’re looking to capture market share is replacing a multi-billion dollar capex investment infrastructure piece, which is smelting, which runs off 1,400 degrees Celsius temperatures, massive energy costs, not the most environmentally friendly by any stretch of the imagination, and replacing that with something that costs orders of magnitude lower. We can build these DEScycle recycling facilities for as low as £20, 30 million. So it’s a massive step change. And where we’re coming at it from is a decentralised network of recycling infrastructure, rather than a globalised central hub, which is the current model. And the only way we can achieve that is, typically you’ve never been able to build a small enough smelter because you need massive economies of scale, whereas we don’t need those economies of scale with DEScycle. So we can start actually really, really small with just a few thousand tons of e-scrap throughput a year, and then scale to almost any size. But what we’re actually doing is optimising for a particularly sized plant throughput processing line. So rather than building a 5,000 ton plant, then a 15,000 ton plant, then a 25,000 ton plant, we thought; why don’t we just build them in lines of 5,000, make them highly repeatable, modular, and scalable, and make it much quicker to first revenues? Because one of the big problems we have, pretty much globally, and China’s by far and away the leader, is it takes a long time to build these types of projects, which puts investors off, kills momentum, and it’s just really, really expensive. So coming up with the modular system to try and get out ahead of the curve and get revenue, rather than sitting there like all of these major battery recycling projects, Northvolt, Britishvolt, Lifecycle, that have all gone under with multi-billion dollar capex, because no one wants to fund them.

OB: It seems like the modular approach is becoming quite popular now when you look at the government’s purchase of small modular nuclear reactors [SMRs] from Rolls-Royce and the rapid growth of Isembard, which is a small-unit, machine tool, decentralised franchise company.

FW: The way I would frame that, look at what’s happening in the world, and are we heading towards remaining a highly globalised economy, or is it going to become a lot more decentralised, a lot less globalised? And the question is, how are individual countries or regions going to be develop resilience through that transition? And the answer is, you need your own production line, whether it’s metals or whether it’s even fabrics or whatever it might be. You can’t rely on this globalised just-in time delivery and supply network anymore.

Thoughts on government policy

“What we’re working on at DEScycle sits at the intersection of circular economics and critical materials and metals resilience, which are two big strategic priorities for the government. And the only option to achieve the latter is roll out a suite of new technologies quickly. The old technologies flat out aren’t economic in the UK and that’s why there are no smelters active in the UK. It just doesn’t work. Power costs are too high, they’re outdated and everything’s being outcompeted by China in the smelting world right now. So for the UK, we need to move technologies like DEScycle, but not just DEScycle, from demonstration through to what’s known as your first-of-a-kind deployment. And it’s that first-of-a-kind deployment stage where there’s a really big funding gap in the UK that doesn’t really exist in the EU or America…It seems like the government loves investing in R&D, which is great, we have a good innovation ecosystem. But we need to invest in capex to actually create the jobs and deploy and scale these technologies.”

OB: Obviously, Teesside is place with quite a long industrial heritage and sadly many chemicals plants have closed down around that area, so it’s good to see that there’s at least a partial renaissance of industrialisation in the region. Did you engage with the mayoral combined authority government there?

FW: Yeah, so it’s the Tees Valley Combined Authority up in Teeside and Ben Houchen the mayor has been fantastically supportive of DEScycle. He came to our bench pilot, which we did with an organisation called CPI [formerly the Centre for Process Innovation], which is a UK government Catapult up in that part of the world in Sedgefield. So we’ve worked for quite a long time in the Northeast and in the Tees Valley. And it’s funny, you talked about the chemicals companies closing down there, the most famous of which was of course ICI [Imperial Chemical Industries], which collapsed after the Global Financial Crisis and got stripped apart. We’re actually on that very site. and what’s really encouraging for us is that there are so many innovative companies in that area doing lots and lots of different interesting things. It’s really starting to feel like the UK has a really big opportunity with all of these new technologies coming through, but we need to be able develop, commercialise and deploy these innovations quickly. Unfortunately, though, the UK is a great place to develop tech, but historically, it gets deployed overseas.

OB: What’s your diagnosis of that problem? Is it because, again, there’s not the willing or patient capital there to support scaleups, or is it just that we haven’t got the British equivalent of the German mittelstand [the term for the large number of medium-sized companies in Germany] that can bridge the scaling journey of these technologies?

FW: Again, part of it is culture in terms of the decisiveness and the strategic thinking of the government. What we’re working on at DEScycle sits at the intersection of circular economics and critical materials and metals resilience, which are two big strategic priorities for the government. And the only option to achieve the latter is roll out a suite of new technologies quickly. The old technologies flat out aren’t economic in the UK and that’s why there are no smelters active in the UK. It just doesn’t work. Power costs are too high, they’re outdated and everything’s being outcompeted by China in the smelting world right now. So for the UK, we need to move technologies like DEScycle, but not just DEScycle, from demonstration, where we are currently, through to what’s known as your first-of-a-kind deployment, then through to your second and third, and scaling your business and technology. And it’s that first-of-a-kind deployment stage where there’s a really big funding gap in the UK that doesn’t really exist in the EU or America. It’s always hard to fund these projects, but if you build it in the EU, you’ll probably do it with 50% equity, 25% grant, and 25% public institution loan. If you build it in the US, you’ll get a big grant, and there’s a lot more equity there that’s very, very used to taking that risk. In the UK we have neither. We have lots of grants focused on R&D innovation, we have lots of funding like the National Wealth Fund that’s really really good at funding big renewables projects. But there’s nobody that’s really focused on this first-of-a-kind deployment. And this is really the key to unlocking that large scale, advanced manufacturing infrastructure development back in the UK, which I believe is what is going to actually drive economic growth, rather than just investing in innovation alone without the technology deployment. It seems like the government loves investing in R&D, which is great, we have a good innovation ecosystem. But we need to invest in capex [capital expenditure i.e. buildings, equipment and machines: stuff/things] to actually create the jobs and deploy these technologies. And I can give you direct examples of what we’re facing in our industry in metals. In the last year, we’ve seen the US in particularly lead in this space, followed closely by Canada, with governments deploying capital to back critical metals infrastructure projects. Now, there’s been some really big ones in the US, which I’m not expecting the UK to replicate at the same scale, where they’ve had multiple billion-dollar investments, offtake contracts with floor pricing mechanisms and really, really strong strategic support. The EU’s got something similar with its grant funding network on a smaller scale. And there’s really good grants available in Australia and Canada for these first-of-kind plants. But in the UK, we’re just not there yet. And I can tell you, because it’s happening to us right now, we have multiple different economic development offices from the US, from Canada, from Australia, and even from Europe saying, “Hey, come build over here, and here are all these different incentives to move.” We’re a proud British company. We have British chemistry, British founders. Everything’s been done in the UK, and we really want to build in the UK. But we’re just asking, if everyone else is incentivising all this infrastructure to be built their own countries, we need to do that in the UK. Now, the government is sending the right policy signals. It’s released its Critical Minerals Strategy. The people I’ve spoken with and chatting with in various government departments like the Department for Business and Trade, like Defra [Environment, Food, Rural and Agriculture], they’re all really super supportive. But I think we just need the firepower from up top so these organisations can be mandated to actually deliver. Sadly, the UK seems to be known for its ambitious but under-resourced plans. The National Wealth Fund completed a great facility with Cornish Lithium, who are our friends, we know them well. We’ve had a chairman in common for a while, Ian Cockerill, who’s still our chairman. They got a £25 million facility out of the National Wealth Fund, which is fantastic. I think that’s the exact type of deal they need to be doing. The problem is, there’s not many other facilities that have been completed like that. What I fear for the National Wealth Fund now is that they’re under pressure to deploy and get money out the door quickly and get returns quickly. So they have a couple billion pounds to shift, and it’s a lot easier for them to deploy £500m into another low-risk offshore wind farm, for example, than funding a DEScycle, which is higher risk. But what we’re doing is unlocking a whole new industry here in the UK rather than just adding tinkering at the edges of an industry that we’re primarily importing. And it begs that question of what the strategic aims of bodies like the National Wealth Fund are. So it’s that risk that I feel the public financial institutions [often called ‘puffins’] like the NWF, like British Business Bank, like the Scottish National Investment Bank, need to actually be mandated to take, rather than just leaving them to deploy where it’s easy. But like I say, the Cornish Lithium deal with NWF would be a perfect blueprint to then roll out across a whole range of promising critical mineral projects doing different things like solar recycling, magnet recycling, primary mining here in the UK, all which could be really interesting. But for me, the big bang comes from companies like DEScycle, which are these novel, midstream processing companies, which, to a reader not involved in the metals industry might not sound sexy, but this is really the key that unlocks all of the raw material supply that’s a foundational industry for everything that’s actually interesting. So for AI hardware, for power equipment, for electrification, for EVs – it all stems from metals. And currently we don’t control any of this supply chain and we’re relying on global supply chains that are easily disrupted. So if we want to change that, we’re going to have to change the infrastructure we have, which at the moment is very minimal here in the UK. Like I say, go to the US, Canada, Australia, there are all these grants that are in the hundreds of millions to draw down on for exactly this kind of risk. And what I feel like other countries get that we don’t is if a government wants to roll out new novel infrastructure to unlock new industries, it needs to share risk where it’s greatest. And that’s the part before the private commercial lenders, like the big banks, want to get involved in. That’s really the gap we have here in the UK.

OB: How have you found planning and permitting when it comes to the new pilot plant?

FW: The process has actually been positive. Without a doubt, planning and permitting is a nightmare for building any type of infrastructure or large development project in the UK. There’s definitely a culture and an attitude here in the UK’s permitting bodies of guilty until proven innocent, rather than having a mandate for promoting and enabling growth. But from a DEScycle perspective, we’ve actually had a very positive interaction with the Environment Agency [EA]. Typically it takes 12 months on paper to get your environmental permit. We’re on track to get ours in seven. And how that’s come about is a lot of pre-engagement with the Environment Agency before we submitted to make sure we’re putting all the right information together. We made sure we submitted a good application so that we didn’t need to be asked a million questions. And then also what’s been really helpful is having that support of government in prioritising and fast-tracking our application to the EA, because they are under-resourced and don’t have the capacity to process at speed normally. So we are quite hopeful to get our permit in not quite record time, but close to it. Hopefully DEScycle can act as an example of being able to build complex, novel infrastructure projects here in the UK, and how to work effectively with the Environment Agency to do that at pace. And for me, the one thing I really want to see is the creation of a fast-track lane that provides automatic planning and purposing approval, not just permits, for any project of strategic national importance, and then maximum timelines for the authorities to then grant those permits. And they can still be sensible timelines, they don’t need to go down to like two months. I know you get permits in America that quickly, but they don’t need to be silly. But it’s just giving project builders and investors the certainty your permit will be granted in a sensible time, because it’s the uncertainty, not necessarily the timeframe, which kills the investment appetite and then kills projects.

OB: Why is it that universities aren’t currently optimised for spinning-out and commercialising their inventions like DEScycle?

FW: There’s basically three main reasons, but they all relate to culture. The main reasons are we haven’t got the funding environment set up to spin these technologies out of universities, which is critical. There is a good VC community here in the UK, and there is a great grant-funding infrastructure here in the UK, but it’s an order of magnitude smaller than the US, so we just don’t have the sheer firepower or indeed the will to fund those high-risk projects. The best ones do tend to get funded but it’s really hard to pick winners. The second one is the risk placed on the investor and the entrepreneur. So in the US, as we hear so often, failure is seen as a badge of honour, which is a great way to think about it, whereas in the UK, we tend to be much more risk-averse to failure, when in actual fact, failure, and rapid failure in particular, is useful, because it allows you to learn. The last thing is, and this varies across universities, but we don’t have the expertise and the culture of wanting to incentivise the academics to spinout and start to make money. Universities typically want to keep hold of a lot of the IP and the value behind that IP for themselves, which makes sense if you haven’t been on that journey of developing new technologies. But once you’re in that ecosystem, you understand that it’s going to take around 5 to 10 years, multiple millions of dollars, a lot of risk, and a lot of different parties to take an idea from a university through to a finished technology. But a lot of people at universities haven’t had that experience and don’t understand the process fully. They don’t always understand that maybe the university shouldn’t own 50% of the company forever. But I think we are getting better in the UK, which is positive, but we’re still a step behind the US.

Quickfire

OB: A book you’d recommend.

FW: The End of the World is Just the Beginning by Peter Seihan. It’s a really, really interesting book, written about two, three years ago. It basically details what would happen to global trade and global economies if rebels from Yemen were to block the Red Sea, and what would happen if we had a US that realises that it doesn’t need a globalised world, it just needs the Americas, and decides to focus its attention solely there. And given current events, it’s very prescient.

OB: Favourite café?

FW: A bakery slash cafe in Clapham called Aux Merveilleux de Fred, and it’s not because it’s got my name in it. It’s run and owned by these two French girls and they make the best croissants in London. I’m convinced of it. So that’s a really good spot on the on Northcoate Road.

OB: I’ve always thought there was a real dearth of good pastries in London, so this is an excellent recommendation. Fred White, thank you very much.

Follow or connect with Fred on LinkedIn here, follow DEScycle on LinkedIn here, and visit DEScycle’s website to find out more.

In March earlier this year, I attended an event at the London School of Economics on the subject of “Devolution economics: can local decision making strengthen Britain’s economies?”, where our now-First Minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth was on the panel.

When it came to the Q&A portion of the evening, I raised my hand and asked a question to our First-Minister-in-waiting about whether he was interested in an industrial strategy for Wales. Reassuringly, he said that he was, and named several sectors that he felt Wales had strengths in that it should capitalise on. What was less reassuring and quite familiar was the sheer number of sectors he named.

Before I continue, it’s worth elaborating on what an industrial strategy is. An industrial strategy is basically just a plan for the economy, but with a more interventionist and directed approach. So rather than simply creating the environment for businesses generally to succeed and sitting back to watch the fruits of your labour sprout, an industrial strategy will do that as a base, but will go further and identify sectors that it views as strategically important that it wants to nurture or protect and grow, with a view to either maintaining the skills and capability of that sector or to becoming globally competitive and exporting the products and services from it. And the key element here is the need to choose.

Critics of industrial strategy argue that governments shouldn’t try to shape the economy, that the market itself are best-placed to determine the strengths and competitive advantages of a nation, and that the best businesses will naturally outcompete and rise to the top. What this view fails to take into account is that short-term business cycles and pressures do not necessarily optimise for long-term national resilience and strategic leverage. For example, banks and investors have traditionally tended to prefer lower-risk businesses with short lead-times to product release and low overheads - which makes sense. Why wouldn’t investors want easier money? The problem is that those sorts of businesses do not necessarily or even typically confer strategic advantage and leverage. The point of view also appears to disregard that we still live in a world of relatively free trade, and that countries do take industrial strategy very seriously, and those that do will unleash the sectors they’ve nurtured upon the rest of the world and eat their lunch, as we’ve seen with China.

And for a country the size of China, choosing isn’t necessarily a requirement. It can afford to compete on practically every part of the supply chain of practically every sector that matters, given its sheer scale and the resources at its disposal. But for a country with about 0.23% of the population of China, and funnily enough about 0.22% of the landmass, the constraints are far more real.

So what are those constraints? This brings us back to what an industrial strategy is. An industrial strategy is about identifying what tools, levers and powers a government has, whether “hard” or “soft”, to support the industries that it has chosen to prioritise. This can include pure, cold, hard cash to invest in businesses in a given sector to stimulate growth, changing planning law to fast-track development applications for those businesses, amending the education system to ensure students are being trained with the right skills to enter those sectors, to something as basic but inescapable as time and attention - how much ministerial and civil servant time can be given to thinking about and talking with a sector and solving the problems facing it that only the government can solve. For a country the size of Wales, in terms of population, budget, devolved powers, and the size of its government and civil service, it can only afford to choose a handful of sectors to prioritise and give the requisite attention to meaningfully grow those sectors and boost the broader economy to a degree that will make a difference.

Which brings us to the question of what those sectors should be. Sector selection is both art and science. It’s a science in the sense that it should be evidence-based, considering factors such as existing domestic capacity and capability, the size of the market globally and the capital expenditure required to be competitive in those sectors. But it’s also an art in the sense that it requires a degree of instinct and judgement regarding political and cultural values, global industrial and geopolitical trends, and of social attitudes and dispositions. It’s not simply a question of which sectors make the most money or employ the most people. These are of course relevant questions, but a government might also want to consider the geographic mobility of a sector, economic and market trajectories, the barriers to entry and how vulnerable it might be to aggressive international competition, how valuable it is within key global supply chains and the extent to which it might provide that nation an element of leverage in international trade negotiations, and how high-quality the jobs are and the esteem that those types of jobs might have.

For me, the sectors in which Wales has existing strengths and capability, for which there are huge and growing global markets with high margins, which require high skill levels, that have high barriers to entry and that can provide Wales with leverage in international supply chains are:

1. Semiconductors

2. Aerospace

3. Pharmaceuticals and healthtech

Not all of the above sectors meet all of the criteria mentioned in the previous paragraph, but they all satisfy at least some of them. They are also all some of the highest gross value-add (GVA) sectors in Wales, meaning they have high profits per hour of work done.

Going through each briefly;

Semiconductors are now the equivalent of what oil was to the global economy in the 20th century. They are the commodity that powers the world. Three of the most valuable companies in the US NASDAQ stock exchange, worth over $1trn each, are semiconductor companies - Micron, Broadcom and NVIDIA, the last of which is the most valuable company in the world. Depending on the date, the semiconductor company Arm is the most valuable UK-headquartered company, although owned by Japanese Softbank and listed in the US, and in fact used to have a Welsh CEO, Sir Warren East. The most valuable company in Europe is the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine manufacturer, ASML, headquartered in South East Netherlands, which makes the machines that “etch” the patterns on semiconductors. ASML’s main customer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Centre (TSMC), is also the sixth most valuable company in the world. So it’s safe to say semiconductors is the biggest industry in the world, and it just so happens that Wales has a genuine foothold in it. Wales is home to the world’s first compound semiconductor cluster, which are semiconductors made of novel combinations of materials to improve their performance. South East Wales also has major companies such as KLA and IQE, Swansea University is home to the £50M Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials, which possesses a manufacturing-grade cleanroom. IQE is actually the fastest-growing company in the UK right now, with its shares having increased by 1000% since the start of the year, according to City AM. Cardiff is also home to one of the most exciting companies in the world right now, in my view, called Space Forge, which uses the optimal conditions of space to manufacture extremely pure and high-performance semiconductor substrates in orbit, whose Director of Communications and Public Policy, Lewis D’Ambra, I interviewed for Cylch last year. Crucially, semiconductors is one of the few sectors in which China has not yet acquired world-dominance, and is still catching up across many parts of the supply chain with its South East Asian neighbours, Europe and the US. Given Wales’s existing strengths in the sector, the market conditions and the strategic importance of semiconductors, it would be negligent for the government not to double, triple or quadruple down on this enormous industry.

Aerospace is another anomalous sector that China has invested significant amounts of money into but, given structural barriers to entry and the deep, often irreplicable traditions of knowledge in areas such as jet manufacturing, it has still not disrupted the market, giving those who already have a foothold in the supply chain a chance to consolidate that position if the requisite effort is made. Fortunately, Wales is home to several major aircraft manufacturers, including GE Aerospace, Airbus, BAE Systems, Safran, Boeing and British Airways, as well as a significant aftermarket sector, accounting for about 20% of the UK’s aircraft maintenance and repair market. More broadly, aerospace is often the top market for export-intensity in the UK, meaning its revenue is most reliant on selling abroad, which is critical for a nation’s balance of trade, to ensure that it is not funding its imports through debt. Helpfully, similarly to semiconductors, aerospace also has clear dual-use capabilities, meaning it has both civil and military applications, which increases the size and diversity of its market and the therefore the resilience of its business model.

Pharmaceuticals and healthtech are two of the most mass-market industries in the global economy, with growing potential thanks to the dawn of AI-enabled discovery and development, ageing populations, and increased interest in better solutions to manage increasing healthcare-related fiscal burdens. Two of the top 10 most valuable companies in the FTSE, AstraZeneca and GSK (formerly GlaxoSmithKline), are in pharma, demonstrating the market size and potential. Unlike aerospace, Wales has seemingly very few major companies with a presence in its borders, apart from perhaps GE Healthcare. Instead, it has a long tail of small and medium-sized businesses with a high average GVA, which, if they can be scaled through government-facilitated partnerships and export services, could be a real driver of growth domestically. Critically, given the vast range of possible pharmaceutical and healthtech products, it is likely to be very difficult for any one country to dominate the entire market or supply chain, allowing for a more competitive and dynamic market with lower risk of monopoly.

Beyond these more specific sectors, I would dedicate some focus to critical minerals, refined and processed chemicals and materials, and machine tools. If there has been a lesson from the headlines over last two or three years, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the closure of the Straits of Hormuz and the trade war between China and the US and the export controls on critical minerals, it’s that we can no longer rely on global supply chains for key materials or technologies to the extent that we used to, or with the same level of reassurance. We have to have either domestic capability or diversified supply chains, or both, and ideally with allies. However, whatever we can source manufacture and source domestically, we should, and whatever Welsh government can do to support that, it should. Wales still has companies such as Tata Steel, 7Steel, Valero (oil refinery), Bakelite (resins), CastAlum (machine tools), CeramTec (ceramics), as well as the UK’s only nickel refinery, Vale Clydach, with nickel being an essential component in batteries. Wales should do what it can to retain and strengthen these foundational capabilities, as they are both sectors in and of themselves, but also horizontals that feed into other more advanced, value-added sectors further downstream. Having capability in them will increase Wales’s resilience and economic security, which should be a strategic priority for the government. All of this should be considered in the context of what the UK government is doing of course, and Welsh government should be enthusiastic and leading participants in this collective project. (I should also mention agriculture, which is a major critical industry within Wales, but given its unique nature, I think deserves its own Food Security Strategy.)

Conclusion

Wales was critical to the Industrial Revolution and its origins in Britain. Coal, iron, steel and slate were the bedrock of Wales’s economy, but now new foundations must be laid and reinforced.

The UK government itself has published a Modern Industrial Strategy, back in 2025, of which Wales is of course a part, however, we shouldn’t assume that this industrial strategy is necessarily designed with Wales in mind. After all, why would it be? Wales is only a small fraction of the UK population and workforce. And although Wales should take advantage of the opportunities presented by the strategy, it can’t afford to be a passive recipient of strategy, it needs to be able to set its own priorities and enact its own strategy based on those priorities and the powers that it has at its disposal.

Admittedly, Wales may not have many powers or resources at its disposal, but it does have key levers available to it that can make a real difference. Key to Wales’s strategy is that it should be seen as the best place in the world to do business. It should align its planning, transport and infrastructure strategy, education, funding and government attention with these sectors. It should accelerate planning applications from businesses in these sectors, ensure that transport routes to those business locations are well maintained and efficient, that universities align with these sectors and are attracting a training high quality students in the right skills, ideally in partnership with industry, that it thinks of ways of consolidating public funding pots such as the Development Bank of Wales, the Welsh Pension Partnership, the National Wealth Fund and the British Business Bank, to benefit from economies of scale, and it should assign ministers explicit responsibility for them, with dedicated policy teams and regular minister-level meetings with industry. Government should also seek to facilitate partnerships between smaller businesses in these sectors with large customers as well as provide export support to help these businesses to grow and scale, and develop a national automation and tech adoption strategy to support their productivity and competitiveness.

Of course each sector will have its own requirements, but these are all broadly useful tools to apply in any case. And as well as a broader statement of intent, the government should publish individual strategies for each of these sectors, each with growth targets over a fixed period, a clear roadmap for achieving those targets, and definite, tangible commitments.

We are no longer living in a free market, non-interventionist world, if indeed we ever truly were. Politics has always been about the need to choose, therefore that is what Welsh government must do, and it must be strategic and hard-nosed about these choices. Things like tourism and film and TV are great and nice-to-have, but these do not scale or drive broader, long-term prosperity, or provide national and economic resilience. We must become an engineering nation with a laser-like focus on the industries of the future - industries backed by hard, tangible assets, with real value. And as with so many parts of life, less is more.

Admittedly, these days, the concept of billionaires is quite unpopular, and for understandable reasons. A billion is an almost unfathomable amount of money. A popular analogy when comparing the difference between a million and a billion is that one million seconds is roughly 11 and a half days, while one billion seconds is about 32 years. So while most of us would rightly think that a million pounds is a lot of money, a billion is on another scale entirely. And as I say, people’s concerns around the mere existence of billionaires is a legitimate one. Can we really say that a billionaire has worked a thousand times harder over their lifetime than the average person? Of course not, and there are some fair criticisms about the ability of ultra-wealthy individuals to hoover up assets and drive up prices for the rest of us, and some billionaires avoiding paying anything close to what the average person would consider to be their fair share of tax by effectively avoiding income and capital gains tax by simply borrowing against their assets, both of which should be mitigated against. But the reality is that, whether they are billionaires or whether they are centimillionaires (people who have at least £100m in wealth), the very rich will always exist, and if not here, then somewhere else. Because countries want rich people to do business and live within their borders, and a globally coordinated tax on the rich to cut them down to size seems highly unlikely in any sort of conceivable future. And after all, money is motivating, and people should be rewarded for hard work and solving problems that society and/or consumers face, or offering new products that make their lives better. And wealth for the founders of successful companies is, in many if not the vast majority of cases, a product of them providing products or services that everyday people are willing to pay for, at scale. If we don’t like billionaires, then we should all stop shopping at Amazon, stop using social media and Google, and stop buying iPhones, or stop buying mass produced things full-stop. (Hey, I might just take that locally produced artisanal train to work tomorrow instead of that mass produced one) And, whether you like it or not, billionaire and centimillionaire founders do have something important to share. (Apart from their money)

Economic growth is the holy grail for most countries. Most countries want to improve their standards of living, improve their infrastructure, their healthcare, their schooling etc etc, and at the very least they want their standards of living to not drop and for their economic growth to at least keep pace with inflation. So economic growth is important. Great. That’s established. But how do we get economic growth? Well obviously if I had the complete and authoritative answer to that question, I wouldn’t be writing this article, I’d be in Downing Street somewhere, or the Treasury, with Starmer and Reeves working me overtime to make sure they can announce another quarter of 0.1% growth. But one thing about growth is obvious: if you want it, you need to produce successful businesses that themselves grow and bring in large revenues and profits.

Governments are regularly criticised for not listening enough to people on the ground or with experience of the sector for which they’re making policy or are regulating. Having worked briefly in a government department myself, I think generally this view is overstated, but I do think it’s fair to say that there is a wider political hesitation, and perhaps more so in Wales than in UK central government, to really listen to big business or successful, incumbent entrepreneurs, for fear of being perceived to be corrupt or captured by big business, which is a fair concern to have. Trust in politics is already low, and all risky political activity should be carefully communicated, well explained, and reasonably transparent. But to not listen to those who have successfully navigated the complex and perilous world of entrepreneurship and succeeded where the vast, vast majority of others haven’t, and to not shine a light on them as examples that we should be proud of and seek to emulate, feels like missing a shot at an open goal at point blank range, and ultimately quite negligent.

An acquaintance of mine, Rian Whitton, who writes a very good Substack called Doctor Syn, makes a compelling argument for this sort of engagement, citing the example of countries such as France and Sweden, who, despite their fair share of policy own goals (in France in particular), have nonetheless managed to avoid many of the pitfalls that we have in the UK, in part (in his view), because of these countries’ close consultation and relationship with so-called “national champions” who have a stake in the country, both emotionally and financially, and are encouraged to continue to do so precisely because they are embedded in the political culture of their home nations. The article is worth a read (as is Rian’s Substack more broadly) Laying the Foundations - by Rian Chad Whitton - Doctor Syn.

Obviously, some wealth is accumulated slightly more ethically or tastefully than others (I’m thinking of David Sullivan of West Ham and porn infamy here), and in certain sectors that might be considered to be more strategically important, so it’s right that we focus our attentions on particular individuals who have written the playbook for how to build successful businesses in the sectors that we care about and want to build more of. So I’ve taken the liberty of compiling a short list of some Welsh billionaires and mostly centimillionaires who the Welsh government should try to court and invite to join some sort of official, statutory entrepreneurs advisory council, to provide regular feedback and counsel to government on its efforts to support entrepreneurship and business scaling in Wales.

1. Michael Moritz - Partner at Sequoia Capital (venture capital)

The wealthiest of the lot, and technically not a founder of the company he is most famous for, but entrepreneurial (and wealthy) enough that it would be remiss to omit him from the list. Moritz was born and raised in Cardiff in 1954 to Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany. He attended the now-closed Howardian School in Penylan. He went on to study history at Christ Church, Oxford and then moved to the US for an MBA, after which he became a reporter for Time magazine, where he famously shadowed Steve Jobs during the development of the Mac computer, eventually falling out with him over the resulting coverage, later writing the first authorised history of Apple Inc. After leaving Time, Moritz joined Sequoia Capital, now one of the largest and best-known venture capital firms in the world, headquartered in California. Today it has over $50bn of assets under management. Moritz took over leadership of the firm in 1996. Some of his most notable early-stage investments, which have contributed to Sequoia’s success, were in Google, YouTube, PayPal, Skyscanner, Klarna, LinkedIn, Kayak.com and Yahoo!. He still lives in San Francisco and is reportedly worth approximately $7bn.

2. Terry Matthews - Chair of Wesley Clover and serial founder

Reportedly Wales’s first billionaire and the richest Welshman in the world until being overtaken by the man at the top of this list in 2012. Born in Newport during the Second World War in 1943, he grew up in Caerphilly and studied electronics at Swansea University. Matthews began his career as an apprentice in British Telecom’s (now BT) research lab, before moving to Ottawa in Canada and joining a semiconductor company. Shortly after this, he co-founded a technology consultancy (having initially been an electric lawnmower importing company) called Mitel. The company eventually became a semiconductor manufacturer, following an acquisition, and later floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 1981. In a full circle moment, British Telecom purchased a controlling interest in the company in 1985, after which Matthews moved onto the next of his many ventures. Matthews is now reportedly worth over $1.5bn and owns the Celtic Manor Hotel.

3. Grenville Thomas - Founder of Aber Diamond Corporation (mining)

One of the lowest-profile on the list, this is a man few will have heard of, and someone I only came across through a conversation with another Welsh person in the mining industry. Thomas was born in Clase in Swansea, also during the war, in 1941. He went into the coal mines aged 16 but decided a few years later to pursue a degree in mining engineering at Cardiff University, from where he graduated in 1964. Thomas soon made the decision to also move to Canada, initially working in nickel mines in Ontario and then in Yellowknife in the North West Territories, eventually founding his own mining company, based in Toronto, called Aber Diamond Corporation (after his native Abertawe (Swansea)). As is often the case, fortune favoured the bold, and Thomas’s bet paid off. In the mid-90s, ADC discovered an enormous diamond mine, which contributed significantly to Canada’s rise to become one of the world’s largest diamond producers. Thomas has since become an established figure in the mining community, and has passed the passion down to his children, Eira (Welsh for ‘snow’) and Gareth, who are both also prominent in the sector. He now lives in the ‘millionaire’s retreat’ of West Vancouver and nearby has built an exact replica of the Red Lion pub in Morriston that his grandmother owned when he was a child. He reportedly still visits Wales regularly and is estimated to be worth nearly $1bn.

4. Douglas Perkins - Co-Founder of Specsavers (retail)

Perkins is the co-founder of the international optician chain Specsavers, alongside his English wife, Mary (who I’ve excluded for that reason). Perkins was born in Llanelli just two months before Terry Matthews and attended Llanelli Boys Grammar School and then Cardiff University. After graduating with an Optometry degree, he eventually took over his father-in-law’s optician store in Bristol and then in 1984 co-founded Specsavers with his wife, after having already opened 22 stores prior to this. Specsavers now has over 2,800 stores worldwide, employing over 40,000 people, with a turnover of approximately £4bn. He currently lives in Guernsey (for non-tax reasons, I’m sure), and is worth approximately £800m (assuming a 50:50 share between him and his wife).

5. John Deer - Co-Founder of Renishaw (metrology and advanced manufacturing)

Born the year before the outbreak of the Second World War in 1938, in the Swansea Valley, after completing an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering after school, he went to work for Rolls-Royce in 1960, where he worked for 14 years in the aerodynamics department. During his time there, he met Irishman David McMurtry, who had invented a device to take precise three-dimensional measurements for components of the Concorde engine. Deer convinced McMurtry to commercialise the product outside of Rolls-Royce, calling the new company Renishaw. Deer left Rolls while McMurtry stayed and rose up to become Assistant Chief Engineer. Deer was responsible for the manufacture and commercial aspects of the business and McMurtry was responsible for design. They initially located the office and manufacturing in Deer’s house. McMurtry eventually resigned from Rolls and joined Renishaw full-time. Deer was Managing Director from 1974 until 1989, when he became Deputy Chairman. Since then, he has been primarily responsible for production and business development, including setting up overseas subsidiaries. Today, Renishaw is a FTSE250 company and has over 5,000 employees across 36 countries. According to its most recent financial reports, it had an annual revenue of £713m and pre-tax profits of about £130m, with major export markets in traditionally engineering intensive countries such as China, Japan, Germany and the US. Deer is estimated to have a net worth of approximately £600m thanks to his remaining shares in the company and those previously sold.

6. Michael Heseltine - Former Deputy Prime Minister and Co-Founder of Haymarket Group (publishing)

The oldest member of this list, Heseltine was born in Swansea in 1933. His father had been in the Royal Engineers during the war and was later a Colonel in the Territorial Army and a factory owner in the area. His family had originally arrived in Swansea through his grandfather, who was in the tea trade and relocated to South Wales as tea was shipped into the port there. Heseltine’s mother was from West Wales but moved to Swansea when she was young (apparently living opposite Dylan Thomas at one point). Her father’s work was also in the docks, where he unloaded coal from ships, eventually moving up the management chain and founding West Glamorgan Collieries. Heseltine moved to England after primary education to attend various secondary and preparatory schools in Staffordshire, Shrewsbury and Worcestershire. After graduating from Oxford, Heseltine went into property with a friend, renovating flats in London and renting them out, and then moved onto the publishing sector, establishing a magazine company called Cornmarket and then rebranding as Haymarket (following a deal with a creditor to provide an equity share instead of a debt repayment), which made numerous acquisitions of small, successful magazines. Heseltine became Conservative MP for Tavistock in 1966 under Ted Heath, eventually being made a junior minister when the Conservatives entered power, after which he stepped back from direct management of Haymarket, although was still a major shareholder and consultant. As a minister, Heseltine was a major advocate and pioneer of urban regeneration, particularly through development corporations and enterprise zones, which exempted particularly economically deprived areas from normal planning regulations or taxation in order to stimulate business relocation and investment. He is most recognised for his work in Liverpool and the London Docklands, at one point being made Minister of Merseyside. Following mounting pressure on Margaret Thatcher to resign in 1990, a leadership contest was initiated, in which Heseltine stood. In the first round, he prevented Thatcher from winning by a margin that would have guaranteed her an immediate victory, though she nonetheless resigned as party leader as a result, with Heseltine withdrawing after the second round, having received a lower share of the vote than in the first, with John Major winning the contest and becoming the new Conservative leader and Prime Minister. He was made Deputy Prime Minister under Major from 1995-1997, until the election defeat to New Labour. He remained an MP until the 2001 election, then standing down from his seat in Henley, making way for none other than the future Mayor of London and Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Heseltine says that he feels British rather than Welsh, but has stated several times that he considers himself to be from Wales and that his Welsh ancestry is important to him. He now lives in Northamptonshire (very near the new HS2 route, which he has expressed support for in the past, despite his proximity. Though I once tried to invite him to site and he very politely declined. Which is fair enough I suppose.) He is reportedly worth approximately £300m.

7. Anne Boden - Founder and former CEO of Starling Bank (banking)

Boden is the first woman to found a UK bank (and the only woman on this list). She was born in Bon-y-maen, Swansea in 1960, her father working in the local steelworks. She attended Cefn Hengoed Comprehensive and stayed local for university, graduating with a degree in Chemistry and Computer Science from Swansea. Boden went on to have a high-flying career in finance, working at Lloyds, Standard Chartered, the Swiss bank UBS, the Dutch bank ABN AMRO, Royal Bank of Scotland and reached c-level at Aon and Allied Irish Banks, as CIO and COO, respectively. She founded Starling in 2014, with the goal of creating an entirely digital bank. Her co-founder later left to found Monzo, and Boden eventually lost control of Starling following major investments, which reduced her shares, and stepped down as CEO in 2023 following an investor clash, and later from the board in 2024, but still retains an approximately 5% share in the company. She is now working on an AI business. She is estimated to be worth approximately £200m.

8. Professor Christopher Evans - Co-Founder of Merlin Group (life sciences)

Widely considered to be one of the UK’s most successful life sciences entrepreneurs, Evans was born in Port Talbot in 1967 and raised in the area, attending St Joseph’s School. He went on to study Microbiology at Imperial College London and then obtained a PhD from the University of Hull. His first company, Enzymatix, was one of the earliest biotech companies in Europe. He later founded Chiroscience in 1991, which discovered an anaesthetic called Chirocaine and a drug for osteoporosis called Romosozumab, which became one of the UK’s first biotech companies to go public in 1994. The breadth of Evans’s ventures is quite remarkable, from aforementioned anaesthetics to stem cell research, cancer treatments, respiratory drugs and proton beam therapy. In total, Evans has built more than 50 medical companies from start-up over the last 30 years and floated 20 new medical businesses on stock markets in six different countries, creating 11 successful academic spin-outs and companies worth over $2.4 billion, with one sale alone of a company called Biovex to Amgen in 2011 for $1bn. Evans has also been tapped by previous governments - both UK and Welsh - to provide advisory support. In 2011, Lord Puttnam appointed Evans as one of the eight trustees for the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, which later became known as Nesta. In 2013, Evans also worked with Welsh gov to create a £100m Welsh Life Sciences Investment Fund. In 1998, he became the youngest recipient of the Society of Chemical Industry Centenary Medal and has twice been named Cambridge Businessman of the Year in 1996 and 1998. Evans now lives in the Cotswolds and is reportedly worth an estimated £170m.

A Council of Elders

I’ve previously seen the academic and commentator, Dylan Jones-Evans, who I have immense respect for, say that Wales doesn’t need more committees, it needs a strategy, which I half agree with. Strategies, it goes without saying, are essential, and the new government should certainly have a growth strategy at the top of its agenda, but strategies need insight and iteration from experts, and therefore do need committees - people who have the track record and credibility to properly scrutinise government proposals. And this doesn’t just mean arranging one meeting and sending updates every quarter asking for feedback, it requires a depth and regularity and quality of engagement. And the challenging thing with getting experts, who are typically time constrained, to give their time to scrutinise something is that they need to feel that it’s worth it - that their input it valued, that it will make a difference, that there is real political commitment behind it, and that, ideally, there is some esteem and profile associated with the role.

I’m sure many if not all of the people in the above list are patriots who care about Wales and for whom, being from Wales is a core part of their identity, but how many of them have been shown any love by their homeland? How many of them are household names who we as a community take pride in for having produced? The UK is commonly criticised for not celebrating its entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in the same way that the US does, and the media is often guilty of revelling in the failures of British entrepreneurs. In the former, I think Wales is equally guilty. Yes, all of these people are outrageously wealthy, but almost none of them came from any kind of conspicuous wealth. They simply played by the rules of the game and combined hard work, instinct and opportunity to produce success. Can we truly resent them for that? On the contrary, I think we should celebrate them for it, and leverage their success for the benefit of the rest of the country.

And as I say, how we do this is crucial. In my view, a statutory council should be formed - a kind of Council of Elders. It should be statutory in the sense that it is permanent, with permanent membership, and cannot be abolished without the consent of the Senedd. Its primary purpose should be to provide insight and feedback on government growth policy and legislation, but this feedback should be primarily private and not published or FOIable. This is not so special interests can lobby government behind closed doors, it is because the best and most honest conversations and feedback happens in the absence of concerns around perception and media and social media hysteria. The UK embedded this measure for its £800m Advanced Research and Innovation Agency for these very reasons. If the public deems policy to be poor or the result of corrupt practices, the public should get rid of the government who in question at the next election. However, we should provide governments and advisors (and in the case of ARIA, research) space to discuss and debate openly without fear of being on the hook for every single word.

More prosaically, the council should also be staffed by a small secretariat who can carry out research on behalf of the members, coordinate meetings and engagement, and where useful, write reports. Its secondary function should then be to act as international ambassadors for Wales, to effectively be trade envoys joining missions and engaging with international business to encourage investment in Wales. And thirdly, discussions with the members should be initiated to establish a Welsh “patriots” scale-up fund from the contributions of the members (incentivised by generous tax-breaks on these contributions and any resulting returns), match-funded by the government, with the members acting as trustees, with the aim of identifying promising Welsh or Welsh-founded start-ups with the potential to scale, incentivising them to do so in Wales.

And the above list of people have the expertise that Wales will need in order to succeed in the 21st century. Venture capital (Michael Moritz) is becoming a bigger and bigger player in business investment; semiconductors and telecoms (Terry Matthews) are the technologies of today and increasingly the future, with the proliferation of AI, data centres, satellites and drones; critical minerals (Grenville Thomas) are, as the name suggests, essential component in the hardware of these advanced technologies, including in batteries, which are now the essential good during this energy transition; e-commerce and retail (Douglas Perkins) are huge, international markets that are ever-evolving and in which there is still much up for grabs; metrology (John Deer) will become increasingly important as technology evolves and becomes more sophisticated and dependent on more precisely engineered components; publishing and media (Michael Heseltine), once thought to be dying, are now making a revival, and are both platforms with enormous scaling capacity; banking and AI (Anne Boden) are, it goes without saying, two of the biggest sectors in the world, and look set to be for the foreseeable; and life sciences (Christopher Evans) is another enormous market and an area in which the UK has a global comparative advantage, but will need to redouble its efforts in the face of competition from the US and China. This Council is therefore ideally suited for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

Taiwan’s Upon a Time

We all recognise Taiwan today as the global hub of the semiconductor business, but before this, Taiwan was effectively a backwater - the cast off of civil war. So how did this incredible turnaround happen? And the answer is obviously not ‘by accident’. The Taiwanese government made a clear and strategic decision to focus on semiconductors and build the sector from the ground up, and in order to do this, it needed people and expertise. But who was going to move to Taiwan to help them? Its diaspora. One of whom was Morris Chang, who was recruited from the US after having worked for semiconductor giants at the time Texas Instruments and General Instrument Corporation, to be the Chair of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute, and subsequently founded the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which is now the sixth most valuable company in the world.

Conclusion

So it’s encouraging to see this Plaid government talking about a new economic mission to narrow the gap between Welsh productivity and the UK average and to make Wales the best place to start, invest in and grow a business in the UK, and its intention to establish a new Welsh Development Agency. These are all positive things, but let’s also do the obvious thing and tap into our Welsh diaspora who are literally among the best in the world at what they do, show them some love, play to their patriotic instincts, and give them a stake in rebuilding Wales and transforming it into something they can be proud of - for all our sakes, and our futures.

