, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
So, overall in this financial year, we've made £112 million available to support people arriving from Ukraine, and we've done that because we're absolutely committed to making our claim of being a nation of sanctuary a reality. That's why we've provided the…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
First of all, just to say how pleased I was with the work that Alma Economics did for us. It was an independent review of the application of the LTT legislation, which was something that was agreed to when the legislation was undertaken. It was a statutory…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
Just to add that we do use the Swiss study in terms of our WRIT ready reckoner, so that people can understand what we've built in in terms of what we would expect to be behavioural change based on what is the best proxy, but there are so many unknowns. I…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
Yes.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
Yes. And we've talked about the interest that there is in the Senedd in different bands, and so on. So, I think it's a big picture that—
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
Yes, you'd need, obviously, to have to—. This is one of the things in terms of behaviour change as well; there is a range of things that we have to consider, not just where people are located, and so on. So, I think there is a whole range of things that need…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
So, certainly for those inactive and ceased accounts, which were the large part of those uncorroborated accounts, there's obviously no risk there. And at the moment, obviously, we have the same Welsh rates of income tax, so there's no risk in that sense. But…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
I think a small degree of error is to be expected in terms of taxpayers not telling His Majesty's Revenue and Customs when they've changed address, or employers not operating the codes correctly. Analysis of the latest address assurance scan, which is…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
These things are just rounding errors to Treasury—they're such small figures—but, to us, they actually matter quite a lot.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
I would always want to have greater powers, and I do agree that some local authorities have greater resources, definitely in a relative sense, to us. So, there's definitely more that we need in terms of the amount of money that we're able to draw down, or to…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
I can see—. Because Mike Hedges has mentioned in committee many times about Welsh Government having prudential borrowing powers, and it going then to the Senedd to agree what our borrowing plan should be, and so on, as being a more appropriate model for the…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
We should certainly be able to have much more flexibility in terms of how much we put into our reserves and draw down. I should say that, again, a pragmatic response from the current Chief Secretary to the Treasury has been in relation to my request to be…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
Is it worth just adding as well—? I can never miss the opportunity just to point out that £350 million as the size of the Wales reserve now is completely inadequate, given the way in which the budget has increased over time. There has been no increase in the…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
So, in significant part, this is about maxing out, really, what we're able to draw down from the Wales reserve in any financial year, and then it's about looking at underspends that are emerging late on in the financial year. So, we tend to see things…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
Because that money for pay is set within the second supplementary budget, if the Senedd passes it, then it will be there, available to use. So, it's there, and we can draw it or not draw it, and then, at the end of the financial year, it would return to the…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
So, all we can do is carry up to £350 million in the Wales reserve; anything beyond that, you have to find other ways to manage or it does get returned to Treasury. So, other ways to manage might include reducing the amount of borrowing that we wanted to do…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
Yes. There are a number of things that we can do at the end of the financial year. For example, we've planned to borrow £150 million this year. If it were the case that we were going to exceed the headroom in the Wales reserve, we could reduce the borrowing…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
We knew that we had to make an allocation within the supplementary budget for those awards in this financial year, both in terms of education and health, because, if the Senedd didn't approve the funding to be there, then, obviously, we wouldn't be able to…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
No, there's headroom now in the Wales reserve to accommodate underspends, so we're confident.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
So, the latest Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John Glen, and I have had a bilateral meeting the week before last, I think, [correction: 9 February] alongside also our Finance: Interministerial Standing Committee meeting, which also involved the Deputy First…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
So, we received the estimate of potential changes on 18 January. Those details were shared with us in confidence by HM Treasury, and we were notified at that point that any revisions to the estimate outside of a 10 per cent tolerance could be carried forward…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
So, I am confident, because the headroom in the Wales reserve to accommodate any underspends arising at the end of this financial year is £221 million. So, I am confident.
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
And I think it's easy to forward plan when you have time to forward plan, but unfortunately, in that year when we did have the pandemic, we were having late additions to funding. We had, if you remember, the funding guarantee of £2 billion, but then, a little…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
Well, a few things: just robustly to say there was no error made in that financial year. So, 2020-21 was an absolutely exceptional year in relation to the fact that it was the year of the pandemic, and Welsh Government saw an extreme increase in its resources…
, Finance Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government Second Supplementary Budget 2022-23
It's less a case of money that hasn't been allocated, but when it does get to the end of a financial year and underspends might start emerging, it's at that point then that you are a bit more able to move money across from those areas of underspend to areas…
