, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 6
I just want to raise primary care. Now, I'm fairly confident, when we have the budget coming out and it goes to health boards, the percentage increase into the health boards will not be equalled by the percentage increase for primary care. It never has done…
, Plenary
Business Statement and Announcement
I'm asking for a Government statement on basic farm payments. I'm asking for a statement providing an update on the provision of basic farm payments and explaining why the Welsh Government is opposed to the Farmers Union of Wales proposal to cap basic farm…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Thank you, First Minister. I’m convinced of the benefits of Flying Start. It stops children starting formal schooling with a developmental age substantially below their actual age. We have seen in England the PM scrapping changes to the childcare system drawn…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
4. Will the First Minister provide an update on Welsh Government support for Flying Start? OQ58938
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
You nearly did. [Laughter.]
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
Thank you very much.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
But that test is not relevant to Wales, is it? Because you've got places like Connah's Quay, which are not far different from the Welsh side to the English side, whereas with the Scotland-England border, the big population centres are back up in the central…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
I saw a map, and it might have been from you, where it showed how close landfill sites in the north-west of England and the south-west of England are to Wales. So, aren't we very dependent on landfill tax in England, and if England dropped theirs by 25 per…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
And volume depends on value. Why would you sell a house that is worth 10 per cent less than what you paid for it, rather than waiting for inflation and other factors to catch up and take it back, at which stage you might want to sell it? I think that that's…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
Before this tax got devolved, when we had stamp duty, what I saw was—and you can tell me if I have got this wrong—that it was volatile and cyclical, and when we had the problem with the financial crash, in Wales, the amount of stamp duty being collected…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
Mine will be very brief.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
Sorry, I was talking back to about 1990.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 5
Talking about consumption, are you talking about consumption in cash terms or volume terms? With 10 per cent inflation, if people spend 5 per cent more, it's a 5 per cent reduction in volume. And haven't gas and oil prices been volatile for a very long time?
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 4
Thank you. That's one of the things that I was banging on about two years ago, when I was making limited progress. I will keep on banging on about it and, hopefully, I will make more progress. I will quote you as being a supporter as well, Victoria. The final…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 4
Can I talk about free school meals? Anybody who has followed me in the Senedd—which is probably nobody outside my office—will know that I was asking questions on free school meals two years ago, and expanding free school meals, and I was getting a lot of very…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 4
I think Luke wants to say something.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 4
I should have said that before I came here in 2011, I taught at a further education college, and the number of students who would not have been there without EMA, albeit not being sufficient, was fairly substantial. I think that we need to perhaps realise…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 4
Thank you. To Victoria: you reported the freeze on the education maintenance allowance and its eligibility thresholds. I spent many years campaigning for EMA to continue after they did away with it in England, and we were much more interested in actually…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 4
Natasha, you have talked about childcare earlier, and you talked about—. 'Disappointment' was one of the words you used—I wrote it down. It's incredibly expensive, but it also has an effect on the broader family when grandparents tend to fulfil caring roles…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 4
One mistake on one form that throws you out means that you don't think anybody's going to give you anything. I just want to ask—I'm not sure who, it might be to Luke—has anybody done any work on the correlation between the length of the forms that people have…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 4
Can I declare an interest? My office is a member of the Bevan Foundation.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 3
And finally, last year you suggested it wasn’t clear what Net Zero Wales commitments were being funded as part of the budget. Do you see it in this year’s budget?
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 3
If my colleague Joyce Watson was here, she’d tell you that she thinks that we ought to have legislation to stop people tarmacking over all their gardens, which is causing problems with biodiversity and problems with drainage. Would you agree with that?
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 3
I'm sure that biodiversity would improve because of cuts in local government expenditure: where they don’t cut grass verges down to an eighth of an inch above the earth, where they don’t cut the grass on the roundabouts to an eighth of an inch above the…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2023-24: Evidence session 3
You talked about biodiversity earlier. I'm very keen on biodiversity. If you ever listen to any of the debates, I normally talk about equilibrium in terms of the environment and the importance of the high-end predators, which stop the rats and seagulls…