Early life and background

OB: Where were you born and raised?

WF: I was born in Caerphilly Miners Hospital and raised in Aberbargoed, which is close to Blackwood. My mother was a teacher and my father was Chief of Environmental Health in Islwyn Borough Council, so he actually knew Neil Kinnock pretty well, who I know you interviewed. I went to a secondary school in Newport called Rougemont from about the age of 11 and then went to Salford University.

OB: My brother lives in Newport and his kids used to play football in Rougemont, funnily enough. What did you study at Salford? And why Salford?

WF: Small world! Well I went to Salford much against everyone’s advice, but there was only one course I wanted to do, which was electroacoustic engineering. I thought I was going to play around in the recording studio for three years but they basically stuck a calculator in my hand and it all got very mathematical and technical, which put pay to that.

OB: And I guess this is probably before Salford had all the investment and became Media City and home to the BBC. What did you do afterwards?

WF: Exactly, it didn’t look anything like it looks now. That’s definitely for the better. But after uni I went to London to work in banking, in places like Morgan Stanley, Crédit Lyonnais and Crédit Agricole, very much on the derivative trading structuring side. I did that for quite a few years then moved to KPMG as a risk advisor and then joined Hermes – not the delivery company. Hermes was an evolution of an organisation that was originally set up to manage the BT Pension Fund in 1984, and also the Postal Workers’ Pension Fund, which has gone through a number of iterations and which eventually led to Brightwell

Brightwell

OB: So what does Brightwell do?

WF: Brightwell is a pension fund manager. Now, there are different kinds of pension funds. The scheme that I help to manage is a defined benefit [DB] scheme, which means that the corporate sponsor, BT being the largest in our case, actually wears the risk of having to provide pensions to its members, and they’ve given us the responsibility to invest the assets in a way that generates cash flow to meet the pension obligations of the scheme. This is as opposed to a defined contribution [DC] scheme, which most people now have because DB schemes have mostly been phased out over the years, which means that the individual instead is the one responsible for investing their money today to provide for themselves later in life. And I think it’s been very interesting to see how the pension landscape has changed. I can remember Robert Maxwell falling overboard off his yacht, which seems a bit tangential to the pension world, but it became apparent pretty quickly that he was using funds that were promised to the pensions of his employees to run his own business instead, and shortly after that, legislation was brought in so that so that those sorts of funds would be ringfenced and cut off from day-to-day revenues.

OB: So what’s the reason for the decreasing prevalence of DB schemes? It’s quite a common observation that people point to as a sign of declining quality of life in Britain that pensions are less generous than they used to be and provide less security, compared with what people call “gold-plated” DB schemes. If Brightwell are making it work, there must be some way of doing it.

WF: There are a few reasons. One is that the law changed. It became very clear that corporates were accountable for providing the pensions well into the future and that those liabilities had to be brought onto their balance sheets and be treated differently, which meant that there was a lot of exposure sitting on those corporate balance sheets. That was made worse when we went through this period of very low interest rates post-Great Financial Crisis, which has the effect of pushing up the value of liabilities, so it made those exposures even greater. And corporates, take BT as an example, want certainty about the amount of cash they have available to invest to build out their core business, and when you have a pension liability, a very large one, it makes that job of investing very difficult for them, and you can see that play out across the UK corpus in general. The larger ones are better set up to manage that risk. The smaller ones are not and it became an issue. They just wanted to get it off their balance sheets, hence why you see so many of these schemes being bought out by institutional investors like insurers, but ultimately what it meant was that many DB schemes were closed. Even the BT DB scheme has been closed for a while, so if you’re a new-joiner to BT, you won’t be eligible for it. And from a finance perspective, the average age of our members is 71, so most of them are retired, and pretty soon they’ll all be retired, so things become more predictable at that point and easier to manage.

OB: So would the pressure have been on you previously to generate a much higher rate of return presumably from your investments than it will be in the future?

WF: Yes, and the approach that we’re taking as we reach 2035 is that we want to be what we call “cashflow matched”. So in other words, the assets generate all the cash that’s needed to pay pensioners every month. And just to put some context on it, for the BT scheme, we pay out roughly £250 million a month, about £3 billion a year. So we have to plan how to generate that money, which means building out a portfolio of a highly cash-generative assets.

OB: That stands in quite stark contrast to the state pension and the growing liabilities that the government has and how that has just been growing over time. There’s no real connection between what we’re putting in and what will eventually have to be paid out.

WF: Exactly, it’s entirely unfunded. There’s no pot behind it. There are other countries in the world that do it differently, and I would argue that the UK’s approach is riskier.

OB: And post-Financial Crisis, markets have obviously been quite tumultuous and growth has been challenging, particularly in the UK. How has it been finding stable investments with reliable returns since 2008?

WF: The main challenge has been in planning how to move what was a quite a risky, more equity-based portfolio into more of a bond-based portfolio. We have exposure to most asset classes, though our biggest holding is government bonds [also known as ‘gilts’], and we have fewer illiquid assets like property and infrastructure.

OB: Do pension fund managers such as yourselves invest in private companies as well as public equities?

WF: Yes, we go across public and private markets, but most of it is public. Being the size that we are, we currently have about £35 billion worth of assets under management, which gives us access to some of these opportunities in private markets that smaller schemes don’t have. But we don’t have specific allocations for public versus private. It’s all about whether the investment fits the strategy. At any one point, one may be more favourable than the other.

OB: And of course, Brightwell isn’t part of BT, you guys just manage their pension fund. So do you offer your services to other companies or is managing a fund of that size a full-time job?

WF: I have two jobs, one of which is being the Chief Investment Officer for the BT Pension Scheme, and the other is helping to roll out our services at Brightwell to other clients.

OB: It seems like the role of a pension fund manager is inherently quite scalable. If you take on another big client, do you have to increase the size of Brightwell in proportion to the size of the client’s fund compared to the size of BT’s fund or can you just add them to your books?

WF: We think our investment platform is very scalable. The logistics on the operational side is definitely scalable. Where the effort needs to be is around a bit more of the governance because all schemes do things differently. But the short answer is ‘yes’.

OB: As someone who’s got no insight into this industry at all, how do you go about identifying investment opportunities or deciding what’s a good investment?

WF: Another one of the advantages of our size, like I mentioned before, is that we often get shown things very early stage because managers know that we can move really quickly if we need to because of our governance structure, which helps us to identify opportunities and be competitive in our investments. But at the same time, you don’t want to see too many investments because there are only so many you can make, and that’s the role of external investment managers, to filter those opportunities for you so that when they come to you, you know you’re going to be interested in them. But we have an investment office team whose job is to look for investments and investigate them before recommending them to me.

OB: Given the strategic nature of your role, what’s your view on what the major trends are in global markets and what are some that you feel confident about over the next 5-10 years? Where do you see the market going?

WF: Obviously there are big, well-understood trends like AI and the energy transition. One big risk of course thought is the indebtedness of governments around the world. The amount of the sovereign debt that’s being issued is quite scary. And the question that’s being asked market-wide at the moment is: how sustainable is it? We saw the impact of governments losing bond market confidence with the whole Liz Truss episode. It’s not difficult to map that onto other sovereign debt markets, and that could end up being quite uncomfortable.

OB: It’s funny because the UK’s debt isn’t as high as somewhere like the US, Japan or France, but for some reason our bond yields are higher so we pay higher interest rates on our debt, even though our total debt burden is lower. I think someone called it an ‘idiot premium’ because they don’t trust our governments.

WF: Yes, there are a number of descriptions, but we wouldn’t be able to print most of them.

OB: And what are your views on the measures that the current government is taking to address the debt and the deficit?

WF: They need to spend more time looking at the spending numbers. At some point they’re going to have to confront the issue of welfare expenditure. They can tax as much as they like, but there comes a point where the string breaks and that’s a concern for me when looking at UK finances. If you look globally, part of the reason the US can tolerate such a high debt:GDP ratio is because the dollar’s the reserve currency of the world. How that develops and whether it remains the reserve currency will be interesting. We’re already seeing ways in which other governments are trying to challenge that dominance.

OB: And presumably that makes investing in government bonds less attractive in comparison to other investments than they might previously have been?

WF: Definitely, and you’re already seeing it. If you look at long-term interest rates, they’ve been edging up for the last three years, they’ve stabilised more recently, but there’s already a premium being built in to lend to governments for a longer period, and I don’t see that reversing anytime soon.

OB: Government has this thing called the Mansion House Accords, which includes some efforts to get UK pension funds to commit more money into domestic equities and infrastructure, which has been somewhat controversial. I heard the Pensions Minister Torsten Bell on a podcast the other day and he said that, actually, pension fund managers all think this is a good idea, but no one wants to do it first because it means they’ll have to charge higher fees and they don’t want to become uncompetitive. What’s your view on the debate?

WF: My first point, which is the same as we’ve given to various strands of government over the last few years, is that 65% of our portfolio is invested in the UK, whether that be in gilts or property, but there seems to be this focus from government on equities, which seems strange to me. If you look at the size of the UK equity market, it’s relatively small in the global context and if you look at what most pension funds have invested, they’re probably in line with that ratio. So I think there’s a bit of a misjudgement that we need to be buying more equities. UK infrastructure’s of course an area that we’re interested in investing in, but the question always comes; how do you access that investment and what protections come around it? The UK is crying out for infrastructure build out, but the issue with infrastructure is always that it’s regulated and therefore political, so you’re exposed to not just regulatory risk but political risk, and anyone building out an infrastructure allocation needs to diversify it. I couldn’t put it all into the UK as we would be overexposed to the sometimes volatile political climate of the UK. But for clarification, fortunately the government recognises the difference between DB and DC here because Mansion House is focussed on DC.

OB: So you’re saying you wouldn’t invest in HS2? I’m just joking. I’m saying that as an ex-employee, so I’m familiar with its challenges.

WF: Actually, something like that wouldn’t entirely be off the table, but would depend on the characteristics of the investment. We wouldn’t take an equity tranche in it, but we could be interested in funding it from a debt perspective. If the reward, accessibility and liquidity were there, it would be something we might consider. And we’ve engaged with Treasury and government on how to make these investments accessible for schemes like us and others as well.

OB: Getting more private money into infrastructure projects has been a big topic of discussion in infrastructure circles, and it seems like some countries, like Japan for example [see Why Japan has such good railways - Works in Progress Magazine], have a better model, and it feels like there’s a missed opportunity there because even something like Crossrail, which obviously went over budget, now has extremely high levels of patronage, so would have provided a good, reliable revenue stream. It’s the busiest railway in the UK. One of the accusations you hear made against pension funds in the UK though is that pension funds abroad invest more in their domestic markets than UK pension funds do. Is that a myth or is there some truth to it?

WF: It’s true to some extent. If you look at somewhere like Australia, which runs pensions in a very different way, a lot more of that investment is in the domestic market. Now, having spoken to some of my peers running those schemes, they worry about how much exposure they have to their home market. But the Australian government incentivises to encourage that, whereas in the UK, the government wants pension schemes to do the same thing, basically out of an expectation of national obligation, and they’re not really putting in any incentives. The Australians on the other hand have much more foresight to realise that if they make it appealing, the pension funds will naturally invest.

OB: And when it comes to the Mansion House Accords, which are mainly voluntary as far as I understand, the government has that stick, which is the backstop, which if the pension funds don’t meet the targets, then they can come in and force them to.

WF: Yes, so as a DB scheme we’re pleased to be outside of it. But the industry as a whole has pushed back quite a lot on that ‘sunset clause’, as they call it. Because it’s fine in the hands of one flavour of government, but potentially quite a dangerous tool in the hands of a different flavour of government. Once it’s there, it’s there.

Quickfire

OB: How often do you go back to Wales? Do you still have any ties back home at all?

WF: A couple times a year. I’ve still got a couple of sisters back there. But I still pop occasionally to watch the rugby, for my sins. I’ve got a 14-year-old son who plays rugby, and god bless him he’s decided he’s Welsh and supports Wales and I did point out that he’s in for a lifetime of hope and misery in equal measure.

OB: What’s a book you’d recommend?

WF: The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley. I’m bit of a cricket nut and when he captained England in the early 80s and he had a bunch of mavericks that he effectively had to mould into a team capable of beating Australia and others. It’s an interesting read.

OB: Favourite café?

WF: There is a greasy spoon around the corner from our offices called De Vine, which provides a much-needed bacon sandwich on a Friday.

OB: Wyn Francis, thank you very much.

Follow Wyn on LinkedIn here and hear more from him in this clip here.

Background

OB: Where were you born and raised? And what’s your connection to Wales?

NJ: I was born and raised in North London but my dad’s from a village called Brymbo, just outside of Wrexham, but he went to study in Cardiff and now lives in a place called Llanfyllin near Welshpool, which is sort of a small hippie enclave. But he’s very Welsh. Welsh to his bones. I also have two much younger half-siblings through him who are in Welsh-medium education.

NJ: How did you end up being born in London?

NJ: My dad moved to London after uni, which is where my parents met. My mum was from North London, but I was never allowed to support England, except in cricket because my dad’s name is Geraint Jones and in the noughties one of the England wicketkeepers was called Geraint Jones, so that was allowed.

OB: And presumably, given your name, your dad absolutely loved the NHS?

NJ: I think he liked the name and wanted one that was Welsh that English people could actually pronounce, because his got butchered so much. My much younger sister’s name is Angharad, which is very Welsh too.

OB: And do people struggle with that?

NJ: I actually don’t know because she’s never really left North Wales!

Generation Rent

OB: What does Generation Rent do?

NJ: We campaign on private renting issues on behalf of renters across the UK. So not just England but all of the devolved nations. We actually had a meeting with Plaid Cymru last week, funnily enough. And it feels funny but this is the only time I’ve worked on an issue that I’m experiencing first-hand. When I was working on addiction or homelessness, you’re always a bit removed from the issue. Whereas now, I’ve been renting in London for nine years, which means I can actually draw on that experience and use that to inform my work.

OB: Have you yourself had any particularly bad experiences as a renter?

NJ: Oh yeah, absolutely. I remember in my first flat, there was a winter where the boiler stopped working and they just wouldn’t fix it. It was madness. We ended up just having to move out. That was about two-and-a-half months in total with no boiler.

OB: Wow. Were you still paying rent as well at the time?

NJ: Yeah. We managed to claim some back in the end, but it was ridiculous. We all just had to shower at the gym because the water was absolutely freezing.

OB: You hear those stories and you’d imagine that, surely, as a landlord, you wouldn’t want to subject anyone to that.

NJ: The landlord was abroad and the agent was crap, which is a classic combination. And you come to realise through those sorts of experiences that you just have so little power to enforce your rights too.

Renting and the economy

“if the cost of a bunch of bananas had risen at the same rate as rent since 1988, a bunch would be about 13 quid in the supermarket”

OB: Why are high rents a problem for the economy?

NJ: Rents are a mass transfer of wealth from younger working people to older, asset-rich people. 58% of landlords don’t have a mortgage, and if you pay the average household rent in London over four years, you send over £100,000 to your landlord. It’s money that’s sucked out of local economies, and furthermore, it’s passive income. It’s not productive.

OB: How would you describe the state of the housing market and renters’ rights at the moment?

NJ: Renters pay the most for the worst quality homes. We’ve seen rents soar in recent years. The stat we always go to is that if the cost of a bunch of bananas had risen at the same rate as rent since 1988, a bunch would be about 13 quid in the supermarket. Post-pandemic, we saw that renters nationally were spending on average 36% of their income on rent. In London, it’s 42%, which is way above affordable definitions, and have very little power and very little security. In the past, renting was seen as this transitional thing you did for a few years when you were young and then you would save up and buy and get on the property ladder. But what we see now is that high rents are just locking people into renting and it’s becoming a vicious circle. I talk to renters now who are in their 60s and 70s who will never buy because all their money goes on their rent. But we do have some changes coming in the form of the Renters’ Rights Act, which will bring some very significant changes in England, especially around the ending of Section 21 evictions and giving renters a lot more security in their homes. However, what it won’t do is directly address the cost of rents.

OB: Presumably, at one point, renting was something that was normal and fine and people accepted and were happy to do, and it wasn’t such a big deal. But now, it feels like renting has become quite a huge burden and very expensive, and that our rights have been somewhat diminished. What’s led to this situation that that we find ourselves in today?

NJ: I think one of the big things is the loss of social housing through the demolition of estates, the introduction of right-to-buy and, crucially, the reduction in the number of social houses being built. Social housing has been decimated in this country and what that’s done is pushed a lot of people who really should be in social housing back into the private rented sector, and that increases demand as well as forcing them to pay rents that are far above their means. And because rents in the private rented market aren’t capped, when there’s high demand, the rents will shoot up because landlords can play potential tenants off of one another. And we know from research that landlords raise rents mainly because they can, not because they have a financial need to do so. So in terms of our housing market, the balance is off. It’s taken us a long time to recognise that the private rented sector serves a different purpose to what it did 30 years ago. As I say, legislation is now starting to slowly catch up. Unfortunately, it’s different in Wales, which is the only place where no fault evictions will still exist after the 1st of May. So in Wales, you can be evicted for no reason, but you do get six months’ notice. Long-term, we think the answers are limits on rent increases and building many more social homes. We’ve heard that the government has this grand ambition to build 1.5 million, but when it relies on developers, affordable housing targets tend to get slashed, so we need more social housing.

OB: What are the main policy changes you’re still lobbying for? Presumably some of them have been seen in the Renters’ Rights Act.

NJ: A big thing is simply the enforcement of the Renters’ Rights Act. There was a Guardian investigation that showed two-thirds of councils in England haven’t taking one single enforcement action on a landlord in the last couple of years. And that’s not because all landlords have behaved perfectly, it’s because councils are stripped to the bone and have very little resource to enforce the law, and of course, a law is only as good as its enforcement. So we’ll be working hard to make sure that that’s happening and to make sure renters are aware of their rights and how to pursue enforcement. So that’s one side of it. And the other side is around the cost of renting. And we would like to see, as a first step, a cap on rent increases pegged to inflation or wage growth, whichever’s lowest. So that would mean landlords can raise the rent by a small amount but it would stop price gouging, which is still a worry, especially once Section 21 has ended. Landlords might start using these rent increases as another means of evictions.

OB: With regards to a proposal for rent increases to be capped to inflation or wage growth, whichever is lowest, would that be national wage growth or local wage growth?

NJ: It’s difficult to find local wage growth statistics, so probably nationally.

OB: And is enforcement resource-intensive?

NJ: Yes, but the government’s only given about £60 million nationally to local authorities for what they call ‘new burdens funding’. The ambition is that there’ll be new fines for landlords and a cost for landlords to sign up to the new online database when it starts later this year and they’re hoping that eventually that will fund enforcement entirely. And that’s obviously a nice ambition, but it won’t happen for a while at least, and we’re concerned that there just isn’t obvious, proactive enforcement early on. Some landlords will be waiting to see what they can get away with. And if they see people abusing new eviction grounds, then they’ll do the same. As we’ve discussed, local authorities are doing their best, but many of them are in real financial black holes and selling off assets as a result, which means that unfortunately there will be an onus on renters to know their rights and enforce them. For example, outside of antisocial behaviour or rent arrears, landlords will only be able to evict tenants if they want to sell or move into the property. And if they do that, they can’t let out the property for a year. And the only realistic way of policing that, it seems, will be renters seeing the property re-advertised and flagging it to the local authority. Because the renter, if they see that, can claim what’s called a rent repayment order, where they will get some of their rent back. But in an ideal world, local authorities would be checking local adverts and cross-referencing them with eviction notices and spotting these sorts of infringements, but that’s unlikely to happen.

OB: What do you think is the biggest information asymmetry in the market?

NJ: Probably just the fact that a lot of renters aren’t aware of their rights or how to pursue them. Have you ever heard of the First-Tier Tribunal?

OB: No.

NJ: 69% of renters when we did a representative poll nationally said they’d never heard of it. And this is the body through which you challenge rent increases and claim rent repayment orders. More than 50% of renters don’t know what an EPC is. It stands for ‘energy performance certificate’. It tells you how energy efficient your home is. So there’s a real lack of awareness of rights for renters and especially renters on lower incomes who more rogue landlords tend to rent to.

OB: What’s your view as an organisation on professionalised landlords, or corporate landlords versus amateur landlords?

NJ: I think what we’ll see through the reforms to renting is a drop in the number of these accidental amateur landlords and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. More professional landlords with bigger portfolios who treat it as a job will be much better at understanding new regulations and abiding by them. Whereas you do come across cases of these amateur landlords who inherited a home and rent it out without knowing what they’re doing. So, in the long-term, I don’t think the shrinking of the private rental sector is a bad thing. We hear supposed horror stories put forward by landlord groups about landlords selling up, but the private rented sector is way bigger than it should be as it is. One in five people privately rent now. And if a landlord does sell a home, that home isn’t bombed to the ground. It still exists. It could be an amateur landlord or even a more professional landlord who’s happy to abide by new regulations who buys it. It could be someone who’s going to live in it, which then frees up another space in the rental market. The more legitimate fear is around landlords turning properties into holiday lets and Airbnbs, which is very relevant for Wales. And we’ve seen quite a number of changes which have made it harder to do that, but we’d like to see it go further and have local authorities be able to bring in licensing teams so they can control the numbers of those types of properties in their area. But yeah that is the fear, because if you take ethics out of it, there is a rational financial choice there for a landlord to go, “Well, if I can rent this out on Airbnb. three, four months a year and make more in rent and not have to abide by these new regulations, I’m going to do that.”

OB: I’ve been living in Airbnbs for the past few months and you look at what people are charging even for a night, it’s incredible. And these aren’t necessarily nice or central. So you can totally imagine a situation where that happens. I read a stat a while back that said 7% of dwellings in Camden, where I used to live, were for Airbnbs, which is insane and must be so distortive for rents. And so many Airbnbs generally are not particularly well-maintained.

NJ: And if you think about Camden, the average percentage of income a private renter spends on rent in Camden is well over 50%. That’s the third highest local authority in the UK.

OB: Wow. And is there anything in the Renters’ Rights Act about landlord licensing?

NJ: No, but the government did make a change outside of that, though, to make it easier for local authorities to bring in licensing schemes. Whereas before, they had to apply for sign-off from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, they’ve removed that step now. But we don’t have licensing schemes for Airbnbs.

OB: Does the government do a good enough job on the data-collection side?

NJ: There’s more it could do, especially around rents. So the First-Tier Tribunal, for example, when it arbitrates on rent-increased cases uses local market rents, but it’s unclear where it gets its data from at the moment. And our fear is it looks on platforms like Zoopla or Rightmove, where advertised rents are often higher than what they go for in reality, which would affect the decision-making of the tribunal. So we would really like to see the new database record actual rents and give a better understanding of what people are paying in certain areas, rather than those tribunal decisions being based on inflated advertised rents.

The Financialisation of Housing

OB: It’s interesting, housing in the UK is such a big part of our culture and is such a big, emotive subject. It seems like a lot of people in the UK feel that it’s their inherent right to be a landlord and that any challenge to that perceived right is huge injustice. And I think stems largely from the fact that we have a culture of viewing housing as an asset, which itself I think comes from the broader economic issue of the financialisation of housing and people relying on their house for their retirement plan. You see news stories on the FT, for example, about falling house prices in London and describing that as if it’s a problem, which to me always seemed really perverse. Surely, actually, that’s quite a normal thing for a market for the prices to go up and down? And actually, if something is too expensive, whatever it might be, isn’t that a good thing for it become more affordable? After all, we wouldn’t cry for Apple if they had to drop the price of an iPhone, and Apple are arguably a more productive business than the business of landlordism.

NJ: I think that’s completely right, and I think our situation and culture around housing is fairly unusual compared to some of our European neighbours. We talk about the housing ladder, we about house prices, about passing homes down to kids and it’s seen as this thing that is primarily a financial asset and less like a foundation of life. In places like Austria, people with families and on good salaries will live in rented accommodation for life, whether that’s public or private, and not mind it at all because it’s really well regulated. Whereas here, passing down property via inheritance is a big thing, but also a huge driver of inequality. But I think the Renters’ Rights Act is like a first step towards changing that culture slightly. One of our goals is to create a system in which renters will be the envy of homeowners, which is a long way off. But there are benefits to renters in a really well-regulated system. For example, you have flexibility. If you want to like move, it’s a lot easier to find somewhere to live and to leave your place. And you also have to worry less about the sudden and large cost of maintenance or things breaking, because it’s the responsibility of the landlord to address that. But for a long time in the UK, the cost and the lack of security and enforcement have far outweighed those benefits in recent years, which is something we need to reverse.

Quickfire

OB: A book you’d recommend.

NJ: A book that had a huge impact on me was Keep the Aspidistra Flying, by George Orwell. I actually have an Aspidistra plant tattooed on my leg, but the book is about a man who tries to give up money, and it’s excellent.

OB: What’s a common misconception about renting that bothers you?

NJ: The misconception that a place you’re staying as a tenant is still the landlord’s home. No – if you’re paying someone a thousand pounds a month to do nothing, that’s your home.

OB: What’s one enforcement mechanism for renters that you think a lot of renters don’t know about but that they should?

NJ: The First-Tier Tribunal, which I mentioned earlier, especially from the 1st of May. So at the moment, a lot of renters don’t challenge rent increases because of the fear of getting a retaliatory eviction. That will end from the 1^st of May. And from then, even if you lose the case, your rent increase won’t be backdated. So the worst thing that can happen is you kick the rent increase down the road. So we’d like to see every renter challenge a rent increase on the 1st of May. And all you do is put in a form and the tribunal looks into it, so you don’t have to go to court or anything like that.

OB: Nye Jones, thank you very much.

You can follow Nye on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Scott is a perfect example of a classic British midshipman. They’re trained to deal with whatever’s in front of them. And it’s one of the great British traits that’s taught in the public schools, which is “Don’t get flustered. Get on with it and sort out the mess.” But because of that, we are more likely to get into messes because we don’t plan enough in the first place.

Early life

Everybody knew my mother. She was a bit of a force of nature. We actually had to have police line the route for her funeral, there were that many people. It was insane, actually. And you realise, “Wow, mum knows everyone. Literally everyone.” You could have done a good job in thieving on the day of her funeral because everywhere was bloody empty.

OB: Where were you born and raised?

SE: I was born and raised in Merthyr. I went to Vaynor and Penderyn School. It was the school that covered the bottom half of what was then the Brecon Beacons National Park. It was a tiny school with this massive catchment area. A failed comprehensive, really. But when you’re in a rubbish system, you don’t know it’s rubbish, and you sometimes end up thinking that you’re the problem because you assume everybody else is getting the same education you are. And it took me a long time to realise that I wasn’t actually bad at education or dumb, and that I was actually reasonably clever. Because when I left Wales to go to Bath University, I had the worst A-levels of the 120 people doing my degree, but now I’m a professor at Cambridge. So I probably wasn’t the dullest in the group. But when I arrived, I crapped myself, because I thought I would eventually get kicked out.

OB: What did your parents do?

SE: My father was a miner and did a very good job and got out as quickly as he could and spent most of his working life in the Hoover factory on the line making washing machines.

OB: This is the famous factory in Merthyr, right?

SE: Yeah, it was by far the biggest. My mother spent most of her life on the line of Thorns making light bulbs and then later in her life became a cleaner at the local tiny police station in Cefn Coed. Everybody knew her. She was a bit of a force of nature. We actually had to have police line the route for her funeral, there were that many people. It was insane, actually. And you realise, “Wow, mum knows everyone. Literally everyone.” You could have done a good job in thieving on the day of her funeral because everywhere was bloody empty.

OB: You said you had the worst A-levels of your cohort at Bath, but you must have done reasonably well to get in in the first place. Were you just lacking in confidence?

SE: I wasn’t uber confident in a way that I can observe in some of the young people I interact with now, which I think is something that affected the speed of my development, and it took a while for me to develop a sense of self-worth and awareness of my abilities, which is essential in academia. Good academics are really conscious of what they’re good at and not so good at. They need to be able to know how good they are whilst having a healthy sense of realism. I feel quite confident now in saying that I’m the best in the world at what I do. I am number one. And that’s not a conclusion I’ve come to just through sheer arrogance. This is based on evidence, achievements and contributions. But at the same time I’m also very conscious that if I made half a step sideways, that title would be taken, because academia is so competitive. But it took me a long time to be able to do that stock-take of my own abilities, and I think that’s a skill that some people are helped with when they’re younger, particularly if you go to the right schools, which means you’re more likely to find the right path for yourself.

Entering academia

One of my proudest partnerships was working with Toyota. They have a factory in Derby, and we managed to reduce the energy to make each car by 8 % every year for 14 years. That adds up to about a 77% reduction. That means they can now make four cars for the energy it took to make one.

OB: What was your first job after uni?

SE: Martin Baker Engineering. They make most of the world’s ejection seats. They’re probably the coolest company on the planet. Twice a week you got a letter saying “Thank you for saving my life.” So I was lucky enough to get that job and ended up doing quite well and got promoted quickly and started to realise that I was actually quite competent! I then got a letter asking if I wanted to be an academic, which I hadn’t really considered but thought I’d give it a go. Fast forward to today and I’m still here.

OB: What’s been the focus of your academic career?

SE: In simple terms, I try to work out how to solve bleeding-edge problems in the processes and operations of world-leading manfuacturers, and then my team and I bring back what we’ve learnt and disseminate it to the rest of the world, either by building tools and making them publicly available, open source, so that other factories can solve the same problem, or by writing about it in papers and books. I eventually came to the view that more research was not the best use of my time, and that my students would carry on that work. From my perspective, there’s a climate crisis and I wanted to be as impact-focused as possible.

OB: So what are you working on at the moment?

SE: Right now my two biggest projects aren’t publicly funded, they’re with BMW and Chanel, but I have smaller projects in China, but interestingly very few in the UK.

OB: And what do you specialise in now?

SE: I would argue we’re probably the leaders in resource efficiency. How would you make today’s products in today’s factories in the most sustainable way possible? And largely I call that programme ‘Stop doing stupid stuff’. You’d probably be utterly shocked at what happens in real life factories. Things like companies leaving ovens on over the weekend. And that’s normal. Totally normal. But basically I help companies make significant efficiency gains – which is both in terms of the energy and materials they use, and also time and, as a result of all of those, cost. One of my proudest partnerships was working with Toyota. They have a factory in Derby, and we managed to reduce the energy to make each car by 8 % every year for 14 years. That adds up to about a 77% reduction. That means they can now make four cars for the energy it took to make one. And the most expensive purchase to support that transition was 4,000 euros. They made those savings for effectively nothing, And Toyota own some of the world’s best-run factories. In the top 10 globally. And we improved it by 300% at zero cost. That’s how much waste is out there. So that’s the sort of thing I’m into and what I lead the world in.

OB: It’s funny, the idea we have of industry, of private enterprise, is that because it’s driven by profit, that it would naturally self-optimise, but that seems not to have been your experience.

SE: No, not at all.

British Manufacturing, Deindustrialisation and Reindustrialisation

To be blunt, if we decarbonise everything else and we are still making steel in a carbon intensive way in 15 years’ time, we could still be on a net zero pathway, which is good. What we shouldn’t be doing is putting the hardest problem at the front. Let’s build up our competence through solving easier problems and then deal with the harder problems when the technology advances.

OB: I don’t know how much you’re into your history of British manufacturing, but do you have any thoughts on the decline of manufacturing in the UK?

SE: I’ve been in manufacturing for a very long time. My family had been in factories for a long time before that, at a time when we were still a big driver of the UK economy. In part, we were caught up during the time of anti-worker, anti-union sentiment, which was derived from the fact that one union, the National Union of Mineworkers, could bring the country to a halt in a single figure number of days, because the electricity depended on them digging up coal, which we were so reliant upon. And since the War, the tide of industrial control has ebbed and flowed between bosses and workers, and each time whoever had the upper hand did stupid things to get revenge and spite one another, instead of getting together and asking whether there was a way that they could cooperate in a way that would benefit everyone, and we’ve paid the price for it. Because of that, politicians realised that deindustrialisation is good for government because it means that they don’t have to referee between the steelworkers’ union and the owners of the steel factories. If there’s no steel industry, that’s one less thing to worry about. So I think it was a political expediency to run down British manufacturing. We now understand the consequences of that.

OB: Why has deindustrialisation been a problem for the UK economy and society more broadly, do you think?

SE: I was one of the authors of a 2013 government-sponsored report on the future of British manufacturing out to 2050, and one bit of analysis that we asked to be done came back with some really interesting statistics. On average, manufacturing has a background productivity rate of between 3% and 4%. The service sector has a background productivity rate between 1% and 2%. So if you have an economy that’s dominated by the service sector, your productivity rate is going to go up at 1 % rather than 3%. It’s simple; the economies of countries that have a lot of manufacturing grow faster. And a calculation was carried out that said if manufacturing drops below a certain percentage of the economy, you effectively reach a point where the only way to continuously succeed, to be able to buy goods that other countries are manufacturing, is to continually devalue your currency to make it more competitive internationally, but that makes those products more expensive for consumers. So it harms British buyers anyway and their quality of life diminishes. The quality of jobs in manufacturing is also really high. The average wage in manufacturing is higher than the average wage in banking and finance, which most people wouldn’t realise, because we think all the rich people live in London and work in banks. Manufacturing pays more and is probably more satisfying because you’re actually making things. So the reduction in the number of manufacturing jobs has had huge effects across the country in so many ways.

OB: Obviously, your specialism is industrial decarbonisation. Do you think it’s possible to grow your manufacturing sector while decarbonising?

SE: Yes. We assume that decarbonising industry, even heavy industry, is really, really hard. Sometimes it can be really expensive, but it’s not necessarily really hard. But the sooner you do it the quicker it pays off. Looking at steel, for example, we’ve had various governments over the last four decades choose not to invest in electric arc furnaces, and throughout those decades we’ve saved those steel companies multiple times. Every time we’ve put in the least amount of money we could possibly get away with, which meant we’ve kept gas or coal. If we’d converted them to electric arc furnace 30 years ago, they would have been more efficient today. We wouldn’t have had to save them again, and they would be much lower carbon. So there is nothing stopping heavy industry from decarbonising.

OB: What about things like primary steel production, which you need for military ships and submarines, but which is also especially energy-intensive?

SE: You’re right, but even there there are solutions emerging. And look, to be blunt, if we decarbonise everything else and we are still making steel in a carbon intensive way in 15 years’ time, we could still be on a net zero pathway, which is good. What we shouldn’t be doing is putting the hardest problem at the front. Let’s build up our competence through solving easier problems and then deal with the harder problems when the technology advances. So we’ve got more time and we’ll have more money because when we solve the problems to begin with, we’ll save money. My point is, Toyota are saving millions on energy. At some point in the future, they might need to spend those millions on some really fancy tech to get the next lift in performance. It’s better to save money at the start and spend it at the end. What we seem to be caught up in is thinking that we need to spend lots of money at the start on some massively big, difficult technical problem. And I say, “No, let’s do that last. Let’s start with the smaller savings that we could be making.”

There’s a part of me that actually don’t care about the policy. I care about implementation, and good implementation of a bad strategy is better than bad implementation of a good strategy. At least you’re given the chance for the strategy to find out whether it is a good strategy if you’ve implemented it well.

OB: China is often touted as the gold standard when it comes to industrial strategy. What are they doing right?

SE: For the last 50 years, the gold standard has been a combination of Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. And those are really good places still to learn from. And maybe we’d be better off learning from them because their approach is rather more transparent. They tell you how they’re doing it and they dare you to compete with them. China does tell you what it’s going to do, but in slightly vague language. What China is doing, though, is investing very considerably in its key strategic sectors. But it doesn’t just throw money at something. It pulls together key people and experts from government, education, research, business, and it comes up with a plan. And within that plan, there is a very dynamic market. Universities compete to be the institution of choice, startups compete to be the one that becomes big. That coordination competence I think is maybe the most important aspect. There’s a part of me that actually don’t care about the policy. I care about implementation, and good implementation of a bad strategy is better than bad implementation of a good strategy. At least you’re given the chance for the strategy to find out whether it is a good strategy if you’ve implemented it well. And implementation of things that require very complex coordination is not a skill many governments in the world possess, but it is something that China is good at. And that’s hard for us to compete with. So a combination of planning and free market, to a degree that I think most of us don’t really understand very well, has been developed in China that’s made it incredibly effective. China set the goal, for example, of peaking its carbon emissions by 2035. They changed that to 2030. Most observers will say they’ve already achieved it. They’ve overachieved on even the more ambitious target, which is typical of China. We on the other hand make promises without a plan. And then you look at the scores on the doors, on the ground, and what have we actually achieved?

OB: How do you think Welsh Government does on coordination?

SE: Welsh Government is at the sweet spot of government when it comes to size. It’s not so small that it doesn’t have the resources to solve problems, and it’s not so big that different parts of government don’t know each other exist. Everyone in the Welsh Government goes to the same bloody cafeteria! So somebody whose interest is in the farming business, for example, will go to the cafeteria and talk with people who are developing at the waste strategy for Wales, just because of that size and proximity. In London, that doesn’t happen. They are half a mile apart. Despite this, though, Wales still doesn’t do it well.

we just seemed to have meetings about everything in absolutely tedious detail. It seemed endless. But what I realised was, when it came to actually delivering the plan, the execution was perfect. We’d agreed to do something, and we’d all leave the meeting and everybody knew their exact job and got it done.

OB: What are some cultural differences you’ve observed between companies from different countries compared to UK businesses?

SE: I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of amazing businesses, one of which was when I was seconded to Nissan in Europe. That was a really important moment for me. At that point, I’d already worked with many, many companies across many sectors. Nissan asked me to join them and lead a particular programme of involving their suppliers in the design of their next car, and we had targets to design a car 30% than they’d ever designed a car before. But not only that, but to build it 30% cheaper too. Now, 3% is hard. 30% seems unimaginable. But that was an opportunity for me to learn the Japanese way of doing things. And there were big differences in culture that I had to adapt to, some of which drove me nuts initially in the first few months, but which eventually made sense. One of these apparent quirks was that we just seemed to have meetings about everything in absolutely tedious detail. It seemed endless. But what I realised was, when it came to actually delivering the plan, the execution was perfect. We’d agreed to do something, and we’d all leave the meeting and everybody knew their exact job and got it done. And it taught me something about the relationship between preparation and delivery. It seemed so weirdly exaggerated at the time spending all that time on preparation. And then you realise, we have a tendency in Britain to want to move quickly, which I like, but can mean that you start doing something and then you have to deal with the problems that emerge from acting quickly because you haven’t thought through everything.

OB: What do you think are some of the systemic challenges facing the UK economy?

SE: Where to start. One interesting area is that we’ve got one of the best financial sectors in the world, which should be to the advantage of the UK much more than it does currently. The problem is that all of the money in that sector is global. One of the things I’ve observed as a startup founder is that, for example, German venture capital is expected to be used in Germany, whereas British money is international. Part of it’s language of course, but part of it is cultural. So as a founder in Britain in manufacturing, for example, looking for investment, I’m competing with a shopping mall in Johannesburg. Now, the German equivalent is not competing with a shopping mall in Johannesburg. And I think that the international nature of our wonderfully successful financial centre means that we don’t have a good national financial centre. We have a good international one, and we’ve never built a good national one.

OB: How would you go about changing that? Would you compel British financial institutions to invest more in UK startups, or is that not the right way to go about it?

SE: That’s why we have a British Business Bank, right? Which seems like a good idea, but the execution has been poor. All politicians could do with a few years in industry, I think. They should learn the skill of execution, because politics is too much of a dance. And you know, words come out, and they might even be translated into papers, but most of the papers I read are paper thin. Where’s the depth? And you need depth to execute well. In my view, it’s part of the tradition of British amateurism. I’m an avid reader of our exploits in difficult regions of the world like the Arctic, the Antarctic, Everest et cetera, and it would be polite to say I’m not a fan of Scott; the amateur who changed his mind halfway through a trip and said, “Oh, actually, I think there’s room for five of us to go to the South Pole.” Every calculation in preparation for the expedition all along having been based on four people, and then you change your mind and bring five people along. Scott is a perfect example of a classic British midshipman. They’re trained to deal with whatever’s in front of them. And it’s one of the great British traits that’s taught in the public schools, which is “Don’t get flustered. Get on with it and sort out the mess.” But because of that, we are more likely to get into messes because we don’t plan enough in the first place. [Author’s note: for an excellent article on the cultural differences in planning, read this The Maintenance Race - Works in Progress Magazine] But like I’ve said, there are some great businesses in the UK, and they’re some of the best in the world. Toyota in Derby and Nissan at Sunderland are some of the best factories in the world. They’re running incredibly brilliantly now. If you go to their equivalents in Germany, and I do a lot of work in German car companies, I think they’re better run in Britain. So when we’re good we’re great. But one of the things that I’m fascinated about is if you’re wandering around a British factory, the CEO will take you to a machine that’s 40 years old and they’ll say, “My engineers are amazing. This was deprecated in 1989 and we’re still making money out of it in 2025. It’s bloody brilliant. It’s like printing money.” Whereas the German CEO will take you to the 2 million euro machine with 17 robots on it that they bought last year. So in Britain, we sweat the asset and save the £2 million upfront cost. In Germany, no, they would buy the new equipment even if they didn’t have 100% confidence in the equipment itself, because they’re confident that with their skills, they will stay at the leading edge. And they know that they need to do that in order to keep winning business. And interestingly in Germany, those jobs are protected. You can’t buy a 2 million euro machine and then sack two workers. Those two workers have to be given another job in the factory at an equivalent level, so you don’t get the same union pushback to investment in productivity technology.

OB: Finally, what are some of the industrial opportunities for Wales to help it pursue some manufacturing-led growth?

SE: There are a few things, but one interesting opportunity is that we have a fantastic coastline and one of the developments that’s going to happen in industry is near-shore manufacturing. What minerals and materials can we access from that first five miles of shoreline and use to manufacture goods from? We’re not talking about digging up gravel here. We’re talking about using seaweed to make medicine, for example, and developing new, really high-tech sectors. I think that’s one of our greatest assets, but we don’t have a clear strategy to get the most out of it at the moment.

OB: Steve Evans, thank you very much.

Find Steve on LinkedIn here and see his academic profile here.

Background

On the morning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I posted something online and it suggested I was in Sebastopol, and a well-known former Labour MP rang me at about eight in the morning asking, “Are you in the Crimea?!” And I had to say, “No, I’m in South Wales!”

OB: Where were you born and raised?

NY: I was born in Panteg Hospital in Griffithstown, Pontypool, and I was brought up there and in Sebastopol, which is the adjoining village.

OB: Such a crazy name for a place in Wales. The equivalent of Hughesovka in Ukraine.

NY: It is, isn’t it? There’s no autolocation for Griffithstown on certain apps so it thinks you’re in Sebastopol instead. On the morning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I posted something online and my geotag said I was Sebastopol, and a well-known former Labour MP rang me at about eight in the morning asking, “Are you in the Crimea?!” And I had to say, “No, I’m in South Wales!”

