, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
Inflation has come down—this is really a capital question—so are the prices for capital projects also coming down?
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
This is on pay awards. No treasurers or finance people worry about anything more than pay awards, because that smashes right the way through whatever budget you thought you had. Are you expecting the pay awards for 2024-25, which have gone through, to be…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
Yes. Thank you.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
The same as with student loans, which I think is a Ponzi and is going to explode at some stage. But the fact that it goes up massively continually doesn't matter at all to the amount of money that the Welsh Government can spend on a day-to-day basis.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
Sorry, when I said 'cash', I meant spendable cash. As we've seen previously, there are various changes within the supplementary budget associated with international financial reporting standard 16. Are all those just technical or are those taking money out of…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
So, it's going to be covered by consequentials.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
I'll prefix this by saying there's cash, there's cash that is covered by consequentials and there's accountancy standard movement of money. I'm going to ask you a number of questions. Which ones of these do these fall into? The £200 million associated with…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
I'll just end with: local authorities have far greater ability to move things into capital maintenance if they have lots of capital, and move things into revenue maintenance if they have plenty of revenue, without anybody seeming to be worried at all. I'll…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
Sorry, I hate to keep on pressing this, but where do I find out how you make those decisions then?
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
Well, it will raise the value, because parts of the hospital would not be able to work if the lighting system's out. I'm not talking about lightbulbs, I'm talking about changing the lighting system maybe to LEDs, taking them straight off. Would that be…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
But putting new lighting into a hospital, which will last longer than 12 months—are you going to treat that as revenue or capital?
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
But can you move it? Can you move it? If you've got to put lighting into a hospital, which is being dealt with by revenue, can you transfer that to capital?
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
You used to be able to move revenue into capital without any control, but there's also that grey area of capital of maintenance, isn't there? If you look at schools, a new boiler for a school can be capital or maintenance; putting a new lighting system into a…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government First Supplementary Budget 2024-25: Evidence session
As far as the Treasury’s concerned, it shouldn’t really matter. Once this money is out, it’s out. I’m not going to talk about capital, because that’s more complicated. But, once the money’s out, whether you put it into reserves, whether you take it out of…
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
Thank you very much.
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
I'd just take things on a stage. I mean, I knew Chris very well when he worked for Swansea Council, and he may or may not have liked me, but the danger is that people bring unconscious bias of people they worked with who they liked or didn't like during their…
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
You've also got people who've come from fairly senior positions in some local authorities, for example. I see two in front of me. I mean, does that become a problem at times?
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
The last question from me—and you answered the timeline question earlier, and you're reporting back on that—you all live, I would guess, somewhere between Llanelli and Monmouth, or the vast majority of staff live in that south Wales area, so you're actually…
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
There must be a mixture of approach across the same council, never mind anything else, where you'd have letters sent out from one part of the organisation from relatively junior members of staff, whereas, in education, it was always the director of…
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
I can talk about Swansea Council probably more than I can talk about most other places, and, with the director of education, for example, every letter that went out went from the director of education. It may have said, 'Please contact Chris Vinestock', who…
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
Do you feel you're giving your staff enough support? I know you're going to say 'yes'. Do your staff feel that you give them enough support, and how are you investigating whether they believe they're getting enough support?
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
Have the staff identified other changes they feel would be beneficial, outside of the report?
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
Diolch, Cadeirydd. Did the review demonstrate any particular challenges for the team investigating elected Members code of conduct cases, and is there any specific training or support you will provide to the team, going forward?
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
But they have a public view, don't they? I mean, if somebody 'likes' Daily Mail headlines, Peter would probably agree with them. But that would be seen by many people, including me, to be showing a right-wing bias.
, Finance Committee
Review into the operations, processes and investigations carried out by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales: Evidence session
A simple thing, based on today, there's legislation coming in to improve workers' rights and there's also the Daily Mail attack on it. Now, would 'liking' either of those be seen as showing political bias?
