, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
So, I would start off, of course, by disagreeing that these are sticking-plaster approaches. This is real investment in the NHS, which is the area where the Welsh public tell us that they want to see us investing our funding. And then, I would just make the…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
I think it's probably too early to be talking about job losses, because those arm's-length bodies have only had the details of their budgets yesterday, so they'll be working through a series of options. And other organisations, Cadw, for example, will be…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
I should say at this point that we have published an updated SIIA in relation to the current financial year. This looks back at the changes that we made in October. That's been published on the Welsh Government website, so you can read the SIIA for the next…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
We can share it with this committee. I know you'll have a strong interest in that.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
So, there have been some cuts within the range of grants, but we know that by providing local authorities with greater flexibility and dealing with the administrative burden, that does in itself release funding. And this is something that local government has…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
And just to say a little bit more about that, one of the things that we've been doing is looking to reduce the administrative burden on local authorities. When we asked local authorities what that would mean to them and what their key concerns are, we were…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
We've set out the impact of our choices in the strategic integrated impact assessment, and that really does look at the kind of choices that we've had to make and where the impacts will fall. Importantly, we look at cumulative impacts both in terms of people…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
No, the £20 million is additional capital that we've been able to find from elsewhere.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
That released £78 million for reprioritisation.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
This is one of the difficult choices that we’ve had to make as a result of our focus on core front-line public services, essentially. So, the 75 per cent relief relates to retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, and that was due to end at the end of this…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
I'm glad you mentioned the report because we do publish an awful lot of documentation alongside the budget, much of which I think doesn't get the attention it deserves, because we do publish, for example, as Andrew mentioned, the chief economist's report…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
'No' is the short answer to that. I met the latest Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury just a couple of weeks ago, and I hoped that we would be able to move things forward. Before the pandemic, I had a meeting with the Minister of the time, Jesse Norman, and…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
We still overprogramme our budget as well to try and make sure that we do make use of that borrowing. Maybe I'll ask Andrew to talk about our existing borrowing and what that means for repayments in future years.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
Mike Hedges is absolutely right that, actually, councils do have much more flexibility in managing their budgets than we do as the Welsh Government. On borrowing, for example, we're limited to borrowing £150 million a year, and up to £1 billion. Every year…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
I'm definitely confident we would have a different kind of conversation with a different coloured Government in Westminster, because I know that there would be a different approach to devolution. One of the challenges that we get, I think, is a Treasury that…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
Yes, and I do recognise the criticism that we've received for publishing the draft budget in recess, but what most people don't appreciate is what sits behind that, that we only find out our budget in—. Well, it was 22 November this year, and that gives us…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
And it's £166.7 million, and that really is a significant amount of money. I know, again, the sector would like to see that uplifted, and this sector does amazing work and really important work, but we have to see it in the overall context of our Welsh…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
Yes, and I recognise the pressure that local government is under, that all public services are under, but let's remember again, looking back to the autumn statement, that there was no additional funding at all for public services in the autumn statement…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
I think that there will still be considerable pressures in social care. Even with the 3.1 per cent overall uplift to local government, I know that they're going to have to face an awful lot of difficult decisions themselves, including in how they set rates of…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
So, £450 million is the additional that will be provided in next year's budget, but the NHS still is going to have to make some difficult decisions. So, the health boards themselves will be making difficult decisions, but then there has been a level of…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
Spend per head in Wales on the NHS is significantly higher—9 per cent higher than across the border in England. And we saw in-year that we had to provide the NHS with an additional £425 million this year, and you've seen the action that we've taken for the…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
So, I think the concerns about Senedd reform are a complete red herring, in the sense that when you look at our budget, £1 million is allocated to Senedd reform next year and we've just talked about a gap in our budget of £1.3 billion, and we've talked about…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
No, there’s been no funding provided to the Welsh Government in respect of the UK Government’s spend thus far on HS2, and, given the changes to the plans for the programme, clearly now it’s never going to be a Wales-and-England project; it’s a purely England…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
So, I’ll leave the detail of the basic farm payment scheme and the scrutiny of that, if I may, to the rural affairs Minister, who’ll be appearing in front of the relevant committee, and she’ll have the full level of detail behind it.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Draft Budget 2024-25: Evidence session 1
So, overall, we've worked alongside a set of priorities for Government. So, those priorities were about protecting core front-line public services as far as possible, and you'll see funding that is redirected to that, and then delivering the greatest benefit…