So I grew up there and moved to Griffithstown when I was 14. I went to school at what was then West Monmouth Comprehensive School and did my A-Levels at Pontypool Tertiary College. I then left to go to university at Worcester College, Oxford in October 1995, where I spent three years studying Modern History. After graduating, I stayed on to do a PhD but I left after a year because I decided that the monastic life of an academic probably wasn’t for me. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at the time so I moved home to figure things out.

OB: What did your parents do when you were growing up?

NY: My dad left school at 16 and worked in industry. He’d spent time in the army and in many other different jobs, but the week I was born he started a degree at Cardiff University as a mature student doing an industrial relations course. He went on to become a sociology lecturer at Pontypool College and then did a number of trade union and teaching roles before he retired. My mum worked in retail her entire life. For much of it she managed Shipley’s – the slot machine shop in Cwmbran, which then became Cashino and is now Merkur Slots.

OB: I think the course your dad did was the one that Neil Kinnock also did at Cardiff Uni.

NY: Quite possibly. In the 70s he did some teaching at the WEA [Workers’ Educational Association].

OB: Was the environment you were raised in quite politically active?

NY: Growing up in that bit of Gwent – the Kinnocks were in the valley next door – there was a guy called Llew Smith who became the MP for Blaenau Gwent after Michael Foot [former leader of the Labour Party immediately before Neil Kinnock] in 1992. He took over the role as the instructor at the WEA after Kinnock went to Parliament, and my dad knew him. I think he undoubtedly went into higher education as a result of his involvement in trade union activism and then in the Labour Party locally.

Career and political activism

OB: Could you give me a whistlestop tour through your career from when you graduated?

NY: I left Oxford in 1999 and farted about a bit doing some work on EU-funded projects for an organisation called CRED – the Centre for Research and Economic Development – which was basically a collection of Wales-based consultants looking at how EU funding was allocated. I then went to work at Cardiff Business School in 2001, where I worked in what was then the Small Firms Research Unit run by Professor Brian Morgan [also former Chief Economist of the Welsh Development Agency], which was also work funded by the EU to provide research and networking support for SMEs across South Wales. I was there for roughly ten months before I went to work for Kevin Brennan when he was elected MP for Cardiff West in 2001, and I worked with him until the end of March 2003. I then went to work for BBC News at Millbank as the Labour Party desk expert in the old political research unit.

The unit provided internal support and information for journalists across the BBC, which meant that in the summer of 2004 I spent an inordinate amount of my time doing what we would now call ‘live blogging’ on the Hutton Inquiry [into circumstances around the death of the nuclear weapons inspector, David Kelly in the lead up to the Iraq War]. I did that for two and a half years with a diverse brief covering local and national election programmes, the budget, live broadcasts and a number of other areas, but eventually I decided that it wasn’t what I wanted to do.

So in the autumn of 2005, I went to work at the Local Government Association, which is the main umbrella body for councils across England and Wales – although there is a separate one for Wales called the WLGA - and I ended up spending seven years there. For the first 18 months I was one of the political advisors, and then for the remainder of the period I worked as the Head of Office for the LGA Labour Group, which meant spending a lot of time getting to know a lot of the Labour councils quite intimately, as well as a lot of the senior Labour local government politicians across the country. On top of this, I was also acting as a conduit to the Brown government, and then Ed Miliband in opposition. From the end of 2012, I had two and a half years out of the workplace, largely due to a bout of bad health and associated addiction issues, which I’ve written publicly about. After that, I got my first proper job back in the real world at the end of 2015 as Strategic Policy Advisor at the London Borough of Sutton, which made for an interesting return to politics because Sutton is a flagship Lib Dem council and I’d been the senior Labour hack in local government. And from there I went to work for New Philanthropy Capital in January 2018 – a consultancy and think tank in the charity and social sector – working for Dan Corry, who I had known when he was a New Labour SpAd [special advisor – politically appointed advisors in government] and, briefly, Gordon Brown’s Head of Policy at Number 10.

OB: He also more recently wrote the widely circulated Corry Review on environmental regulations and is now Chief Economist at the Future Governance Forum, right?

NY: That’s right. I worked at New Philanthropy Capital for 18 months. Throughout most of this period, and particularly from about 2010 onwards, I became increasingly involved with the local Labour Party in what was then the Vauxhall constituency in the London Borough of Lambeth. After 2015, Vauxhall was one of the few parts of the country that did not collapse in the face of that hard left wave, and I began to be heavily involved in the internal shenanigans regarding Jeremy Corbyn. During that period, if I’m being honest, I spent more time trying to prevent the Corbynite wave from entering local politics than I spent doing any of my actual jobs. This led me to apply, and eventually be appointed, as the director of Progress in the summer of 2019.

OB: What’s Progress?

NY: Progress had originally been set up in the wake of Tony Blair’s campaign to rewrite Clause IV – a formerly longstanding element of the Labour Party constitution that enshrined the party’s commitment to public ownership of industry, and something which Tony Blair removed to demonstrate the changed nature of the party. At the time, Progress campaigned for and offered support to the then-leadership, maintaining very close links with the government after 1997. By 2011 it had fallen out of favour however, and after 2015 Progress became one of the main enemies of the Corbyn project due to its links with New Labour. 2019 was therefore a particularly interesting time to take over as leader of the organisation. Labour was in freefall under Jeremy Corbyn, but at the same time, his control over the party was getting stronger. Antisemitism was driving people away from the Labour Party, and then Change UK emerged [but later dissolved ten months after being established], which meant a lot of moderate people left. I went to do that job because it was an opportunity to get actively involved in the effort to prevent a complete Corbynite takeover. The only reason that that didn’t happen is because Boris Johnson called the election for December 2019 and Labour got smashed, with the lowest number of MPs since 1935. So early 2020 was an important opportunity to think about the future of the Labour Party and to remobilise ‘moderate’, anti-Corbynite members. This became particularly challenging during the lockdowns though, because useful conversations about politics are always easier to have in person.

OB: At what point did you move back home during all this?

NY: The day before lockdown. I moved home for what I thought would be a very short period. I didn’t want to stay in my flat in Stockwell if we were all going to be confined to the house for what we thought would be a couple of weeks. So I moved back in with my mum and dad for the first time in 25 years. It was an interesting time for everyone…

But I actually ended up staying in Wales permanently. I lived with them during Covid before buying a house in Griffithstown. So now I’m living in a house that is two minutes away from the hospital I was born in, and two minutes down the road from where my parents live. And in 2022 I became the councillor for that ward, too.

Future Governance Forum

A lot of think tanks will come out with brilliant ideas, but without a clear sense of implementation, or how they’ll work in reality. The expectation is then largely that civil servants should pick up this shiny bauble and work out how to polish it.

At the time, the Labour Party was rightly focusing on how to win an election. But a lot of work needed to be done, and still needs to be done, on thinking about the design and delivery of credible policy.

OB: So how did the Future Governance Forum come about?

NY: One of my aspirations for Progressive Britain, which is what we re-branded Progress to in 2021, was to do more think-tank-esque work. Along with Georgia Gould [daughter of the late Baron Philip Gould, former New Labour grandee and pollster], former Leader of Camden Council and now Minister for Schools in the Department for Education, we decided we wanted to do something with that ambition.

OB: I actually used to live in Camden for three years. I met Georgia a couple of times, although she wouldn’t remember me.

NY: Georgia’s fantastic. We also did some work with Chris Clarke – author of the book Warring Fictions – which focussed on identifying and counteracting the increasingly powerful and persuasive populist stereotypes. We ended up publishing that work, before doing a sequel which argued that progressive politicians have to speak in much plainer language. Across the course of 2022, Georgia and I spoke to a number of funders and the opportunity arose to set up a separate entity, which is where FGF came from.

OB: So what is FGF and what does it aim to do? And did you start it alongside your other gigs?

NY: I did, unfortunately – which I wouldn’t advise anyone to do. I was basically doing three different jobs simultaneously, which brought me close to burnout and destroyed any prospect of a social life. FGF was eventually created though, and the whole point of it is that it’s not something exclusively associated with the Labour Party. It is a progressive organisation that supports and promotes better progressive government.

OB: So you’re non-partisan but you’re not apolitical.

NY: Exactly – that’s a good way of putting it. It’s all about the design, delivery and implementation of policy, and how to make government better. A lot of think tanks will come out with brilliant ideas, but often without a clear sense of implementation or how they’ll work in reality. The expectation is then largely that civil servants should pick up this shiny bauble and work out how to polish it.

The topics we’ve looked at so far have included things like mission-driven government –

OB: So the Mariana Mazzucato stuff? [who’s Italian, not Japanese]

NY: Exactly, which is basically thinking about how you can govern differently. We’ve also done a lot of work on devolution, mostly within England. And then under the banner of ‘Rebuilding the Nation’, we’ve done work on investments in infrastructure.

His argument is that things like over-financialisation of sectors like the water industry, as well as the over-quantification, KPI-driven, New Public Management attitude towards public services like healthcare – where they are run on private sector lines despite being completely different in nature – have failed as a way to deliver public goods. Look at the extent to which private equity now owns and operates key public services like nurseries, care homes and water et cetera. We’ve gotten to a point where we’ve got to start asking whether this is the right way to provide these public services.

OB: What was the spark that made you want to start FGF? Presumably you saw a problem and you thought you could do something about it.

NY: A big part of it was that I’d done enough organising. I’d done that for a long time and the reality was that there were big gaps around Labour’s thinking on how to actually govern. At the time, the Labour Party was rightly focusing on how to win an election. But a lot of work needed to be done, and still needs to be done, on thinking about the design and delivery of credible policy.

OB: Which is the major criticism of Labour at the moment, it seems like.

NY: But the reality is – and I know people get fed up with Labour saying this – the economy they inherited was in a really poor condition. The Conservatives set up a lot of cliff edges for 2024 in their final two budgets. The global economy was also performing poorly, there was the fallout from the Truss budget, the legacy of Covid, and, of course, the ongoing ramifications of Brexit. How many billions of pounds worse-off are we as a country as a result of having to deal with all those things?

One of the biggest challenges this government faced is dealing with the burden of that economic inheritance, while at the same time thinking about how to make the economy more effective and robust. In 1997, Blair was very lucky to inherit a strong economy. And for the following 10 years that he was Prime Minister, we experienced a continuation of ‘The Great Moderation’ – the period from 1992 to 2007/2008, which saw one of the longest periods of sustained growth in the history of industrialised economies.

OB: The End of History, as Francis Fukuyama called it.

NY: Correct. There was money to spend during that period and the Labour government had agreed to stick to the spending limits imposed by the previous government for the next two years to ensure nobody thought they were going to run away with the silver, or spend your generation’s silver. Showing the country that they were fiscally prudent and could be trusted to manage the economy was vital to rehabilitate the party’s reputation after previous governments. But crucially, when they did decide to turn the taps on, there was money in the tank.

I don’t envy anybody working in government at the moment. It’s difficult enough to work out how to keep services going; invest in them and reform them – let alone manage the range of other factors that are complicating matters. The process of trying to make sense of what they have inherited, make the state more responsive, deal with Trump, and everything else that is going on geopolitically, is an enormous task.

OB: You talk about making government responsive - Keir Starmer was in front of the Liaison Committee in Parliament last December, where he was talking about pulling levers and things not happening, and it feels like a lot of governments, not just in the UK, struggle with deliverability and actually ‘getting stuff done’. What do you think is the core cause of these symptoms that we see? Where there’s a lack of transmission from the centre to the nodes at the end. Because, for whatever reason, the most powerful person in the country can’t seem to figure out how to deliver his agenda. So why is that?

NY: We published a paper in January by a journalist and author named Phil Tinline, called Power Failure: A New Theory of Power. Phil is a former BBC journalist. He wrote a book called The Death of Consensus a couple of years ago. This recent paper makes the argument that we are at the end of a 40/50/60-year cycle in terms of how politics and, crucially, how this system operates.

The boiled-down version of Phil’s argument is that we’ve gone from a mixed economy and a social belief in the competence of the state, to an age in which people largely believe in market-led solutions and doubt the ability of the state to solve issues. His view is that this modern consensus needs to be re-evaluated – especially in light of the 2007/08 Financial Crisis which was largely a result of that market-first thinking.

His argument is that things like over-financialisation of sectors like the water industry, as well as the over-quantification, KPI-driven, New Public Management attitude towards public services like healthcare – where they are run on private sector lines despite being completely different in nature – have failed as a way to deliver public goods. Look at the extent to which private equity now owns and operates key public services like nurseries, care homes and water et cetera. We’ve gotten to a point where we’ve got to start asking whether this is the right way to provide these public services.

One of the major things FGF has been looking at is how to develop coherent and deliverable policy. How can we iterate more effectively? The answer to that question is that we need to trial it, analyse the results, and be prepared to tweak it continuously. All of this is key if we want to make government more agile.

OB: It does feel like ‘agile’ government has been an ambition for a while. When I was at the Civil Service, I did courses about how to develop policy and the stated ambition was always: “Yeah, let’s iterate and let’s have these really rapid cycles, and let’s learn from what we’ve done and then actually try things on the ground and learn.” But it doesn’t feel like this is ever how things really happen. So why doesn’t that happen more often?

NY: I think local government is somewhere where that is done well. There is an issue about silos across public services and the public sector full stop. Because of the way in which most big public services are set up and established institutionally, there are almost zero incentives or opportunities to be working properly across local government, the NHS, and central government.

I’m not saying that strides haven’t been made in the last 15 to 17 years. There was an initiative after 2008 called Total Place that came out of the Brown government. Total Place looked at pilots for integrated settlements, where you would calculate what the total public service expenditure in Greater Manchester was, for example, and you would consider what it would look like if you gave the regional government that entire budget as a lump sum. This would allow them to decide the priorities within that spending envelope. That’s the sort of thing we’d like to bring back.

And to be fair to the Coalition Government, the Troubled Families programme, spearheaded by Louise Casey [now Baroness Casey, author of multiple high-profile reports in topics and institutions such as the Metropolitan Police, the child grooming gangs scandal and integration by ethnic minority communities in Britain] in 2010/2011, essentially grew out of Total Place – but it was a much smaller version of it.

This agenda is an opportunity for effective change. And it’s sort of thing goes hand-in-hand with the UK government’s efforts to push for greater decentralisation across England.

people are gravitating towards the necessity for this kind of systemic change, rather than simply tinkering around the edges…[around] the birth of New Labour, there was a lot of discussion at the time about how we were operating within what was then the prevailing Thatcher/Reagan economic model that had taken over the industrialised economies. Because of that period of sustained growth, it had become commonplace to think that an ideological underpinning was unnecessary. Technocracy replaced political belief.

OB: Do you think the current government has much of a theory of the state and a theory of what’s wrong with it? Starmer obviously does talk about things like pulling levers, but it seems like that language has very much emerged from fashionable pro-growth think tanks like Centre for British Progress, rather than something he’s come to his own conclusion about through a lot of deep contemplation. And to me, at least, it feels like his understanding, or his philosophy of governing, is quite superficial. What do you think about that?

NY: I don’t think there is any burning theory of state that is motivating the way that government is being done. But I don’t think we’ve had that from any government for a while. When the Prime Minister came in, he said he wanted ‘competent government’, which centres on the assumption that calming things down and bringing competence and stability back into the system would make it effective again. But increasingly people have left Number 10 over the last few months, like former Director of Strategy Paul Ovenden, criticising the “stakeholder state”. So people are gravitating towards the necessity for this kind of systemic change, rather than simply tinkering around the edges.

But coming back to the so-called End of History that we were discussing earlier, and the birth of New Labour, there was a lot of discussion at the time about how we were operating within what was then the prevailing Thatcher/Reagan economic model that had taken over the industrialised economies. Because of that period of sustained growth, it had become commonplace to think that an ideological underpinning was unnecessary. Technocracy replaced political belief.

OB: You’ve spoken about mission-driven government and about the current inability of government to work outside of silos and for departments to work with one another. How important do you think the machinery of government [the way that government is structured] is? Or do you think that’s actually a side issue when it comes to bringing about meaningful change?

NY: It’s definitely not a side issue. It needs to be improved. And there’s a problem beyond the make-up of central government itself, which is the way in which it views other tiers of government – a sort of, dare I say it, chauvinism, that places central government on a pedestal above other services. The reality is that local government is at the sharp end of most issues and public services, and they have a greater understanding of what’s happening on the ground.

Local government

Having spent 20 years in England, and then coming back to Wales and now being a councillor, it’s forced me to wonder; what is the point of devolution? Is it a means to an end of different or better political, social, and economic outcomes for people? Or is it an end in and of itself? I don’t think we’ve quite answered that question in Wales, or reached a consensus – if such a thing exists.

My critique would be; what is the point of having differentiated answers for some of those really complex social policy problems if you can’t move the dial sufficiently, or if you have worse outcomes than the people who are governed by central government policy? Thinking about areas such as education and the PISA scores – in which Wales consistently ranks so low – are we ignoring effective policy solutions that other countries are pursuing simply because we haven’t devised them ourselves?

OB: So why did you stand to be a councillor in your home ward back in Torfaen?

NY: I’d moved home and I’d been involved in politics before, so I was interested in it and I wanted to do some good. I’d had opportunities to stand in London, but I never fancied it. Full disclosure, my dad was one of the sitting councillors in that ward and had been for two terms. So he stood down and I stood, and I managed to get the seat. Now I represent Panteg, which is the ward where I was born, grew up, and now live.

OB: And what’s been your experience of it to date?

NY: It’s been great. I love it. Most notably, I became the chair of the Pension Committee. Torfaen County Borough Council is the administering authority for the Greater Gwent Pension Fund, which covers the pensions of Newport, Monmouthshire, Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly and Torfaen council employees, past and present. There are also a number of admitted bodies, which is in large part a bunch of housing associations, carers services, and other companies that have been outsourced over time.

I ended up becoming the chair of the fund. And it’s funny, because many of my friends from Oxford University went off into the City and have earned vastly more money than I have. But it’s interesting that now, in my late 40s, I’ve become involved in the world of investment, and I’ve found it absolutely fascinating. Even more so because of the timing, with pension reform and consolidation under both Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves becoming a big ticket item.

OB: When it comes to local government, do you think the primary challenge that they’re facing is that they’ve had their budgets slashed in real terms and are also having these statutory duties piled on them?

NY: You’ve hit the nail on the head. Since 2010, the reduction in spending power of the average council has been remarkable. It’s been a cut of roughly a third in real terms. The Coalition Government reduced all schemes for grant funding on the basis of need or disadvantage, and simultaneously encouraged councils to become much more entrepreneurial in terms of the speculativeness of their investments. So you have places like Thurrock, in England, that have effectively gone bankrupt because of some investment decisions that went south.

The fact that the vast majority of local authorities have survived for so long shows the resilience and resourcefulness of much of local government. The overwhelming cost of statutory services in the current climate, inflation post the Covid pandemic, the fallout from the Liz Truss budget; these have all clobbered councils. Homelessness, housing duties, adult social care and children’s social care alone now take up over 70% of most councils’ budgets. This really underlines the importance of rethinking how we deliver them.

Where, right now, we provide separate services for exceptional cases, wouldn’t it be better if we mainstreamed them, but provided add-ons and additional support to the people who meet the eligibility for those cases? Because when you exceptionalise people, whatever the service, that’s where it starts to become a money pit quite quickly, and you end up throwing more money at it rather than solving the problem.

OB: An example of this would be the taxi bill that local authorities are having to foot to transport SEND students to specialised schools that are often miles away from their homes.

NY: Absolutely. These things need to be tackled because otherwise it’s a precipice. What’s interesting in Wales is the route that the Welsh government took after 2010 following the imposition of austerity measures, and the knock-on effect that had on the funding arrangements from the central government. By and large, Welsh government tried to prioritise spending for local government instead of slashing it.

If you look at the recent budget that is being voted on next week [at the time of writing], one of the things that came out in talks with Plaid Cymru and the Labour government is an agreement on an uplift to local government in this settlement, which has been significant. Looking at my local authority of Torfaen, we’ve gone from being in a deficit to being in a surplus going into the next financial year, which has been immensely helpful.

OB: What are your thoughts on the upcoming election in Wales?

NY: It’s looking like Plaid Cymru are in the driving seat. Having spent 20 years in England and then coming back to Wales as a councillor, it’s forced me to wonder; what is the point of devolution? Is it a means to an end of different or better political, social, and economic outcomes for people? Or is it an end in and of itself? I don’t think we’ve quite answered that question in Wales, or reached a consensus – if such a thing exists.

My critique would be; what is the point of having differentiated answers for some of those really complex social policy problems if you can’t move the dial sufficiently, or if you have worse outcomes than the people who are governed by central government policy? Thinking about areas such as education and the PISA scores – in which Wales consistently ranks so low – are we ignoring effective policy solutions that other countries are pursuing simply because we haven’t devised them ourselves? I’ve come to the realisation that there are some big socioeconomic issues that always seem to lose out, regardless of which side of Offa’s Dyke or the Severn Bridge you might live on.

OB: What do you think is the cause of the apparent reticence to adopt ideas from elsewhere? Is it sort of a Welsh-first view, where we want to make our own solutions and implement them in our own way? Because obviously, on several metrics, including on education, as you mentioned, and in health as well, which is also devolved, Wales is performing poorly. Or is it just the fact that we have a relatively immature democracy so we’re still figuring things out and our politicians are still figuring out how to do government?

NY: There is definitely a conversation to be had about the maturity of the political system, and the fact that we have created new institutions over the course of the last 25 years. Although I think we need to question whether there has been too much of a desire to do things differently because ‘we are Wales’ and ‘we are a separate country’. I can understand that instinct. But the question is; whose interests are being furthered by just deciding things need to be done differently?

My view is likely coloured by the fact that I’ve spent a proportion of the last 25 years outside of Wales. I’m keen to do more work looking at Wales with FGF over the next 12 to 24 months, because it will potentially become a more interesting proposition if there is a change of administration. But the reality is that most of our work is in London and England.

I certainly don’t have a perfect insight into devolved government in Wales. But I do believe there are valuable lessons to be learned across England and Scotland – and lessons for them to learn from Wales too. I hope we can be mature enough to learn the right lessons from all the good, bad and ugly policy challenges across the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments. Doing so would allow us to land on some key prescriptions where everyone should be pushing in the right direction.

we’ve invested in the regeneration of the Uskmouth site on the coast of Newport, which is an old coal-fired power station. It’s now being regenerated into one of the biggest battery storage facilities in Wales and it could end up meeting the energy needs of about two thirds of the population. We’re talking about a significant double-figure return on it over a six-month period. And that’s infrastructure that’s going to benefit people.

OB: What’s been your main insight and experience of being a councillor so far?

NY: It’s been an education and it’s been fascinating. The work I’ve done as Chair of the pensions committee has allowed me to think about how my day job and my political career are linked, because two of the first papers we published at FGF in November 2023 were parallel papers looking at progressive investment policy and pension reform. In that paper on pension reform, we explored the argument behind consolidating some of the private pension systems. We also considered what one could do with the local government pension scheme, which collectively is the fourth or fifth largest pension scheme in the world, but is split over a number of geographies. The Greater Gwent Fund is obviously one of those.

Now, the government has come in and told local authority funds that they’ve got to consolidate. Much of the last 24 months has therefore been spent working with officers at the fund – who have been fantastic – and with other chairs and officers that make up the Wales Pension Partnership, to turn what is a joint corporate committee of those eight councils into a standalone pensions company. With our new chief executive starting in April, it’s been a massive sprint to ensure everything is ready so this company can open its doors on the 1st of April.

WPP is currently on course to be launched formally on that day as a fully City-regulated organisation that will manage roughly 26 - 27 billion pounds worth of assets. This means it is by far, and will remain by far, the biggest financial institution in Wales. Part of our pitch was also that we want to lean into the ability of that company to act as a pinwheel to crowd in greater investment, and to use it as a centre for investment and financial excellence based in Cardiff.

OB: To invest in Wales specifically?

NY: A significant proportion is invested globally as part of a diversified portfolio to reduce our exposure to any one market and reduce the risk to pension members. But one of the things I’ve been keen on since being elected is investing more locally and on more ‘impact investments’, as they’re called, which the government is supportive of.

The question is; as an institutional investor operating during constrained fiscal conditions, how should we use our position to pump-prime the indigenous economy? Something that we’ve done in Gwent that we’re keen on, is to make the case that there are local economic infrastructural investments that can be made that offer a very good rate of return. There is no suboptimal investment going on here; we are actually investing in things that make market sense because the return has been sufficient – and at the same time we are putting something back into the communities of the pension holders.

For example, we’ve invested in the regeneration of the Uskmouth site on the coast of Newport, which is an old coal-fired power station. It’s now being regenerated into one of the biggest battery storage facilities in Wales and it could end up meeting the energy needs of about two thirds of the population. We’re talking about a significant double-digit return on it over a six-month period. And that’s infrastructure that’s going to benefit people.

People argue about the politicisation of some decisions about pensions, but I actually fully agree with the government. If you want to invest in the future of the country, green infrastructure investment is the way to go. When people talk about onshoring or bringing industry back, the reality people need to realise is that we cannot bring back a thousand jobs on the shop floor of a plant or a factory somewhere, where people will clock in and out the way they used to. Those jobs are gone. They don’t even exist in China in the way they might have done. High-level investment into the technologies of the future is what we need to be doing. The country needs to be competitive in that space, and the reality is that we will all benefit from those investments going forward. So that’s something we’re very much looking into.

Obviously, the fiduciary responsibility of these organisations is the most important thing we have to consider. We need to ensure the money is always there to pay the current and future pension benefits to the people whose money we are holding and investing for their future. I won’t be as directly involved from the 1st of April because the management and the accountability structures will change, but I’m really confident in the people who are running it currently – who are also Welsh, by the way.

The chief exec is a native Welsh speaker who spent many years working in finance, both in London and on the continent, and has come back to live in Wales in the last five years. He wants us to be at the head of the pack in terms of thinking creatively about how we can use both the assets under management, and also our position, to ensure that there are more innovative and creative investment opportunities and solutions in Wales.

This work is crucial because we need to be bringing much more inward investment into the country. In my view, for Wales to be the viable polity it aspires to be, it needs to be a much more viable economic entity. And if you can’t sort out the latter, you’ll never achieve the former. Which is why I would never be in favour of independence for Wales as things currently stand, because the economy is not sufficiently robust to sustain itself.

OB: Indeed. We have about a 21 billion pound fiscal transfer every year from central government. But just to check my understanding, are all local government pension schemes defined benefit?

NY: Yes, although there are increasing calls from Reform UK, at least, for the LGPS to be reformed so as to not be so ‘generous’. The reality is that the average LGPS pension in England and Wales is just over £5,200. The overwhelming majority of these people are not taking home six-figure salaries – so it’s certainly not a gold-plated pension. If you’re just guaranteeing that someone’s nan who might have worked in the canteen of the local college for 40 years has got five to six grand to live on in her old age, I don’t think that’s very generous. I’ll always stand up for the LGPS to continue paying those pensions and provide those benefits for people.

OB: How big is the Greater Gwent Fund comparatively?

NY: In the ten-year period from 2016, we’ve grown our assets from 3 billion to just over 5 billion pounds. That puts us in the middle of the UK rankings, but we’re the second-largest in Wales after Rhondda Cynon Taf.

OB: How well do you know Torsten Bell? [Current Pensions Minister and MP for Swansea West, although born and raised in London.]

NY: I must have known him for well over fifteen years. His knowledge of this matter is fiendish. I was sat in my office at home listening to the second reading of the Pensions Bill – what a sad f*cker I am – and it was a tour de force. The man knows his stuff backwards with a fluency that you just have to respect. His ability to deliver the speech at the dispatch box, and deal with what were some very difficult technical questions, was considerable. Although the reality is, I think, nobody in that room had the knowledge of the technical questions like he did.

Quickfire

At least over the last ten years, has it been as business-friendly as it could have been? I applaud the opportunity to promote the social sector as a source of employment and innovation, and to be thinking about different ways of doing things. But let’s call a spade a spade – if you want spin-outs that are CICs [community interest companies], or you want to start spinning out community organisations, you need an economy to actually spin out of first. I’m not saying we shouldn’t think about community ownership, or other ways of looking at the economy, but we need an economy that works better than it currently does before we can start thinking about doing things differently around the edges.

OB: A book you’d recommend.

NT: I’ve just started reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst. It’s a novel set in the mid-1980s at the peak of Thatcherite excess. This is going to sound really wanky, but the main reason I’m reading it is that the protagonist went to the same college at Oxford that I did. Otherwise, I would recommend everybody read Rethinking Labour’s Past by a fellow called Nathan Yeowell, published by Bloomsbury in 2022.

OB: I’ve heard it’s great.

NY: The reviews are fantastic. I haven’t written any of them.

OB: What online source of journalism would you recommend people read?

NY: Polly Mackenzie, who used to work for Nick Clegg in government and used to run the think tank Demos. I’ve got to know over the last 18 months and she’s just launched a Substack with some really interesting thinking in there about the issues we’ve been talking about.

OB: One change you would make to boost Wales’s economy?

NY: Honestly, I want the next government to seriously and critically engage with the private sector. We definitely need more initiatives like the Welsh Investment Summit that was held in the Celtic Manor in December. We also need to try and encourage and support entrepreneurs in Wales, but crucially to keep them in Wales. The big problem we have is retaining entrepreneurs and therefore retaining the revenues and tax revenues those companies generate. We need to make it a much more dynamic and entrepreneur-friendly environment in which to operate.

OB: I’m sure you saw The Times list that came out recently which showed the 100 fastest growing tech companies in the UK and there wasn’t one in Wales, whereas there were about three in post-Troubles Northern Ireland.

NY: I think it’s a serious challenge to Labour’s track record. At least over the last ten years, has it been as business-friendly as it could have been? I applaud the opportunity to promote the social sector as a source of employment and innovation, and to be thinking about different ways of doing things. But let’s call a spade a spade – if you want spin-outs that are CICs [community interest companies], or you want to start spinning out community organisations, you need an economy to actually spin out of first. I’m not saying we shouldn’t think about community ownership, or other ways of looking at the economy, but we need an economy that works better than it currently does before we can start thinking about doing things differently around the edges.

OB: Final question, will you ever stand to become an MP?

NY: I’m 50 this year, so I very much doubt it.

OB: I think that probably puts you in the lower end of the age-range!

NY: You can come again!

OB: Nathan Yeowell, thank you very much.

Follow Nathan on Twitter and LinkedIn.

I’ve always thought that the idea of ‘national pride’ is, in some ways, a bit superficial. When I think to myself, “Am I proud to be Welsh?” The answer is, frankly: no. Not because I don’t love Wales (I do), or because I’m ashamed to be Welsh (I’m absolutely not). But simply because I don’t really know what that means.

I don’t swell with pride simply at the thought that I was born and raised here or because I have ancestry in Wales. And to a degree, the idea sits uncomfortably with me given that the logical consequence of national pride, as its typically understood, is national superiority or inferiority, which is always a slippery slope. So the conventional idea of “national pride” doesn’t really make sense to me, or at the very least doesn’t seem useful.

But what I do have is a very strong sense of national obligation and identity. And through that lens, the word ‘pride’ starts to make more sense. In the same way that someone might use the term ‘house proud’, I take pride in Wales as a place and as a distinct idea. These things matters to me, and it matters whether they’re in a good state or a bad one. I feel a sense of duty to try to contribute to Wales’s success in however small a way that I can, simply because I was born here, because I grew up here, and because I have ancestry here. And the use of the word ‘simply’ there isn’t too downplay the importance of those things. It’s to show that, even though where we’re born and raised and who our ancestors were is a matter of chance, in many ways, it’s all that matters, because it gives us a focal point and something to hold on to, and something to care about. And in my view, national obligation and national identity are intrinsically related, with the former following the latter.

But over the last few years, since I’ve started to think about these things more consciously, I’ve begun to worry that this shared sense of national obligation is dissipating among younger people in Wales, which is a trajectory that I think should concern all of us, and make us worry about Wales’s future.

Before I continue, I think I should preface this by saying that I think this is a problem that’s emerging across across the Western world more broadly, and possibly across the world as a whole, not just in Wales, with continuing cultural and commercial globalisation and the emergence of a global monoculture, where everyone increasingly watches the same shows on Netflix and Disney, listens to the same music on Spotify and Apple, and reads the same books - if they read at all.

Now, in some ways, this is a utopian ideal. It’s the breakdown of intercultural barriers, giving us shared cultural touchpoints that will eventually allow us to form one harmonious global citizenry. (As well as also giving US tech giants huge profits, cultural influence and platforms that become almost impossible to displace because of their market dominance. But that’s by the by.) But whether that’s what’s happening and what the actual result will be is another question.

However, some countries seem to be resisting this cultural dilution more effectively than others, holding on more strongly to their cultural heritage and traditions, and maintaining a greater semblance of national identity in the face of global social media and the democratisation of technology. And in doing so, they’re giving their own citizens the tools to be able to more consciously choose between eventually becoming purely global citizens with no cultural ties to their home nations, or becoming people who appreciate, consume and enjoy the culture that other countries have to offer, whilst having a clear sense of national identity and obligation. And what I mean by ‘tools’ is really a mental scaffolding that grounds them in a sense of place and origin, and a distinct upbringing, based on that place.

So why do I think this is more of a problem in Wales than elsewhere? To be completely honest, I don’t have any quantitative evidence, and maybe I’m being paranoid because you’re always harsher on your own country than other people are, but I do think that, regardless of whether the problem is worse here comparatively to other countries, in absolute terms, based on my observation of people, media and social media, the situation is concerning, and I think it all stems from our own sense of who we are and where we’ve come from.

I was fortunate enough recently to be invited by some very kind and lovely people to an event celebrating St David’s Day. It was a fantastic evening and it was just great to be surrounded by dozens of other Welsh people, all simply celebrating Wales’s national day. And throughout the evening, there were a few speeches given by various people, each referencing typical Welsh traits. Things like: Welsh people love a debate, we have strong opinions, we love rugby, we’re passionate, we’re very humble and…we don’t mind a drink! Weey!

Now, all of these references were obviously well-intentioned, and they were clearly made to try to bring people together and create a sense of levity and shared experience, but throughout them all, I found myself either rolling my eyes, or mildly cringing. And I couldn’t help but think: is this what we’ve been reduced to? A caricature of a simple, boozy, rowdy, daffodil-hat-wearing chorister? Obviously, this is not the cynical image the speakers were trying to conjure, but this is the image that was evoked in my mind nonetheless.

It’s subsequently made we wonder: is this all we have? Is this our national identity? Some dated and twee stereotypes? If this is what is being invoked at a high-cultural evening in the City of London, then maybe we really are lost. Because of course, stereotypes should not be the basis of a national identity, particularly not from the people of that nationality themselves! Even if they are inoffensive or even positive. And, moreover, does that mean to say that if you love to debate, you have strong opinions, you love rugby, you’re passionate, you’re humble, you love a drink etc, that you are in fact Welsh? Even if you’ve never been there and you live in Siberia? Obviously not! And if we are grasping at those things as the basis of a shared identity, then that to me is a sign of a deeper cultural malaise.

In my view, a national identity can only truly be grounded in a shared understanding of history and place in the world, and it is an idea that must be actively maintained. But, how many of us really have a shared sense and understanding of Welsh history, Welsh politics, Welsh geography, and Welsh culture? How many of us read books about Wales, about Welsh history, travel around Wales, keep up-to-date with Welsh news and politics, watch Welsh film and TV (and not necessarily Welsh-language), or keep an eye/ear out for the latest Welsh artists? I myself am absolutely guilty of not doing nearly enough of all of that. But actually, I don’t think the guilt necessarily lies with us as individuals. Rather, I think it lies with a political system that has failed to inculcate young people coming through state education with a meaningful sense of shared history, culture and sense of place, and has failed to create the institutions that might support that.

From my own experience, Welsh history was largely a footnote in school education. There were some cursory lessons about Owain Glyndwr and Llewelyn Ein Llyw Olaf, but that was the extent of it. Furthermore, nor do I recall learning about the political or even natural geography of Wales, about the other towns and cities outside of Cardiff, their economic histories, and how we are all tied together. We didn’t learn about the history of mining in Wales, of steelmaking, of devolution, urban development, agriculture, anything. And this isn’t to belittle the importance of the Tudors (of Welsh descent, of course), or the Second World War. Those eras and events are absolutely fascinating and critical to the shared history of Wales and the United Kingdom, but local and national Welsh history have been wholly inadequately taught in Wales for far too long.

And in music, one of Wales’s most famous pastimes, schools (via the national curriculum) have let this tradition die out on their watch. There is such a rich history of beautiful Welsh hymns and songs that the vast majority of young people in Wales today, myself included, just don’t know and have never sung, which is an enormous shame for the supposed Land of Song. Yes, the Eisteddfod is a thing, but singing Welsh songs shouldn’t be the preserve of those whose parents push them to compete in Welsh cultural tournaments, it should be a core part of the national curriculum, with education around them about their historical origins, and their cultural significance.

And then, of course, rugby - the sport upon which so much of our national identity hangs - which finds itself in an almost existential place in Wales. This too is in decline. Although rugby is still culturally the national sport, football has overtaken it in terms of participation, which, though disappointing, is unsurprising given the global appeal of the game, the simpler ruleset and the therefore lower barrier to entry. But since the glory era of the 70s, and to a great extent the 80s with regards to the club game, rugby in Wales feels like it has been in a precarious position. It has certainly had dazzling highs and periods of success, such as the Grand Slams and Six Nations victories since 2005, but somehow this has also been mirrored by deep lows in between. Our success has never felt secure. Not that one would expect Wales to win every Six Nations. That would be unreasonable. But the possibility of finishing in the bottom two has never felt implausible, no matter the success that the team might have had in the previous season. Of course, to an extent, this is the nature of high-level sport, and tournaments such as the Six Nations thrive when there is intense competition and no one is guaranteed success. And it’s true that Wales does have a smaller player base than the Englands, Frances and South Africas of this world. But Wales has also not in recent decades had the swagger or self-assuredness of countries of a similar size, such as Ireland and New Zealand, which I believe is a direct result of mismanagement by the WRU and a lack of attentive stewardship from successive Welsh secretaries of state and Welsh governments, which has also impacted the interest and cultural importance of rugby in Wales.

The nadir that Welsh rugby has experienced over the last couple of seasons has felt so ruinous to those people who still follow rugby in Wales precisely because of how central rugby has been to our culture and our national identity, and yet, the system surrounding the game in Wales seems to have been an afterthought, whereas countries such as Ireland and New Zealand build resilient systems that are designed to produce a continuous pipeline of players, rather than relying on hope that talent will emerge, which has benefitted both the clubs and the national side and has bolstered those respective countries’ national pride and cultural vitality. Rugby in Wales has gotten to the point now where the sport is genuinely losing fans, people are choosing not to tune into matches and have stopped watching club rugby, which is having the reinforcing effect of reducing the commercial viability of the game. If Wales doesn’t have rugby, our national identity will lose one of the key pillars underpinning it.

And part of this does come back to place. I don’t know quite where I sit when it comes to the debate around the replacement of the clubs in Wales with the regions, but what I hear consistently is that the clubs meant something to fans. They represented real, tangible places - often mining towns - and the rivalries were intense. Obviously, the club game disappeared for a reason, and I won’t relitigate those reasons here, but it does seem like something has been lost in that process. It may be that this lack of mutually recognised local identity, formerly perpetuated through club rugby, has diluted that sense of shared history and culture, as well as diminishing that tribal quality that I’m told was so integral to the game and its appeal in Wales for decades.

My go-to comparison to make whenever discussing areas in which Wales appears to be suffering is Ireland - our Celtic cousins across the sea, who I’ve already mentioned. Despite many similarities, in many places where Wales is struggling, Ireland appears to have excelled, and one of the most notable is the preservation of its cultural identity. This can be seen in the strength of Ireland as an export, the global celebrations of St Patrick’s Day (even if that does just involve drinking), and in the common experience that many people I know have observed, that Irish people, whenever and wherever they’re abroad, tend to find each other and stick together much more closely than Welsh or Scottish people, which I feel must be to do with a greater sense of national identity - as controversial as that may sound.

All other things being equal, being an island must surely make it easier to preserve traditions and institutions, as must their recent history throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, which has probably served to entrench their sense of distinct history, but regardless, in my own personal experience, Irish people do have a greater sense of their national history, and have established more compelling “myths” about their nationhood. This is obviously a complicated phenomenon to unpack, but things like the fact that Ireland has two national sports that no one else places but which are widely watched and that Ireland has a very distinct and recognisable political and administrative geography, which has been adopted by its national sports of Gaelic Football and hurling, are important pieces of national cultural “infrastructure” that support the development of a common national identity. In contrast, Wales has no unique national sport and I’d be willing to bet that most of us have no idea how many local authorities or histories counties there in Wales, let alone be able to name them, or have much of an idea about many of those other places. As innocuous as these things sound, I think they matter.

And this is probably partly because Wales is arguably more geographically divided than Ireland, with a fairly sharp division between North and South that is difficult to traverse through current public transport and which is sparsely populated in the middle, which contributes to cultural and linguistic divides between the two, including in things like rugby. Of course, all countries have regional divides, but I think the topographic divide and the difficulty of travelling between the two is a relevant contributory factor to the difficulty of developing a cohesive national identity.

So, why does this all matter? I probably should have started with that. I suppose it comes down to what you value. I think that having a national identity is crucial to the success of a nation. Much of what makes a place great is the extent to which its people care about it. If you feel nothing about where you come from, you’re less likely to want to stay there, move back, promote it, invest in it, or care about the challenges that it faces. You may take the view that there is no logical reason why we should care about our own country than others, and that our interests should simply be some sort of combination between our own, our family’s and where the need is greatest. And that’s a perfectly defensible position. But my position is that Wales is an idea that is worth preserving - and not only preserving, but promoting and advancing. But we have to give people something to hold onto. We can’t take national pride, obligation and identity for granted, particularly in a globalised age. We have to more actively maintain and communalise our cultural heritage - our history, our music and our sport - and give people a greater sense of what Wales is. This should be a guiding mission of any incoming government. Without our history and our traditions, we become rudderless, and less able to tell the story of who we are and where we’ve come from, and where it is that we might want to go.

What makes a place good? Or great? Or, even, the best? There’s obviously no science to it, but generally the things that come to mind that we could all broadly agree on (in no particular order) would be wealth and high incomes relative to the cost of living, abundant green space and natural beauty, good quality and beautiful housing, bustling cultural and culinary scenes (i.e. performing arts, restaurants, bars, cafes etc), good transport links and infrastructure, high-performing schools, safe and clean streets and neighbourhoods and low levels of crime, social cohesion, low levels of pollution, effective but not tyrannical law enforcement, and competent and trustworthy government. There are obviously others, but you get the gist.

What of the above does Wales not have control, or at least significant influence, over? The answer is: not much.

