, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Senedd Commission Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session
I am. Diolch, Peredur. Partly going back to what I was talking about earlier, the use of the project fund and the prioritising of it in areas where you can actually make early savings, I'm not asking you to tell me what you're going to do now and what the…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Senedd Commission Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session
Can I just give some feedback? My office is never used on a Monday; my office is never used on a Friday; and it is very rarely used on a Thursday—pushing on to never. So, you could turn the heating off there. And I'm sure that an awful lot of other Members…
, Finance Committee
Papers to note
All we really need is a page of costs and savings. I can understand that bit.
, Finance Committee
Papers to note
I was just going to say, obviously, we'll note that letter, but can we write to the Minister asking for a breakdown of costs and savings within the Bill for us to take the opportunity to scrutinise it, even if we scrutinise it without a ministerial presence?
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Biodiversity
I very much welcome the statement by the Minister. We cannot continue to lose species. I'd take up more than my minute by listing the species in Wales that are under threat, but in biodiversity, of course, we need an equilibrium. We cannot afford to lose…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Swansea Council was never going to build 1,600 houses of its own. That would be more than they've built in the last 30 years. What they were relying upon is the private sector to build, and the private sector only builds when it can make a profit. The problem…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
Thank you.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
You say most of the products are intra-UK—this is my final question—do we import any?
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
Thank you very much. Finally from me, the benefits from revenues total £8.6 million from the manufacturing sector switching to non-plastic, but that's for the whole of the UK. Do you know how much of that would be for Wales?
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
I speak as somebody who enthusiastically supports the Bill, but I have to again stick to financial questions as Peredur looks at me, so I was just saying what things could be done to make it look better when somebody in the Chamber gets up and says, 'Is it…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
Will you be updating that because oil prices have gone up rapidly? Oil prices in Britain have gone up even more rapidly because oil is traded in dollars and the pound isn't doing very well against the dollar at the moment. Are you going to update that…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
I know, but I can only ask financial questions, so I had to find my way around that. The other thing is that you've got a cost of £17.1 million as the additional cost for business and customers to replace single-use plastic items with non-plastic…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
You and I represent the River Tawe—we're halfway across each at the bottom of it—and there are problems of plastics ending up in the River Tawe, which cannot be good for fish, and certainly isn't good for the environment. So, I'm not supposed to ask you this…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
Thank you. The plastic bag made a huge difference. I spend a lot of my time on the weekends visiting sports grounds, and they used to be covered in plastic bags. Now, when I see a plastic bag, I notice it, because it's a very rare event. You could change…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
Oh, good, because we might see some of them coming back again, because they were much better than the current plastic ones.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
So, the ones that aren't marketed as single-use, the old, hard—
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic Products) (Wales) Bill
I got confused, Minister—I hope you can unconfuse me. You will remember when we used to have multi-use plastic knives and forks, which were washable and could be used several times. They tended to be either brown or sort of a see-through plastic—there were…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—Pre-budget scrutiny
Well, the Trefnydd—. Sorry; through you, Chair, the Trefnydd tells me, when I complain to her, that the amount of time Government give for a debate is set by Government not by her.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—Pre-budget scrutiny
Just two things, outside the protocol but within your power, or within the Government's power. Can we have enough time for the budget debate? We have less time to debate the budget here than the average local authority has to debate its. We used to have an…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—Pre-budget scrutiny
Very briefly. I think one of the saddest things is that the Treasury seem to think that the National Assembly for Wales is another name for the Welsh Office, and I think that is a problem we suffer from. But there was going to be an appeals mechanism. Does…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—Pre-budget scrutiny
Thank you.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—Pre-budget scrutiny
And about 15 per cent on goods and equipment and maintenance, et cetera, and 5 per cent on others. But, anyway, we're not here to scrutinise the health budget. The final question is: we have this situation, we'll know what the budget is for next year, how do…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—Pre-budget scrutiny
It was the last time I saw it, but as I keep on mentioning, I'm quite often out of date on some of these things. It was well under 5 per cent last time I saw it. Pay was running about 70 per cent or 75 per cent.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—Pre-budget scrutiny
As a percentage of the NHS budget, under 5 per cent?
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24—Pre-budget scrutiny
But, food is not a huge part of the NHS budget, is it?
