Plaid Cymru leader's free secondary school meals pledge

Plaid Cymru-led councils will aim to offer free school meals to all secondary pupils within five years, party leader Adam Price says.

Free meals are already being extended to all children in primary education under Plaid's co-operation agreement with Labour ministers in the Senedd.

Mr Price announced the policy at Plaid's party conference, where he acknowledged the "disappointment" of last year's Senedd election.

The party came third in the polls.

Mr Price said the co-operation agreement he struck with the Welsh Labour government had given the party influence in a wide range of areas including securing the extension of free school meals for all primary school pupils.

Plaid Cymru leads four of the 22 Welsh councils, with elections due in May.

The roll-out of the £200m universal free school meals programme for primary pupils is expected to start in September.

In his conference speech in Cardiff, Mr Price said Plaid Cymru-led councils "will commit to setting the goal and begin immediately planning to extend universal free school meals to all secondary school pupils within the next five years".

"Through free school meals for all we will begin to create a Wales free of hunger and poverty."

The last time local elections were held in Wales, in 2017, Plaid Cymru made modest gains overall, increasing their majority in Gwynedd and becoming the largest party in Anglesey.

More recently, there was disappointment for Plaid at last year's Senedd election.

The party won only 13 of the 60 seats in the Welsh Parliament and lost the key constituency of Rhondda.

Mr Price acknowledged the result in his speech: "Of course, we would have liked to have done better than we did. But the disappointment of the result spurred us on to find a new way forward.

"As so often in our history we dusted ourselves down and resolved to win the argument instead."

Plaid Cymru promised an independence referendum at the last election. At conference, Mr Price warned party members that the road to independence would take time.

"Not in one great leap" he said, "but step by step on a road that is long."

Referring to the co-operation deal with the Welsh government, he said: "We snatched our moral victory from the mawing jaws of defeat - on free school meals, on rent control, on second home taxes."

Mr Price said that with Plaid "Wales moves forward" - but that means "accepting the trade-offs and contradictions and cumulative little victories that being in government, locally and nationally, inevitably means".

He added: "Our place is to be in government, or at the very least influencing it from the outside as much as our numbers will allow."

Adam Price's speech is notable for its explicit recognition of the party's disappointing performance in last year's Senedd elections.

But Mr Price goes on tell party members they've had a big influence over the Welsh Labour government's policies via the co-operation agreement that the two parties have signed.

The extension of free school meals to all primary school pupils is a badge of honour for many in the party.

So with local council elections looming, it's no surprise to see the party wanting to double down by aiming to include older children in the offer in Plaid run local authorities.

But with inflation putting the squeeze on council budgets, that's a big challenge.

Another big prize for the pro-independence party would be a larger Senedd - something that Welsh Labour supported at its conference a couple of weeks ago, though tensions remain over what sort of electoral system to adopt and the timescale.

On the latter, Adam Price was clear in his speech he wants it ready for the next set of Senedd elections in 2026.