Although Wales’s devolution deal is, in the eyes of many, incomplete and insufficient, it nonetheless gives us as a nation meaningful levers to pull over our own condition and the paths that we choose to follow - levers that I don’t believe we have utilised to their greatest effect.

Now, I want to preface this by saying that this is not a party political commentary on the success or failures of devolution and past governments, rather, it’s a commentary on the level of ambition and imagination in the discourse around Wales’s potential and its future more broadly, and a plea to think bigger and more confidently. That isn’t too say that what I’m about to say isn’t political. It is. Everything is. But I genuinely think there is a lot that we can and should agree on across all party lines. This doesn’t need to be a left or right, unionist vs nationalist, green vs capitalist argument. There are of course fundamental disagreements between those sides by their very nature, and particularly so at the extremes, but politics is about compromise, and for a country the size of Wales, there has to be room for agreement.

What I’m interested in, what we should all be interested in, and what every single Welsh government, regardless of its colour, should be maniacally fixated and obsessed with is: how do we make Wales the best country in the world?

This may sound meaningless and hollow, and just another political slogan, and you may think that this is surely what everyone government and every First Minister that Wales has had has been trying to do since Devolution in the late 90s, but I seriously question whether this has been the guiding principle behind Welsh political thinking over the last nearly 30 years. And my challenge would be: why not? Why not us? What is seriously holding us back as a nation? Are we genuinely that systemically restrained by Westminster? Is it a question of money? Do we need just a few more billion from the central pot? Will that solve it all? Somehow, I’m doubtful.

Once again, this is not a party political view. This is a challenge to any incoming government to think deeply, strategically, and creatively about what powers we have available to us right now. What resources do we have at our disposal? What would the ideal end-state for Wales look like? Where are we trying to get to, and how can we get there? No, we may not have all of the powers at our disposal that we would like. And no, we may not have all the money that we feel that we might deserve. Although I’d wager that many other countries or states around the world would consider themselves to be in the same position. And this isn’t to say we shouldn’t keep campaigning for what we feel we’re entitled or for what we want, but the question is; should those considerations be at the forefront of our political discourse, or should we continue those discussions in the background, whilst just getting on with what we have and making the most it? And in doing so, might we not make the case for greater powers and funding even stronger?

Our political posture matters. Not just for our relations to UK Government, but to our identity as a nation. It’s a choice over whether we want to be a country that has agency and confidence in its ability to sort its own problems out, and that quietly gets on with improving things bit by bit. Doing better with what it has at its disposal. Or a nation whose leadership constantly asserts that it can’t really solve any of the big problems. And I will emphasise for the final time: yes, money matters. Yes, powers matter. And no, I’m not saying that Wales hasn’t suffered historical injustices, and that it doesn’t have very difficult financial constraints. But what I am saying is that the emphasis of the rhetoric matters too, as does the kind of political culture you create, and the message you communicate to the electorate as a whole, and younger generations in particular.

I want a political and business leadership that says “Circumstances may not be ideal, but they rarely are, so let’s make the most of it.” I want leaders who tell us that we are not limited by what we are given, but rather by the opportunities that we create for ourselves. We as a nation need a culture of optimism and ambition. It is absolutely critical for our sense of national purpose and identity. The more inevitable that we make things seem, the more we resign ourselves to the circumstances as they are. Of course, there are people and communities in dire self-perpetuating cycles of poverty, and this isn’t a call for them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Far from it. But it is a call for government and business to pull itself up by its bootstraps, because it helps no one when the people in power say they have none. And sometimes, having a limited number of options or resources can in fact free you to act, and give you licence to be creative.

Furthermore, some might take the view that, as a small nation, we don’t have the size that it takes to help ourselves. But I believe that it is precisely Wales’s size that gives it an advantage. Being a small nation with considerable autonomy means we can act more quickly, we have fewer stakeholders to engage. And compared with a more large and lumbering polity such as the United Kingdom, we can be more dynamic and agile - all of those good buzzwords that corporates use, but I like them anyway, hence the title of this article. My view is that we should think of Wales as a start-up. Not that devolved Welsh government is new in any sense, but because it has the latent growth potential and size to be less encumbered by the bureaucracy and risk-aversion of a more established, sclerotic nation like our larger European neighbours.

So what can Wales do to help itself? Quite a bit, I think.

Let’s revisit some of the factors that I included above in the list of things that make a place good, great or best. Now, I’m not going to claim to have developed a fully considered, costed and detailed manifesto on a March Sunday morning, but here are the broad levers we need to think about.

Education

The most exciting thing that Wales has devolved competence over, in my view, is education. We literally have the absolute freedom to shape what and how we teach children and young people however we want. Despite this, Wales’s outcomes are still languishing behind our Union peers and compared with the rest of the world. This is inexcusable. The next government should take the opportunity to radically rethink our approach to the national curriculum, focusing on functional skills and knowledge in areas such as business management, personal finance, economics, mechanics and engineering and computer and materials science. We should seek to become the most literate country in the world, with every day devoting significant time to reading and interpretation of literature, and the only homework in primary school should be to read, read, read. On the other side of the coin, we should seek to become the most articulate country in the world, and the most able to communicate our ideas, both written and verbally. The ability to articulate and persuade is the mightiest soft power an individual can have, and the ability to do so fluently and confidently is the greatest gift we can confer to our citizens. And there is absolutely no excuse as to why we shouldn’t be able to achieve this. In my view, comprehension and communication are the meta-skills upon which everything else, and success more broadly, rest. We must prioritise this above all else. However, schools should also be about national identity formation, and about forming citizens of the world. History, geography and literature should all contribute to this in the curriculum. Students must understand their place in the world, at a local, regional, national, continental and global level. They should learn about their local history, their local geography, where they are situated, how they connect to other places, the history of their nation, classic literature, myths and legends, watershed moments, and of course, global history - all of which must be weaved together in a coherent whole. We must be citizens of the world, but also understand where we ourselves come from, and where we are. And finally, sport and athletics are the other pillar that should hold up this new curriculum. Welsh children are some of the most unhealthy in the country, and we should seek to ensure that every child does some form of exercise or sport every day. We should focus on the core team sports of rugby, football, cricket and netball, which every child should play every year, with the addition of other individual sports such as athletics, swimming, rowing, gymnastics and weightlifting also included, to develop well-rounded athletes. The earlier and more regularly we include this in children’s lives, the more embedded it will become in the habits they take forward into their adult lives.

And all of this will contribute not only to a happier and healthier population, it will also develop a happier, healthier and more skilled workforce, which will encourage businesses to invest in Wales, which brings me to my next point.

A thriving business environment

Wales obviously doesn’t have power over corporation tax, so it can’t do an Ireland and undercut everyone to attract the Apples of this world, but I don’t think it necessarily needs to. What it needs is to create the right environment, which says we’re open to business and investment, and we are willing to listen to your challenges, work together in partnership to make doing business here attractive and simple. Businesses want political certainty and the ability to have their voices heard and to have an active dialogue with decision-makers. A government that refuses to engage actively and regularly with business is a government that is not serious about growing the economy. We must also be sure that we’re producing graduates with the right skills and competencies that can fill the vacancies that any new business might advertise for. So we need closer integration with our higher and further education institutions and ministers in charge of our national curriculum in order to ensure that education and training provision are fit-for-purpose. This also means bringing business and industry into schools to tell them about the types of jobs that are available, having closer partnerships between higher education institutions and industry to fund research and PhDs and facilitate placements. We also need to be clear about what types of industries we want to proactively target and drive investment into. Where does Wales have an existing advantage in globally critical industries? Semiconductors and aerospace come to mind. Let’s double down on these strengths and develop national strategies to become world-leading in them. Let’s establish industrial advisory councils in these key sectors, bringing the best Welsh talent from across the world to inform our national policy. And in order to do that, let’s also establish a Diaspora Engagement Agency (which hopefully won’t be confuses with the US’s Drug Enforcement Agency), to map, engage and potentially even bring back talented Welsh people who have left for whatever reason, and see if they want to contribute to industrial development or investment. Global Welsh have already done a great job of this independently. They should receive the backing of government to 10x that work. And then finally, and more prosaically and fundamentally, we need to create places where people want to live and move to - nice communities and environments that are beautiful, liveable and that have sufficient housing, as well as space for offices and laboratories or manufacturing and testing facilities, and of course good transport links that ensure ease of access and simple commutes, all of which brings me on to my next point.

Planning: well-connected, beautiful, liveable places

Being from Cardiff, I can only speak confidently about our capital as a case study for planning, but I know Wales isn’t famed for its transport links, or necessarily for its architecture (in recent history, that is).

I’m of the sincere belief that what we see around us significantly influences our mood and how we feel about a place. If we’re exposed to beautiful architecture and well-designed cities and neighbourhoods, I believe this has a tangible impact on our mood and our sense of local and national pride. And vice versa. This is an area in which Welsh Government and local authorities have full competence over. Welsh and local governments need to ensure that they are using every lever in their power to mandate the construction of beautiful homes (based on a style guide of traditional local architecture), sensitively designed store fronts that cohere with the building in which they’re located, the promotion of particular businesses such as independent cafes, stores and music/performing arts venues, and create as many barriers as possible to anti-social businesses such as vape and “phone repair” stores. Local authorities need robust local development plans that emphasise beauty and the promotion of those aforementioned businesses that we know support the growth of local communities and economies. We need to start taking a more active role in the creation and regeneration of places, and stop leaving decisions about what types of businesses open up to the whims of landlords. We therefore need to promote the use of landlord partnerships with government, requiring closer consultation on what types of businesses local authorities would prefer to see open up, ideally with local residents having a say. We cannot let “the free market” dictate the shape and character of our high streets and communities. So local authorities must use all the tools at their disposal, such as targeted business rates relief, permitted development rights and local development plans to create the types of places people want to live and work in.

But it is of course not just about where we live and work, it’s about how we get there, and where we can get to. Transport funding in Wales is an area of great controversy, and rightfully so. Wales has, in my view, been genuinely poorly treated when it comes to benefitting from transport infrastructure spending, and its an area in which Wales is in great need of support. And previous Welsh governments have shown great ambition and clear vision in allocating money from other pots to spend on developing the South Wales Metro. This was a bold political choice, and one whose decisiveness should be commended. However, given powers over planning in Wales, and public-private financing models that have been demonstrated across the world, including in projects such as Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) in London, I think there is more that the Welsh Government could do to develop better public transport links across the country. What is needed is a clear vision for the end-state, and work backwards from there, with real certainty over planning approval timelines and requirements, and a strong business case. In the case of Cardiff and South East Wales, which is the area that I know best, this would mean gradually developing three separate tram networks radiating out from Central Cardiff, initially connecting the most central parts, and then extending outwards as patronage is demonstrated (these would be from Ely Roundabout to St Mellons (the Melly Line), from St Fagans Road to St Fagans Street (the St Fagans Line, or S Line, for short), and from Llantrisant to Leckwith (the L Line)). With regards to South East Wales more broadly, we must start thinking bigger picture and start thinking about South East Wales as a future equivalent to Greater London. The two are actually remarkably similar in size and dimensions, as seen below:

These screenshots are a 1:1 scale. And here are some comparator distances:

West to East:

• Neath to Newport = about 60km

• West Drayton to Upminster = about 52km

South to North:

• Barry to Merthyr Tydfil = about 43km

• Chaldon to Crews Hill = 44km

We need to start planning our infrastructure development with this sort of scale in mind. This again means improving public transport from Cardiff Central outwards, increasing central Cardiff housing density - not through the use of high-rises but through what’s called “gentle density”, similar to that seen on Cathedral Road, as a gold standard, and then gradually increasing the density through similar architecture on the peripheries, and in the other cities and towns in South East Wales, reducing the gaps between them over time, whilst still ensuring to preserve ample landscaped green spaces and nature reserves. But in order to improve the viability of public transport investments and encourage private finance, government and local authorities need to demonstrate a plan to increase population density so that there will be the customer base there to pay fares to use the trains and trams and generate revenue to pay back the investment. This is why Greater London is able to have arguably the best train network in the world, because of its density, which is currently approximately seven times that of South East Wales, despite being almost identically sized.

This is of course a very challenging area, both due to politics and cost, but if Wales is serious about growing its economy in the long-term, it needs to think of creative ways of improving public transport infrastructure, and this means thinking seriously about how to make planning approvals and requirements more predictable and quicker, and thinking creatively about how to generate finance, looking at models from abroad (as well as closer to home).

A healthy population

Having already touched on this before, I think it’s worth re-emphasising. Wales’s population is not healthy. We are, on average, overweight, and often unemployed due to ill-health. This has to change, and the best chance we have in the long term is in prevention. The next government needs to start a national campaign across schools and communities throughout the country, led by retired legends of rugby such as Sam Warburton, Jonathan Davies, Jamie Roberts etc. We must get individuals like these in front of children and young people to talk about the importance of exercise and nutrition. Teaching this in class is obviously essential, but the credibility and impact is skyrocketed when it comes from sporting legends, who are still recently retired enough to be relevant to these young people. And crucially, these are ex-players that are still in excellent shape and who have their own health and fitness-related initiatives. A one-year, intensive campaign across the country could do wonders, and would be a relatively low-cost intervention. Something like this has to be considered.

Political reform

Finally, I believe that Wales has an excellent opportunity to be an innovator in political reform. It’s followed the approximate model of most other European countries, many of which are now struggling to respond to emerging challenges in a 21^st century world. What is needed is a system that is more able to act quickly, whilst also being more representative of the views of its electorate. With this in mind, what I would advocate for is a directly elected leader (effectively, a president, but who would still be called First Minister), with the freedom to appoint people directly to cabinet roles, with a proportionally representative legislature in the Senedd. However, I would also add a second chamber akin to the Lords in Parliament, but not of government-appointed individuals or hereditary peers, but rather, something more similar to the Commons, which would be representatives from places around Wales, with roughly a representative per 100,000 people (which would equate to basically 32 representatives), as well as delegates from major professions and sectors, as well as Senedd members who have either retired or lost their seat but who have significant and valuable experience (perhaps something like 20 years), and who can nevertheless use this experience to inform the development of legislation. The purpose of this chamber would be to scrutinise legislation and provide feedback to the primary Senedd chamber and the government, whilst having no formal power to overrule. The benefits of this system would be that it would provide a true separation of power between the government and the chamber, and allow the appointment of genuine, full-time experts to roles in government, as well as provide genuine representation of the diversity of views and interests in the Senedd itself. This would hopefully solve both the problem of insufficient political representation and concerns over ineffective government. It’s also a model that I believe could work at the UK level – but that’s a conversation for another time.

Finally, for a country the size of Wales, it has far too many local authorities. These should be significantly rationalised and consolidated, to become effectively four mayoral combined authorities. These would be South East Wales, South West Wales, Mid Wales and North Wales. They would each follow the same electoral system as recommended above at the national level, with a directly elected mayor, with the freedom to appoint experts to their cabinet, a proportionally elected chamber, and a secondary scrutinising chamber of local and business representatives. Consolidating the number of local authorities would allow places to think more strategically and reduce unnecessary barriers to collaboration and communication, whilst also reducing unnecessary bureaucratic inefficiencies and overheads, providing the benefits of the economies of scale.

A successful country needs an effective political system, and this is what I believe the above proposal would provide.

Conclusion

As I say, is this a detailed blueprint for success? Obviously not. These are the ramblings of a concerned but optimistic citizen, and none of these proposals have been consulted on or costed etc. Nor are they most likely particularly novel or ground-breaking, and yet it feels as though these are all areas in which Wales is underperforming, and this article is merely a humble - although possibly somewhat naïve - attempt to shout into what may be an unanswering abyss, and to throw some semblance of a vision onto a wall and see what sticks.

I think my main goal with this article is to implore people to think more ambitiously, and to think backwards from: “What would the best place to live in the world look like? And how can we get here?”, because as I’ve said, I genuinely think Wales can be that place. I see no fundamental reason that would prevent us from getting there. It’s all about creating the confidence and the environment and the singular motivating, galvanising mission to build something that we haven’t seen before.

Yes, the practicalities and the detail are essential, and no I haven’t considered them all or laid them out here, but let’s start with the vision and the ambition, and go from there. Yes, we may be small. But as our patron saint’s namesake demonstrated in the famous parable, the small can be mighty and conquer the Goliaths of this world.

Oh, and let’s fix the rugby, yeah? Cheers.

Diolch yn fawr, a dydd gwyl Dewi hapus.

But how has something that people for so long took for granted now become so expensive and so politically fraught?

Clearly, the causes behind the housing crisis are numerous, but in my personal view, I think it would be short-sighted to overlook the impact that regulation and regulatory uncertainty can have on a capital-intensive and high upfront cost sectors such as housebuilding. So I thought it would be useful to chat with someone with expertise in the area.

the UK went through a huge period of importing traditional trades and skills into the UK, but there’s no reason why British people can’t learn those trades themselves. We are totally capable of it. And those trades and skills are needed. We desperately need plumbers, bricklayers, electricians, carpenters – good quality, highly skilled traditional jobs.

OB: What’s your backstory and how did you get to where you are today?

RW: I was born in Cardiff but I grew up in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, so I say Abergavenny is home. I then went to study architecture at university and after that I got onto a graduate management programme with a national house builder and stayed in UK housebuilding ever since, and that was 27 years ago. Throughout my career I worked across various parts of the UK - in Northamptonshire, South Bedfordshire, South Wales for 10 to 15 years, and also Bristol and the South West for five years. I now work in London.

OB: And what do you do now?

RW: I’ve now got a national role for a trade organisation, the Home Builders Federation, made up of members who represent around about 80 to 85% of all the new homes built across the UK each year. We communicate their interests and concerns to government through things like calls-for-evidence, consultations or roundtables, on anything to do with planning policy or technical building regulations and standards, right the way through to high-level political issues and legislation for the construction and home building industry.

OB: So you liaise directly with policy teams in government?

RW: Absolutely. So we liaise with government ministers, Number 10, Treasury, right the way down to heads of government departments and government officials working on this sort of policy day-to-day. So, for example, we liaise with Defra [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs], the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, and Number 10 directly, as well as the Building Safety Regulator, the Health and Safety Executive, the Environment Agency, Natural England and other government agencies and arm’s-length bodies.

OB: How well-joined-up is government in your experience when it comes to housing? You mentioned before that you’ve previously experienced some parts of government don’t always communicate well with one another and not being aware of what one another is doing. Is that the exception or the general rule?

RW: Government departments do work independently to a large extent, as they largely have distinct portfolios and agendas, however, there are lots of crossovers in responsibilities or interest, whether that’s land-use or planning and infrastructure, so there are lots of occasions where cross-departmental government engagement is required and then it’s up to us to link the key people within those departments as well as within industry in order to make sure that everything is joined-up and that there’s agreement, or at least awareness and understanding, across the board, so we do find that we have to do some of that work of bringing people together.

Regulations and Uncertainty

OB: Given how large your membership is and the range of different sized members you have, are there ever competing interests between them? And if so, how do you manage those differences? Thinking particularly between SME housebuilders and large volume housebuilders.

RW: By and large they are aligned. I would say from our membership, once you remove the top ten national house builders, actually 90% is made up of regional SME developers, and they deliver a significant proportion of all of the new homes built in the UK each year.

OB: That’s interesting and somewhat surprising, because everyone’s heard of the big names like Redrow and Barratt Homes. So what advantages are there to being an SME in the housing market?

RW: Whilst some of the larger developers have access to larger departments which include technical and planning departments, larger buying power and more influence in that respect, the SMEs are often more agile and able to respond and adapt more quickly when they are faced with things like changing standards, requirements, specifications or regulations.

OB: That’s also surprising to hear. But I suppose there are also challenges facing SMEs in today’s economy. I understand that post-Financial Crisis, it became quite hard for SME housebuilders to get finance to build houses so they were getting squeezed, whereas the large volume housebuilders were able to gradually take over the market. Is that right?

RW: It is, but it’s affected every sized housebuilder. The challenges now facing SMEs more than at any other time before is the cost of development, and it’s all to do with the viability and feasibility of being able to justify a new development coming forward. When you’re looking at things like landfill tax, Building Safety Levy, biodiversity net-gain, community infrastructure levy, section 106 obligations, increased costs associated with highways adoption and bonds agreements, it’s squeezing the SME developers so much that it’s become unviable to actually be able to move forward and make a sufficient survivable profit that allows you to operate.

OB: Could you give an overview of what the business model is for housebuilders? What the financing looks like and what the margins have to be in order for the project to be viable.

RW: The private housebuilding business is highly impacted by the relatively long timeline of housebuilding and therefore the uncertainty involved and the risks of delay, as well as changing future demand and pricing once the houses are actually built. Any new development can take between three and five years to come forward. There’s a huge amount of investment and a lot of risk associated with committing to, and agreeing costs for, a new development site. And in terms of viability, depending on the operating model of the organisation, whether it’s a social housing or private business, developers could be looking at between a range of 7 and 10 percent profit for social housing, and possibly 15 to 20, 22 per cent in a private model. It really depends how soon those development sites can come forward and how soon they can navigate their way through the planning system, which is hugely problematic. For example, when you think about the time it takes to commit to developing a new scheme and bringing it forward, it can take anything between three to five years or longer. So that’s a huge amount of risk and a huge amount of outlay to buy the land and pay the salaries of the builders themselves and procure the scheme through to completion. It can also cost upwards of a quarter of a million pounds just to get planning permission alone. And then you have to buy the materials, which has seen a 40% increase since 2020, physically build the houses and then, at the very end, try to sell them. The risk profile is enormous given the timescales and commitments needed to bring new housing forward.

OB: I suppose you’re not selling houses off the conveyor belt. They actually have to be built, they have to be given approval, there are long time horizons and obviously macroeconomic conditions can change in the future, which affect interest rates and create uncertainty, and I guess that needs to be baked into the cost, so companies need to have some sort of buffer in the form of profit margins, don’t they?

RW: That’s right, and I think that’s where local knowledge comes into play. So any regional developer, you need that local understanding of what the market conditions are, what changing standards, regulations and requirements are coming up, in order for you to be able to factor those into your costs. Anything could happen in three to five years. So all of these prevailing headwinds always have a negative and detrimental impact on the viability of schemes. Another example would be the Building Safety Levy, which was just announced earlier this year and is coming into force on the 1st of October 2026. But the levy won’t just affect forthcoming developments, it will affect existing development sites as well. And of course for the existing schemes, they never had an opportunity to factor in the Building Safety Levy cost, which is for making high-rise buildings safer following the Grenfell Phase 2 final inquiry report. It’s valued at around £3.4 billion over 10 years, which is equal to around £3,000 to £3,500 per new individual residential home in the UK. And beyond affected developments that hadn’t factored in those costs, there’s a question there about whether it’s right that buyers of low-rise, low-risk, traditional two and three-storey residential homes are paying for building safety works on high-rise buildings.

The voluntary commitment pledge was to go back and fix all cladding and fire-critical safety defects in existing buildings over the last 30 years. From our perspective, all of the national house builders fully and wholeheartedly agreed to do that. But the reality is that UK house builders were only responsible for around 4% of high-rise buildings in the UK. 96% were built by other external international developers.

OB: I suppose that sort of uncertainty affects the market more broadly. If you’re worrying whether there are going to be all these new things coming down the line, it’s not ideal for a market such as housebuilding. Given your experience of being in the industry for 25 years, how have regulations changed over time? Has it been a gradual increase or have there been fits and starts?

RW: Regulations have always by and large been additive, so we very rarely take regulations away. That’s the purpose of building regulations: to make buildings safer to live in, more energy-efficient, and safer to build and be lived in. In recent years, for example, we’ve had the introduction of brand-new regulations such as Part S, which is the requirement for electrical vehicle charging in all new homes. I would say, however, that in the last five to six years, we’ve seen a steep increase in regulations, largely related to the tragic events of the Grenfell fire in 2017, as well as sustainability requirements, such as energy efficiency and carbon performance. And again, later this year, we’re expecting that the Future Home Standard under Part L will be introduced and that will see a 75 to 80 percent increase in the required energy performance of new-build homes. This stems from back to 2016 and again in 2018 when the Climate Change Committee announced the need to shift towards zero-carbon-ready homes.

OB: It does feel that housing is almost uniquely political because everyone lives in a house or an apartment of some description, and it feels like governments can be quite responsive, and in some ways reactive, to political headwinds and the news of the day, so I imagine that does create a more challenging environment when you’re trying to anticipate and respond to regulations as a housebuilder. It’d be interesting to get insight into examples of other regulations that have been introduced over the last few years that might have added significant costs to housebuilding, but for which there might be a question about how beneficial those regulations have been.

RW: I think there’s two aspects. One relates to fire safety. The Home Builders Federation was instrumental in writing the Responsible Actors Scheme on behalf of housing developers with government following the tragic events of Grenfell. The voluntary commitment pledge was to go back and fix all cladding and fire-critical safety defects in existing buildings over the last 30 years. From our perspective, all of the national house builders fully and wholeheartedly agreed to do that. But the reality is that UK house builders were only responsible for around 4% of high-rise buildings in the UK. 96% were built by other external international developers. We obviously fully agreed to fix the buildings that we were responsible for, the regulations ended up covering a far broader remit than just our own buildings.

OB: I imagine part of the rationale was that the international builders are just harder to reach so it becomes difficult to recoup costs from them.

RW: Absolutely. We’ve also seen changing standards about the definition of a high-rise building with the introduction of dual staircasing for any building over 18 meters or seven stories. So in terms of viability and feasibility, this change will significantly reduce the amount of living space available in a building, which has a real impact on their commercial viability. And then there’s the zero-carbon-ready homes and future home standards that I mentioned before. As a result of those, we’re seeing a fabric cost increase of around £8,000 to £10,000 per plot. So that will be as a result of the inclusion of solar panels, high-performing doors, windows and walls, and air source heat pumps to replace traditional gas boilers.

OB: And do those costs just get passed onto the buyer?

RW: No, and that’s quite a common misconception, because ultimately, there is a ceiling on how much someone is willing to pay for a property in a given area. There can be some perceived added value in some cases but not one that fully recovers the true cost. There can be down-valuations from company surveyors and mortgage providers if new homes are priced too high for a particular area, so any cost uplift associated through taxation, construction cost or fabric cost has to be covered ultimately by the developer, whether that’s through stronger buying powers or negotiation on the land cost, which is the forward outlook and understanding that you need to do when you’re buying land: what are the changing standards that are coming in in three to five years’ time? Can those changing regulations be factored into a lower negotiated land price? Or do they have to be covered by the developers, which means reducing viability? So as the cost of construction keeps going up, you can’t just keep loading that on to the price of the new-build house or equally devaluing land prices. Ultimately there is a limit and that is the real squeeze that all home builders are facing across all parts of the country.

OB: If viability decreases, does that ultimately decrease the likelihood of build-out and ultimately reduce the number of new homes across the country?

RW: It reduces the likelihood of new land becoming available because landowners won’t sell. If they’re constantly being tackled by higher cost, higher taxation and additional duties imposed from government in whichever form they come in, ultimately the viability will reduce to such a degree that landowners simply won’t sell, and that would have a detrimental effect on new land coming forward for housebuilding, yes.

OB: You mentioned energy efficiency earlier, environmental standards are obviously quite high up on the government’s agenda; you have the biodiversity net-gain requirements and nutrient neutrality et cetera, how difficult have those regulations been for housebuilders to accommodate?

RW: Nutrient neutrality has had a huge impact on the number of new homes coming forward, and we’ve published lots of reports for members which are all available on our website, and our estimates are that it is affecting over 160,000 new homes coming forward because they are not able to connect to local sewage networks. Biodiversity net-gain is also having a financial impact as well as an impact on land availability, because you need that 10% biodiversity gain as a consequence of your development, which is proving difficult to deliver.

OB: With the government announcing its ambition to replace those requirements with payments into a so-called pooled Nature Restoration Fund, is that helpful and a better way of meeting those biodiversity net-gain ambitions?

RW: I think the new proposal can potentially help housebuilders, yes. Traditionally, housebuilders just built a new development, sold the property and moved on. The last decade or so has brought additional responsibilities and duties that last beyond the point of sale. For example, biodiversity net-gain places a 30-year stewardship responsibility on developers to ensure they meet their commitments, even after someone’s moved in. Traditionally, in open space areas and new development sites, they would just be for open space or enjoyment adopted by the local authority in the traditional way, but now they’re increasing in scope and they’re becoming multi-functional spaces, which the developers have to ensure often requiring the appointment of third-party management companies because the authorities are unwilling or unable to adopt. It could be for nature, landscaping, biodiversity, ecology, sustainable drainage as well as for open space and leisure use. And as these functions and purposes have increased, so have the duties and responsibilities on either the local authority or private management companies to manage and maintain these spaces in perpetuity, so a more strategic way of achieving biodiversity gain would be welcomed.

OB: I suppose housebuilding requirements could be placed in the “everythingism” category that’s been popularised recently by the think-tank Re:State [previously ‘Reform’ - unaffiliated to the political party and forced to rebrand as a result of confusion], which is a variation on the term “cakeism” that governments are labelled with, where they try to achieve multiple things simultaneously whilst only having the resources to do one of them well, whereas everythingism is basically a label for the belief that every policy should achieve every single one of the government’s aims, at the expense of achieving what that policy is actually supposed to be about, at its core. I mean, in my view, housebuilding should ultimately just be about building houses. To build them well, of course, but ultimately, that should be it. It’s obviously laudable to want to protect the environment, that’s a very noble aim, but I think it does matter how much additional cost we’re adding on to the cost of building and buying houses, because that will inevitably have an impact on the number of houses that are available, because someone has to pay. These requirements aren’t free.

RW: And that’s the thing, developers are willing to embrace change and higher standards, and they’re willing to commit to the wider responsibilities of the Homes for Nature campaign with many signatories committing to higher, broader nature commitments, but ultimately, it is loading additional costs and responsibility onto the developer and to the homeowner as well.

Planning

High-level planning policy has changed at the very top, but, actually, when you’re working in the regions, dealing with local authority planning applications, nothing has changed to that more granular, on-the-ground process.

OB: What’s your view on what the government has done so far on planning policy?

RW: In fairness, one of the first changes the current government made when they came into power was to address the planning system and the National Planning Policy Framework [NPPF], which was hugely helpful and well-received. But what they haven’t done is change the planning process, and therein lies the problem. High-level planning policy has changed at the very top, but, actually, when you’re working in the regions, dealing with local authority planning applications, nothing has changed to that more granular, on-the-ground process. That’s where we’re seeing planning permissions taking upwards of two years, we’re seeing developers have a quicker, more direct route of planning by going straight through to appeal, rather than actually through the normal planning process itself. So government really needs to not just look at policy but at process as well.

OB: Does HBF have any views on what that process should look like or what a reform to the planning process might look like?

RW: It would include something around standardised planning agreements and having cascade mechanisms within Section 106 agreements where, if a provider of social housing can’t be found, it can be delivered in other forms, as well as allowing for the option of outsourcing certain aspects of planning to other professional consultants if capacity or professional ability isn’t available within the local authorities.

OB: Obviously the government made the commitment to hire another 300 planning officers nationally for local authorities, but I presume that’s not really going to make a dent.

RW: It’s helpful but in reality it doesn’t go far enough given the scale of the issue.

OB: What do you make of the government’s announcement that they’re going to call-in every development under 500 homes if it’s not approved by the local authority?

RW: If there’s a new housing development that is sited within strategic infrastructure, such as railway stations, there’s going to be a strong presumption in favour of developments, which would help. We’ve also asked government to increase the housing threshold for biodiversity net-gain commitments for SME housebuilders, which is currently aligned with the requirement for major developments at 10 unit, to 50 units or more, which would help reduce the burden on SME developers, who have fewer resources to deliver this sort of commitment. We’re asking the same for the building safety levy.

1.5 Million Homes and Workforce Availability

To jump from around 220,000 to 300,000, to increase production by around a third, effectively, was always going to be a challenging target…for every 10,000 new homes that you want developed, you actually need 30,000 new recruits into the construction industry. So to scale up from 200,000 to 300,000, you’re talking about an extra 300,000 people entering the construction industry around the UK.

OB: Where is the UK currently on its housebuilding trajectory?

RW: The net addition figure released the week before last from government was 208,000 new homes for 2024 to 2025. Last year was 228,000. HBF’s view is that we’re on a downward trajectory to around 2027, before we hopefully then begin to see an increase in new homes coming forward. So looking at that 1.5 million new homes target and the 300,000 per year, that’s proving more and more challenging with each year that goes by. There is some belief within the industry that perhaps by 2029/2030, towards the tail end of this current government, that there’s a possibility that we could get up to around 270,000, possibly 300,000 houses per year, but it will be a struggle.

OB: Was that ambition always going to be unachievable or were there things that the government could have done to have made it more feasible?

RW: In fairness to the government, changing the planning policy very early showed a commitment to the goal, but I think it was always an aspirational target. To jump from around 220,000 to 300,000, to increase production by around a third, effectively, was always going to be a challenging target. I think that was the purpose. If they made it too easy it didn’t have the same urgency.

OB: It was more of a stretching target, then.

RW: Yes it was. Because it’s also not just planning, it’s the capacity of the workforce, whether it’s manufacturing, materials, appliances, skills, trades, labour. To scale all of those different trades by an additional third takes years. So for every 10,000 new homes that you want developed, you actually need 30,000 new recruits into the construction industry. So to scale up from 200,000 to 300,000, you’re talking about an extra 300,000 people entering the construction industry around the UK. And when you’ve got an ageing workforce as we do currently, I think the average age of a bricklayer is 53 or 54, that becomes even more challenging.

OB: And I don’t know how well the government are doing in terms of attracting people into those career pathways. There’s obviously more of a focus on technical skills than there has been previously, which is great, but that takes time, to raise awareness, to get people trained up and to change attitudes and behaviour towards those pathways, and ultimately change our culture.

RW: Absolutely, and I think construction has always had an image and reputational problem. And I can remember back in the late 90s when I entered the industry, they were talking about the exact same things back then. How do we attract more people into the industry? What can we do to elevate the profile and the reputation of the sector? And I don’t think that things like the recessions that we had in the 90s, a slow period in the early 2000s, and of course the Financial Crisis in the late 2000s have helped. The housebuilding industry is also one of the first to downturn and one of the last to bounce back. So I think those sorts of financial impacts can cause real reputational damage to the construction industry and that’s always a problem to get over, because it appears to be insecure work. So yes, 25, 30 years on, we’re still dealing with challenges of attracting more people into the industry. But the thing is, they’re good quality, highly respected professions.

OB: Absolutely. Like I say, it’s also a cultural thing. You’ve had Tony Blair saying “education, education, education”, obviously with a particular type of education in mind, and setting targets to get 50% of people into university. In hindsight, was that such a good idea? Do you think there is a lack of esteem that we place on professions in the construction industry?

RW: I think the UK has suffered from the decline of apprenticeship schemes and we’re now trying to encourage and promote more companies with government or industry support and the Construction Industry Training Board to take on board more professional apprenticeships. It doesn’t have to be a physical, trades-related apprenticeship. We can have professional apprenticeships where people are studying architecture, civil engineering, surveying in those apprenticeship roles. And I think the cost of higher education has changed discussions around that. But the UK also went through a huge period of importing traditional trades and skills into the UK, but there’s no reason why British people can’t learn those good quality traditional trades themselves. We are totally capable of embracing those trades ourselves. And those trades and skills are needed. We desperately need traditional plumbers, bricklayers, electricians, carpenters, good quality, highly skilled traditional trades providing worthwhile and rewarding careers.

OB: From a personal perspective, I think there is something really appealing about those trades, because it is tangible work, you see the fruits of your labour at the end of it, you’re building something physical, and I think there is a level of satisfaction in those sort of jobs that you probably can’t get if you’re sat in an office behind the behind a screen. I think there must be some appetite amongst younger people for that sort of work. It’s something rewarding.

RW: I read an article recently where the author wrote that that traditional trades like bricklayers, carpenters and stonemasons will be the doctors and surgeons of the future - specialised professions which are highly sought after and highly respected because those more white-collar work are now under threat from AI. So there may actually be more insecurity in those professions further down the line because cognitive functions are easier to automate. And I think if we’re talking about growth, as a nation, we have to build and we have to create, to help the UK economy.

Conclusion

OB: So to wrap up, if you had a magic wand, what would be the top five policy changes you would make to improve the affordability of housing and housebuilding and make the sector function more effectively in the UK?

RW: We need to streamline and improve the planning process. We need to look at the detrimental impact of the ever-increasing taxes and burdens placed on developers for significantly increasing standards, regulations and requirements, which are pushing up the cost of construction.

OB: Yep, so stem that mission creep.

RW: Exactly, because it is having a significant detrimental impact on new housing and the volumes of new housing coming forward because it’s affecting viability and feasibility so much. We need to address wider regulatory issues to do with statutory consultees in the planning system, but also with the water industry, like Ofwat and statutory undertakers, whether that’s water company performance and barriers that they place, whether it’s to do with water neutrality, nutrient neutrality, insufficient capacity within their network because of poor planning within the water industry, . There is a significant push towards greater environmental protection and performance from our aging water networks and the owners of those networks need greater scrutiny of how they perform. This will be set out in the government’s new Water Bill later this year. We are also facing issues around network capacity for electricity supply now that we’re moving towards 100% electric new homes. There are also issues to do with the skills and training, as we’ve mentioned, attracting more people into the construction industry. Those are the key areas, I think.

OB: On a related point, I heard from a previous guest, Antonia Jennings, CEO of Centre for London, that there’s an entire development in West London that’s been built but that can’t be moved into because they can’t get connected to the grid, which is just a baffling situation. How can you give approval for a development and then not guarantee that it’s going to be connected to the electrical grid?

RW: In the last five to seven years, we’ve also seen a significant increase in the number
of electric vehicles and a rapid transition to electrification, including in housing, and the grid hasn’t been able to keep abreast of that strong transition in that small amount of time. And with the introduction of Part S in the building regulations, every new home as of June 2022 has to have a live, active 7.2 KW car charger installed, even though the percentage of new homes with electric cars is still very small. So all of that pushes up the demand for grid capacity and available energy. The cost of guaranteeing that with off-site network reinforcement again pushes up the cost of development, which the developer has to pay for. So all of these are hidden costs associated with construction that are levied onto the developer. New housebuilding uses far less energy than what independent network providers, independent network operators initially thought. With a 100-unit development, for example, it’s a slow on-boarding on new homes being delivered over a period of time. Developers do not require 100% of the energy upfront on day one. It gradually increases over time. So actually there is sufficient strategic opportunity for network operators to improve the capacity alongside the onboarding of new homes whilst network improvements are made alongside. Nevertheless, developers have been faced with network capacity issues generally across all parts of the UK, but especially so in West London.

Quickfire

OB: A book you’d recommend?

RW: I read Soldier by General Sir Mike Jackson some time ago and also had the privilege of meeting him. A great book and a fantastic man.

OB: Favourite café?

RW: Coffi Lab in Llandaff Village.

OB: First thing you read in the morning?

RW: Reuters and City AM.

OB: Hobbies?

RW: I like to stay fit so I go to the gym, used to play a lot of rugby and try to do a variety of exercise, which I also find clears the head.

OB: Rhodri Williams, thank you very much.

“If anybody’s going to blow up the universe, it might as well be a boy from Aberdare.”

It sometimes amazes me, when I’m in one of my more contemplative moments, how little we actually consider the nature of reality and how it - we - all came to be.

We all live our daily lives; waking up, showering, getting dressed, eating, going to work, joining meetings, clicking away at our computers, seeing friends, going for a run, lying on the sofa - and we very infrequently ask ourselves: how is all of this possible? What accident of physics brought it all about? How did I end up right here, reading this? When did it all start? And does it even make sense to ask about there being a “start”? Because if there was a start, then that means there was nothing before, so how did something emerge from nothing? And what’s beyond the horizon of our universe? And if there is no horizon, that must mean the universe is infinite, but so, how too is that possible?

Sometimes it feels like our brains were never designed to be able to understand the implications of all of these questions, and that we’ll never truly understand the true origins and reality of existence. Nonetheless, the nature of human beings is to be inquisitive, and it is some people’s jobs to probe at the very edges and most fundamental components of our universe, to crack open these boxes, and dig a little deeper into the fabric of our reality to better understand how this all came to be, and take us one step closer to a meaningful answer.

One such person is Dr Lyndon Rees Evans, from Aberdare. He was the Project Leader of the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, in Geneva - the largest-scale and most sophisticated science experiment in human history, and the machine designed to find the God Particle, the particle first theorised by the late scientist Peter Higgs, which was said to give mass to matter, and therefore fundamental to the existence of our universe.

Lyn led the design, consenting and construction of the LHC, which eventually achieved its core mission of proving the existence of the God Particle, in what was one of the most significant scientific discoveries in history. He is a legend in science and deserves to be recognised among the greatest Welshmen and Brits to have ever lived. It was a privilege to be able to speak to him. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Early Life

OB: You were born in Cwmbach [literally, ‘Little Valley”] in Aberdare in 1945, is that right? Was that before or after the end of the war?

LE: July 1945, so just afterwards.

OB: What did your parents do?

LE: My father was a coal miner in Aberdare.

OB: Did you have any siblings?

LE: I’ve got one younger brother, who still lives in Wales.

OB: I read that you studied Physics, Chemistry and Further Maths for your A-levels. What got you into science in the first place?

LE: I was always keen on science as a kid, and it came quite naturally to me. In fact, in school, I was lousy until I could drop all the other subjects and just concentrated on Physics, Maths and Chemistry, as you say.

OB: Did you have any ambitions in school as to what you were going to do in the future, or were you quite open-minded?

LE: No idea!

OB: But you played a bit of rugby growing up, I read.

LE: Oh yeah, I played a bit of rugby, which I carried on when I moved to Geneva as well, actually.

OB: Really? What position were you?

LE: I was wing forward. We actually won the Swiss Cup in 1978. We had a team that was made up of internationals coming from all over the place, a lot of whom were good players. Some Aussies, a New Zealander, a couple of Welsh boys. So it was quite a strong side.

OB: Was it a CERN team or a local team?

LE: Funnily enough, there was a CERN team, but I didn’t play for them. And whenever I played against them I always seemed to come off worse for wear…

OB: And obviously you studied at Swansea after you graduated. Did you ever give any consideration to studying outside of Wales or was Swansea quite a good university?

LE: I went to Swansea because it was, at the time, the best Chemistry department in Wales, and I initially chose to study Chemistry. Ironically, they don’t even have a Chemistry department now, but after a while of doing Chemistry I decided Physics would be easier, so I switched.

OB: You eventually went on to do your PhD in 1970, which was a combination of theoretical and experimental from what I understand.

LE: Yes, I worked on laser-produced plasmas.

OB: And did that presage your interest in smashing things together under extreme conditions?

LE: Yeah, I was ionising gases with a laser beam. This was 1966 to ‘69, and this had only been discovered a few years earlier, so it was frontline stuff.

OB: Did you make any significant findings?

LE: I made enough findings to get a PhD, I suppose!

