Jeremy Miles on why he turned down a campaign donation from a man convicted of health and safety offences

Jeremy Miles has explained why he turned down a donation to his failed leadership bid from a man convicted of health and safety offences. Mr Miles, who was narrowly defeated by Vaughan Gething, has also elaborated on what he has told The Development Bank of Wales after questions were raised about their involvement with a businessman who funded his rival's campaign.

Mr Miles, who wanted to be Labour leader and First Minister, has already said he would not have accepted the £200,000 in donations that Mr Gething's leadership campaign took from Dauson Environmental Group, whose founder David Neal received a suspended prison sentence in 2013 for illegally dumping waste at a conservation site.

Nearly a year prior to the donations, a subsidiary company within the Dauson group, Neil Soils, received a £400,000 loan from the Development Bank of Wales for the acquisition of a solar farm. At the time of the loan Mr Gething was economy minister with responsibility for the development bank.

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Chief executive of the development bank Giles Thorley told a Senedd committee during his eight years in the role he had never been contacted or pressurised by any Welsh Government minister. Giving evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee at Westminster earlier this month, Mr Miles confirmed that he had asked the development bank to reflect on whether any recent experience had caused it to look again at its diligence processes.

Mr Miles said: "In light of what has been in the press recently, my question to the development bank, as I said to the committee, was would they reflect on their due diligence processes. Ultimately, that is a matter for them as they are arm's length from the government, but it does seem appropriate for me to ask them to reflect."

He said he was not seeking reflection on any individual transaction, but on the bank's overall approach.

Asked whether the development bank should in future consider making it a condition of any lending that firms make no political donations during investment terms, he said: "It is a matter for the development bank to have in place processes and procedures which are appropriate for what their functions are."

"As a minister, my role is to look over the course of a remit to the bank as to whether it is meeting its objectives. It is not about individual transactions but overall performance."

During his leadership campaign, Mr Miles received a donation of around £2,000 from James Hadley, who in 2009 received a community sentence after admitting health and safety offences. A teenage girl suffered burns on a sunbed at one his salons in south Wales. The donation was subsequently declined.

Mr Miles was asked how long after receiving the donation was a decision made not to accept it and the rationale for doing so.

He said: "The rules provide for a mechanism to decide, having received the money, whether to accept it into the campaign and in that period I decided not to accept it. There are lots of reasons why people decide to take donations or not, and I decided in that particular context not to."

Mr Miles, whose portfolio also includes energy and responsibility for the Welsh language, said his focus will be "practical and actionable", rather than on creating new strategies.

"We will start in the next few weeks with two projects on how we accelerate growth opportunities in renewables and how we deliver change on the ground in the take-up of future skills."

"The next round of three projects will be about SME productivity, effective regional working and on artificial intelligence. The economy was front and centre and the top priority of my campaign. My view is that we will achieve all the other things we want to as a government around health, equality, education and tackling poverty, only if we have a truly sustainable and growing economy which is offering decent jobs to people right across Wales."

"Being offered the opportunity of doing this role and having energy as part of an expanded economy portfolio has been fantastic."

He said he will set up a new national economic council, for which members will be selected through a public appointments process, to replace the existing ministerial advisory board.

Mr Miles said: "My basic message is I want to have people on that council who will challenge us and bring different perspectives to ones we may have, as I think it is important to have that open discussion with people who may see things differently to us. So I am keen to receive constructive challenges from people who will think outside the box and encourage us to do the same."

Mr Miles welcomed the recent evolution of the Cardiff Capital Region that covers the 10 local authorities of south-east Wales under a legal footing as the first of four planned corporate joint committees covering the whole of Wales.

He added: "I think there is absolutely a task for us as a government and the regions to work more closely together."

"In a world where access to public funding is much more constrained than any of us would like it to be, we have to make sure that everything else is aligned and pushing in the same direction."

"That is certainly true within the Welsh Government, but it is also true between the Welsh Government and local authorities. I would also like it to be true between us and the UK Government as well."

The university sector in Wales, and for the UK as whole, is facing significant financial challenges. UK-wide, around 50 have confirmed redundancy rounds, including voluntary schemes at Swansea and the University of South Wales with the sector seeing a significant fall in overseas students in the face of tougher visa rules from the UK Government.

Universities have become increasingly reliant on higher-paying foreign students to subside loss-making domestic students, with calls for the current student fee cap of £9,250 per academic year being increased and allowed to rise in line with inflation.

Mr Miles said: "It is a concern and is happening right across the UK because of the pressure that the higher education funding model is under. What I want to see in Wales is the QR [quality-related research] funding that we make available having the biggest possible impact it can and having that direct line of sight between research funding on the one hand and economic impact on the other. I think we need to emphasise that there is more than we can do to make sure that we commercialise that research and development which benefits the economy."

Indian-owned steelmaker Tata is still on track to end heavy steelmaking at Port Talbot, with the closure of its two blast furnaces, by September. The company said the current primary steelmaking model is financially unsustainable, claiming it is incurring losses of £1m a day.

As part of a £1.2bn funding commitment, with £500m from the UK Government, it plans to invest in a new arc furnace at Port Talbot, making steel from scrap steel.

The ending of primary steelmaking will see nearly 3,000 jobs losses across Tata's UK operations, including nearly 2,000 at Port Talbot. Mr Miles said: "Tata has been clear in its approach [blast furnace closures] and most recently to the First Minister in the meeting in Mumbai."

"I think one of the many reasons why the news from Tata is so hard to swallow is the point at which the announcement has been made is that we are weeks from the prospect of a new government with a fundamentally different approach to investing in the economy and the infrastructure that we need for the renewables of the future, which will change the level of demand for steel in the Welsh economy and the UK economy more broadly." For the latest politics news in Wales sign up to our newsletter here.

"With that on the horizon, it is absolutely the worst point in time for this decision to be taken."

"There are different alternatives for the future. They do require capital investment, but we have an incoming Labour government that is prepared to make that investment. So they shouldn't make any irreversible decisions until there is an incoming Labour government in place."

He was asked if a new Labour government in Westminster would commit to subsidising losses at Port Talbot in any extended period for blast furnace steel production. The Labour Party had made a £3bn commitment to support the UK steel sector, but it is unclear what amount could go to Port Talbot.

Mr Miles said: "This is a step-change in terms of the level of commitment and investment from what the current government has put in place and comes with an industrial strategy which is the critical aspect.

"The Welsh Government supports a just transaction to the new method of steelmaking and that involves keeping a blast furnace open longer and making the transition more smoothly and sustainably. That is what we want to see happening and with a different government there is a stronger prospect of that happening."