All of the biggest parties that we can vote for here in Wales have announced their General Election manifestos. We had the official promises for the Conservatives, Labour, Green Party, Reform and Plaid Cymru, so we take a look at what parts of those manifestos are actually important to Wales, and what doesn’t affect us.
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00:00 If you didn't already know, there's a general election coming up and it's now less than
00:06 a month away. We've seen the campaign trail start and now we've hit the latest milestone
00:12 of all the major parties announcing their manifestos. This means that plenty of topics
00:17 from taxes to transport will be on the agenda for parties and politicians all across Wales.
00:24 Devolution has been in place for around a quarter of a century and it means that certain
00:29 powers are afforded to the devolved governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These
00:35 powers vary between nations but in Wales there are some important fields that are governed
00:40 from within the country. Arguably the biggest of those fields is health, which includes
00:45 obviously the NHS, which is the sole responsibility of the Welsh government in Wales. That means
00:51 that any specific policies about the NHS from the major parties during this general election
00:56 cycle are only applicable to England. The same rules go for other areas too, like education
01:03 and transport. That means that issues regarding schools is, like health, only relevant to
01:08 England at the moment. Plans to change the curriculum or increase funding to schools,
01:14 for example, would not directly benefit schools in Wales. There are plenty of different areas
01:20 that are also not relevant to the people of Wales during this general election, like agriculture
01:25 and rural development, the environment, culture, highways and transport, tourism, the Welsh
01:31 language and local government. There is obviously plenty of overlap, for example in terms of
01:36 the environment, climate change is an international issue, so even though the environment is a
01:41 devolved matter, it could be something that has a big impact on Welsh people depending
01:45 on what Westminster do. Devolution is incredibly complicated and has changed constantly over
01:51 the last 25 years, but during the general election it's important to know what matters
01:57 here in Wales.
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