CERN and the Large Hadron Collider

OB: How and why was CERN started?

LE: CERN [originally Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire] was founded in 1954, just nine years after the war, and one of the reasons it was decided that it would be pursued was to try to reunite European scientists who had been on opposite sides in the war, and to build a facility that only Russia and America could otherwise afford by combining resources into one European institute. Geneva was chosen because Switzerland was neutral, of course, and it was cheap. Although I can tell you it ain’t cheap anymore.

OB: Prior to the Large Hadron Collider [LHC], you worked on the Super Proton Synchrotron, right?

LE: CERN has a fellowship programme, which is a one-year appointment renewable for a second. So I joined as a fellow at the end of ‘69. Then I started working on particle accelerators, on an experimental linear accelerator, actually, and then at the end of 1970, the SPS project was approved, which is this giant accelerator six kilometres in circumference. And I joined that project, starting off firstly by building it, and then in ‘77/’78, the idea was put forward to convert it into a colliding beam device to significantly increase the energy available, and to do that, you would have to collide protons with antiprotons, because you’ve only got one ring. so you’re going to need oppositely charged particles going in opposite directions. That was a really difficult project because we had to build an antiproton accumulator that over hours and hours would accumulate antiprotons, which we could make with the existing machine, the proton synchrotron, which is still a workhorse of CERN actually. And we would make antiprotons by firing the beam onto a target. Every two seconds, we would have a pulse of antiprotons and then we would store it in a special ring where we would also cool it and reduce the beam size. And when we had enough after 24 hours, we would have just one shot of putting it into the super proton synchrotron, together with the proton beam going in opposite direction, accelerating it and keeping it in storage for as long as we could until the next lot of antiprotons was ready. So this was a really, really tough project. But in the end, it produced some very important discoveries, which were the W and Z bosons. And for me, it was actually the prototype of the LHC. So when I was given the job of building the LHC, I knew very well how to build it. But it was a really ambitious project. This was the project that really put CERN at the top of the world of particle physics.

OB: Forgive my ignorance, but is an antiproton a type of antimatter, then?

LE: Yes, that’s precisely what it is. An antiproton is the antimatter equivalent of the proton. So there’s the world of matter and there’s the world of antimatter. Each particle has got its antiparticle, which doesn’t exist in nature, but we can make them in the lab. So an antiproton is identical to a proton except the charge is negative instead of positive.

OB: What was the context for the Large Hadron Collider at the time? Did one exist already anywhere else?

LE: No, the Large Hadron Collider concept didn’t exist at that time. There was a discovery in 1974 at CERN using a bubble chamber, which is an old device that produces tracks of particles that you can see in a liquid, and that was the discovery of weak neutral currents, which will not mean much to you, but was the real start of what’s called the Standard Model of particle physics. Because these weak nuclear currents had been predicted by a theory that also predicted the existence of these two bosons, the W and Z bosons, and a rough estimate of their mass. So because mass and energy are equivalent, we knew what energy we would have to generate to produce them. That’s where the idea of the proton - antiproton collider came in. And it was a success. It was very difficult, but it was a great success. And Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer got the Nobel Prize for their discovery. Us accelerator builders got nothing, as usual!

OB: I have to say, I was quite surprised you didn’t have a peerage, given your contribution to the field!

LE: Well I’ve got a CBE and I’m happy with that.

OB: Prior to you joining as a fellow from Swansea, there was already quite a strong link between Swansea and CERN from what I understand. Was it Eifion Jones who joined in ‘59?

LE: Yeah, Eifion joined ten years before me. Unfortunately he died very young, in his late 60s. But yeah Eifion was the pioneer, the first person from Swansea to come to CERN. And then there were a few other people who came along as visitors, and I came along and I stayed.

OB: And you wrote your first technical paper on the rough design of the LHC in ‘83. What was your official role at that time?

LE: Well, the LHC was only an idea being kicked around at that time. There was no formal structure for it. It was just people thinking. So I wrote the paper in ‘83. At the time I was working on the proton - antiproton collider. But the proton - antiproton collider showed us what the parameter space for the LHC should be, like how much current we could store, and basically pointed the way to the design of the LHC. So the first rough design was produced in ‘83. And in fact, in ‘83, I tried another proton - antiproton collider version of the LHC, which would have meant it would have been much cheaper because it would only be one ring, whereas the LHC has got two rings. But that never worked because we could never get the event rate that you would need. Don’t forget, having discovered the W and Z bosons, there was only one real target left for us, which was the Higgs Boson [also known as ‘The God Particle’], and nobody knew its mass. So when we designed the LHC, we didn’t know what energy we would need to make Higgs bosons. If you haven’t got enough energy, you’ll never be able to make them. So we designed the LHC so that if the Higgs boson existed, we would be bound to find it. So that was in ‘83 and was kicked around for the rest of the year. And then there were various studies and workshops and meetings to decide if we really should go ahead. And it was in 1990 that it was first proposed to the CERN Council for this to be the next big project for Europe. So between ‘83 and ‘90, I was doing other things. I was running the biggest division in CERN, for instance. But I was also working part-time on planning the LHC. Then it took another three years of discussion in the CERN Council to get the LHC actually approved. Then I was appointed the leader of the project.

OB: Whilst preparing for this interview, I saw some articles from the 80s that showed that at various points, Britain was considering withdrawing from CERN. What was the reason for that?

LE: Britain’s always been very hard-nosed about value for money, and there were two reviews into Britain’s participation in CERN where they had a committee looking at the value of CERN to the UK. And in the end they both came out very positive. But it wasn’t so obvious at the time. Now the UK is a strong supporter of CERN, of course. But that wasn’t always the case.

OB: I saw you wrote once that in 1993, the political will changed and there emerged a very strong interest within the scientific community to pursue this kind of particle physics. Was that political will from among member states?

LE: Well getting a consensus is never easy, especially when you have a lot of different parties involved. At that time I think we had 18 member states. We’ve got 22 or 23 now. So getting a consensus is difficult. And also the point of approval is a point where the member states can exert some pressure, and there was some pressure to reduce the budget. But in the end, we got it through. Some years later, that budget pressure came back when there was a cost overrun, which was not very big, but it made big waves. But yes, there was tremendous scientific pressure to build the LHC, because normally, when you build these machines, you don’t know what you’re going to find, but in this case, we knew we were looking for the Higgs Boson, named after Peter Higgs, who theorised it. Peter died last year, but he predicted this mechanism in ‘64, as the means of giving mass to all the other particles in the universe. But like I say, the Higgs Boson’s mass could not be predicted, therefore we didn’t know what machine we needed to build. All we knew was that all the machines we built up to now didn’t see the Higgs Boson, so it had to be heavier than what anything we’d built so far could produce. So that’s when the LHC project began. We proposed it in the early ‘90s, it was scientifically reviewed and then it was put to the CERN Council and in the end it was approved for construction in 1994, and it took from ‘94 to 2008 to build it. It was a very long and quite a difficult project.

OB: When it was approved for construction, had all the detailed design been produced?

LE: No, no, no. First thing you had to do was set up a proper project structure, which would produce the detailed design. We had some prototypes of short, one-metre-long superconducting magnets, for instance, which proved we could reach the fields we needed. But to build the 14m magnets that the LHC needed, that we didn’t have. So it was really the final design that we had in ‘94, and then we started to build the hardware for the LHC.

OB: Were you involved in planning and construction?

LE: Everything! Politics as well. One thing that we were told to do was to get contributions from outside the member states of CERN. So I spent a lot of time with Chris Llewellyn-Smith in particular, who was the DG at the time, travelling to countries like Japan, Russia, the US, Canada, India to try to get their support. We got contributions from all of these countries to help build it in the end. And in those days, we had a very good relationship with Russia. Now we can’t even talk to them.

OB: I saw at one point 8% of your workforce at CERN were Russian. I’m not sure if that’s the case anymore.

LE: No, it’s not. CERN collaborated with Russia all through the Cold War. We had no problem. The rules were clear and our scientists used to go and work in Russia and the Russians in CERN - all through the communist days. Then it was made a lot easier in the 90s. At that point they really contributed a lot - about $200 million to the LHC and we had a very good relationship with them. The invasion of Ukraine has cut that completely. The collaboration agreement with Russia, which had been going on for 40 years, was terminated by the CERN Council. That’s the first time ever, to my knowledge, that the CERN Council made a political decision, and since then, we’ve had no contact with Russian institutes, which is a real big shame.

OB: That’s quite striking, because in my mind, the Cold War felt like a more overt conflict between Russia and the West, so it’s surprising that even then, relations continued.

LE: I actually went to Russia during the Cold War, and I went to Russia many times after it, but now it’s completely changed. It’s terrible.

OB: And I imagine Russia has a very strong tradition of science and engineering, which is probably a loss for an institution such as CERN.

LE: Absolutely. Very strong. An hour ago, I had another Zoom call where we were preparing for a scientific meeting in October in Valencia to discuss the future, and the big issue was: should we invite Russians or allow Russians to come at all? And if it was CERN, the answer would have been ‘definitely not’. We have been told by our Council that we cannot collaborate. But this was under a different organisation, so the consensus we reached was that, yes, they can come, but they mustn’t show their affiliation. They must come like they do in the Olympic Games, under a neutral, international flag.

OB: Are you concerned about potentially ostracising scientists who may be politically neutral, or even antagonistic to Putin’s regime?

LE: Well, unfortunately, they’re under such pressure internally that scientists from some of the big institutes that we have previously collaborated with have been forced to come out in favour of the invasion of Ukraine, which makes continued collaboration even harder.

Constructing the Large Hadron Collider

“Fortunately, we had absolutely no opposition from the public, which is amazing actually, given that we’re called the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, after all.”

OB: I used to work for HS2, so I’m very interested in the planning, consenting and construction process and obviously the LHC is a big tunnel and HS2 is substantially made up of tunnels. So how complex was that process whilst building the LHC? I imagine slightly simpler in one sense, given that there’s very little construction going on on the surface, and you’re therefore affecting fewer communities, so planning approval must be easier to obtain, for example. But obviously more complicated in terms of the technology being built.

LE: There are eight surface area sites around the 27km circumference of the LHC and CERN has always been very careful to integrate with the local communities. We had to do an environmental impact study and a public inquiry in all of the communes that were affected, which took a year before it was approved by the French Government for construction. You’re right, the excavation was mainly underground, so it was invisible to the population. And even the transport of components - if you want to take a 25 tonne magnet to the far point of the ring, and there are 1,200 of them, so it’s a big job - it was all done underground. It was lowered on the CERN site and nobody saw anything above ground. Completely invisible. And even the sites of the big experiments - ATLAS and CMS - the excavation was re-landscaped around the site. So there was no movement of millions of cubic metres of material on the surface. We were very careful with that. But fortunately, we had absolutely no opposition from the public, which is amazing actually, given that we’re called the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, after all.

OB: Exactly. You can quite conceivably imagine some residents thinking, “I think they’re trying to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang beneath our feet. So maybe, we should be slightly worried about that?”

LE: That’s right. And when we switched the LHC on in 2008, there were these pseudoscientists in Hawaii who tried to get an injunction against the LHC through their district court because they thought that it was going to blow up the universe, which they’d done once before when an American machine was switched on. I used to make a joke about it, because it was totally ridiculous. I’d say, “Well, if anybody’s going to blow up the universe, it might as well be a boy from Aberdare.” But the switch on of the LHC was incredible. Normally, we do these things usually in the middle of the night, because nothing ever works first time. But for the LHC, there was such public interest that we had to do it live on TV. Channel 4 covered it. Andrew Marr came. It was terrific pressure, but fortunately, everything worked on the day.

OB: I saw that you had one issue with one of the superconducting magnets. Is that right?

LE: Yeah, that was a week later. One of the magnets failed and it produced a fair bit of damage because these are superconducting magnets, which are extremely powerful, and it set us back a couple of months and took us quite a while to fix everything and come back on again. But you get these problems and you just fix them. But fortunately, it didn’t happen in the light of the cameras.

OB: How is the LHC powered? It must need a lot of energy to run. Has it got its own source of energy?

LE: No, it doesn’t. It uses the energy of a reasonable-sized city, but it’s powered from the French grid, so mainly by nuclear.

OB: In terms of the scale of what you were building, there obviously somewhat of a precedent before with the synchrotron, but given what you were aiming to achieve, you didn’t really have much of a template to work off going into it, did you?

LE: No, it’s unique. I always say, it’s its own prototype.

OB: But just the fact that it took only 14 years to build something as large and complex and as precise as that is pretty unbelievable, I think.

LE: Well, now, fortunately, I’m out of it. I retired quite a while ago, although I’m still active. But now there’s a proposal to build something four times bigger. I personally don’t think that’s on. It’s not on financially or in terms of how long it will take to build. 14 years in science is a long time as it is, and you need to attract PhDs to support the project, which are typically three years. Are you going to attract young people to a project that’s going to take 40 years to build? This is the problem now. The LHC was the limit because we had some other experiments going on at CERN that were able to just about buffer the young people doing their PhDs etc. over that timescale, but I don’t think anything bigger would be practical.

OB: What baffles me is that there are so many different domains that you would have to have mastered to get to the point of managing a project like the LHC, including engineering, planning, politics. It’s pretty remarkable that you went from being a scientist to being heavily involved in other unrelated areas like planning, construction, finance, etc.

LE: And also the interaction with industry. The LHC was not built at CERN, it was built in industry all around Europe and all around the world in some cases, so the relationship with industry was key.

OB: And once construction was approved, how politically insulated were you? Were you protected from much personal interference or were there ongoing efforts to pull funding?

LE: We were being reviewed quite often. We had to report four times a year to the finance committee, and all contracts above CHF200,000 had to be approved by the finance committee. You needed calls for tender, contract adjudications, all that stuff. But always approved in three month blocks. So there was quite a lot of bureaucracy and scrutiny.

OB: And how closely were you able to stick to the budget in the end?

LE: Well, I had a small team looking after the planning and making sure things didn’t overrun too much, but it’s not easy, is it? As I’m sure you attest from your HS2 experience. In the end, the LHC came out about 25% over the initial cost estimate, which is fantastic as far as I’m concerned, compared to most other major projects.

OB: It’s one of those things as well, it must be so hard to estimate what the cost of something like that is going to be, because there’s no reference class.

LE: Exactly. Especially underground construction, as you know, they give you a cost estimate, but in the end, it’s a blank cheque, because anything you find, you’ve got to fix. And you find plenty of things in a region like this, I can tell you.

OB: I’m sure. And the depth that you were tunnelling as well is completely different to HS2. HS2 is about 30 metres at most, I think. You were digging about 100 metres at certain points, right?

LE: The deepest the LHC goes is 180m. The LHC actually goes under the Jura Mountains a little bit.

OB: Tunnelling at that depth probably poses all sorts of challenges as well.

LE: We had some big surprises, the biggest of which was an underground lake, which caused a real headache.

OB: How confident were the contractors? Did they require that a lot of the risk sat with CERN because of the novelty of what they were being asked to do?

LE: The risk always sat with CERN in the end. For instance, for the shaft of one of the big experiments, CMS, we knew that we were going to encounter underground water. In the whole region, the water comes from the water table. So we knew that there was underground water flowing from the Jura Mountains, and that we would have to build a shaft through it. And we had planned to do that by freezing the ground around it and excavating inside using liquid nitrogen, which was a big undertaking. But the water flow was much heavier than we’d foreseen. And these are extra costs that can’t be foreseen, but this always happens.

The Theory of Everything

“One of the problems is that there are some wonderful theories being used, but no predictions that can be tested. This is the difference between science and religion, if you like. In religion, you can believe and you don’t have to prove. Whereas in science, you make a prediction and then you have to be able to prove it. Theories do not stand just as themselves. They have to be able to predict and then you can measure and prove. And that’s where we are at the moment.”

OB: Just to move on to more theoretical physics, do you think a Theory of Everything, which is obviously the holy grail in physics, is more or less likely?

LE: Well, let’s talk about the remaining mysteries, right? We’ve cleared up the Higgs mechanism, which tells us how mass is made. But the big issues now are uniting gravity with quantum mechanics. That’s getting nowhere for the moment. There are 30 orders of magnitude difference in the strength of gravity compared with the strong force that holds atoms together, for instance. Then there’s dark matter. We know that we can’t explain 95% of the universe - only 5% is matter that interacts in a way that we understand. Then you have dark energy on top of that. There’s still a big mess out there that’s got to be resolved. One of the problems is that there are some wonderful theories being used, but no predictions that can be tested. This is the difference between science and religion, if you like. In religion, you can believe and you don’t have to prove. Whereas in science, you make a prediction and then you have to be able to prove it. Theories do not stand just as themselves. They have to be able to predict and then you can measure and prove. And that’s where we are at the moment. We really do not know where to go. We do not have the guidance of the LHC. We didn’t know that the Higgs Boson existed, but we did know that if it did exist, then we had enough energy to make it. Now, we have no guidance at all on where to go next, on understanding dark energy, dark matter, etc. So, I think we’ve just got to keep plugging on. The LHC is being upgraded continuously, and we will probably got another 20 years out of experimental physics coming out of it - refining and trying to find chinks in what’s called the Standard Model of particle physics. So it is tough knowing where to go from here.

OB: What else has the LHC been doing then, since proving the existence of the Higgs Boson?

LE: One of the big things that the LHC is making progress on is the mystery of where all the antimatter has gone. Because, you see, when we make antimatter, we make exactly the same amount of matter. If I want to make an antiproton, I’ve got to make a proton as well. It is a principle called conservation of baryon number. So in the moment of the Big Bang, there should have been absolutely equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Now, matter and antimatter don’t like each other, and when they meet, they annihilate each other. And when they annihilate each other, they produce photons [particles of light]. So based on our understanding, if there was equal amounts of matter and antimatter at the Big Bang, then the universe that we’re in right now should be one that is full of light and nothing else, with no place for us in it, because all the matter would have been annihilated with all the antimatter. And the real question is: what was this asymmetry? And why was there an asymmetry? But there must have been a tiny asymmetry that produced a particular amount of light, and the light is still there. We can see it and we can measure it. It’s called the cosmic microwave background. We measure it all the time. But there was a little bit left over for us to make galaxies and planets and people, which are made of matter. So what was that? The scientific term we use to describe that is CP violation, or the violation of charge parity symmetry, which upset that balance and, fortunately for us, produced enough leftover matter so that we can exist. And understanding that is the aim that one of the LHC experiments is dedicated to. There are four detectors in the LHC. One is called ATLAS and one is called CMS. They’re the really big ones, the general purpose detectors that both discovered the Higgs Boson. But there is another one that is dedicated to looking in detail at this asymmetry between matter and antimatter. One of the possible explanations of dark matter was a thing called ‘supersymmetry’. Every electron has got an anti-electron, which we can make. They don’t exist in nature anymore, but we can make them. But there was a very attractive theory that every matter particle has got its supersymmetric counterpart, and the stable supersymmetric particle could be the source of dark matter. Supersymmetry was really attractive, except that the LHC has busted it completely. It’s proved that it doesn’t exist - in its simplest form, at least. So that was one of the avenues that we went down to try to explain dark matter, but that doesn’t work, so it’s got to be something else.

OB: I suppose that’s part of science, isn’t it? Elimination as well as discovery.

LE: It is. And supersymmetry was a big industry. There were many thousands of theorists working on it, and in one fell swoop, the LHC proved that it isn’t there. It wasn’t very pleasant for some.

OB: Was there any resistance from people who were still trying to hold onto hope, who discounted the findings?

LE: Yes, and what they do then is they produce even more sophisticated models. But above all, what they’ve got to do is to make predictions that can be tested. If you don’t make a prediction, it’s not worth a damn. Like I say, it’s religion, not science.

OB: So after you left the LHC, you were the Director of the International Linear Collider for some years. What was that hoping to achieve, and what can that do that a circular collider can’t?

LE: Well, a circular collider is not very good at accelerating electrons to high energy, because electrons, when you bend them, emit radiation called synchrotron radiation, which reduces their energy, so you’ve got to keep accelerating them just to keep them at constant speed. So if you want to collide electrons - and there are good reasons why you would like to collide fundamental particles, like electrons, whereas protons are not - you need a linear collider. So, in order to investigate the Higgs mechanism in a very precise way, a linear collider would be ideal. Now that we know the mass of the Higgs, we know what energy to build the collider for. That is one of the things on a possible menu for the future, to build a linear collider to go into the details of the Higgs. Because, you see, when you’re looking for new physics, you can either find it or you can find anomalies with the physics that exists. Einstein, for instance, developed the theory of General Relativity because of an anomaly in the perihelion of Mercury [perihelion meaning the point in a planet’s orbit where it is closest to the sun]. He noticed that Mercury was precessing at a rate which is slightly different to what the normal gravity predicted. And that tiny difference led him to the discovery of General Relativity. So part of the game now is precision, and looking for small deviations from the prediction, which can guide you to new physics. So in a sense, the ILC is not a discovery machine, it’s a precision machine. But whether it will ever be built or not, we will see. Going back about five years now, there was a huge discussion of what to do next, and the result was consensus to build the ILC. Now we’re back there again - the LHC is up and running, so where do we go next? And unfortunately, there are a lot of different opinions, which is what governments love because then they don’t have to make a decision, because there’s no agreement about what’s being asked for.

Wales

OB: How often do you go back to Wales these days? I see you’ve been back to your school a couple of times.

LE: I’m actually a vice president of the Morriston Orpheus Choir, so I go back once a year for a concert, which is normally in June, but that’s about it now.

OB: Is there any possibility we can get a collider built in Wales? That might reignite the economy!

LE: I wouldn’t put money on it. Wales should really concentrate on energy production. For me, more nuclear energy is absolutely inevitable. It’s becoming clear to everybody now, right? You could have put up as many windmills as you want, but you’re not going to get all the energy you need. So these small modular reactors [SMRs] now would be a great thing for Wales to have. You’ve got regions like Wylfa, which are approved for nuclear use and are not being used. But not a collider, no, I don’t think so. [Note: the government has since approved the construction of three SMRs in Wylfa and South Wales.]

OB: We missed a trick, I think, when we stopped building nuclear after having been pioneers in civil nuclear, and then France just took the baton from us and ploughed on with it.

LE: And now they’re building nuclear power stations for Britain. [EDF are building Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C in the UK]

OB: Indeed! Quite expensive ones as well.

Quickfire and Reflections

OB: Best manager or leader you ever worked under?

LE: That’s probably going to be Sir John Adams. He was the builder of the super proton synchrotron. There’s a strong tradition of Brits building these big machines.

OB: One book you’d recommend?

LE: Maybe Dark Sun, by Richard Rhodes, about the making of the atomic bomb. He actually interviewed me a couple of years ago because he’s been commissioned to write a book about LHC. So I spent a morning with him. Although he’s about 95 now, so I don’t know if he’ll make it.

OB: Has your life’s work brought you to any profound realisation about the nature of reality? Or do you still feel like you know as little about reality as you did when you started out?

LE: I’m a simple physicist, I don’t think that deeply! I tell you, I was in Portugal one time and I had a call from the BBC because Stephen Hawking had said that he doesn’t need God anymore, and they asked me to come on a radio programme to discuss the topic with men of the church. But what Stephen Hawking had said came off the back of the discovery of dark energy, which is effectively a negative energy. So dark energy was identified as a result of the realisation that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating, not slowing down, as it should be. So there’s something that’s acting like a negative gravity. Hawking said he didn’t need God anymore because the negative gravity would compensate for the gravity and therefore something could be made out of nothing. And it’s okay for Hawking to say that, but he’s going to have to be able to make a prediction that we can verify or not, and unless he does that, these things are not worth anything.

OB: How do you reflect on your work on the LHC?

LE: It achieved more than I ever expected was possible.

OB: Lyn Evans, thank you very much.

Lyn signing with the Morriston Orpheus Choir along with former First Minister of Wales, Rhodri Morgan, in the control room of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, around the time of its launch.

When you think of Wales’s economy, you may think of closed coal pits, declining high-streets, a healthy tourism sector, and maybe some lingering heavy industry like Port Talbot. But increasingly, and remarkably, Wales is now carving out a niche in one of the world’s most critical sectors: semiconductors. And the shining star of that cluster is without doubt a company called Space Forge.

Space Forge is a company that almost couldn’t sound more advanced and futuristic if you tried; it plans to manufacture semiconductor substrates (effectively the base of semiconductors upon which everything else is layered) in space, using the ideal conditions that the environment provides, to create the highest-quality, most efficient semiconductors ever made. And it’s doing all of this from an old burger van qualification site from Rumney, just outside of Cardiff.

Last year, I met up with Lewis D’Ambra, Space Forge’s Director of Communications and Public Policy, himself born and raised in Swansea, to discuss the company’s origins and ambitions for the future, and how we keep genuinely world-leading companies like Space Forge in Wales.

“It’s quite easy for the government to accidentally regulate something novel out of existence.”

Background

OB: How did you get involved with Space Forge?

LD: My background is mostly in policy. I was in the Army for a few years but I’ve got master’s degree in International Security, which was mostly looking at topics like institution-building and conflict resolution. Then I worked in Parliament for a little while, working for Madeleine Moon, who was the MP for Bridgend, but she also sat on the Defence Committee, and whilst I was there, she became the president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and I worked on her campaign for that. I’d touched on space in my master’s degree, and at the time that Madeleine was in her role on the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, NATO was starting to consider its own space policy, so it had been on the periphery of my studies and work for a few years. But I’m from Wales originally, from Swansea, and I was living in London at the time, but I wanted to move back home, and I was looking for a role that was a bit different, ideally outside the public sector, which I was starting to get a bit fed up with, but still challenging. Then the role at Space Forge came up. They were looking for someone who understood how government works, who could get into the corridors of government and start to influence policy, because the proposition of Space Forge is quite tricky from a regulatory and policy perspective. It’s quite easy for the government to accidentally regulate something novel like that out of existence.

OB: What was the context for Space Forge? How did it come about?

LD: The two founders, Josh and Andrew, were both working for a company called Thales Alenia Space, which is a big French aerospace company, which is where they met, working in the Advanced Concepts team there. Their job at the time was basically to come up with ideas that the company could potentially sell, which is where they came up with the concept for Space Forge. They took it to the leadership of Thales and asked if they were interested, which it decided it wasn’t, so they asked if they would mind if they spun it out and did it on their own, which they got the green light for. So they started it in a garage in Bristol, and Development Bank of Wales was one of the first investors, which brought the company across into Wales and it started scaling from there. They started in 2018 and secured their first bit of funding in 2020, which I think was an interesting time, because shortly after they raised the funding the country went into lockdown. So they were basically building this high-tech, cutting-edge business from their flat whilst the whole economy was shut down. But I suppose that experience built a bit of resilience into the company. If you can get used to working like that, you can probably work in most conditions.

“Our clean room, which is the only space-qualified clean room in Wales, used to be a place where they qualified machines to make burgers!”

OB: How did the Development Bank of Wales get involved if it wasn’t in Wales initially?

LD: Josh and Andrew were out looking for funding and Bristol Business Club was the first to put a bit of seed capital in and then connected them up with DBW who looked at the concept, liked it and offered to invest. But one of the conditions of their investment was that the company would have to establish itself in Wales. But Wales also makes a lot of sense as a place to build this sort of business because there’s a lot of aerospace heritage there. There’s a surprising amount of space-adjacent manufacturing and services going on in the vicinity. But the main thing is, even though Space Forge is a space company, what we’re actually trying to do is make semiconductors, and there’s a whole semiconductor cluster in South Wales. You’ve got the Compound Semiconductor Catapult, you’ve got Vishay Newport, and a lot of other companies as well. A lot of materials expertise too. The way I frame our approach to Welsh Government or UK government is that Wales has got a lot of materials heritage and expertise. If you think back to the Industrial Revolution, we mined things like copper and coal, and we then took that and developed our steel industry, and compound semiconductors is the natural progression of that, in a way. So there’s a thread, a lineage that you can follow. We were actually offered office space in the Catapult, but weren’t able to move in because of lockdown, and by the time lockdown had ended, the team had grown so much that it didn’t fit in the office. So we took over a site in Rumney, about ten minutes west of the Catapult, just on the outskirts of Cardiff.

OB: I saw that the site used to be a factory for burgers vans!

LD: It did. Our landlord is still the guy used to run the burger van company. Our clean room, which is the only space-qualified clean room in Wales, used to be a place where they qualified machines to make burgers!

OB: It’s just the natural progression, isn’t it?

LD: I guess!

OB: So what was the gap in the market that the founders identified?

LD: In fairness to them, when they first identified the opportunity, it was a difficult gap to see. I think, since Covid and the war in Ukraine, and various other geopolitical events, people have noticed that semiconductors are a pretty important commodity in the economy. The way I like to frame it is, if you think about what oil was to the economy fifty or a hundred years ago, semiconductors are becoming that commodity now. It’s the thing that drives the economy. They’re in everything: telecoms towers, cars, laptops, TVs. Everything’s got a semiconductor. One of the gaps that they noticed was that the supply of those semiconductors is quite strained. At the moment, most things use silicon-based semiconductors, about 80% of which come from Taiwan, which means that the supply chain is very stretched. So what happened in Covid is the supply chain got squeezed because everything got shut down, which really brought home that sovereign capability challenge.

OB: And there’s of course the ever-present threat from China, who seem to be planning to invade Taiwan.

“We commissioned some independent research into a scenario that considered, if you took the 5G tower network in the UK, switched out the semiconductors in that network for space-derived ones, what would be the energy savings? And it found that you would probably reduce the energy demand from the network by 50 to 60%”

LD: Yes, that’s right. But from a pure technological standpoint, we’re also just reaching the physical limits of what we can do with a silicon chip, which is why we’re starting to look at these small compound materials. So Tesla, for example, has gone over to silicon carbide as the key material that they use. And then there are other more exotic materials like gallium nitride that are becoming more common. But the problem with those is that making them on Earth is quite difficult because you’re fighting against Earth’s environment. Basically, Earth’s atmosphere is full of things that can contaminate the materials that you use to make semiconductors during the production process, so to make good quality chips here is really hard. Whereas in space, you’ve got what’s called microgravity, you’ve got a vacuum, and you’ve got quite easy access to extreme temperatures, which mean it’s a much better baseline for making these sorts of exotic materials.

OB: You’ve spoken about how manufacturing in space allows you to do things you can’t on Earth. So what exactly is that?

LD: It’s mostly about the baseline manufacturing conditions. So what we’re looking at is crystal growth, specifically. There’s about 50 years’ worth of research and evidence to support this method. The first time a semiconductor was grown in space was 1973, in something called Skylab, which was the precursor to the ISS [the International Space Station], but it’s always been done at a small scale. So we’ve known for quite a long time that the space environment is a much better place to grow crystals, and that can be any kind of crystal structure, and most metals are actually crystals at the atomic level. But then you also have things like protein structures. So people have looked at doing drug research in space as well. And the mechanics of it are – and this is where its gets technical – you basically have a crystal structure, which is called ‘a lattice’, and if you’re on Earth, it’s got quite a long growth process, and you have to spend a lot of time basically depositing atoms onto the lattice, which is done via a reactor, and if you’re doing that over a long period of time, you’ve got gravity affecting the entire process, which creates micro-faults – what you might call impurities or imperfections – within the crystal. But you’ve also got the atmosphere, which is an oxygen-rich environment, and oxygen likes to get into those processes, which again creates these tiny defects, these little contaminations within the crystal.

OB: And what are the implications of these imperfections? Is it just that they make the end-product less effective and less efficient?

LD: Yes, exactly. So how semiconductors work is that you pass an electrical charge to them, and if you’ve got impurities in that crystal, they cause friction, so they just get really, really hot, which is wasted energy. And a knock-on effect of that is that if you look at 5G towers or aircraft, for example, a lot of what they’re made of is cooling systems, which use a lot of space and energy just keeping these chips cool, because otherwise they melt. So the implications of increasing the efficiency of these chips is huge. The example we like to use is a 5G tower network. We commissioned some independent research into a scenario that considered, if you took the 5G tower network in the UK, switched out the semiconductors in that network for space-derived ones, what would be the energy savings? And it found that you would probably reduce the energy demand from the network by 50 to 60%, which is a huge saving. And in terms of the cost of running the network, it’s something like £1.2 billion a year at the moment. We could probably bring that down to more like £700 million. And then of course there’s the knock-on effect on the CO₂ emissions because you don’t need as much energy to support the system or to cool the chips, but also because you’re not having to build all the cooling architecture in the first place, which produces carbon during its construction.

OB: Is there a cross-over between all this and data centres? Given all you hear about the water requirements of data centres to keep them cool. You hear about them having to build entire reservoirs just to satisfy the requirements of these data centres.

LD: Yeah, that’s a big part of it. And like you say, there are big, sometimes convoluted efforts being made to cool these things down. Microsoft has even looked at putting data centres underwater as a potential solution! Whereas if you can just improve the efficiency of the chips, a lot of that demand starts to disappear.

OB: So it feels like this is the Holy Grail for the semiconductor industry in many ways.

LD: In many ways it is. And we’re not delusional in the sense that we’re aware that this is still an unproven technology. It’s still very nascent. And we’re at the edges of what we know. So a lot of what we’re doing is actually just testing it out, trying to demonstrate proof of concept, and trying to scale it to a commercial level.

OB: So which part of it still requires a proof of concept? Like you said, the science has been there for fifty years. It’s pretty established.

LD: It’s just the question of being able to do it at scale. So you’re right, we do know that at a small scale, it works. But can you do it at scale? Can it become commercially viable?

OB: So right now, you just don’t know whether the numbers stack up?

LD: All our modelling shows that it should work, but until you actually do it, you don’t really know and you can’t prove it to potential customers.

OB: On a slightly more technical note, what is microgravity? I sort of pretended to know what it was when you mentioned it earlier, but I feel like I should ask.

LD: So it’s actually fairly self-explanatory. Space isn’t complete absent of gravity, it’s just got much weaker levels, which we call ‘microgravity’.

OB: And in the mini forge that you send up, you’re just making the substrate right? You’re not actually assembling anything?

LD: No, exactly. The thing that we’re very particular about is that the only part of the process that we do in space is the bit that space can provide a benefit to. So you make what’s called a ‘seed crystal’, which is literally a small crystal, and you make that in space, and that gives you the kickstart to your process, and then we bring it back to Earth, put it in a reactor and from there it’s like any other semiconductor process and you grow material on top of that. But because you’ve got that much better baseline, the material you get by growing it in space is ten times better than what you can get on the ground.

OB: And when you say ‘grow’, it’s not an organic material, is it?

LD: No, it’s an inorganic process. But what you do is you create a plasma, you fire gas into the plasma, and then it slowly deposits atoms, which forces the gas to crystallise and it slowly deposits atoms.

OB: And it would be the gas of a metal, for example?

LD: Yeah.

OB: That’s insane. It sounds very high-tech.

LD: It is. The process is called ‘chemical vapor deposition’, but it’s actually a pretty well-established process in foundries and fabs [the short-hand term for places that make semiconductors] across the sector.

OB: And how do you power these processes in these mini satellite forges? Is it solar-powered?

LD: The satellite is solar-powered, and it’s got batteries on board, but we’ve also got solar arrays there, and we’re developing a retractable solar array design. One of the innovations that we have to figure out is that, because satellites at the moment have quite low power capacity, but they’re quite power-intensive, how to design a satellite architecture that has very high power density, because those sorts of satellites don’t exist at the moment, because there’s never been a demand for it.

OB: So you guys are pioneering this new technology?

LD: We’re trying to!

OB: And what’s the process for starting a company like Space Forge and getting a license to send a satellite to space?

LD: Yeah, well that is one of my roles at Space Forge – overseeing the licensing process. One of the reasons why we’re in the UK, for a start, is that the UK does actually have a space law and it does have a process to regulate how you do these things, which is helpful. What it doesn’t have though is a regulatory structure for how you re-enter a satellite into the UK’s air space, which is obviously a thing we need to do to get the materials back. So the UK is ahead in the sense that it’s got some of the regulatory frameworks in place. For example, the satellite we sent out recently, ForgeStar-1, that’s effectively a tech demonstrator satellite that was the first UK in-space manufacturing license, so that tested the process for it.

OB: So did they invent that concept in partnership with you guys then?

LD: In a way. They already had a process for what’s called an ‘orbital operator’s license’, which is what you need if you want to put a satellite into space. Ours was adapted from that process to fit the particulars of what we’re trying to do.

OB: So were you working hand-in-hand with the CAA [the Civil Aviation Authority, the regulator] to get that adapted license?

LD: Yeah, we have fortnightly, sometimes weekly calls with them to go through the process.

OB: That’s pretty cool to go into this unchartered, unprecedented territory with the regulator.

LD: And we say the ForgeStar-One is a tech demonstrator, but it’s also a process demonstrator as well, in some ways.

OB: In terms of actually launching to space, I believe you had the initial launch from Cornwall with Virgin Orbit, which unfortunately didn’t work out, and then you launched more recently from California with SpaceX, is that right?

LD: Yeah, so the Cornwall launch was ForgeStar-Zero, and it’s worth saying that it was nothing that we did that caused it to go wrong. There was a valve in the rocket engine that failed. Unfortunately, malfunctions like that are not uncommon in the industry. Launching stuff into space is quite hard. I wouldn’t want to be a launch company. It’s a really hard thing to do. Most estimates are that it costs about half a billion pounds just to build the engine. And yeah it was a shame, but we still got a lot from that process. The ForgeStar-Zero was the first satellite to be designed and assembled in Wales, and we think it was a UK record for getting a satellite from conception to the launch pad, which was five months. We can’t find anyone in the UK who’s done it after.

OB: Prove us wrong!

LD: Absolutely.

OB: And how big is the company now after having started off with two people?

LD: When I joined, we had just closed our seed round, which allowed us to bring in a lot of people. I was about employee number 20, but after that seed round we hired about ten to fifteen people all in one go. That was January 2022. We’re now 75 people, about 71/72 of those are in Wales. Then we’ve got a small office of about three people in the US, which we’re looking to start scaling up, and we’ve just opened an office in Portugal as well.

OB: Why Portugal?

LD: Portugal also has a space law, which makes launching easier. That office is in the Azores. Portugal’s got a number of islands in the Atlantic which can be used as a landing zone, and they’re quite keen to turn the Azores into a satellite space transport hub.

OB: Were they courting you or did you guys see the opportunity?

LD: A bit of both. Portugal is quite keen on making use of their long coastline and their island archipelagos.

OB: And given that Space Forge is still a relatively new company, does it still feel like a start-up?

LD: Very much so. I would give co-founders a lot of credit actually because they’ve made a real effort to keep that innovation culture in there and stopping those sort of stolid hierarchies developing. But again, there’s a difference in the two businesses that Space Forge operates in. I’d say the space side is a bit more developed than the semiconductor side just because the company came out of the space industry and that’s the industry we had more familiarity with originally, so we’ve developed a lot quicker on that side of things. And we’re now looking to scale that.

Funding, Customers and Supply Chains

OB: I was somewhat surprised to read that Space Forge received NATO Innovation Fund funding. Why did they choose to invest in you? Are there military applications to what you’re doing?

LD: It’s not that there are military applications per se. In our case, it’s more the security and resilience element. Like I mentioned earlier, the semiconductor supply chain is quite strained, so having an alternate supply of one element of the supply chain is very important for NATO member states. But there are obviously military applications in the sense that some defence-related devices require semiconductors, so having those top-quality chips in NATO security systems is obviously a benefit.

OB: Speaking of supply chains, do you guys yourself have a big supply chain? Are you assembling the satellites yourselves?

LD: So our business is really two businesses. One side is the satellite business and the other side is the semiconductor business, and in each one we’re at opposite ends of the supply chains. On the satellite side, we’re at the top of the supply chain buying in the products to build the satellites, whereas on the semiconductor side, we’re near the bottom, providing the base crystals. So we’re quite odd in that sense. We’ve currently got partnerships with companies like Northrop Grumman and BT, and we’re trying to see how we can get our semiconductors in their supply chains, and those are our pilot partnerships effectively, but we’re looking at any high power-demand industries or applications.

OB: But you obviously haven’t actually produced any crystals in space yet, have you?

LD: No, so we’ve got what we call our terrestrial pilot line. We’re working with Swansea University who’ve got their Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials, which is probably the most advanced clean room in the country at the moment.

OB: In the UK or Wales?

LD: In the UK! It’s a very impressive building. You’ve got to have a look at it if you can. It’s really very impressive. It’s had probably about £100 million worth of investment into it.

OB: Wow, I had no idea!

LD: I live in Swansea and I had no idea either until we started working with them. So we’re growing materials there to start exercising the supply chain. And then we’ve got our ForgeStar-One satellite in orbit at the moment and that has a semiconductor tool on it. We’ll be firing that up soon and getting some data back from that to start proving the growth conditions [at the time of writing, it has just been reported that Space Forge have confirmed that they have generated plasma on ForgeStar-One, which is a huge step for the company], which will be the first proof of concept, but over the next two to three years, probably, we’ll be proving that out further and flying more than payloads.

OB: So are Northrop and BT placing pre-orders?

LD: The big thing we’re working with them on is exercising their supply chains. Given the nature of semiconductor technologies, you can’t just go to a semiconductor company and say, “I’ve got a new material, here you go.” They have to work out how to work with that material. That’s one of the reasons why we’re producing materials on the ground already. We produce the material and work with BT and their partners, for example, to see how the material will fit into their current supply chain. How can we make a chip out of it? So when we get to the point where we’re bringing stuff back from space, it’s seamless.

OB: So it’s quite big deal for them. They’re potentially overhauling their entire supply chain.

LD: Which in many ways is a vote of confidence in us, because they obviously think it’s worthwhile investing in this technology and worthwhile taking the time to understand it.

OB: Have you had to turn any potential customers away just so you’re not spreading yourselves too thinly and so you can give sufficient attention to your existing customers?

LD: We’re still a small company so we do have to pick and choose who we work with. There are obviously considerations regarding the sorts of companies we can work with, given our NATO funding. There are partners that we can work with and there are partners we can’t work with.

OB: And with regards to your satellite business, how much of your supply chain is local?

LD: We try to source as locally as we can. Where we can, we try to work with Welsh companies. Where we can’t, we try to work with UK companies. If we can’t do that, we go to Europe.

OB: Is that company preference or is that stipulated by the funding that you receive?

LD: A bit of both. We do have a company preference for sourcing as locally as possible, but we’ve also got Welsh Government funding, so a lot of the work we do with Welsh Government is around building local supply chains. But it’s also helpful for us as well having those local connections and local supply chain around us. It raises the water level.

OB: And I suppose that it also becomes self-perpetuating in a way.

LD: Exactly. The skills that you develop creates a nice ecosystem.

OB: And how has it been finding people with the right skills locally?

LD: I wouldn’t say that we’ve struggled to recruit. I think part of that is because we’re selling a bit of a challenge and an ambition. People like to come in and have a big goal that they’re working towards that motivates them. Things like reducing emissions and contributing to the decarbonisation of industry. Where we can, we recruit from Wales, but where necessary we recruit from all over the world. We’ve got people from Japan, people from India, Europe, North America.

