THE general election is a chance to “end 14 years of neglect” and see two Labour governments working together to “transform” Wales, First Minister Vaughan Gething told the Wales TUC today.

Mr Gething vowed to fight for the future of Welsh steel, trade union rights and public ownership even if standing “largely alone” as Welsh governments had since 2010, but ideally in partnership with a Labour government at Westminster.

Despite more than a decade of straitened budgets under the Tories, Labour in Wales had delivered a publicly owned railway system and ended the right to buy to defend social housing, he stressed.

“Wales upholds the democratic right to strike, has social partnership enshrined in law and public services protected against privatisation … we have not and will not collaborate with Tory attacks on trade unions,” he said to applause.

Turning to Wales’s industrial future, he vowed: “There is nothing I wouldn’t do to save sovereign steel in Wales and the thousands of jobs that depend on it,” arguing that the steel industry is “vital for green growth and our collective security.”

A British-level Labour government would be able to convince Tata Steel investment is on the table to save the steel sector, he said, referring to Keir Starmer’s promise of £3 billion investment in the industry.

Mr Gething thanked the Wales TUC general council for standing in solidarity with him in the face of press attacks, and said when Wales TUC was established in 1974 few could have imagined it would be addressed by a black first minister and led by an Asian Welsh woman, Wales TUC general secretary Shavanah Taj.