SWANSEA: City name-checked alongside Oxford and Cambridge in new Chancellor’s first big speech

Swansea has been named by the new Chancellor as one of the places proving Britain’s innovation formula works, alongside Oxford, Cambridge and a handful of other cities.

John Healey, delivering his first major speech since becoming Chancellor in July, told an audience at the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry on Monday that local leaders, universities and businesses had built clusters of innovation across the UK.

“Our UK formula works: local leaders working with world-class universities, investors, local businesses have created clusters of innovation across the UK, not just in Oxford and Cambridge but in Leicester, Swansea, in Strathclyde, Newcastle, yes, in Manchester and in Rotherham,” he said.

As a result, he said, Britain is “world leaders in frontier technologies, in quantum, in nuclear fusion, in AI, in advanced manufacturing”.

Watching from the audience was Swansea West’s own MP: Torsten Bell, the pensions minister named by the Chancellor among “the brilliant Treasury ministerial team” at the event.

Mr Bell said afterwards it was “great to hear John Healey use his first speech as Chancellor to shout out the world-leading innovation taking place in Swansea”.

“He is totally right that innovation is crucial to growing our economy and boosting people’s living standards,” he said in a post on Facebook.

He pointed to what he called good news in the first half of the year, saying the UK had been the fastest growing economy in the G7 with GDP per capita rising, adding: “That does not mean that everything is rosy. It means that lots has been done, and we’ve got a lot more to do.”

What the speech promised, and where

The Chancellor set an ambition to double the number of “unicorn” firms, private companies valued at more than a billion dollars, promising the state would act as an early customer to help them grow.

He also promised to hand city regions greater powers to shape local industrial strategies, and announced a £150m fund to back innovative firms. That money is earmarked for the north of England.

That detail is at the heart of the criticism: Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Liberal Democrats have accused the Chancellor of treating Wales as an afterthought, with the speech’s headline funding heading elsewhere and its new powers aimed at England’s city regions.

Critics also point out that Swansea’s mention was the speech’s only reference to Wales.

For Mr Bell, the moment lands neatly with his own campaign: in March he wrote for Swansea Bay News that it was time to stop talking Swansea down, pointing to the Civic Centre deal, Pride in Place funding and Celtic Sea renewables as proof of the city’s momentum.

The speech now feeds an autumn of bigger decisions. The Chancellor has already warned publicly that the Budget could be tough, and Swansea will learn then whether a name-check comes with money attached.