OB: Moving to Rumney!

LD: I’m sure it’s a bit of a culture shock!

OB: It’s a sterling endorsement!

Commercialisation, Innovation and Competition

“we use what we call the “Coca-Cola method”, which means that if you can see it, we’ll patent it, and if you can’t see it, we just don’t tell anyone about it.”

OB: You spoke about scalability earlier. I don’t know much about semiconductors, what the industry looks like, how much space you need and how what the production volume is like for someone like Nvidia, for example, but on the face of it, to me, sending these satellites to space doesn’t seem like it would allow for the volume that you’d need to meet global demands. Both given the size of satellites and the number of satellites that you can send. So how scalable is Space Forge’s concept?

LD: The way you scale this business is not actually in space, it’s on the ground. It’s in the post-processing. So the limiting factor isn’t necessarily the number of satellites we send to space. But we do need to launch regularly as we only produce small amounts of material in space, but though it’s low volume, it’s very high value potential.

OB: Does that mean increasing the frequency of launches as well as the number of satellites?

LD: We’d be operating more of a fleet model where we’d have some satellites launching in orbit, some satellites landing and being refurbished, and then some on the launchpad, and we’d operate in a cycle like that. But once we get to the commercial scale, you’re not looking at that many launches a year. It’s probably about five launches a year. That should be enough.

OB: Are they all the same duration?

LD: It depends on what material we’re growing, but generally, yeah about six months in orbit.

OB: Your CEO, Josh, talks about this being the next industrial revolution. How impactful do you think this manufacturing process has the potential to be?

LD: Very impactful if we can scale it. So there are the examples I gave earlier, but there are also more retail benefits, like EV charging. We think we can reduce EV charging times by about 50%. So if you can get the best-in-class of those materials and you can get a secure sovereign supply, you can drive the economy in the UK, and it’s also a big export opportunity.

“We’ve spoken to researchers who’ve had payloads on the International Space Station and their research has shattered when it hit the ground. Five years of work just destroyed.”

OB: And reusability is one of your big USPs, right?

LD: Yeah, that’s the end goal we’re working towards. The traditional way of re-entering objects for spaces is ablated, which basically means you put material on the front to protect the cargo behind, which is quite a rough way of re-entering the atmosphere. Our design, in contrast, is radiative, which basically looks like a big metal umbrella, which allows us to disperse the heat around the satellite, so it’s a much gentler way of re-entering the atmosphere, which will hopefully allow it to survive intact. And it behaves a bit like a parachute as we land then.

OB: I guess the gentle re-entry is quite critical for you guys, given that presumably if you crash land, the payload is a write-off and the time spent in space is wasted.

LD: The traditional methods that are still being used mean that satellites hit the ground at about 100 miles an hour. It’s like a car crash. We’ve actually spoken to researchers who’ve had payloads on the International Space Station and their research has shattered when it hit the ground. Five years of work just destroyed. So if we can solve that problem for semiconductor payloads, we can then also look at hosting other experiments in areas like biotech research. Pharmaceutical research is a big one - looking at things like protein crystallisation in space. There are also food security research applications. There’s a process called ‘space mutagenesis’, which is when you take a seed, for example, into orbit in space, which has high levels of radiation, which can induce mutations within the genome, and if you do that enough times, you might be able to find a mutation that’s quite useful, which might provide attributes like improved resistance to flooding, for example.

OB: You’ve spoken about space manufacturing being a potential linchpin for on-the-ground manufacturing in the UK. Would this allow us to be more competitive with countries like Taiwan, for example? For some reason, they’re able to produce semiconductors far more efficiently than we are, apparently. Why are we so much less competitive than them at the moment?

LD: Well, a lot of that has to do with simply the level of investment and time that they put into it years ago. Our Head of Semiconductors likes to say that semiconductor manufacturing is more like cooking than it is science. A recipe can take years to perfect, and you could take that recipe somewhere else with perfect instructions, but the meal still wouldn’t be able to be recreated precisely because it’s not just the instructions you need, you need the expertise of the workforce as well. It’s what’s called ‘process knowledge’, which makes it hard to just copy things that other organisations or companies are doing. So they’ve just had a lot of time and acquired a lot of experience perfecting their craft, whereas we haven’t invested in it. And now we’ve got to the point where, if you want to build a new fab from scratch, you’re talking tens of billions of pounds. It costs about £20 billion to build a commercial-scale compound semiconductor fab.

OB: Which is basically off the scale of anything you can imagine the UK government spending on that sort of thing. So does this then make it more commercially viable to build semiconductors domestically in the UK?

LD: Yes. You’re still going to have to do a lot of conventional processes, but if you can come back with that more efficient seed-crystal, it gives you a big leg-up.

OB: And is your method proprietary or could another company just come along and do the same thing as you guys are doing?

LD: They could try! But it’s not an easy thing to do. There’s a lot of proprietary technology and software that we’ve developed. So some of the technologies, the payload, the re-entry technology, a lot of that is proprietary. But it’s also just the know-how and the expertise that we’ve developed through trial and error. You develop those “recipes” that I mentioned - we use what we call the “Coca-Cola method” in work, which means that if you can see it, we’ll patent it, and if you can’t see it, we just don’t tell anyone about it. But that is the real value in the business, that know-how. You might have the piece of paper that tells you how to do it, but to replicate it is still very difficult.

OB: Is Space Forge the only company of its kind in the world at the moment then? Do you have any competitors or peers?

LD: Yes and no. There are other companies that are looking at in-space manufacturing, but that spans a broad range of application. There’s a US company called Varda Space Industries, who are probably our closest competitor, but we could also potentially work with them. Currently, they’re looking more at pharmaceutical applications than we are. But they’ve got a re-entry vehicle that we could host the payload on. Similarly, they could send their payload with us. But I think the market for this is so nascent that it’s very hard to actually be competing with anyone at the moment because there are so few players. For us, we see more market entrants as a positive, because it means the supply chain will strengthen, the policies and regulation will get better. It’s actually an advantage for us to have more people involved.

Regulation

OB: Are there any challenges then to hosting a company like Space Forge in Wales or the UK? Are there any regulatory barriers?

LD: I wouldn’t say regulatory barriers as such, but we’re at the edge of what the regulation has been designed to do. So there’s that developmental problem of going into the regulator with a question that no one’s really asking, and they haven’t got a framework to deal with it. So there’s a lot of that working with government, working the regulator and saying that this is something that we think is desirable for the UK, and that is a bit of a bottleneck because it will slow us down if we can’t get keep that ball rolling.

OB: Are there other countries that have more mature frameworks in place?

LD: Some do. America of course has a lot of history in this area. Australia has got some heritage now. They’ve done a couple of re-entries. Portugal’s got the laws in place to do it, although they haven’t actually done it yet. So the UK is in a good position. The only country getting ahead of us at the moment is America, so we’re not doing too bad. We’ve got the laws in place that allow us to do it, we just need to get the policy in place.

OB: And do you think there is the political or ministerial interest to get these policies introduced quickly?

LD: There’s definitely interest there. As part of the Industrial Strategy, DSIT [the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology] was given a pot of money to do some sandboxing activities, so that potentially we could do some sandboxing around re-entry.

OB: I’ve heard the term sandbox so many times, but I’ve never actually checked what it means.

LD: It’s literally just where you sit down in a room with all the interested parties and go, “Okay, this is the concept that we want to pursue. How do we get there?” To continue the analogy, you build the sandcastle and demolish it and put it back together and see what works, see what doesn’t work until you get the best actionable framework. So I think you see a lot of that interest in the Industrial Strategy on the funding side. ISAM, which is the In-Space Assembly and Manufacturing subsection of the space industry we sit in, got a specific mention in the Advanced Manufacturing sector plan of this Industrial Strategy, so it’s definitely something the government is interested in doing.

OB: And as you mentioned, you have regular touch points with people in government. Which teams do you meet with?

LD: Space is quite funny because there’s basically a space team in every department of the government because it touches on so many things, so we meet quite a few different teams on a regular basis

OB: And what do you make of the Space Agency being brought into DSIT and reporting directly to the Secretary of State? Do you think it’s bad that it’s losing its operational independence? And does that suggest a lack of government prioritisation? Or does it actually suggest more ministerial interest because the Secretary of State wants direct oversight over its work?

LD: I that it’s a positive that the agency’s getting direct ministerial interest and oversight, because that will make it easier for decisions to be made and for challenges to be referred upwards for quick decisions.

The Future

“when you’re building a company, you’re basically trying to drive a car whilst building the car, and what you need the government to do is to build the road in front of you and make sure that road is clear and that the signs are in place and are visible and are pointing you in the right direction.”

“I’m from Wales, I’m from Swansea. I grew up when there was no work for people and if you had any ambition, you left. I want it to be a place where there is work, where there is ambition there.”

OB: Obviously, given the huge potential that Space Forge has to disrupt the market, you must be getting interest from bigger companies looking to snap you up.

LD: We’ve got good connections with a lot of the across defence, telecoms and infrastructure, for example, so those relationships are there. I think once we get to the point where we prove the concept of growing those materials in space and bringing them back, I would not be surprised if the interest suddenly skyrocketed.

OB: I guess that would be a nice problem to have! So i there a bigger picture, long-term goal for Space Forge?

LD: I think we’d like to see ourselves doing what Apple and other companies are doing in terms of vertical integration.

OB: So you want to own the entire supply chain?

LD: Yeah. That’s obviously long-term – you’re probably looking at about 20, 30 years down the line.

OB: But a lot of big companies who have the means to vertically integrate choose not to. What would be the advantages to you guys of doing that?

LD: A lot of it is around controlling the ways that you develop those chips. It is hard to work with the whole supply chain, and if you’ve got elements of your business that can do all of that, it does start to get a bit easier to innovate. But as I say, we’re a number of years away from that.

OB: And I guess on the growth side, you’re tapping into two huge markets, namely: semiconductors and life sciences, so there’s huge upside and growth potential. So would it make a difference to you guys if the UK were able to allow satellite re-entry into its air space or is that not too big of a consideration?

LD: If we could build, launch and land satellites in the UK, that would make my life very easy. If there was one regulatory process for all of that, that would be fantastic. But at the moment, there’s multiple moving parts to it. Also, things like export controls can make life quite difficult. You have to go through a specific process for technology export control, which you also need licences in place for. So if all those processes were streamlined, that would make things far more cost-effective.

“there’s always pressure to relocate, and we will get courted by different governments who want the capability that we offer, and there will always be that kind of balancing act of thinking about where the best place for our investment is and where are we going to get the best interaction, the best funding, best place to set up.”

OB: Have you engaged much with Welsh Government outside of the Development Bank?

LD: Yeah, we’ve got a good relationship with Welsh Government. One of the nice things about being in Wales actually is you get Welsh Government in your corner, which you wouldn’t necessarily get if you were in one of the English regions, for example. You wouldn’t have that extra lever you can pull. So Welsh Government going to the UK Government on our behalf and making introductions is really useful, because they’ve got some levers they can pull themselves, and of course they’ve got, funding instruments or other policy instruments that they can use too.

OB: And how conscious do you think they are of the fact that they have this potentially huge business in the country?

LD: They are aware of that, definitely. They’ve been very positive. Development Bank of Wales reports into Welsh Government, so indirectly our first investor was the Welsh Government and we’ve got some other funding programmes with them as well, so we’ve got direct connections into their economy team.

OB: Obviously you can’t speculate, but how big of a risk is it, do you think, that you guys would move to a different region or move to abroad for whatever reason?

LD: The pressure is always there, particularly because a lot of our investors are from the US. But our biggest single investor is actually a German VC company, called World Fund, based out of Munich. And then obviously the NATO Innovation Fund led on our Series A. So yeah, there’s always pressure to relocate, and we will get courted by different governments who want the capability that we offer, and there will always be that kind of balancing act of thinking about where the best place for our investment is and where are we going to get the best interaction, the best funding, best place to set up.

OB: What can Welsh Government and what can UK Government do to keep companies like Space Forge domestic? Because that’s a perennial issue in the UK - we build these amazing companies and have all these talented individuals trying to scale-up up these startups, but then these big VCs or tech giants come across, usually from the US, snap them up and take them away and then we lose that domestic capability and the economic benefits of having a tech pioneer scaling and embedding in the UK.

LD: We’ve been bitten by that so many times. I think it’s having that clear strategic path for companies to see what the route to growth is. The big thing when you go to your investors is: what story can I tell them that shows that this is why we’re in the UK? That this is the path forward? And that is about having the right funding in place, the right regulatory environment, the right policy environment. The analogy I like to use is: when you’re building a company, you’re basically trying to drive a car whilst building the car, and what you need the government to do is to build the road in front of you and make sure that road is clear and that the signs are in place and are visible and are pointing you in the right direction.

OB: So there’s obviously the desire to stay, but it’s just making sure that the government creates the right environment for you guys so that it continues to make sense. And I suppose it obviously is inconvenient to relocate a company because you’ve got a workforce and your supply chain, so you’d have to start those from a scratch a little bit.

LD: Yeah, but also, we’re motivated to stay because we’re from here. We want to develop in Wales. One of my motivations for taking the job was to develop a company in Wales that was doing something new and innovative.

OB: There’s that element of patriotism.

LD: Yeah, as I say, I’m from Wales, I’m from Swansea. I grew up when there was no work for people and if you had any ambition, you left. I want it to be a place where there is work, where there is ambition there.

OB: Especially at a time where we’re rapidly deindustrialising, and have been for a long time. Swansea specifically had the Port Talbot blast furnaces nearby, Llandarcy, and then South Wales more generally had the coal mines, which has all gone now. So I was really surprised to read that there was this amazing, cutting-edge company in the Welsh Valleys. It seemed so atypical. And it’s actually really quite stirring. It was really surprising and heartening for me to see that. And it would just be great if we could cultivate that and incubate you guys and make you a huge global success.

LD: That is exactly what we want to do. But the realities of business pressures is that sometimes you can’t avoid it. But we hope we don’t have to.

Quickfire

OB: A book you’d recommend?

LD: I’m going to do some self-promotion now. I am a bit of a hobby author and I’ve self-published a few books, all fantasy stuff. I wrote a collection of short stories called The Year of the Dark Spring, and there’s a novel called The Mantle of the Past.

OB: Where do you get the time to write these?!

LD: I don’t know, to be honest!

OB: And what are they about?

LD: I’m a bit of a history nerd, so they’re basically based on my own world that I’ve built, which is Ancient-Greek-inspired. But the types of books I’d recommend are things like The Histories by Herodotus, which was my favourite book when I was a child, because I was quite an odd child, but stuff like that is my bit of escapism.

OB: A favourite café in Rumney or Swansea?

LD: Mumbles is always a nice place to hang out and, again, a bit of self-promotion, you might guess that I’m half Italian, there’s a big Italian community in Swansea and Verdi’s is always my favorite place to go, just because my grandfather knew the guy who owned it and he used to go there a lot.

OB: What’s the backstory? Did your grandad came over from Italy?

LD: Yeah, from a place called Ischia, near Naples. He came over here in the 50s but ended up working down the mines.

OB: Really? He moved abroad to work in the mines?

LD: Yeah, there was period after the war where the British government was recruiting from places like Italy because there weren’t enough miners and industrial workers. And there were a lot of Italians already in Swansea. My grandmother was also Italian but was already in Wales, and she met my grandfather in Italy and that’s why they ended up going back.

OB: What’s been the highlight so far of your time at Space Forge?

LD: Probably the launching ForgeStar-One, and particularly getting the license, to be honest, because that was me and Andrew, the co-founder and CTO, working for two years to get that over the line and then getting the satellite out and launching it. So that’s probably my proudest achievement.

OB: Lewis D’Ambra, thank you very much.

Tim Williams is the current Head of Cities at global architecture firm, Grimshaw. Originally from Beddau in South Wales [pronounced "Bather”, to my surprise], after jumping from various roles and obtaining a PhD, a PGCE and being called to the Bar, and never practicing as a teacher or a lawyer or becoming an academic, Tim eventually became the Chief Executive of a consortium of local authorities in the East and South East of London, called Thames Gateway London Partnership, before becoming a special advisor to various housing, regeneration and communities ministers in the Blair/Brown government and playing a critical role in projects such establishing Homes England, HS1, Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line), the Olympics and the broader regeneration of East London and eventually relocating to sunnier climes Down Under with his Australian wife.

Tim pulls no punches and has very strong and distinct views, so this was an excellent conversation, which took place over three different sessions last summer. We discussed topics such as national identity, devolution, housing, regeneration and getting things done in government, and Tim provided plenty of food for thought and very little filter. I hope you enjoy.

Early life and career

OB: When and where were you born?

TW: I was born in 1957 in Beddau. At the time, it was still a mining village in the south of the coalfields, right on the edge of the Vale of Glamorgan and Llantrisant agricultural area.

OB: And what are your memories of growing up there?

TW: Oh, benign. No cars, safe, everybody walked everywhere. It was a largely single-class village, although I think we were what I would describe as upper-working-class. We were the best-off family I knew, actually. We were only the second house on the street to have a car. Both my parents worked and my dad had a really good job in the local factory. But it was very much a working-class community. It was a tremendous, comforting but nevertheless a boisterous place, with its fair share of inter-male violence. You had to know how to fight. But it was overall largely a blameless community.

OB: Your dad had various jobs throughout his life, is that right?

TW: Yes, but he worked on the shop floor of a factory for the majority of his career. I always joke about this, but my father’s family were kind of rough but were all very talented, whereas my mother’s family were quite respectable. When my dad left school without any meaningful qualifications, he initially joined the army and then when he came back he became a foreman in a local factory, then a stockkeeper, and then started to manage the transport function of the operation but got himself sacked for being a trade union activist in the mid-70s, and never really had a great job after that. Although he did end up being a Labour councillor.

OB: Did you have any siblings?

TW: Yes, it was me and my older sister – just the two of us.

OB: Were you close?

TW: Yes, she had a big influence on me. I think she ended up turning me into a teenage Welsh nationalist and I made myself a Welsh speaker because of it – because of that fanaticism that I developed. What I think is interesting, and I think about this a lot, I think I really became Welsh when I was about 13. Because before then I was quite British, or even English, as the England football team was a big thing for me. But by the time I was about 15, I was going to a very nationalist-influenced secondary school, Pontypridd Grammar School. The teachers were superb and helped shape my national identity. My grandparents spoke Welsh too, which helped with the learning process.

OB: How was your experience of school generally?

TW: I was quite academic so did fairly well. I was probably top in my primary school, but secondary school was a collection of bullies and I didn’t really flourish because of it, so from 16-18 I went back to Bryn Celynnog Comp. There they made me head boy and by complete accident I met a history teacher who asked me whether I wanted to enter an essay competition, which I ended up winning, and it turned out to be a national competition to get into Cambridge. So somehow I end up going to Cambridge. None of this was on the cards at the time. Nobody in my family had been to university before. It wasn’t a thing I planned for, it just happened. So I ended up going to Cambridge as a Welsh-speaking, working-class, socialist, Welsh nationalist, and ended up at a right-wing college called Peter House.

OB: And then you pursued a PhD in history.

TW: Yes, that was a big mistake, partly because it took me nine years of my life to finish because I kept on getting jobs and working rather than finishing it in three-and-a-half/four years.

OB: What was it on?

TW: It was about the anglicisation of Wales, looking at the example of Pontypridd, and in the process I became very interested in urban history, so the work I do now probably comes out of that experience.

OB: What did you do afterwards?

TW: I eventually realised that I wasn’t supposed to be an academic and that I actually quite liked working. I’d worked for a long time on the shop floor with my dad but I didn’t find a job for ages that combined my interest in work with my interest in intellectual matters. I had reasonable jobs over the years but one of my favourite ones in the early days was as a researcher for [the recently deceased] Dafydd Elis Thomas, the president of Plaid Cymru. It was peculiar of him to choose me as I was a Labour guy at that point, but I loved it. And then I ended up as a journalist for the National Union of Teachers in the early 90s. But at this point, I’d become pretty damaged, pretty disappointed, wondering what I was supposed to do. I’d gone from a public housing estate in the valleys of South Wales to one of the best colleges in the world and I’d done f*** all with that experience and that opportunity. I wasn’t trained for anything in life. I came from a background at the time in which no one really had any middle-class aspirations, no peer group expectations, I didn’t even know that lawyers existed. I grew up in an era where the only middle-class jobs in my neck of the woods for men were teachers, and if you didn’t want to do that, then it wasn’t clear what you were going to do instead. So I was very confused about the world of work. I knew how to be a factory worker. I’d worked on a building site. I knew all that kind of stuff, and I knew about books, but I didn’t know about how you bring the two together. And I think because of that uncertainty about what to do, what I ended up doing inadvertently was looking for the next exam to pass, almost to defer making a decision. I was still doing it in 1997 when I decided to retrain and qualify as a lawyer. I also got a PhD and a PGCE. But I’ve never practised as an academic, a lawyer or a teacher. This is all nonsense, right? And I think it all goes back to not having a career-minded culture in my background. But because of the work I was in before that, it felt very up-down-up-down until an accident happened at the end of ’97.

The turning point

OB: What happened in ’97?

TW: I’m back in Wales, working towards my legal qualification. I’d followed an Irish woman but that eventually fell apart, and I decided that I needed to go back to London, where I’d been working for 15 years. I saw an advert that was very unpromising. It said ‘Head of Marketing for Thames Gateway London Partnership’, which was an organisation that was run and funded by 12 Councils in East London. I’d never done marketing, I don’t even like the word, but I applied and got accepted, thinking I would do it for six months just to get a job in London, then I’d get a proper job. So I went along and it turned out there were only four people and it was an organisation that was on the decline, but I didn’t really care that much. I just did the job and got on with it, thinking that it would simply be a means to an end. After six months, I was on holiday and, as I say, the organisation had been losing its way for some time, and the board decided to sack the chief executive, and for some reason they gave me his job, which I accepted. And after a while in this new role, I actually managed to find a way to turn the organisation around, from a staff of three or four people and basically no money to an organisation of about 15 people and a budget of £3m. And by the time I finished there we had changed London. I was part of a group of five that persuaded the British government under Blair to put the Channel Tunnel Rail Link [CTRL, or what was HS1] through Stratford, not Waterloo, and that changed East London and also made the Olympics happen four or five years later. We managed to persuade the Treasury in ‘99 that it didn’t matter about travel time, we just wanted to regenerate an isolated and disconnected part of London. And again on the Olympic front, the kind of urban regeneration case we made for investing in East London became the case for having the Olympics be in East London. I was also involved in the legacy planning for that with the five host boroughs. There’s now loads of social housing in East London, lots of jobs that were never there before, lots of connectivity. It’s not perfect, but nothing is. And I still believe that we did better than many Olympics in getting a lasting benefit.

OB: What did you do after that?

TW: In 2005, I started working for the Blair government and joined David Miliband as his special advisor, then Yvette Cooper, John Healy, and all these people who are still in government today. There’s also a tremendous irony in the fact that I ended up helping shift the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from Waterloo to Stratford, which is that the company I now work for, Grimshaw, were kicked off the job of designing Waterloo because the contract got taken away from them. I didn’t tell them that in my interview of course.

OB: Had you led an organisation before Thames Gateway? Or was that your first time as a chief executive?

TW: Yes that was basically my first time as a chief executive. I’d led things before but they were more internal teams. I’ve been a chief executive or managing director about four times over the course of my career, but what I’m good at is guerrilla outfits – little insurgencies within organisations. I tend to start with small units and then I grow them. I’m what people would call an ‘intrapreneur’. My wife actually gets really annoyed with me because I keep on doing these start-ups and I leave them, but what I do is lead start-ups that are on the cusp between public and private and make them self-perpetuating, so I get young people to come in and they replace me, and I’ve been reasonably comfortable with moving on to the next thing but within the same kind of world. I did it with Thames Gateway and I did it again when I came to Sydney and was hired by the Committee for Sydney, which is basically the equivalent of Business LDN.

OB: What do you think makes you good at doing this sort of thing?

TW: I basically do two things. One of them is having an agenda, having clarity over what the aims are, articulating that, and then putting in the hard work required to make something real out of the opportunity, in an organisational sense. I’m not tidy, but I can create momentum for change, and people then offer to give me more resource. Secondly, I create good networks. I come up with an idea, and I convince you that this is the happening thing and that you should join me.

Regeneration vs gentrification

“King’s Cross was a red-light district before the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was connected to it. Before that, rents were 40% of the London average, and now they’re 110% of the London average.”

OB: Could you speak a bit about your experience on lobbying for Crossrail? [What’s now known as the Elizabeth Line] [I spoke last year with former Chair of Crossrail, Sir Terry Morgan.]

TW: Yes, I lobbied for Crossrail to cross the Thames into North Kent, Abbey Wood, Bexley and Greenwich – me and a few other people. I met this guy Robert John [see previous interview with Robert, here], another Welshman, who was deputy chief executive of Canary Wharf at the time. When I met him I heard his accent and asked where he was from and he said “You’ve probably never heard of this place, I’m from Llantrisant. I said “We used to beat boys up from Llantrisant.” And he then said “Oh, do you know my father, Tudor John?” And I said “Do you know what, weirdly I do!” And together we lobbied Gordon Brown, because he wanted it to stop at Canary Wharf, and we managed to convince him that it needed to go further. So when I travelled on the Elizabeth Line recently, I felt an enormous amount of pride and also delight at how good it is. I’m not sure we’ll ever see anything similar again unfortunately, but it really is brilliant.

OB: Obviously you’ve had a big impact on East London and apparently it’s changed drastically over the last twenty years or so. I’ve only been in London for about three years, but I’ve heard that places like Hackney, obviously Canary Wharf, and King’s Cross near me – although not in the East – have changed dramatically. How different were things back in the day?

TW: King’s Cross was a red-light district before the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was connected to it. Before that, rents were 40% of the London average, and now they’re 110% of the London average. It would never have happened without the East London lobby of John Prescott. Ironically, when we were lobbying for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link to go through Stratford, we never really considered the impact it might have on King’s Cross as a terminus. It was never really part of our imagination. And obviously there’s an attempt to do something similar with Euston as a terminus for HS2 now, but they probably haven’t learned some of the lessons from HS1 and the regeneration of King’s Cross, which was a public-private partnership.

“I think we can often be very unreal about what the alternative to gentrification might be. Because it seems to me that it’s just continued misery. Some people want change without change. They want everything to be better but for it to be the same.”

OB: I was going to ask about Euston next, funnily enough. I worked for HS2 and I also lived in Camden, so I’m quite interested in the future of Euston. Also because even though Euston is basically central London, it doesn’t feel like it, which feels like a missed opportunity from an urban planning perspective. So I was chatting with someone from the Department for Transport a while back who’s working on the plans for the regeneration of Euston, about what the vision for Euston could be, and I suggested that King’s Cross, literally two minutes down the road, was surely a great blueprint. It’s been a huge success and it’s now a destination in its own right, and this person said to me “Oh, no, we don’t want another King’s Cross.” And I said “Really?” And their response was “It’s gentrified the area massively and made it extremely unaffordable.” What do you make of that accusation? And what do you think about the idea of gentrification?

TW: Yeah, I get that, but I think we can often be very unreal about what the alternative to gentrification might be. Because it seems to me that it’s just continued misery. Some people want change without change. They want everything to be better but for it to be the same. It just seems quite naïve to me. But it’s always been my worldview that we should maximise community benefit from change. London, for example, has always imposed a big bargain on development, which is 40% affordable housing – and, by the way, in Australia it’s zero. So whatever we think of London and its shortcomings, there’s a 0% affordable housing requirement for developments in Sydney. There is no social compact around housing from development. But in a broader sense of social value, King’s Cross is a very interesting example of the government keeping ownership of the land in its deal with the developer, so they shared the land value uplift over time, which is smart. And in fairness, it was a lot simpler than Euston because there was no over-station development at Kings Cross. But at Euston you have at least four government agencies fighting with each other, and the Tories were just cowards about the whole community engagement aspect. But on the wider question of Euston and the trouble that’s experienced, there was one aspect of King’s Cross acting as the terminus for HS1 which I think has complicated national connectivity slightly, which is that the international trains don’t stop at Stratford. Our vision was for Stratford to be an interchange for the North, rather than King’s Cross or Euston, which we think would have helped Stratford immeasurably but also help the country because then HS2 wouldn’t have had to go through Euston. But it’s interesting, even though it doesn’t stop there, Stratford has still benefited from the reputational uplift it’s experienced alone.

Getting things done in government

“20 minutes later I was hearing language I hadn’t heard since my childhood growing up around hardened miners.”

OB: So after you left Thames Gateway and joined the government, what were you doing?

TW: Back in 2005 I was made a special advisor to David Miliband, during which I helped create the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), which is basically what we know today as Homes England. When I came in, I was told that the civil servants will always bamboozle you with paperwork and it’ll take three years to get anywhere, and by the time you get there, the minister’s gone and you won’t be able to get anything done, so you’ve got to do something early days. So I said that we should do something fairly radical and bring two organisations together and create the HCA, and we did.

OB: What was the inspiration behind merging the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships to form the HCA?

TW: I had a very strong sense of urgency and purpose going in as David Miliband’s special adviser in May 2005 because people had also told me that you’ve got to remain aware of how quickly time passes, because the policy cycle is very long and protracted. I talked to some very senior people, like David Higgins who was the CEO of English Partnerships and eventually ran the Olympic Delivery Authority [and chaired HS2], and Margaret Ford, who was the Chair. They were both clear that we should do some institutional innovation straight away, so what I wanted to do was to bring the entrepreneurial agency of the department, which was English Partnerships, together with the agency that had all the money, which was the Housing Corporation, and I wanted to stop the latter just being a sausage machine for housing and to make it a bit more creative. In the north, I wanted the new body to do economic development because they don’t need so many houses, they need jobs, and in the south they don’t need so many jobs, they need houses. Although I’m not convinced it was the right thing to do now, because of the crash that came right afterward, nonetheless it did survive a change of government and a bonfire of quangos, and it’s done some decent work, but it was meant to be bigger than it is. Unfortunately, though, it’s become simplified back down into just housing, although I’m told that there’s a bit more interest again in broadening its remit.

OB: What was your experience of working in government and with civil servants? Did you actually experience any of the obstacles that you were warned about?

TW: Lots of people going into government find getting stuff done very complicated. I’d already worked with my friend, Michael Barber, on setting up the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit as an external advisor, and I developed an understanding of how to go about effecting change through that. The unit was set up because between ’97 and 2001 they didn’t achieve much because they had gone into government as a campaigning outfit and then discovered that it was all a bit more difficult than they thought, so they decided they needed a central hub to strategise and get things done. But I underestimated how long setting up the HCA would take because by the time David Miliband eventually left that role, we hadn’t finished. Luckily, when his successor, Yvette Cooper [now Foreign Secretary], inherited the project she stuck with it. It took about two years from the time that I thought of it to legal implementation. But in that process, I became very interested in how you get stuff done and normally I don’t believe in beating up public servants, particularly because of the degree to which you’re dependent on them in the British system. It’s interesting to contrast it with the Australian system, where ministers have about eight or nine special advisors, whereas at the time we only had two; a policy person and a PR person, which meant we weren’t in the way of the civil servants, we were just a bridge between the minister and them, communicating what his values and his objectives were. Whereas in Australia I think there’s a danger of civil servants being crowded out. When it came to convincing Gordon Brown to do Crossrail, which he was minded not to because frankly he was a miserly b****** and thought it was a bit expensive, and then when he did agree to it he only wanted it to go as far as Canary Wharf, I was part of the internal lobby to get the full Crossrail as we know it today, and Yvette Cooper was very helpful actually because she believed in it and was very close to Gordon and was able to be quite instrumental in persuading him. I also had a slightly less positive experience with Shriti Vadera – now Baroness Shriti Vadera – or Shrieky Vadera as she was then known by some. She was quite a poisonous and aggressive person. She was advising Gordon Brown at the time in the Treasury and was being quite obstructive, and I remember saying to David, “Do you mind if I ring her up?” because I wanted to lobby her on Crossrail, and he just looked at me and said “Do you really want to do that?” because she was quite a tough character, but I was quite innocent and naïve and said “Yeah, why not?” Anyway, I pick up the phone and 20 minutes later I was hearing language I hadn’t heard since my childhood growing up around hardened miners. She was effing and jeffing left, right and centre. I was pretty taken aback.

“I think he’s an out-of-the-system person whereas I consider myself more of an in-the-system person. He wants to burn it, I want to navigate it and change it. You can be as smart as you like but if you can’t build coalitions then you won’t achieve anything.”

OB: It’s interesting, and you can throw this back at me, but I do see some fairly striking parallels between you and Dominic Cummings. You both grew up in post-mining areas, both studied history at Oxbridge, both campaigned against devolved assemblies in your respective home regions [the North East Assembly in the case of Cummings], both have eclectic interests and are quite active in talking about them online, both people who take pride in being able to get stuff done, both quite like start-ups and recruiting ragtag teams, and you’re both quite critical of the civil service status quo. What do you think about that comparison?

TW: Well, it’s interesting. I am critical of him because I think he f***** up. He talks a good game but ultimately he failed because he was too weird and he hated the system too much. He literally offended everybody in sight and thought that was a good tactic and ultimately I don’t think he’s very tactical. I think he was brilliant in the Brexit campaign because he held to a very simple, straight, singular proposition “Take back control”. And that was a rather brilliant slogan. But he was a better strategist than he was a persuader, and I think that when you go into government you have to be a persuader because you’ve got a bunch of people who’ve been there a long time and do know quite a lot, and you’ve got to try and persuade them of your agenda, and it’s no good going around being rude to them or shouting at them. I think he’s an out-of-the-system person whereas I consider myself more of an in-the-system person. He wants to burn it, I want to navigate it and change it. You can be as smart as you like but if you can’t build coalitions then you won’t achieve anything.

OB: When it comes to changing minds about big decisions like where HS1 will go through, or how far Crossrail will go, my assumption is that you have to submit a formal business case, have a strong BCR [benefit:cost ratio], crunch all the numbers et cetera. It doesn’t necessarily sound like that’s how you managed to get your agendas, as it were, over the line.

TW: Oh no, that never happened. It’s very interesting, you do have to make a case and you have to have evidence, so it’s not that the BCR stuff goes away, but the formal business case that was done by the Treasury showed that the Channel Tunnel Rail Link shouldn’t be moved to Stratford, just like the BCR of the Treasury showed that we shouldn’t do the Victoria Line, we shouldn’t do the Jubilee Line extension eastwards, we shouldn’t do Docklands Light Rail et cetera et cetera. Because the BCRs are all based on journey time savings, we instead kind of beat the Treasury up from the outside by gaining a lot of political support inside. John Prescott was very important in the lobbying for Stratford. The journey time reduction to Paris from London of 15 minutes didn’t really matter, what mattered was that you were opening up the possibility of a regenerated East London.

OB: How important do you think having a vision that people can get behind is versus just having the numbers and the business case? Because it occurs to me that there’s a lack of vision-led leadership nowadays, both within organisations and in politics.

TW: Absolutely, I agree. Empiricism on its own isn’t enough, because numbers don’t speak for themselves. E. H. Carr, who was a terrible man actually, a Stalinist, but he wrote a book that all school kids used to have to read, called “What is History?” He said: a fact is like a sack, it won’t stand up unless you put something in it, which is my view. You have to have a vision and a clear sense of direction and reasoning. But you do also need the practical element of knowing how to start the journey, how to incentivise progress, and how to demonstrate throughout the process that this is still the right thing to pursue, because for various reasons people lose faith and political will can erode. But ultimately, you need someone with an idea that can galvanise people.

Housing

“there’s an international housing problem. Everybody seems to be thinking about this in terms of what can we do in Britain? Or what can we do in Australia? And, actually, many countries, not just in the anglosphere, are facing the same housing delivery problems, but they seem to all be blaming the public sector planning system for it rather than thinking “Oh, hang on a second, we’ve all got very different planning systems, so is there something else going on?”…Quantitative easing, low interest rates, it goes to the asset price bottom line and it’s just been inflating the cost of everything, and no amount of homes in the universe could soak up the extra demand that’s been going in. Added to the problem is that housing demand is coming predominantly not from first-time buyers, but from people who already have money who can borrow more, i.e. existing homeowners, right? So existing homeowners borrowing cheaply have been buying second homes to become landlords so that they become rentiers. And we’ve made them rentiers through public policy – deliberate public policy crowding out first time buyers who can’t afford to compete with these people. ”

OB: Given your work on regeneration and urban development, what’s your view on the housing crisis? What are the causes and what are the solutions?

TW: So I’ve been looking at housing in the UK from about 2005 in the UK and then in Australia from 2010 and one of my great surprises was that there’s the same developer business model in both countries, and politicians and the media don’t really understand what that model is and don’t really understand housing at all. First and foremost, they don’t seem to understand that there’s an international housing problem. Everybody seems to be thinking about this in terms of what can we do in Britain? Or what can we do in Australia? And, actually, many countries, not just in the anglosphere, are facing the same housing delivery problems, but they seem to all be blaming the public sector planning system for it rather than thinking “Oh, hang on a second, we’ve all got very different planning systems, so is there something else going on?” There is something else going on. One is to do with the impact of money, which seems to be completely missed when people discuss housing. Another is the limitations of the private sector in delivering homes for sale. There’s a natural constraint to their business model there. This is not a manufacturing process. Let me explain the difference – and this is something I only realised back in 2007, during the Crash, but I’m very clear about it now. Basically, lots of people who look at housing think it’s the same as any other business, right? They don’t seem to understand that, as the great joke went; “Buy land. They’ve stopped making it.” So it’s not like, for example, if I wanted to reduce the price of widgets [the generic term for a manufactured product], where I can just produce a shed load of widgets in response to the market demand. The price will go down because I produce loads of them, but my return is OK because although my margin goes down, I produce loads of them, so my revenue’s unaffected. That’s not the business model of housing, and part of the problem is that I can’t produce the entire supply needed to meet the market demand like I can with widgets, because the market already exists in housing, so 98% of all the homes in a market already exist. So when I put new supply into the housing market, it doesn’t replace all the existing supply that’s already there, it just adds two or three per cent maximum. Therefore, the price is set by the 98%, not the 2%, whereas the price of widgets is set by the total production of widgets because you buy a new widget every time. So the failure to understand that is why we’re not producing the kinds of housing numbers that will place a downward pressure on housing prices. And the business model is very specific. It’s a return on capital-employed model. They will not lay a brick and sell it into the market if they can’t make 20% return on capital it’ll employ. The banks will not lend to them unless they show that they will make 20% after all costs have been accounted for. Now, if you think about that, it’s a very high margin to satisfy, right? It’s because of the risk of development. This is not a moral thing, or a question of housing companies being “evil”, this is simply their business and the results of the market. The other thing is that there’s an absorption rate issue. They can only put houses onto the market at a rate that is margin-maintaining. So on a site that can accommodate 100 homes, you will find universally across the housing markets in the private sector, they will do 10 or 15 or 20 a year for five years, because if they put 100 straight away, the margins would collapse, so they can’t do that. And thirdly, imagine you’re a person who just bought a house off them or, you know, the 19th or 20th home in the first tranche, and then the developer said, oh, f*** it, I’m just going to put the other eighty onto the market. You’ve just bought a house at a given price, and then the person next door gets this lower price. I’m just not going to do that. So the price of a home is also set by the average price of that type of home in that market.

“We need to go back to the system with government building housing on its own land, with its own investment creating non-market housing. And I repeat: not to be good, not to be moral, not to be socialist, but because it’s missing from the market and has been for 50 years.”

Another aspect, which is particularly relevant in the anglosphere, is social housing, or public housing. Let’s just do some numbers to explain this. Between 1950 and 1975, 45% of all housing in the UK was public housing. So that meant the private sector was doing 200,000 homes a year in 1950 and the public sector was doing 180,000 or something like that. 25 years later, it was still 200,000 private sector 150/160,000 public sector. When we stopped building public sector housing in 1975/76 under the Labour government, I have to say, guess what? The private sector response was absolutely zero. They just carried on building 200,000 a year. And if you look at the numbers now in England, they’re still only building 200/210,000 a year. So there’s something missing from the supply side and it isn’t just the planning system, even though all of the private sector seems to be homing in on that, when in fact that’s a very marginal, small part of the risk that the developers face. They’ve got so many other things that they have to think about, including particularly the cost of money. Then there’s the macroeconomic context with housing. We’ve been through an incredible era of monetary inflation, flooding the world market since 2008 with cheap cash. Quantitative easing, low interest rates, it goes to the asset price bottom line and it’s just been inflating the cost of everything, and no amount of homes in the universe could soak up the extra demand that’s been going in. Added to the problem is that housing demand is coming predominantly not from first-time buyers, but from people who already have money who can borrow more, i.e. existing homeowners, right? So existing homeowners borrowing cheaply have been buying second homes to become landlords so that they become rentiers. And we’ve made them rentiers through public policy – deliberate public policy crowding out first time buyers who can’t afford to compete with these people. There are now half as many people today who can afford a home under the age 35 as there was in 1981, right? Half the number. It’s just collapsed. So nothing that people are doing in the UK, in Australia, in America, wherever, is working at the moment to get the supply that we need. But it’s also not having an effect on prices at all. It’s just not going to work. By the way, I don’t even think the government is clear as to what they want as the end result. Do they want prices to collapse? Have we heard that? Do they want the proportions of people able to own a home to go back to 1981 levels? Have we heard that?

“in Australia in the early 1980s, only 25% of bank lending went to mortgages. Now, 80% of bank lending goes to mortgages.”

And this all leads to a distorted economic strategy by governments, which has effectively been leading to an over-financialisation of residential property and an under-investment in other, more productive and distributed parts of the economy, and it’s been leading to wealth inequality in western societies based around property access. For example, in Australia in the early 1980s, only 25% of bank lending went to mortgages. Now, 80% of bank lending goes to mortgages. They used to do more lending to industry and the productive economy, and now they do it all into residential property. Thanks to quantitative easing, we’ve had finance-led inflation of house prices, and it’s not going to be brought back very easily, and certainly not by the means that we are using. The only way to do it is going to take 20 years to unwind what is a 30-year problem. We need to wean ourselves off the over-investment in housing. So all this is a complete disaster, and there’s one country in the world that seems to understand this and everybody ignores it, which is Singapore. In Singapore, what they do is assert that everybody has the right to shelter, so everybody gets access to public housing and they can then sell it. They can buy it, and then they can sell it once, right?

