13 January 2022 , Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
No. Thank you.
13 January 2022 , Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
I want to talk about the integration of health and social care. I think of them as a continuum rather than cut-off points. Can the Minister tell us the exact figure to be allocated to the new social care regional integration fund? How will schemes be…
13 January 2022 , Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Finally from me, Chair: I think that we've seen one really good example in Designed to Smile, which has really reduced the number of children having fillings. When you go to a poor area of social deprivation and an 11-year-old girl asks you what a filling is…
13 January 2022 , Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
If I move on to something that we discussed in some detail yesterday, so I'm not going to repeat everything I said yesterday, on prevention and health inequalities, Chair. You'll know my view on health inequalities after yesterday. But can I ask how much of…
13 January 2022 , Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Diolch, Cadeirydd. Financially, primary care has lost out following the merger of primary and secondary care in the health boards. How will the budget use targeted investment to improve primary care provision and stop people having to use A&E for their…
13 January 2022 , Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Can I just say I agree entirely? If you read a Nuffield report from 2010, it shows a huge reduction across the health service in England and Wales, but especially in Wales, in the number of people dealt with per consultant.
13 January 2022 , Health and Social Care Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: evidence session with the Minister for Health and Social Services, the Deputy Minister for Social Services and the Deputy Minister for Mental Health and Well-being
Lots of other organisations outside health have made substantial reductions in their fixed costs—things like LED lighting, things like reducing the cost of agency staff. I know that nursing agency staff is a huge cost in the NHS, and I also know that…
12 January 2022 , Plenary
Plaid Cymru Debate: Health inequalities
Health inequality has been known for over 50 years, when Dr Julian Tudor Hart wrote an article in The Lancet on the inverse care law. The inverse care law is the principle that the availability of good medical or social care tends to vary inversely with the…
11 January 2022 , Plenary
Debate on a Statement: The Draft Budget 2022-23
Our spending review set up an unadjusted Welsh block grant from the Treasury through to 2024-25. This three-year budget is something many of us have been calling for for a very long time, and allows for longer term planning. Wales Fiscal Analysis estimate…
11 January 2022 , Plenary
Business Statement and Announcement
I would like to ask for two statements. As someone who has continually asked about the public sector provision of supply teachers, I have long believed that supply teachers are being badly treated. I was very pleased to see the proposed action in the Welsh…
22 December 2021 , Plenary
Statement by the First Minister: Update on COVID-19
The normal way to compare action and inaction is to have a control sample. Brazil and the southern states of the United States of America have given us such a control sample, but with catastrophic death rates in those countries. I'd like to raise two points…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Welsh Tax Acts etc. (Power to Modify) Bill: Evidence session 1
Thank you very much.
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Welsh Tax Acts etc. (Power to Modify) Bill: Evidence session 1
Whilst it's very unlikely that a made affirmative decision would be overturned by the Senedd, and if you were the Minister at the start of that procedure you probably wouldn't be the Minister at the end of it, if it was overturned—. What I'm trying to say is…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Welsh Tax Acts etc. (Power to Modify) Bill: Evidence session 1
Last year, you had an example, didn't you? The stamp duty land tax in England was changed, and land transaction tax rates and thresholds were changed in response to the changes. How much did that cost?
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Welsh Tax Acts etc. (Power to Modify) Bill: Evidence session 1
Thank you. That takes us further on to the position of cost. One of the things this committee, and as a Senedd in general, has been very keen on is realising that costs of implementing legislation mean less money available for other services. Many of us, I…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Welsh Tax Acts etc. (Power to Modify) Bill: Evidence session 1
And moving on, responsibility for the administration of land transaction tax and landfill disposals tax is with the WRA. How confident are you that the WRA can react quickly and effectively, and do you expect them to incur extra costs if they do?
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Welsh Tax Acts etc. (Power to Modify) Bill: Evidence session 1
Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Minister. From what you said earlier, I take it that when we eventually get aggregate tax, which we seem to have been waiting for forever, these rules will apply to that. And if we had a land value tax, it'd apply to that. And any…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Welsh Tax Acts etc. (Power to Modify) Bill: Evidence session 1
But land transaction tax has both been volatile in terms of the amount of money it brings in—probably the second most volatile tax—and also there have been continual changes, not every year but certainly every several years. Landfill disposals tax is slightly…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Welsh Tax Acts etc. (Power to Modify) Bill: Evidence session 1
Yes. My question is really: these taxes are relatively new, why didn't you—you weren't the Minister in charge; why didn't the Welsh Government—bring them in at that time? Why are you bringing them in three years down the line?
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session 1
I suppose I and the host unmuted me at the same time then. I think that I absolutely agree with you on that, but a number of the grants you've given out—some of the housing grants, for example—you've kept at exactly the same rate for the next three years, so…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session 1
Thank you, Minister.
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session 1
Just moving on, continuing with the third sector: next Friday, a week Friday, a number of third sector organisations are in serious danger of sending out redundancy notices to their staff, as they do every New Year's Eve, because they haven't got certainty of…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session 1
Finally, moving on to local government—and I don't often say that the local government settlement appears fair, and I think you've been generally welcomed by local authorities—but local authorities themselves fund a huge number of organisations in the third…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session 1
My final health question, and this drifts into local government to some extent as well, and to other areas: health improvement. Is it any surprise that people living in cold, damp conditions that are overcrowded and who are not eating particularly well are…
22 December 2021 , Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2022-23: Evidence session 1
As I say, there's a lot of information there and maybe I missed it, but I was trying to break it down into four areas: the additional money that is needed for pay; the additional money that is needed to deal with the pandemic, which is actually there; the…