But we’re confused over here. We think “Oh, we’ll reduce planning barriers and make it easy to get planning approval and everything will be fine.” Well, we’ve done that and they haven’t built any more than they otherwise would. We still have huge numbers of unbuilt planning approvals. And property developers know this, of course, but the lobbyists are saying different things to government. So all governments are going to be disappointed. And the British Government, elected a year and a half ago, is getting nowhere. All it’s doing is making it possible for land values to rise above over-inflated expectations thanks to planning uplift, right? But there’ll be no additional housing delivery because the private sector is wrecked at this point in time. The private sector in housing is wrecked. It’s been wrecked by COVID. Everything went up in price. All the land that they bought four years ago is all inflated. All the costs have inflated. They haven’t got access to the skills. Again, this is not a socialist critique. It’s a realist critique arguing that we need an extra player in the market on the one hand, which is to say we need more public housing. We still need the private sector supply and we need to help it to happen. We need new rentals, which are not subject to the same risk return requirements of the homes for sale, but also much more public housing, and not just social housing – literally government housing, because even social housing requires a private sector to exist. We need to go back to the system with government building housing on its own land, with its own investment creating non-market housing. And I repeat: not to be good, not to be moral, not to be socialist, but because it’s missing from the market and has been for 50 years.

Devolution

“I came up with a joke one time, which I thought was my finest, which is that ‘devolution’ manages to sound like the opposite of evolution and revolution at the same time.”

“to have one Welsh Assembly whose only raison d’etre is to criticise the English for the lack of money they give us. I knew that was going to be a problem. My problem was not decentralisation, my problem was nationalism being reinforced”

OB: On devolution, did the fact that you were involved in the campaign opposing devolution have any impact on your career or relationships in Wales?

TW: Well in the campaign itself, it was just me and four other people. We had no money and we nearly beat the Blair government. The record needs to show that we only lost by 7000 votes in a million, which is 50.6% or something to 49.4%. We spent £50,000. The government spent £3.5m. But as a result I was nearly stopped from being a special advisor to David Miliband because some of the Welsh objected to my taking the role. And when I went to get a job advising Leighton Andrews, one of the Welsh government ministers, on urban regeneration, I had to go and meet Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister, to get permission as a heretic. But I completely understand it. The only funny thing about it was that Mark Drakeford was in the room at the time because he was advising the First Minister, and 15 minutes into the discussion, the First Minister says “Tim, we’ve been speaking in Welsh for the last 15 minutes.” I said “Yes…” “I didn’t know you spoke Welsh.” There was some kind of an assumption that because I was a traitor to the nation, as they saw it, I couldn’t possibly speak Welsh.

OB: How involved have you been in Wales with your work on regeneration?

TW: Not as much as I would have liked, but I set up something with the help of Leighton Andrews, the Education Minister at the time, called the Centre for Regeneration Excellence, but I only worked there for 18 months. He was very good, but we just didn’t have any money. And it’s my view now that devolution just isn’t extensive enough to sort Wales out. And I’m not convinced that the British state – both the government and the civil service – is in a fit state to address the challenges of anywhere outside of London at the moment, and that’s a deep, systemic problem.

“Before the Financial Crisis happened, UK GDP was growing at about 2.5% a year. Ever since the Crash it’s been about 0.4%, and that was before Brexit…What didn’t happen after Brexit was a kind of galvanised public service and political leadership thinking “Wow, we’re self-governing. We can do all sorts of things now!” That never happened. There were loads of people who either didn’t want it to happen or others who just didn’t have any idea of what it meant to run a completely independent state again. And that was the worry that I had with Welsh devolution”

OB: So has your view of devolution changed since ‘97 when you were campaigning?

TW: Not really. I mean, I did please my Welsh nationalist friends once by supporting the devolution of additional powers later on, but my rationale at the time was “It’s incoherent as it is at the moment, so giving the Welsh government more powers can’t make things any worse.” But I do have these occasional crises of self-assurance because I do see myself as a patriot, but I just have a different view of what’s in the interests of Wales. I’m a Welshman to my toes. I have some vague idea of Britishness and I have no sense of Englishness, and I’m fundamentally, deeply Welsh – far more Welsh, in my view, than most of the people who criticise me for not being a good enough Welshman. And I just think, “you know f*** all about South Wales, so who are you to criticise me?” But the real point of this is that I overestimated the capacity of the British state. What didn’t happen after Brexit was a kind of galvanised public service and political leadership thinking “Wow, we’re self-governing. We can do all sorts of things now!” That never happened. There were loads of people who either didn’t want it to happen or others who just didn’t have any idea of what it meant to run a completely independent state again. And that was the worry that I had with Welsh devolution – that we just wouldn’t have enough oomph behind running a state of our own. But like I say, I overestimated the capacity of the British state to sort out British problems, and now I take a slightly Cummings view of the capacity of the state, because we can see how banal the people who manage the state in Britain are at the moment. And it’s not a Brexit problem either. Before the Crash happened, UK GDP was growing at about 2.5% a year. Ever since the Crash it’s been about 0.4%, and that was before Brexit, and nothing serious or meaningful has been done to even attempt to reverse that, and ever since we have consistently been among the lowest performers in Europe.

“Before devolution, Britain was what Yugoslavia thought it was before it collapsed. We were a successful multinational state running in a democratic fashion and then we f****** blew it up!”

OB: Just lingering on devolution for a bit - so obviously you worked quite closely with local government when you were in Thames Gateway, and you are very complimentary about what they achieved, so what was your critique of devolution? Was it the model or was it just that you believed in a stronger unitary state?

TW: I have quite an idiosyncratic view of this, but it’s important to note that decentralisation is not the same as devolution. I came up with a joke one time, which I thought was my finest, which is that devolution manages to sound like the opposite of evolution and revolution at the same time. You can have that for free.

OB: I’ve written it down.

TW: It’s good, right? But basically Blair wrecked the British state in the name of what he thought was decentralisation, but is actually not. Devolution is a form of dissolution of the state over time based on nationality. The problem is that you can have a South Wales Parliament and a North Wales Parliament and you can have a big county council, five of them in Wales, and that would be great, but to have one Welsh Assembly whose only raison d’etre is to criticise the English for the lack of money they give us. I knew that was going to be a problem. My problem was not decentralisation, my problem was nationalism being reinforced, which results in even Welsh Labour becoming nationalists in practice. But this leads me to a personal paradox, which is that I’m a bit like the Welsh students in Oxford at the time of Owain Glyndwr, in that if there’d been a proper uprising in Wales, I’d have been with my Welsh comrades on the battle lines against the English. But this is not what happened, it was the most genteel, unconvincing and begging bowl, permission-seeking of national revolutions there’s ever been. “Please, sir, can I have some more?”

“The central state has to let go to grow”

OB: That’s a really interesting point. I hadn’t considered it from that perspective before – the reinforcement of national divisions and nationalism through devolution along national lines. But at the same time, you compare Welsh devolution with the mayoral combined authorities, such as most notably Greater Manchester, and the way that Andy Burnham has become a figurehead for the region. Do you think that that model has reinforced the sense of regional identity there in the same way that it has in Wales?

TW: I think the people running Greater Manchester are tremendous and we should follow them and their view of the world in seeking forgiveness instead of permission. But you’re probably right, it probably has developed a stronger identity as a result, but I do think that the national bonds are more fragile than the regional bonds. Before devolution, Britain was what Yugoslavia thought it was before it collapsed. We were a successful multinational state running in a democratic fashion and then we f****** blew it up! Or at least it’s in the process. I feel so strongly that this is happening that I feel like setting something up called the 2036 project, in reference to the fact that by then it will be 500 years since the first Anglo-Welsh state was created as a result of the Act of Union, from which came the British state, and on the current trajectory I’m not convinced it will last until 2036. But on decentralisation we do have to keep going with that. The central state has to let go to grow, because the Treasury orthodoxy is a disaster. But the Labour government could never have devolved to Manchester in the way that the Tories did, and the reason is because Labour is a centralising, universalist outfit. Everybody needs the same deal, the same this, the same that. And the idea of giving asymmetric deals to different regions and to the people in those regions does not appeal to the conformist Labour mindset. George Osborne, who was a **** and only did it in order to disrupt Labour in the regions, but he came up with more money, more decentralisation than the Labour government was ever going to give the city regions.

Levelling-up and Wales

“All the stuff I hear about housing is a southern policy…we seem to be missing an economic strategy that satisfies either the goal of making the Golden Triangle a success or levelling up the North”

OB: You said earlier that London doesn’t need jobs, it needs houses, whereas the North, for example, needs jobs, not houses. So how do we get growth in places like the North and actually “level up”, as Boris might have said?

TW: What I’m pretty stunned by at the moment is that there doesn’t seem to be an urban regeneration or regional policy from the new Labour government. They are completely silent on the levelling up agenda. There was nothing wrong with the notion of levelling up, but there was no money or serious policy behind it. But there is nothing wrong with the idea at all. In fact, what else should a bloody Labour government be doing except levelling up? All the stuff I hear about housing is a southern policy. So all the new towns that they talk about, they’re all about feeding the Cambridge, Oxford and London Triangle. They’re not even about Swindon or something like that. You know what I mean? They just haven’t got anything to say outside that Triangle at all. They’re rather like the Labour government 20 years ago, banking on the financial services and distributing the dividends. And there is a problem with London, by the way, which is not being addressed either, which is that it’s very important to the national economy. When London was firing before the Crash, GDP growth in London was about 3.5% per annum, and that was funding a lot of welfare distribution in the rest of the economy. So without London growing at that previous rate, and instead growing at about 0.4% per annum, we haven’t got that engine. So even though I don’t really want the only engine in the country to be the Golden Triangle, it’s not been doing very well anyway, so we seem to be missing an economic strategy that satisfies either the goal of making the Golden Triangle a success or levelling up the North. And there’s a specific problem around Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which is that devolution changed the rules, so consensus and clarity over who’s responsible for what when it comes to urban regeneration and funding for it is still in flux. It seems likely that Wales also isn’t getting as much of the discretionary funding that it was before 2010. But how you create economic prosperity and jobs is the biggest question. I think the first thing is to actually understand the nature of growth and what happened to these “left behind” places like the Valleys. As you know, I’ve just been on a walk down the 21 valleys of South Wales and I walked 390 kilometres – and, by the way, I had 23 consecutive days of sunshine. When has that ever happened?! - but I can tell you that they’re in pretty poor condition. There is a bit of a more complexity around the situation, which is that housing is so cheap, comparatively, especially if you’re earning an average wage, that people have good cars – people have better cars than houses, and have better cars than their equivalent would have in England it seems because housing is 40 to 50% cheaper. And there also seems to be a move by the new middle class, the knowledge workers, up towards the Valleys. Pontypridd, for example, and other towns that are relatively close to Cardiff strike me as having better prospects than those further away – those that are very difficult to revive because of their topography and morphology. The government probably needs to recognise, without being fatalistic, what can and cannot be achieved. But it also needs to be ambitious. You look at a bankrupt country like ours after the Second World War that was nevertheless able to bring tens of thousands of new jobs to places like Ebbw Vale. There was a revival of steel manufacturing. Governments of the left and of the right seemed to believe that you could actually do something. I think the problem today, for me, is I don’t believe they believe they can. I think there’s a huge fatalism, and I think it particularly matters on the left where their very purpose is to do these kinds of things, and I think they’ve given up on it. I think they’ve given up on the idea that they can do something with the legacy communities of the Industrial Revolution. I don’t think it’s easy, but I don’t think you start from that sort of mindset. And to exacerbate this there’s also a sociological problem. The Labour Party is now all about trying to win seats in the in the University towns of the southeast and are becoming overwhelmingly a middle-class party with the working-class voting for the parties that represent the populist discontent, so I don’t think there’s as much political self-interest in the Labour Party in the North and the Midlands as there used to be. But I do think there is a serious discussion to be had about; do we really need some of these big housing estates on the top of the hillside like Penrhys? We try every generation to save Penrhys – I think we’re on the third attempt now. Just knock it down and make sure that all those people go into under-occupied homes in the town centres of South Wales. But there’s also another problem, and here’s an exemplar: in Porth, with a population of about 6,000, there are thirteen barbershops in the town centre. And there’s a bit of a turf war going on in Blackwood. It’s the same in a lot of valley towns – and in high streets around the country more generally. You’ve got vape shops and you’ve got sweet shops and you’ve got barbers. I rather think the black economy is a big thing in some of these areas, and it seems as though we’re losing a grip on our town centres and high streets, and that’s a problem. Ultimately, I’m not an optimist on the economic renewal of the regions of the UK.

OB: Given your pessimism about the state of politics and government in Britain, how optimistic are you about Wales’s prospects going forward? What are the problems and what do you think the solutions might be?

TW: I’m saying this as a patriot and as someone who wants Wales to succeed, but there are too many leading public servants in Wales who are actually second-rate British public servants who couldn’t make it in Whitehall. We’ve got to develop our own capacity, our own training, our own people. I think James Price, the Chief Executive of Transport for Wales, is a good example of a great leader, and someone who could potentially run the whole Welsh civil service. I think we need to innovate from below, and take back control, not in a nationalist sense, but essentially not simply look up to the centre, but rather invent and innovate, just like Greater Manchester did. We need to see more of that kind of innovation within the Welsh Civil Service. I think it’s possible but it’s touch and go. But I do generally think that innovation in Britain is going to have to come a lot more from the Manchesters and even the Cardiffs rather than Westminster, because I don’t think it’s in a good shape at the moment at all.

Quickfire

OB: Would you ever move back to Wales?

TW: Well, the thing is, I’ve never really left. You see, the house I grew up in was public housing, and after a while the right-to-buy came along and I bought it for my parents so that they didn’t have to pay any rent. My father died 10-15 years ago, and I’ve still got this place. Initially, some relatives stayed there, now I’m renting it out, and I’m completely, totally absorbed in the economic future of Beddau. And I’ve worked for the Cardiff City Council Economic Strategies team, and I’ve worked for the Welsh Government on urban regeneration. I’d come back at the drop of a hat to do something in Wales because I still regard myself as, spiritually, having never left and, as we started this whole discussion, I feel myself to be entirely Welsh. I mean, there’s not an English particle in me at all, and there’s precious little Australian. I’m basically a Welshman lost in space, but I think about it all the time.

OB: What’s a book you’d recommend?

TW: I’ve got a recommendation for a novel, which is Eugénie Grandet by Balzac. It’s a brilliant, brilliant description of provincial life in France in the 1820s and 30s, and an amazing demolition of capitalist obsessions. It’s a remarkable elegy to everyday work and why it’s valuable. And I like it because, to tie all this stuff together, growing up in a working-class mining community, I was tremendously impressed with the quality of the community and the culture and the intellectual and cultural depth that I experienced. This always annoyed me – when I started reading sociology, I was basically told that I should have some kind of chip on my shoulder and an inferiority complex, but I actually had the opposite. Sadly, I might have had a superiority complex, but essentially I thought that the community I grew up in had far better ideas about the universe than some of the ones I’ve met along the way. I like the validation of everyday wisdom, and I consider myself to be a kind of democratic intellectual on the grounds that I came from a bunch of people who showed me on an everyday basis that they were intellectuals. My dad was a musician who wrote a symphony when he was 16-17. He left school at 15, he became a councillor, and the manager of a local factory. He was just f****** outstanding and I don’t think he was alone. So for me, all these things come together in a sort of weird Welsh universalism, which validates our everyday experiences and the idea that we’re all intellectuals and that, actually, we should listen to each other a bit more than we do.

OB: There’s a book on my list to read called The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes and I’m told it reveals how well-read everyday working people were, how culturally and intellectually curious they were, which contrasts starkly with most of our lives today. But it sounds like it speaks a lot to your experience growing up.

TW: I’ve read it actually. The author’s an American, Jonathan Rose. He did a lot of researching into British mining libraries and archives from back in the 20s and 30s. It’s funny, people have this conception of the working class, and mining communities in particular, that they were all ideological Marxists. I see this as a slight myth, even in South Wales. We used to call places like Maerdy, one of the mining villages, Little Moscow, precisely because it stood out for its political beliefs. Working class communities are all by and large pretty moderate, middle-of-the-road kind of people. Of course there were some extreme Marxists, but what this book reveals is that, if you looked at the book selections of people from 1930s, they weren’t taking out Marx’s work on dialectics or a short course on the Communist Party of Great Britain, they were taking out crime thrillers and American hard-boiled fiction.

OB: Any final reflections on your career?

TW: It’s interesting, when you look back on your life and start to piece parts of it together. I think my life might actually be a bit more coherent than I thought it was for a long time, because basically everything I’ve done before has fed into what I’ve done for the last 25 years. I think that everything was a prelude to what I’m doing now. So that’s good to know. I’ve changed my life and reinvented myself fundamentally three times, but this last 25 years has been a consistent period work in urban regeneration and economic development and advocacy around cities. It’s pleased me enormously because there’s also been a kind of sub-political, non-political form of politics. I can lay a credible claim to have changed London, I can lay a credible claim to have changed Sydney, and I can lay some claim to have done a few things in Wales, but not as much as I would have liked.

OB: Tim Williams, thank you very much.

Tim’s Bio

Dr Tim Williams is Head of Cities for global architecture firm Grimshaw and host of the Grimshaw Cities podcast. Tim was previously Head of Cities in Australasia for Arup. Between 2011 and 2017, Tim was CEO of the think tank Committee for Sydney, which, under his leadership, became highly influential. Prior to moving down under in late 2010 with his Australian wife, from 1998 to 2003, Tim was CEO of the Thames Gateway London Partnership, with its 10 councils working together to transform East and Southeast London. Between 2005 and 2010, he was a Special Advisor to five planning/housing/cities ministers in the Blair/Brown governments He’s also been a specialist advisor to a regeneration minister in the Welsh Government and advised Boris Johnson during his time as Mayor of London on his residential design guide for London.

Tim has a history degree from Cambridge, a Ph.D from the University of Wales, a PGCE from Oxford and was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple. He learned everything he knows from growing up in a stroppy family, in council housing, in a disputatious mining village in Old South Wales.

Tim made his name in urban regeneration and transport though his leadership of the Thames Gateway initiative. In this role, Tim had a hand in securing the redirection of Channel Tunnel Rail Link (also known as HS1, now known as London St. Pacras High Speed) via East London/Stratford to Kings Cross, rather than via Waterloo, in making the case for the Olympics to come to the east side of London and in ensuring that the Elizabeth Line finally won government support, went via Stratford and also crossed the Thames to connect gateway boroughs in southeast London. He also played a key part in legacy planning for the London Olympics and has recently contributed to legacy planning for the Brisbane Games. He was a senior advisor to Lendlease in the building of the Athletes Village for London 2012.

Tim’s advice on housing and urban strategy is sought by key decision-makers in the public and private sectors in Australia and the UK. Most recently this has involved him advising the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory, two state premiers, one Australian Prime Minister and a UK housing minister or two. Tim has for 25 years been a columnist on urban regeneration and housing matters for UK planning journals, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Fifth Estate. Though Tim lives in Sydney, he was born in the former mining village of Beddau near Pontypridd and remains, as he says, “obsessed” with the history and future of Wales, the south in particular. In March 2025, he walked all 21 valleys - 400kms - of the South Wales coalfield, and in 2023, published a booklet, with fellow Welsh exile, the late David Martin Jones, on the life and politics of Welsh Chartist Zephaniah Williams, transported to Australia after the Newport uprising, called Zeph the Rebel. He will also soon publish a book on his experiences of walking the 21 vallys of South Wales, which he calls the Taff Camino.

Early life

OB: Where did you grow up and how did you end up working at the Coalfields Regeneration Trust?

MRW: So I grew up in Nantyglo [literally, “coal stream” in Welsh], a little tiny mining village in Blaenau Gwent. I lived there until I was about 18 and then went off to university in Cardiff. Not a million miles away, but certainly a change from the Valleys!

OB: Did you have any siblings?

MRW: I grew up one of four children. I was the second oldest of three girls and one boy, and the boy being the youngest was spoilt rotten.

OB: I’m actually the youngest of four, so I can relate to your brother!

MRW: Babies always are! But growing up in a coalmining community in a council estate, I saw poverty, but everyone was in a similar boat. I was lucky because my parents really valued education. They weren’t pushy, necessarily, but they encouraged us to try different things, take opportunities, and made us value our own education and make the most of it. And I was also quite fortunate because, even though I was quite shy, I always had this drive within me. And I think that might have come from that upbringing where I saw a lot of worklessness and what that meant for those people’s lives. I recognised that, in my own community, opportunities to get a decent job were quite limited. And I think my motivation to do well was about freedom more broadly - so freedom to have the lifestyle and the kind of life that I wanted. Not necessarily to be enormously wealthy, but to be able to travel, to go on holidays, and not be too limited, and to me it seemed like education was the obvious way out. So I went to uni and did a degree in Ecology and Environmental Management and did a sandwich placement with the Welsh Development Agency [WDA] in Swansea.

OB: What work were you doing for the WDA?

MRW: I was in the environmental team working on greening industrial sites like industrial estates and trying to increase their biodiversity or addressing invasive species, for example. And then I was within the wider regeneration team, and at that time, the Llandarcy oil refinery was still just sitting there - it’s since been reclaimed - and part of our work was thinking about what we were going to do with this huge post-industrial site. So that was also a valuable experience, seeing what the WDA did. Whatever you might think of them, they were key in enabling the regeneration of post-industrial, strategic sites. And after uni, I decided to move back home and got a job in the local authority in Merthyr Tydfil, where I worked my way up. And while I was there, a lot of the roles I had were around supporting the third sector, which gave me an insight into the invaluable work they do to support people impacted by poverty and their families. I then moved to Coalfields in 2008, which is where I’ve been ever since. I’ve held various roles since I’ve been here and worked my way up. It was a really small team at the time that I joined and it was a great culture in that, if you wanted to explore and do extra tasks and be given extra responsibilities, it was encouraged, which allowed you to widen your skill set, which meant that, when opportunities came up, you were ready to grasp them. And then about three years ago, the Head of Wales retired. He was a great mentor and was really supportive and I ended up applying for the role and getting it, and since then the team has just grown massively. I think we were about seven people when I became Head of Operations and we’ve nearly tripled in size since then. But looking back, you realise how formative your early years and experiences are. And now it seems surprising to think that, out of my entire school year, only a handful of people went on to university, so I was quite fortunate to have gotten the opportunities that I did.

OB: What did your parents do?

MRW: My mum stayed at home and looked after the four of us. She just absolutely loved it. My dad worked for 16 years in a shoe factory, but it was around the time of piecework [where you’re paid based on the amount you produce, rather than a fixed hourly rate], and having four kids at home and being the only one working, the pressure was all on him to keep the family afloat, which was difficult when he didn’t know how much money he’d have week-to-week or day-to-day. And there were frustrating things like, because he was working, we weren’t entitled to free school meals, which would have been a big help. And in-work poverty is still a massive issue today. Working at Coalfields, I see now how multi-layered poverty is, and how problems can be mutually-exacerbating and stack up on one another. People in coalfield communities are more likely to have caring responsibilities and suffer from poor health, added to the fact that there are simply fewer opportunities available locally, which all together makes it more difficult to get into work. Our latest research showed that, in 2024, there were 46 jobs per 100 people in the South Wales coalfield communities. So there’s a massive deficit of jobs for local people. And that’s part of the work we’re trying to do in facilitating the creation of local jobs in communities. And that in itself is also self-reinforcing, because local jobs create local wealth which then gets recycled within the community itself.

The legacy of the closure of the mines

OB: Just starting from the basics, how do you define coalfield communities?

MRW: As a charity, the formal definition relates to the significance of the job losses following the closure of the pits in the 80s. If there were job losses of 10% or more of the male working age population, it was defined as a priority area for the Trust, so we have specific areas of operation as a charity throughout the UK.

OB: What do you think are some of the reasons the effects from the closure of the mines have been so long-lasting?

MRW: It’s simply because communities were built around the pit. Not only did the pits provide jobs, but miners also created medical aid societies before we had the NHS, they built welfare halls, recreation grounds, libraries, and stimulated all of this locally led action to provide services and amenities for the community. Communities were bound by this shared sense of purpose. And with the unions, you also had the national boards that you could tap into for support. So when the jobs left and the unions weakened, there was very little support or investment to support a transition to a different local economy. We still see that regional inequalities are growing, with the South Wales coalfields being the poorest region in the UK. There is still a lack of long-term investment and policy focus needed to address the inequalities affecting coalfield communities, which represent a quarter of the population of Wales. The region also lacks business infrastructure, such as industrial units, to support the growth of the local economy. The charity’s working to develop industrial units in communities where there is a viability gap, enabling businesses to start up and grow and employ locally. The profitable income is then used to support charitable work and the upskilling of the local workforce. We’ve delivered this in England and are keen to develop the model in Wales but we need investment to kick start it.

OB: What do you think a just transition would have looked like for the coalfield communities back in the 80s?

MRW: Tower Colliery’s a good example of the fact that some mines actually were economically viable, and that the government could have supported more workers’ cooperatives to do something similar. So what you had was the members bought the mine from British Coal in the 90s after British Coal had decided to close it, and they continued deep mining as long as they could and then transitioned to open-cast, and the profit from the operations of that mine and the continued sale of coal then went to the local members. And they managed to keep the jobs there for another 13 years after other mines had closed down, and that retained wealth had a lasting impact. So while the mines might not have been economically viable for the state, some of them at least could have been viable as member-owned and run cooperatives. So I think a just transition would have been about looking at more controlled and incremental decommissioning of the industry rather than a sudden shut-down. Obviously coalmining had been declining for decades, but there was still a significant workforce in the industry by the 80s, and for it to have been shut down so suddenly like that was catastrophic. But there was no support for workers after the closure.

Partnerships

OB: What are some examples of work you’re doing with partner organisations at the moment?

MRW: We have a longstanding partnership with credit unions in Wales. We funded the development of their services and their expansion to cover under-served areas, and recently we’ve invested in a community endowment with Smart Money Cymru Credit Union. Credit unions are mutuals, which means they provide fairer terms to their members because they’re owned by them, and reinvest their profit back into services to benefit the community. Again, it’s all about retaining wealth in the local area. Our first major partnership project was based in Aneurin Bevan House in Tredegar, where we hosted the establishment of their first high-street branch in the county. So as the banks close their high-street branches, the credit unions can step in. But they haven’t got the start-up capital to open these branches themselves, so we secure funding on their behalf. They then put the workers in and that’s their investment to build their membership to make their branch self-sustaining. Our partnership focuses on them delivering services in areas where there are high levels of debt and where loan-sharking is prevalent, and provide local people with a means of ethical finance. But they also try to promote education around finance and create a savings culture. And credit unions have what’s called a ‘common bond area’, which is effectively the catchment area for their members. Now what you see is some credit unions merging and expanding their common bond area so that their members can benefit from those economies of scale. For example, you’ve got unions in Caerphilly merging with unions in Newport and Brecon.

We’re also working with the Mining Remediation Authority [until recently the Coal Authority] and Welsh Government through Innovate UK funding to develop a scoping tool for brownfield sites. Communities or developers might identify post-industrial land that they’re interested in developing but there will often be very little easily accessible information about that land, so what we’re trying to do is find and pull together data or site investigation reports that have been done into an accessible digital tool so that people could basically have a better understanding of the development opportunities. That might be community-owned energy, housing, mixed-use spaces, etc. There’s hundreds of millions being spent on coal tip safety and this tool could support their future use. We want to enable communities to have an input into how former industrial land can best be used for their benefit.

Local infrastructure wealth funds

OB: I saw a proposal that Coalfields put forward for the owners and operators of wind farms that are built in local areas to input £8,000 per megawatt into what you called a ‘sovereign community fund’. Could you speak a bit more about that? [France introduced a similar model for nuclear power plant construction back in the 1970s, which generated significant wealth for communities in which nuclear power stations were built, causing public support for nuclear power to increase significantly. Read more about this model in this Works in Progress article]

MRW: In a similar way to coalmining where there was significant wealth extraction out of communities, the owners of windfarms are generating large profits, whilst our communities are the ones hosting them and generally not seeing any benefit. There are some examples of where it does happen, but we want this benefit to be consistently applied for all communities impacted by large-scale renewable developments. An example of where this has happened is a community benefit fund in Pen y Cymoedd [literally, ‘Head of the Valleys’] for a local wind farm, which distributes £1m each year, which is a huge amount of money for the local community. But not only that, we want to figure out how we can enable community ownership in these developments. Not necessarily the entire development, but have say 10% equity in the development and any dividends that are generated.

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OB: So that would be something negotiated by the local authority, given that it’s them who decide whether developments receive planning permission? And they then attach this as a condition for permission, like a Section 106?

MRW: Well this is it. Currently it’s up to the good will of the developer. Some local authorities have got clear policies so developers know going into it what community benefit is expected of them. Others haven’t got that. And the issue with Section 106 is that they’re often quite difficult to monitor and enforce, often because local authorities haven’t got the capacity. And with large-scale developments, they go to national-level Planning and Environment Decisions Wales [PEDW] process for the planning approval, in order to take pressure off the local authorities, which creates confusion as to who’s responsible for setting, monitoring and enforcing community benefit requirements. Our argument is that the Welsh Government and Local Planning Authorities should be consistent in pushing for the industry standard to be met. So there’s a big gap right now between the potential benefit and what’s actually being realised, and there are developments going through the planning system that are missed opportunities. If the industry standard was met, it would provide £11m each year to support the former coalfield communities of South Wales. A significant investment which is much needed.

OB: And what are you looking to do with these community funds? What will that funding actually be used for?

MRW: This is one of the questions. There are a number of developments generating hundreds of thousands of pounds each year for these communities, and some of them are being used to sponsor the local football team, for example, which is great, but given the amount of money, there seems to be an opportunity for addressing more systemic issues in a strategic way, but right now nobody’s coordinating the allocation of that funding. So we need to make sure that we’re taking advantage of the opportunity that these funds provide and thinking about the kind of legacy we want to create with that funding. And we think that’s a role that Coalfields could play, given our understanding of the region and our relationships with community groups, we could work with communities to develop investment plans.

High-streets

OB: The death of the high-street is an issue not just in South Wales but across the UK. Why do you think high-streets are suffering so much?

MRW: I think in the Valleys and coalfield areas, at a basic level it’s a lack of disposable income, and a lot of the time in these areas there are quite a few high streets serving a relatively small population, so the money’s just spread too thinly. With transport issues across Valleys being so poor, it does make it harder to get high footfall on high streets. But then you have places like Treorchy, which was voted best high street in Britain in 2020, which has bucked the trend. They’ve shown a different way of doing things by not letting big supermarkets open up and outcompeting local independents, for example. And they’ve done that deliberately through the planning process. So I think it’s also about high streets having a unique offer and having a distinct identity and character that’s so important, given the decline in retail on local high streets. In Tredegar, the charity has taken on two assets, showing how the community sector and social enterprise can support town centre regeneration. We’ve established a heritage centre at 10 The Circle, where Aneurin Bevan used to meet as a committee member of the local medical aid society. The building was safeguarded to celebrate its unique history and the town’s connection to the formation of the NHS. The other building provides a credit union branch office and a base for our work, including our cancer support programme, delivered in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support.

Transport

OB: How important do you think transport is to regeneration?

MRW: For us it’s the connectivity across the Valleys that’s a massive issue, and connectivity to employment and services such as colleges and hospitals. In a lot of our communities, not only is public transport poor but a significant minority of people don’t have access to a car, so they’re extremely functionally isolated from employment opportunities and basic services. For example, to get to Velindre, which is the specialist hospital for cancer care, that’s a four-hour round trip on public transport from here [Penywaun in Aberdare], which does nothing for cancer outcome inequalities in our communities. Just look at Blaenau Gwent. Cancer Research UK found that, if you’re diagnosed with cancer in Blaenau Gwent, you’re more likely to die than in any other area of the UK. So transport is key. Not just on an economic level but also in terms of a social impact.

OB: Michelle Rowson-Woods, thank you very much.

Early life

OB: What’s your backstory?

RDT: I grew up in Aberdare, which was a beautiful place to grow up. I’m the eldest of four kids, and I was the only one to go to an English-speaking school, the rest of them went to Welsh-speaking schools. I loved maths growing up and decided to do my degree in it at university. I then graduated and the early part of my career was very hotchpotch. I was a youth worker for a couple of years, I worked in a manufacturing plant in Merthyr Tydfil for a while and then at the AA call centre in Cardiff. I knew I really wanted to work in policy in the charity sector, but the options at the time was you either had to do an unpaid internship - basically, volunteer - which there was no way I could afford to do in London, so I didn’t even consider that, or you got an entry-level job, get your foot in the door and then work your way up. So I decided that’s how I would do it. I had lots of admin experience in Merthyr and Cardiff and then started applying for admin jobs at charities in London working on modern-day slavery, which was an issue that I really cared about. I eventually got one for a small charity and then within a year, I was actually working on policy on modern-day slavery, as well as doing campaigning, comms and media because it was, like most charities unless they’re the really big ones, small and overworked. I was just enthusiastic and willing to take on extra work, and that helped me progress and I ended up staying there for four years.

OB: Was this before modern-day slavery gained the interest and attention of Theresa May when she was Home Secretary?

RDT: Yes, it was in the noughties, around 2006, so still during New Labour. I started working there when they were still using the language of human trafficking a lot more and worked with lots of really great organisations like Stop The Traffik. I ended up burning out horrendously because I was in my early 20s and I wanted to save the world and thought it was up to me. I had no social life, worked all the hours on what was a very traumatic topic to be exposed to so often, and just pushed myself too far. So I decided that I was going to find a job working on something much more technical and less emotionally exhausting, and the job at Transparency International came up in 2011. I went for it and got it, maybe not understanding at the time how prevalent corruption was in the UK, assuming it’d be less stressful. But fifteen years later and I’m still here, which I wasn’t necessarily planning to do. I joined the organisation when its UK presence was very small. There were only three or four people initially and it’s really grown in that time. The job can be difficult, but I love it and I work for an incredible network of people here in the UK but also globally, which is why I’ve stuck with it.

Transparency International, Money Laundering and Corruption

OB: Could you tell me a bit more about Transparency International as an organisation?

RDT: Transparency International is a global movement of 110 what we call ‘chapters’. Each chapter in each country is run by locals, rather than being run top-down from some kind of global centre. In the UK chapter, there’s anywhere between 30 to 50 of us at any one time, depending on funding. About half of us work on global issues because we host a couple of global programmes on defence and health, but I work on the domestic side. That includes things like Covid PPE procurement, looking at some of the corruption risks with how contracts were awarded. We’ve done a lot of work on that and have been quite involved in the Covid Inquiry. I also work on political corruption, thinking about how we ensure that our institutions in Westminster, the Senedd, Holyrood and Stormont are strong and aren’t vulnerable to corruption. I also do a lot of work on money laundering, particularly in Britain’s property market, and how our lawyers, accountants, trust and company-formation agents help people move dirty money around the world and what the UK’s role in that is, and I’ve been working on that for a long time. It’s a policy area with lots of ups and downs, but I feel really privileged to do this job and I don’t think I could have imagined having a job like this when I was 17 and living in Aberdare. I don’t think I even knew jobs like this existed.

OB: Can you give us a sense of the scale of the problems that we’re facing in the UK in terms of money laundering and corruption?

RDT: The exact scale of money laundering is of course unknown because of its very nature. What we do at TI is we tend to look at particular sectors. Through our investigations, we’ve identified £11.1bn of UK property that we believe has been bought with suspicious money. And this is just what we’ve found, right? So it’s almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg, because we have a very small investigations team and they have to work using open-source material, including things like data leaks, and they then marry that together with data from the Property Register, the Land Registry and Companies House and other bits of data.

OB: Obviously, the UK, London in particular, is a hotspot for laundering. Why is it that it feels as though it’s taken a long time for the government to really take an interest in doing anything about it? And to the contrary, it seems like the UK’s been quite a willing participant in facilitating this system. You’d think from an economic perspective, it would make sense to seize assets that have come from ill-gotten gains, because that’s a gain for the Treasury. But then there’s also the inflationary effect that the flooding of dirty money into the country has on house prices and the general cost of living for everyone else.

RDT: So we’ve had moments of action in the UK, but then sometimes it feels as though we take one step forward and three steps back. There’ve been times in my career where myself and others have had to really fight even to stand still. 2016 was a big year. David Cameron hosted a London Anti-Corruption Summit in May of that year and there were some amazing commitments made to tackle it. We all know what happened a month later. Cameron of course left government and we had to really fight to make sure those commitments came to fruition. One of them was the Property Register. Prior to recent legislation, you could buy property in the UK in the name of a company based in the British Virgin Islands. You wouldn’t have to tell the Land Registry who you really were, which is known as ‘beneficial ownership’. You wouldn’t even have to tell the UK law enforcement authorities. It was just a crazy state of affairs. We fought really, really, really hard to hold the government to that commitment, and then in early 2022, it finally passed legislation to make it a reality, which is amazing and has really improved the transparency of property ownership in the UK. There are still loopholes - the major one of which is trusts. We’ve seen legal firms lately advertising on their websites saying that they can help you set up these complex trusts to hide your ownership. We did a big bit of analysis on this a few months ago and we found £2.5bn of UK property owned through these complex trust structures, and we were able to do some investigative work to identify the ownership for some of those properties, some of which did point to suspicious funds of questionable origin. There is, I think, now a real acknowledgement from the UK government of the risk of money laundering into the UK and how UK ownership structures facilitate that, which is great. But we are still vulnerable in many areas.

OB: Presumably you flagged these loopholes during the bill process. Any indication as to why these warnings weren’t listened to?

RDT: First of all, a lot of this stuff is really complex. On trusts, for example, I don’t think anyone had done a big public analysis like the one that we did. So it takes time to just move the needle on these things and make people aware of it in the first place. There are signs of movement, and I’m an optimist. I remain hopeful. The issue of property is one that the public gets very exercised by because of the shortage of available housing and yet you have all these properties that are essentially safety deposit boxes. You’ll have whole high-rises that you’ll walk past at night and they have no lights on. There are buildings where you speak to people with inside knowledge who tell you that condensation builds up on the windows because the flats weren’t being used. Or people would buy these flats and not put kitchens in because the kitchens will date the flat and really it’s just there as an investment to sell in 10, 20 years’ time. [For further reading, see this Vanity Fair piece here] The reality is that this is a great option for people who want to have a safe and reliable investment and a means of laundering their money. It has gotten harder since the 2022 legislation, which is great, but there’s still this remaining loophole that needs to be addressed.

OB: Because you don’t know how big the problem truly is, is it harder to know the effectiveness of the intervention of changing legislation, for example?

RDT: Measuring impact is complicated but there are ways of doing it. So Companies House was affected by a big legislative change that we were campaigning for back in 2023, and when that came into effect, they published some statistics that showed they’d removed tens of thousands of companies from the register. Before the law changed, they had no power to remove a company with dodgy information. Previously, if you set up a company, you could say your name was Mickey Mouse and that you were born on the ninth of April 2026 - as in, you haven’t even been born yet - so the record would clearly be bogus, and yet they did not have the power to remove that from the register, but now they do. And ironically, being involved in the campaign on this, I moved into a new property last year and was getting lots of mail for companies I’d never heard of. I contacted Companies House about one of the companies once the law changed and they told me that there were actually three other companies also registered to my address, and asked whether I wanted them to be removed too, and a month later they were, which was great. So clearly they’re taking steps and things are getting better and moving in the right direction, and I do believe that it’s harder to move money through the UK than it was five years ago.

OB: Given the loophole with trusts still exists, how easy is it for bad actors to just shift all their ownerships to that structure? Does that not just undermine everything?

RDT: If we don’t plug all the holes on the ship, the water’s still going to be pouring in. That’s why, when we tackle money laundering, there’s never going to be a silver bullet. You’ve got to tackle all of those loop holes and that’s what we’re working to do. But you’re right. The other side is responding and adapting to the changes that government is introducing. For example, we’re seeing criminals moving away from using retail banking to EMIs - or electronic money institutions, which aren’t regulated as effectively as a retail bank.

OB: I don’t want to labour the point, but addressing money laundering does feel like a win-win politically, right? No one in the public’s going to be like, “Oh, I want more money laundering, actually.” So it’s odd that this isn’t more of a centre-piece of party manifestos and policy platforms, or more urgency in government to do something about it.

RDT: Exactly, it doesn’t help the economy. I remember speaking to someone recently who lived in London and he was saying there used to be such a strong community in his area with a thriving local economy. There was an estate agent, a pub, a laundrette et cetera, but they mowed down the council houses there and replaced them with these big, empty high-rises, and each one of those businesses shut down because there was no footfall anymore. And it’s not just directly bad for the local economy, it’s bad for the UK’s reputation internationally too, both among other nations and among the international business community. The more the UK is seen as a clean place to do business, I think the more investment it will attract, particularly when you’re looking at things like hidden beneficial ownership, which means that sometimes firms don’t even know who they’re actually doing business with. If we go back to Covid, for example, we know there was a lot of fraud during that time. People applying for these things through anonymous companies, and as soon as they received the money they just disappeared. And once that happens, it’s really hard to chase down and get it back.

OB: Bigger picture, beyond inflating asset prices et cetera, why should we care about money laundering?

RDT: At the end of the day, money laundering is the grease in the wheels that helps people who are engaged in drug trafficking, slavery, child exploitation, organised crime, groups that are stealing public funds. If you can steal money or obtain it through illegal transactions, you need a getaway car, you need somewhere to hide it. And often, these anonymous companies, whether that’s BVI-registered companies or UK LLPs, they are the getaway cars, and then things like high-end property, that’s the safe place where you hide it. And it’s frustrating, sometimes, when we don’t see the progress or the understanding of the human suffering that is ultimately at the end of the chain, probably partly because these are such technical issues. But the perception a lot of people have of money laundering is quite whitewashed and victimless.

Overseas Territories

OB: You mentioned BVI - how big an issue are our overseas territories?

RDT: Firstly I think it’s really important not to group them all together. They’re all very different. However, in the work that our small investigations team do, companies registered in the BVI show up in almost every single money laundering investigation relating to the UK, so they’re a real problem. BVI did publish some information recently about how they’re planning to have a beneficial ownership register. Unfortunately, it’s really, really poor. You can only apply for information from that register if you’re involved in UK court proceedings and that company is relevant. They’ve also said in their proposal that they will notify the beneficial owner when you apply for information about them. So if you’re an investigative journalist and you’re investigating some really dodgy people, guess what? BVI will tip that person off, and who knows what they’ll do with that information.

OB: They’ll even tell the beneficial owner who the person applying for information about them is?

RDT: Yes. We have instances of journalists being killed in the last three years because of investigations they’ve been doing into dodgy people. So it’s not great.

OB: If the government was sufficiently motivated, could they apply the same standards to the overseas territories? Could they say, “Okay, we’re all going to have these rules. We’re all going to have these beneficial ownership requirements.” Or does the UK government have no power over that?

RDT: I think there is more the UK can do to encourage places like the BVI to become partners in the fight against organised crime and human suffering, yes.

Professional Services

OB: You mentioned earlier the role that professional services in the UK play in this whole system. How big of a problem is it that professional services are clearly facilitating this type of crime? Obviously not all professions and not all individuals within those professions, but can we do anything to improve compliance?

RDT: Yeah we can. So at the moment, there are bodies that oversee certain high-risk sectors to make sure they stay in-line with anti-money-laundering rules. So law and accounting - two really high-risk sectors, there are 22 different supervisory bodies that oversee those two sectors alone. It’s really disjointed. Many of them are also representative bodies. So for example, if I’m one of these supervisors, I’m taking membership fees from you but I’m also supposed to sanction you if you break the rules, which is a clear conflict of interest and incentives. Because if you’re the individual, you might just decide to leave. There has been acknowledgement in government of this issue - both the conflicts of interest and the fragmented nature of supervisory systems. They did a big consultation two years ago and we are still waiting with bated breath on how they’re going to reform this and sort it out, because it’s a widely recognised problem. [This interview was carried out this summer. The results of this consultation have since been published, on the 21^st of October. See here if interested] And it is sad, because there are a lot of really amazing lawyers and accountants out there that really do their jobs well and have a lot of integrity. But because this is so badly supervised at the moment, the activity that assists money laundering gives these sectors a bad name, which is a real shame because most lawyers and accountants are not engaged in that sort of thing.

OB: Has the invasion of Ukraine by Russia spurred on action?

RDT: It did initially. So the Property Register, for example, had draft legislation that had been sat in Whitehall for at least two years and once the invasion happened, they announced that they would bring it forward. It was going to happen anyway, but I think the invasion made the UK government realise that they needed to show they were really taking action on this, so they picked it up and rushed it through Parliament.

Political Donations

OB: So what about dirty money and politics? What’s the state of the UK in that regard?

RDT: It’s still very much a problem. Due to company rules here in the UK, you could set up a UK company tomorrow and within 100 days donate millions of pounds to British political parties, even though that company has no operating profits and never had an operating business. And there are probably also ways of doing that as someone registered overseas as well, which is illegal but still possible. And I would say that’s another major loophole that poses a critical threat to UK democracy. I’m really hoping that the government does comprehensively address it.

OB: And unfortunately we had the case of Vaughan Gething who received £200,000 in donations during the Welsh Labour leadership campaign from someone who was under criminal investigation by Natural Resources Wales at the time. And that completely dwarfed anything the combined donations to his rival Jeremy Miles, and obviously he had to resign as First Minister because of that scandal. So that’s not a great image for Welsh politics.

RDT: I think it was not only the highest-ever campaign donation in Wales, I think it was also the highest-ever leadership campaign donation in British political history. And people still ask why it matters. Patriotic Millionaires released the results of a poll of its members a couple of months ago and about 82% of them said they believed that you can buy influence by making large donations. So if the millionaires themselves are saying they believe they can buy influence, then we should probably take that at face value. I’m not saying that every person that gives a large donation to a politician or party is doing it to get influence, but some of them definitely are and it’s a major loophole. Currently, there’s no donation ceiling, there’s no cap at all, and that’s a problem.

OB: Have TI proposed any ways to reform party funding in the UK?

RDT: Yeah, first of all, putting a donation ceiling in place is important. We favour a low cap, but just any cap would be better than what we have now. I think reducing spending limits in the run-up to elections would be a good idea, because at the moment there is so much pressure on the parties to make sure they’re raising as much as the other parties and not have any other party outspend them at elections. It’s also a problem that the Electoral Commission isn’t sufficiently independent, which it needs to be in order to actually investigate and levy fines for breaching their rules. And I think it is affecting trust in institutions, and this is true across voting lines. You have consistently high responses from voters saying that they don’t like the fact that political parties receive huge donations. If you look at the donations data for 2023, 66% of all donations to all parties were made by just 19 donors. So increasingly, rather than our parties being funded by a huge array of people, it’s instead funded by a smaller and smaller group of very, very wealthy and increasingly influential people. And that’s not just wealthy people in the UK.

Covid

OB: You mentioned that you contributed to the Covid Inquiry. How bad were some of the issues you identified?

RDT: We were the only country in the world that had a VIP lane for PPE procurement. We looked at other countries around the world and we were the only ones that had a system where a minister could say, “I know this guy, let’s add him to the list.” People who had no experience of producing PPE before made millions off it and in certain cases produced completely unusable equipment. Our emergency regulations, which suspended regular processes because of the urgency of procuring PPE at speed, were also in place a lot longer than other countries. At TI, we spent a year analysing 5,000 Covid procurement contracts across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and identified around 130 contracts worth over £15bn that had corruption red flags. Now, that isn’t to say definitely that those contracts were all corrupt, we had a list of around ten red flags and if someone had a certain number on more we identified that contractor as high-risk of corruption. £15bn is an incredible amount of money, and we have a duty to make sure the government spends that money effectively on goods and services that are legitimately procured and offer value for money.

Quickfire

OB: A book you’d recommend?

RDT: My favourite book is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier because I read it in my 20s and thought it was a certain type of book with a certain type of ending. I then read it in my 30s with a little more life experience and thought it was completely different type book with a very different ending. So I love that book because you can read it in different ways and I speak to people who’ve read it who have very different perceptions about what they think is going on and what they think the author is doing. I just love it. It’s amazing.

OB: Did they make a film adaptation with Armie Hammer recently?

RDT: They did. No film adaptation I’ve ever seen has truly committed to the story because it’s too dark. Every single adaptation, including that one, changes key things in order to make the story more happy and palatable. Even the Alfred Hitchcock one changed a key part of the plot in order to make it less dark, which I think is really interesting - no one can commit to how dark it really is!

OB: Favourite cafe in London?

RDT: I think it’s probably Alma’s Cafe in Harlesden. It’s just so warm and open and welcoming and you see lots of different types of people when you go in, which I think is a real win. The owner also knows everyone’s name. It’s a really, really special place.

OB: And your proudest achievement to-date.

RDT: I think the Property Register. We started campaigning and working on it back in 2014/2015 and it finally became legislation in 2022. We’re not done yet because we’ve got to fix the loopholes, but we had to fight really hard - and not just us but working with other people in different sectors to really get it over the line, and we didn’t give up and we kept going. It was a seven/eight-year campaign but we got there eventually.

OB: Rachel Davies Teka, thank you very much.

It seems like a question that should have a simple answer, but with regulations, legislation, competing interests, and limited money, it begins to become apparent that the answer is actually far more complex. But as with most political decisions, it comes down to political will, and someone making the argument for why we should do it, and convincing the people with the power and the purse-strings.

For many years, South Wales has lacked a basic, well-functioning, integrated public transport system, which has arguably significantly held back its prosperity and the wellbeing of its inhabitants. One man, an outsider to the political system, decided to do something about it. Over the course of a decade, Mark Barry made it his mission to lobby local authorities, council leaders, the business community and the Welsh Government, to convince everyone that the region needed to take serious action to address its poor transport inheritance.

It’s a remarkable story of will and perseverance, the power of conviction to create a consensus over the need to act. Here’s a whistlestop tour of Mark’s experiences and his philosophy on transport, the built environment, and the make-up of the governance of the United Kingdom.

Early life and career

“It would be a Friday afternoon, for example, and someone would say to you, “Mark, you’ve got to go to Milan on Monday. You’re going to be running a testing programme for this big trading system for an Italian bank.” I wouldn’t know Italian, and I wouldn’t really know about that particular trading system they were running, but you were just dropped in and you had to be credible immediately”

OB: What’s your backstory?

MB: I grew up in Grangetown, about a mile and a half from here, and went to Archbishop Mostyn Comprehensive School in Ely [now Mary Immaculate High School]. And when I was growing up, Cardiff was a declining city, you could see the dereliction of the old steel works and the docks. Then in 1981, I left to study Civil Engineering at Manchester University, but switched to Physics and the Analysis of Science and Technology after a year.

OB: So, you’ve got a bit of an engineering background, then?

MB: Well, a little bit, but I was always interested in urban geography, partly because my uncle Robbie in Italy was an architect, so I became fascinated with urban design, transport and buildings, and as a kid, I would plan and draw cities in my scrapbook. Before moving to Grangetown, we used to live in Mynachdy, and at the time they were building Eastern Avenue. As a five-year-old, I was just fascinated by this huge construction site outside my front door. So there was definitely an interest in infrastructure and urban planning from a young age.

OB: What did you do after university?

MB: I stayed in Manchester for a few years, working for Ferranti Computer Systems Limited [the British company that made the world’s first commercially available computer] as a technical author, which was really dull, I have to say, which included writing some maintenance manuals for a control system for Torness nuclear power station in Scotland.

OB: That at least sounds pretty cool, if the day-to-day reality wasn’t!

MB: I mean, what’re you supposed to do when a nuclear reactor melts down?

OB: Run?

MB: Exactly, run very fast! I then moved to London in ‘87 and lived there for 15 years, working in software design and IT. I ended up becoming a development manager in a London software house, designing databases and software applications for financial service systems – mainly trading, insurance, etc.

OB: That was probably a pretty good time to get into that sector as well - software and financial services.

MB: It was, and then I moved into management consultancy at PA Consulting Group in ‘95/’96 and spent five years there, which was the hardest, toughest, but best five years of my career at that stage. You were just dropped into situations from a great height and expected to deal with it. It would be a Friday afternoon, for example, and someone would say to you, “Mark, you’ve got to go to Milan on Monday. You’re going to be running a testing programme for this big trading system for an Italian bank.” I wouldn’t know Italian, and I wouldn’t really know about that particular trading system they were running, but you were just dropped in and you had to be credible immediately, and that would happen every six months for clients like BP Solar in the US and others in the UK. But PA Consulting was just fantastic. It just gave you this kind of confidence that you could take forward with you for the rest of your career.

OB: That’s interesting to hear, because management consulting, particularly the Big Four, typically has quite a bad reputation. You think of the McKinseys of the world and people wonder what they actually do, what value they actually add, and often they’re just giving cover to leaders by telling them to do things they were already going to do anyway.

MB: My experience was that, whenever I looked around the room at PA, I just saw really clever and capable people. There were people who could develop a methodology to solve a complex problem almost on the spot. Part of the PA model at that time was not a reliance on having reams of documents and a process to make decisions, but empowering people to use their intellect and their judgement to sift through the detail, identify the most strategic issues and make recommendations. A lot of the model was about individuals having the personality and confidence to work within teams of people from other organisations who they didn’t even know and getting them to do something that they might be reluctant to do to achieve a business output.

“People always say, “Oh, there’s no investment funding in Wales”, which may be true, but there is loads of capital to invest in London. There’re VCs all over London, they’re just looking for investable ideas, often no matter where. You just have to meet and talk to a lot of them and get past the inevitable numerous rejections before you succeed”

OB: So how did you end up back in Cardiff?

MB: I actually moved back to Cardiff while I was still working for PA Consulting. They were sending me all over the world so I thought I may as well go back home and bring my family with me. And I’d always wanted to do something back home. I didn’t know what it was but I had an instinct and I had this voice in my head telling me that I had to go back. So after I moved back, my next step at PA would have been to become a Partner, but I just knew I didn’t want to do that. So after I moved back, I left PA and took a job with the Welsh Development Agency [WDA], although I ended up being asked to leave the within a year!

OB: I saw you wrote in one of your articles that you got escorted out of the offices. What happened there?

MB: While I was there, I ended up working in the technology commercialisation and innovation team, and one of the things that PA Consulting did was, if one of their consultants had an idea for a new business, they’d encourage you to bring it forward, develop it, and if they thought it had legs, the partners would support it, the company would invest in it, the person whose idea it was could be involved and be given equity, and PA would help it get off the ground. A couple of those PA spin-outs eventually became multi-million-pound companies, and I thought that was a really good model. My first role at the WDA was working on the commercialisation of intellectual property from universities, and I thought, “How do we get more of these spin-outs”? Or ‘drag-outs’, as I prefer to call them, because nothing emerges easily from a university, it comes out kicking and screaming. And I came across this biological microencapsulation technology at Cardiff University with some colleagues, David Barrow and Jo Daniels, and we all agreed it looked pretty promising. So I went to the senior management of the WDA and told them about my idea and the model that I’d seen work at PA, and proposed that I leave WDA to become the chief exec of this new start-up and that, if they backed me, I’d try to raise money and give both parties an equity stake in it, which I thought all sounded quite reasonable. But then the WDA turns around and tells me that I can’t do that because it’s self-interested. So I suggested that I do it in my own time, but they wouldn’t accept that either. And the way the conversation went was almost as though I’d broken the rules and transgressed somehow. So I told them that I was going to do it anyway and they said that if I did, they’d have to sack me. I effectively told them to do their worst and then they escorted me out of the building! So, me and my business partner at the time decided that we were going to pursue it, but, of course, we’d been blacklisted from any public grant funding in Wales! But we did manage to get seed funding from an early-stage venture capital company in London. People always say, “Oh, there’s no investment funding in Wales”, which may be true, but there is loads of capital to invest in London. There’re VCs all over London, they’re just looking for investable ideas, often no matter where. You just have to meet and talk to a lot of them and get past the inevitable numerous rejections before you succeed in securing a term sheet. So, I ended up Chief Executive of a biotechnology company called Q Chip Ltd for five years based in Cardiff and managed to raise a decent sum. Then - and this is a bit of a theme - I fell out with my investors, because I wasn’t from the industry and I wasn’t a recognised name, and they wanted to move exclusively into pharmaceutical products, which is a lot more investment, a lot longer-term, which can mean much higher risk. Whereas I wanted to focus on diagnostics, which, given what happened with COVID, would have been a good bet. Oh well!

Seeds of a Metro

I have told ministers, “Don’t tell me you can’t afford rail when you’ve made the political decision to make the Metro more expensive to operate than it needs to be.”

OB: So what happened next?

MB: I’d left PA Consulting, been “kicked out” of the WDA, started a business and then fallen out with my financial backers, and I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do next. I’d always been interested in transport and its impact on the economy, and I’d lived in Manchester, which had a tram network, and I wondered why we didn’t have the same thing in Cardiff. I wasn’t a civil servant or a transport planner or anything like that, but I knew the business community. That’s where I was from. My brother, Sion, was also the Business Editor at Western Mail. And in early 2010, I was at an IWA [Institute of Welsh Affairs] conference and I challenged one the speakers and suggested that we should build a Severnside Airport. At the close, John Osmond, who was the IWA director, said, “Why don’t you write an article about transport?” So I started writing it, and next thing you know, I’ve got 15,000 words, which became the first Metro report [A Metro for Wales’ Capital City Region]. I published it in early 2011 and this laid the foundation for all that followed.

OB: The idea must have occurred to you before the moment of epiphany, right?

MB: I’d always been convinced that we had a crappy public transport network. I mean, you travel to other places and you realise how bad it actually is. I had written on it previously and I’d responded to consultations going back to the late ‘90s. I was just baffled why things weren’t improving. And then I learnt about devolution, funding, lack of institutional capacity et cetera, and those sorts of issues were writ large when it came to transport in Cardiff. So, in early 2010, probably just after that IWA conference, my brother introduced me to Roy Thomas of the Cardiff Business Partnership [CBP], which had just formed. This led me to a meeting with David Stevens, the founder of Admiral Insurance, and others who were part of CBP, which was set up to lobby for improving the economic attractiveness of Cardiff and the wider region as a place to do business and a place to work. I shared with them a draft of the report I’d prepared for the IWA saying we should build a metro and they loved it. They said they would brand it and support it. I was self-funded up to that point but they gave me a bit of money to keep it going because the concept resonated with them. In parallel, from various events I’d been to and through various points in my career, I knew people like Terry Morgan who was the chairman of Crossrail [now the Elizabeth Line. Interviewed recently as part of #CylchLDNLive], Jim Steer [co-founder of a major transport consultancy, Steer Davies Gleave, now just Steer], and Robert John who was the Deputy Chief Exec of Canary Wharf -

OB: I actually interviewed Robert a few weeks ago. [See here]

MB: Well give him my regards, because he was really, really helpful. In fact, like those I just mentioned, there were several people like Robert who helped tremendously in shaping my thinking and approach to the Metro.

So I eventually developed this document that was ready to launch in March 2011. At that time, the Welsh Government had no idea, although I had sent a draft to the Welsh Government Transport Minister. I then asked Cardiff Council, who were always very supportive of my efforts, by the way, whether I could have City Hall for a day to host a report launch with the IWA and CBP, and they agreed. I got Terry Morgan to come along and give a speech, as well as Jim Steer, Mark Hopwood MD of Great Western Railway, Mike Bagshaw, Commercial Director at Aviva Trains Wales, as well as well-known transport expert Professor Stuart Cole. The event and the report got good coverage in the media off the back of it, including my first interview with BBC Wales with a younger Nick Servini.

​The general thesis of the event was that the economy of Cardiff and its wider region wasn’t nearly as strong as it should be and we needed to do something significant to give it a boost. Our proposal was that we should build a metro and that it would cost about £2bn. And that event really brought me to the attention of people in the UK rail and transport world, because a lot of them didn’t know who I was, and ever since then, for better or for worse, I’ve become the sort of emotional focal point of the South Wales Metro conversation, and for four or five years afterwards, I became the go-to person to ask about it. After that initial fanfare, I then spent a long time trying to work out how to make it happen. From 2011/2012, I was still independent and I created the Metro Consortium, and did a little bit of work Welsh Government on the electrification of the Core Valleys Lines, which kind of hit the buffers in 2012. The big change for me was when Edwina Hart, the Minister for Business, Enterprise, Technology and Science, was given the transport brief early in 2013. Around that time, I’d written another report saying we needed to combine economic development and regeneration with transport in much more of an overt way. I wasn’t really aware of all the theory behind it, but it just seemed self-evident to me that these things were intrinsically linked. I then helped put together and was interviewed for a Week In Week Out documentary about it with BBC Wales, which broadcast in March 2013. Edwina invited me in shortly after that for a meeting along with Chris Sutton, former Director for CBI Cymru and of Jones Lang LaSalle [JLL]. I thought it was just going to be us three and maybe her advisor. We turn up to Ty Hywel, go up the lift, walk into a room and there’s this massive round table full of people. It was the whole senior transport team! And she said, “Oh, Mark, I’ve got my team here. Could you just tell everyone what you think we’re doing wrong on transport in Wales and what we should do to sort it out?” I had to think on my feet a little bit and try not to say anything that would piss anyone off, so I basically said that I thought they were doing a really good job tactically, but that there was a missing strategic piece linking our long-term investment in public transport with business, regional development and regeneration, and that we really needed to understand that link, especially in South East Wales. And she went, “What does everyone think?” And it was just a series of nods and “Yes, Minister”s around the table. She then said, “Right, everyone go downstairs. I’m going to chat with Mark, Chris and James.” That was James Price, the Director of Economic Development and Transport, who’s now the Chief Exec of Transport for Wales. So I sat down with James, Edwina and Chris, and that was where we started to scope out the Metro impact study.

They then procured the study, and we got Capita, JLL, The Urbanists and others involved. I then led the programme looking into the bigger picture, the vision for what the Metro might be able to achieve. We sketched up regeneration opportunities in places like Merthyr and Ebbw Vale, as well as Cardiff, just to say, “Look, there’s a massive opportunity to bring all these things together.” And I often say now that, looking back, I was creating an Impressionist painting, not a Pre-Raphaelite. Because if you give too much detail, you give people more reasons to disagree with it and more reasons to say no. In doing so I had to continue building support from stakeholders and assemble a broad supportive coalition, so I met every leader of every local authority, just about every chief exec of every local authority, and I presented to half the council chambers. Eventually I got everyone to say they wanted a metro without knowing exactly what it was, because we didn’t have the detailed plans at that point. But it was important to get support for the spirit of the project. Funnily enough, I saw Mark Wild [CEO of HS2 and former CEO of Crossrail] last year when I was up in Glasgow talking about the metro there, and he was saying something similar that resonated with me and the approach we had taken with our Metro, which is that you have to start with the why, and the exact ‘how’ can come later. My vision had three aspects. You build a metro for South East Wales, because firstly, you want to give more people more choice to travel around without a car, secondly you want to enable economic development and regeneration, and thirdly you want to mode shift [encourage people to use modes of transport other than cars] and decarbonise. That’s it. Every metro vision needs to encapsulate those three things. And I wasn’t necessarily an expert on these things at the time. I knew a little bit about light rail and tram trains but I wasn’t committed to one particular mode. I had personal views and I’d asserted things, but they weren’t red lines for me. I was purely focused on how to transform the economic fortunes of South East Wales and Cardiff.

OB: What was it about transport that in your mind you thought, “This is essential, and this is what I’m going to focus on”?

MB: Because it seemed to me that if you go to Manchester, the impact of the Metrolink was really clear. I lived in London for 15 years and part of the value and enjoyment was the fact that you could get around London so easily. I moved to London from Manchester in a car and within four months I sold it because I didn’t need it. I’ve worked in places like Milan and Washington, places that have a certain equity of accessibility. And all I could see here were strangled roads, congested buses, Victorian railways and people trying to make use of an asset that hadn’t been upgraded for 120 years. It was just benchmarking against other cities.

OB: And why did it take you to do this? How much activity was there before you around improving connectivity?

MB: Well, the idea of putting a light rail system in Cardiff and the Valleys was in the proposals for the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation, which included a light rail down to the Bay, linking to some of the Valleys lines. Of course, the problem we had was that rail powers were never devolved and Whitehall is very centralised, even though they’d not long ago given Manchester’ Passenger Transport Authority the power to develop the Metrolink. Sheffield was doing the same and Birmingham was about to do it as well. But they just basically dismissed Wales, partly I think because there wasn’t an organisation in place that could have taken on the responsibility. Welsh Government hadn’t yet been established because it was before the devolution referendum. Nor was there a Passenger Transport Authority in Wales or Cardiff. In 1968, there was the Transport Act, which gave some places passenger transport authorities, such as Greater Manchester, Merseyside, West Yorkshire and Tyneside. And look what happened in Tyneside in the 1970s. That’s the best example. They took some of the local poorly used commuter railway, completely cut it out from the national network, built a couple of tunnels through the city centre and ba-boom, Tyne and Wear Metro. And that was an amazing system that got to 50 million passengers a year by 1985, only to be rolled back when buses were deregulated. But in Cardiff - or Bristol for that matter – we didn’t have the institutional structures or capability here, even though the idea was quite strongly put forward by the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation. I think it was the SRA [the Strategic Rail Authority, the predecessor to Railtrack and Network Rail] that killed it. Another thing that happened, of course, when the Welsh Government came into play in 1999, is that they were looking to influence the second franchise that was being put out to tender by the SRA in 2003. Sue Essex [former Welsh Minister for the Environment] included light rail in Cardiff in their requirements. But of course the West Coast Main Line [the major rail artery in the UK, connecting London and Scotland via Birmingham and Manchester] upgrade was going over-budget, and that basically meant that all the franchises had to be squeezed. The Rail Passenger Committee in Wales argued for more but we just didn’t have the leverage or the infrastructure funding because rail wasn’t devolved. If it had been, the fact that the West Coast Main Line was going over budget wouldn’t have been a problem for us. And the fact that budgets would end up being squeezed again by HS2 too was an obvious risk that I could see 15 years ago, which I set out in my evidence to the Transport Select Committee in 2011. At that time, it was also impossible to get data broken down on enhancement spend in Wales specifically. I wrote a letter to Network Rail asking for it back in 2008 and they got back to me with some wishy washy answer. I ended up doing my own research in 2010 and found that there was no serious UK Government funding for major rail enhancements in Wales whatsoever. There was some funding from Welsh Government, but that came from pots of money that weren’t even supposed to be for rail.

OB: And how was your experience of working with Welsh Government when your proposals for a metro system gained traction and Edwina Hart gave the go-ahead for the impact study?

MB: After I completed the Metro Impact Study programme at the end of 2013, I was brought into Welsh Government for two years on a part-time, fixed-term contract basis to lead its further development. Part of me worried they were bringing me inside to keep me out of the way, and this turned out to be somewhat true. Despite that, I was engaging with experts and trying to build up a bigger body of evidence of technical studies to demonstrate the feasibility of the Metro, but some officials kept trying to water it down into something they could manage. Because, in their view, which on the face of it was right, the Welsh Government had no powers, funding or capability to deliver this thing, so it didn’t make sense to recommend it to a Minister. But I was committed to it, so I had to be slightly Machiavellian about how I went about influencing people. One day I bumped into one of First Minister Carwyn Jones’s special advisers at a rugby match and told her that there was no way this South Wales Metro was going to happen because there were too many barriers internally. And to her credit, she said that she’d get me into a one-to-one meeting with Carwyn to discuss it. Edwina didn’t know and neither did James Price. So, I get to this meeting, and I say to him,

And to his credit, he said, “No, we’ve got to do it.” So, he arranged a meeting with me, James, Edwina and a couple of other senior civil servants. I had to pretend I’d not met Carwyn, because if Edwina knew that I’d met him, she would have known that I’d gone behind her back. And in that meeting, he told Edwina that he would be taking responsibility for the Metro out of her portfolio and that he would be personally responsible for it, which was essential, because it needed that political profile and backing from the top of Welsh Government to convince stakeholders like the Treasury. So, he took ownership and I was part of a core team tasked with moving it forward. And at that point, James Price did his job and said, “First Minister, this is very difficult and there are lots of risks.” And Carwyn said, “James, they’re my risks, not yours.” So, I give a lot of credit to Carwyn for providing the political space for James to say, “Okay, we’ll have a go.” And what James managed to do in parallel was negotiate Core Valley Lines electrification enhancement funding with the Department for Transport, and then used the Rail Act to create Transport for Wales, which was completely the wrong way to do it, but it’s all we had, and procure the next Wales and Borders franchise – and so the Metro. But rather than try to contract for a light rail system specifically, and cut out the Core Valley Lines, de-designate them and turn them into a stand-alone light rail system, we contracted for outputs, which meant that we might not end up getting one, which I felt was a mistake, because I was confident that a light rail system is what we needed.

“people won’t really appreciate how big of a change it is until it’s probably too late for Labour. And they do deserve to get a lot of credit and political capital from all of this. To be fair to them, even when officials were saying, “It’s too hard”, they decided to get on with it and do it, and they should be recognised and applauded for that.”

OB: So, they wanted to be mode-agnostic, is that what it was? That’s a common theme in government, where it doesn’t want to appear to be pre-emptively favouring a certain technology over another.

MB: Exactly, but another thing that happened during the procurement process was that I believe they ran scared of the unions over driver-only operation [DOO]. The unions didn’t want to de-designate to a light-rail system which they believed would open the door to different T&Cs.

OB: What does de-designation actually mean?

MB: Most of the UK heavy rail network is part of the national rail network, and there are rules and regulations that apply, which are overseen by the Office of Road and Rail [ORR]. The asset manager is Network Rail and all the unions and the way you operate, the way you procure, the way you finance the rolling stock, timetables, et cetera are all under that designation. Now, Manchester Metrolink and London Underground, for example, don’t operate under those rules. What happened in Manchester was they cut out a number of non-mainline railways from the national network, which then allowed them to develop their own standards and procedures, terms and conditions and procurement processes, completely separate from what Network Rail does. So, with Manchester Metrolink there was no franchise, just concession-management contracts. I wanted to do that with the Core Valleys Lines - just slice it out, physically, with some managed interfaces if necessary. My understanding was that the rail unions didn’t want that because they could see that if you go for trams or tram-trains on a de-designated light rail system, you don’t need to have a guard opening doors on every vehicle, and you’ve got light rail drivers sometimes being paid 30% less than they are at the moment in a heavy rail system. I don’t blame them for fighting their corner, but the result is that we end up with a more expensive network to operate and with less operational flexibility than could otherwise have been the case. So, in 2016, I left Welsh Government and started working with one of the bidders for the contract, MTR [the former and original operators of the Elizabeth Line until recently], because they were proposing a pure light rail system using tram-trains and I thought I needed to help a bidder to deliver the best solution. And we did have the best solution for the Metro, but it had all these institutional challenges, which would eventually scupper that bid, including the unions, and so we ended up with this odd combination of a heavy rail network running light rail vehicles. But fortunately, and this is the crucial thing, we ended up with tram-trains. The benefits of tram-trains are very relevant. One is you could run them on a de-designated, non-mainline network or tramway, change the Ts&Cs and get your operating cost down. But from a physical perspective, they can go up steeper inclines and manage tighter gradients than a typical heavy rail train, which gives you more flexibility on alignments in the future. The metro system we will have next year, whilst a massive improvement on what was there before, and big shout out to James Price and everyone at TfW for delivering it, is sub-optimal for Cardiff, particularly the frequency of trains through the most densely populated parts of the region being stuck at just 2tph when you need at least 4tph to provide a “turn up and go service”. In theory, a light rail system also gives you more network capacity, because of things like reduced junction clearances and the opportunity to utilise a different control system, but we just haven’t taken advantage of it yet. However, one of the biggest barriers to making our system more financially efficient is minimising the operating costs, and a big part of that is the staffing costs. And if you want to expand, the incremental cost of expansion of our current system is higher than it needs to be. Manchester Metrolink generates an operational surplus because it has a tram driver and then roving customer service staff on a much lower ratio [driver to other staff ratio, that is] than other systems. So, one of the biggest costs long-term is not the initial capital expenditure, it’s the operational cost and the cost of staffing. So on the Manchester Metrolink, the driver will be getting paid approximately 70% of a heavy rail train driver, and there’s no dedicated guard on every vehicle, they instead have roving customer service and revenue protection staff, so your staff costs per vehicle are probably about half of what they will be here. That’s a big difference, especially as we have a slightly lower population catchment on a bigger network area, so you’ve got vehicles travelling further distances with fewer passengers relative to Manchester Metrolink, meaning that revenue per kilometre is lower and you’ve got longer staff operating times. So, I have told ministers, “Don’t tell me you can’t afford rail when you’ve made the political decision to make the Metro more expensive to operate than it needs to be.” But my argument to the unions would be that we want to expand this network, have more tram-trains running more frequently reaching more places, which ultimately means more jobs to go around for drivers and roving customer service staff. We want to make this a bigger successful network, which would be a good thing for the unions too, I think.

OB: So how has Manchester achieved this? Were they more politically brave?

MB: Michael Portillo, who was Secretary of State for Transport at the time, was reputed to have said, and I paraphrase, “You can have this cut-out section of the national rail network for a pound, but don’t ever come back asking for more money.” So, they actually closed down the network for three to four years, so the unions didn’t really have much leverage. They just turned it off, which was a huge disruption, but they started with a strategy, built a whole new organisation and a whole new network and then opened with a bang with a brand-new stand-alone light rail system. Whereas what we’re trying to do is transition gradually, which presents some political risks. We haven’t had, and probably won’t get, that big boom moment where we’re working on this thing for a long time and then it all goes from 0 to 100 overnight, so there isn’t that same psychological impact and the same political win for the government. People just see things get a little better, but then forget how bad it was and take the gradual improvements for granted. And one day they’ll probably ask, “Where’s this new metro, then?” And we’ll have to say, “You’re using it!” So even though completely shutting down a network is disruptive, psychologically, when it reopens, it’s a lot more powerful. And what’s more, the full benefits of the our Metro network aren’t going to be realised until after next year’s Senedd elections, because the trains aren’t running at full speed yet because there are still older trains on the network and the tram-trains are still being tested with new drivers, etc, and the network’s not running at full capacity with higher frequencies, so people won’t really appreciate how big of a change it is until it’s probably too late for Labour. And they do deserve to get a lot of credit and political capital from all of this. To be fair to them, even when officials were saying, “It’s too hard”, they decided to get on with it and do it, and they should be recognised and applauded for that.

OB: So does the Welsh Government now want rail to be fully devolved?

MB: They’re kind of schizophrenic on this. When I was working with Ken Skates five years ago, he wanted to devolve it, and then what happened was, like they always do, some officials, particularly those in London, intervene and say the railway is a liability with lots of risks and future unsighted costs and you need to consider ongoing maintenance, and can Wales manage it, et cetera. But liabilities are part of life, right? You manage them, you insure them and you mitigate them. I think if the Union means anything, you pool your risks and pay a premium and you find a way of doing it. But officials obfuscate, which is what happened in 2005 when we had the chance to have rail fully devolved. Still the biggest devolution mistake, in my view!

Constitutional Reform

OB: You said before that you think we have a 19th century bureaucracy in the UK. What would you mean by that? How would you change the Civil Service and the machinery of government to make it more fit for purpose?

MB: I think, ultimately, the way Westminster and Whitehall works was developed and optimised around the administration of the British Empire and imperial expansion in the 19^th Century, about command and control, about managing an empire, not four nations of the Union on this island. And as a result of that, all major levers of power, especially fiscal, are still in Whitehall. And I think whilst that might have been great for those purposes at that time, it isn’t fit for a more isolated, post-imperial Britain. And although we’ve had some devolution, it’s not really changed much. The fundamental reality is that the Whitehall Civil Service, which has been there for centuries, is very, very London-centric, and all the big decisions are made there, and that’s something that I don’t think suits more equitable development of the UK economy. I was invited to a Network Rail board dinner about two and a half years ago, and Andrew Haines [another Welshman], the soon-to-be-former CEO, was there, as well as some of the senior executives and senior DfT and Treasury officials. And because I was a guest, one of the organisers said, “Mark’s going to say a few words”, and I could see people’s eyes rolling, so I said, “I bet you all think I’m going to talk about rail investment in Wales and lack thereof. And I am! But I’m not going to start there. I’m going to start in Bristol.” And this was around the time that they announced the reopening of the line to Portishead. So, I said,

“Bristol’s a region of a million people. Similar to the Cardiff Capital Region. Had Bristol been in France, there’s no doubt that under the versements transport [the French payroll tax introduced in France in the 1980s for organisations with 11 employees or more, which was hypothecated for transport projects], it would have had a tram network 25-30 years ago, undoubtedly, with four services an hour - proper, urban transit. And yet, we’re celebrating a one train an hour re-opening of an old freight line to Portishead, which probably isn’t the most important thing for Bristol anyway. Is that what we’re celebrating? That’s frankly embarrassing, really, isn’t it? And worst of all, that decision was made by a senior official, not in Bristol, but in Whitehall, based on some value engineering. That’s the first part of our problem. Bristol needs the autonomy and the power and the funding capacity to deliver and develop that itself.”

You look at France, they had no trams before the 1980s, and they then gave cities the power to raise their own funding and now every major city has a tram network. And the last thing I said at that Network Rail dinner in 2022 was,

“In Wales, in two and a half years, we’ve had a little look around and found good business cases for about three billion pounds worth of rail enhancements, but as custodians of our railway, what have you been doing for us? I tell you what, you haven’t been looking, because you’re not designed to look. You’re all very London focused, so local and regional benefits like in Wales, are emotionally not your priority. And we’re left to get the crumbs that fall off the table.”

Everyone at an individual level agreed, but then institutionally it doesn’t happen because that’s the way the institutions are set up. So if you’re Leeds, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle, and even Wales, under the current suboptimal devolution settlement, you’re forced to undergo this undignified bun fight, begging bowl auction before the CSR [Comprehensive Spending Review] trying to twist the Chancellor’s arm and convince the Treasury to give us some change. It’s pathetic and embarrassing. So, I don’t think ultimately that we’re going to solve the UK’s economic problems, equity in the UK economy and the imbalances, unless we really rip up powers, and that means major constitutional change. I believe in a confederal-federal arrangement. I think the Westminster Parliament should become an English Parliament with much greater powers vested across England. We should have a Senate of the nations and regions, and you empower Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Our major cities outside London, like Cardiff, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, should all be competing with the second cities in Europe, like Marseille, Stuttgart et cetera, but they’re being held back.

A Mayor for Cardiff?

OB: If you look at the success of Andy Burnham, for example, in Greater Manchester, do you think that we need something similar in the Cardiff Capital Region? Do we think we need a mayor for the region?

MB: I was always a big fan of regionalisation in Wales and there used to be something called SEWTA, the South East Wales Transport Alliance, which was a voluntary, non-statutory body of all the local authorities in the region, but it didn’t really work because Cardiff didn’t really engage because it was generally overlooked regarding strategic schemes – despite being the biggest and most densely populated local authority. I was hoping that we’d get another, more strategic body with some statutory powers at regional levels, and we do have the SEWCJC, the South East Wales Corporate Joint Committee, which is the formal name of the Cardiff Capital Region, and it’s one of four CJCs in Wales, but it’s still effectively a committee of all the ten leaders in the region, but without a figurehead like a mayor. And I worry this governing by committee will mean that, rather than focusing on region-wide, strategic issues, we just end up trying to appease everyone by giving everyone a slice of the pie, no matter their relative importance to the region. And I think if there was a regional mayor, that wouldn’t happen. But when you have ten locally interested leaders coming together, they’re always more likely to prioritise their own local authority area, because that’s their job. The biggest problem with having a mayor in the Cardiff Capital Region is that it’s effectively half of Wales.

Trains, Cranes and Automobiles

“If Trump thinks that the rest of the world’s being unfair to America and he’s putting up all these tariffs on imported goods, we should do the same with Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb. There are lots of companies that cause significant externalities that aren’t being properly costed. So, I think we need this kind of fiscal innovation to go alongside constitutional reform.”

OB: You talk a lot about the precedence that the car has had in all our spatial planning and about spatial planning not really being joined up. Obviously, nationally, we effectively have modal agencies i.e. National Highways and Network Rail. Do you think we should merge the two to create an integrated transport infrastructure body?

MB: In Wales we are. But I do worry about GBR [Great British Railways]. I looked at the whole consultation document for GBR and they mentioned bus once or twice, and didn’t mention integration at all. Whereas in Wales, TfW has got an integration remit, to do bus franchising for example. I think in Wales we have got potentially a much more integrated organisation and culture developing. Whereas in England, because the scale of it, the DfT is very modally siloed, right? So, all the planning and strategic thinking is all modal-based, which is why I think GBR should be about devolving all those powers to regional bodies so that we can take a much more holistic view of transport. All the DfT should be doing is ensuring balance of funding and some common standards and principles. DfT is almost too big to reform, so I would instead just take power away from it and give it to the nations and regions. In Wales I think you’ve got the right structures emerging, but lack of funding and the lack of powers over rail are getting in the way.

OB: So what role do you think cars have in our cities and towns?

MB: I’ve always said, I’m not anti-car. I’m anti so much car and so little choice, and I think the important thing is accurately pricing and apportioning the negative externalities associated with car use and using that as a means of funding improved public transport to give people more viable options to use it. Look at the New York congestion charge, for example, and the initial data from that. I know we’re not New York but the principles are the same, and the results have been a phenomenal reduction in congestion, improvement in public transport speeds, no impact on retail or footfall, improved air quality, and a big revenue stream to spend on more investment in public transport. You obviously get these drivers from New Jersey, for example, complaining about their freedoms, but I think there needs to be a conversation about the freedoms of drivers versus the freedom of everyone else not to be negatively impacted by excess car use, especially in urban areas. And you need to recognise, as a car user - and we own a car, by the way - that there are a whole bunch of costs that are incurred from driving that drivers don’t directly pay, and that society more broadly has to pick up. Not least, for example, that the DfT estimates that road traffic accidents cost the UK over £40 billion a year if you include unreported costs, and direct costs alone are £19-20 billion. And then you look at the impact of out-of-town developments on places like Newport. No one wants to recognise that the biggest impact on Newport town centre has been 30-40 years of out-of-town development like Spytty Park, Celtic Springs, Imperial Park, Langstone, all of which are just dotted around the edge of the city. I know internet shopping has had an impact, but most towns in the UK first began to be hollowed out by the convenience of car-based out-of-town shopping. And that may be a trade-off that we’re happy with, but I don’t know how aware people are about the relationship between that and the vitality of our high-streets, which everyone seems so concerned about. And for me that, that’s one of the biggest problems, is out-of-town shopping centres sucking out value and wealth from communities. We have large corporations with balance sheets in London or wherever, opening up a large store on the edge of town, outside of walking distance, so locking-in car dependency, employing people on low wages or zero-hour contracts, sucking the money out of the community and spending it elsewhere, or giving the money to shareholders who have no relationship or stake in the town. It’s extractive economic activity. And this is taken to the next level with companies like Amazon, and it’s a similar outcome with companies like Uber, who’ll eventually be trying to roll-out autonomous vehicles. If Trump thinks that the rest of the world’s being unfair to America and he’s putting up all these tariffs on imported goods, we should do the same with Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb. There are lots of companies that cause significant externalities that aren’t being properly costed. So, I think we need this kind of fiscal innovation to go alongside constitutional reform. I wrote a piece a while back about the concept of GDP, and how it doesn’t account for the value of our environment, which it should, because without our environment, without bees and trees, we have nothing, and we need a new metric that takes into account the true impact of climate change and environmental degradation on our economy, because it’s real and it’s only going to get worse.

OB: One of your ideas that I find really attractive is the idea of a Metro Development Corporation. Could you talk more about that?

MB: When I led the Metro Impact Study in 2013, it was all about what the metro could do in terms of regeneration, culture, access to work, local communities et cetera. It’s all good and well spending money on a metro, and that’s great, but so what? What’s it all for? And how can we amplify the impact of that investment? The big things for me are the poor state of our high streets and lack of affordable housing. I know we need lots of new shiny technology companies, but we also need to build people’s lives. So, we need, I think, over 20-30 years, a major capital fund to support new affordable housing, not on greenfield sites, but around our metro network. But that’s going to be difficult, because the volume house builders don’t really want to do that. They want a big greenfield site that are less constrained to get the maximum margins, so you need the public sector to step in. The other thing is the high street. Now, we can’t get rid of all the out-of-town developments, but there’s a lot of stuff you can bring back in. For example, right now, we’re sat across the road from HMRC and BBC at Central Square in Cardiff. They both moved from the edge of Cardiff to the city centre, and it’s had a significant impact. Compare that with Newport, for example. About 35 years ago, the UK Government moved the IPO [the Intellectual Property Office] to Newport and then 20 years ago moved the ONS [Office for National Statistics] there as well, but neither of them is near a train station. They’re in car-based, out-of-town locations. Let’s move those offices to Newport city centre and repurpose the land they’re on currently for housing. But you need an organisation with the capacity and capability to take that on. Another question is, how do we slowly increase the density of the Valleys towns? I’m not talking 25 storeys, but four/five storey, mixed-tenure apartments near metro stations. I think if you had a 25-year programme with sufficient funding up-front, you could begin to create something very special. The connectivity will be there. I think the biggest, most guilty parties are the hospitals and the health boards. They spent the last few decades building hospitals in places you could only get to by car. Royal Glamorgan, Prince of Wales, Llanrechfa Grange. They all wanted their lovely greenfield site, and then dumped the problem of getting there onto patients and staff and the additional transport subsidy onto the Welsh Government Transport department!

OB: So why did they choose to build in these places? Just because out-of-town is cheaper?

MB: Exactly, but then there’s the externalities. So, we’ve got to be more holistic and take a cross-departmental, systems approach to how we appraise these things and how we decide where to build public sector buildings, at a minimum. Over 60 years, the cost to society and individuals of having to make all these journeys by car would far outweigh the initial cost of building the thing in a better-connected place, but from the perspective of the hospital, that’s somebody else’s problem. I’d say, if you’re going to build a hospital, you make it incumbent on them to ensure that there are accessible public transport links. If that means it’s more expensive to build out of town than stay in the city, then so be it.

OB: Mark Barry, thank you very much.

For more details of the story of the development and advocacy for the South Wales Metro, read Mark’s book “How to build a Metro”.