Rebecca Evans: I'm very grateful to the Chair of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee for the work the committee did in scrutinising the regulations. I was pleased to provide that clarity in terms of the drafting choice for the approach that the committee was particularly interested in. These uprating regulations will be required each year to ensure that all eligible households in Wales...
Rebecca Evans: Funding early intervention services has been an important consideration in allocating the 2020-21 budget. For example, in 2020-21 we have doubled funding for our whole-school approach to mental health to £5 million, invested £5.5 million to support Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales and invested an additional £3.5 million for the Flying Start approach.
Rebecca Evans: We are investing in Ogmore through developments including INEOS Automotive and the new Tirion residential development, which I visited last month. We have also allocated £3 million for the new National Imaging Academy for Wales at Pencoed, and £3.5 million to redevelop Maesteg town hall, in line with our Valleys taskforce work.
Rebecca Evans: Llywydd, I understand you've given your permission for questions 2 and 8 to be grouped. The Welsh Government's draft budget follows the UK Government's one-year spending round, which does not turn the page on austerity. Our budget in 2020-21 will be £300 million less in real terms than 2010-11, but, nonetheless, the Welsh Government is investing in a more prosperous, more equal and greener...
Rebecca Evans: I'm grateful for the question, and, as I was able to set out in my statement on the draft budget yesterday, additional funding has been found for next year to provide funding to support communities at particular danger in terms of climate change and flooding, but that's on top of the additional funding that we're putting through our innovative housing programme for coastal risk management....
Rebecca Evans: Well, obviously, there have been difficult decisions that have had to be made within individual portfolios in terms of whether or not they're able to increase funding for particular elements of their budgets or simply maintain those areas of spend. And, as Alun Davies quite rightly says, the spending of £25 million has been maintained rather than increased in terms of the bus services...
Rebecca Evans: The Welsh Government operates within the budget regime set by the UK Government. Budgets are monitored closely by officials, and this includes forecasting and explaining budget variances. I receive monthly reports from the finance director, and discuss financial performance with officials. I am responsible for approving budget amendments during the year.
Rebecca Evans: Well, of course, the setting of council tax is a matter for local councils themselves. And I have to say the Welsh Local Government Association have recognised the settlement that local authorities have received this year as being an exceptionally good one. And we've worked really closely with the WLGA and others in terms of setting the budget and understanding the pressures that they're...
Rebecca Evans: I certainly don't think we've got to the point where we can say we have achieved complete best practice yet, and that's been very clear, because we've set an ambitious budget improvement plan. I see that as a five-year rolling plan in terms of how we can continually strive to improve the way that we set our budget and the way that we can make considerations about where we put Welsh...
Rebecca Evans: Certainly. Only yesterday I was able to announce, as part of the budget 2020-21, that we would be continuing to extend our high street and retail rate relief scheme into 2020-21. So, that's more than £24 million of funding, which supports over 15,000 businesses with their rates. I think that's really important, but, actually, that goes alongside £230 million of other relief for businesses...
Rebecca Evans: Well, I'd start, of course, by suggesting that Darren Millar is wrong to suggest we have punitive business rates in Wales, because, actually, a larger proportion of businesses in Wales pay no rates at all than do across the border in England. And the place where we set our business rates really does reflect the fact that our average rateable value in Wales is different to in England. So, in...
Rebecca Evans: I think, in terms of our support for business, the figures that we've already seen for land transaction tax do speak for themselves, because, in the first year of land transaction tax, the changes to the rates ensure that we do maintain our attractiveness to commercial enterprises. And, as a result of these new tax rates, over 90 per cent of non-residential transactions in Wales pay the same...
Rebecca Evans: I do have to say, what I think is lacking in innovation and lacking in ambition is when opposition parties put out press releases that could have been written before. I think it's almost par for the course, isn't it, that an opposition party will say that there's been a missed opportunity or that they're disappointed? How about studying and scrutinising the budget and genuinely challenging...
Rebecca Evans: I have had the opportunity to discuss this particular issue with the Minister for environment and rural affairs just this morning, because we are keen to be able to demonstrate the decisions that we make and the impact that they do have on our carbon reduction. However, it really is not that simple. So, for example, investing in the infrastructure to support electric cars is only one part of...
Rebecca Evans: I would obviously disagree with what the Member's suggesting—that this budget is business as usual. Of course it's not. We see a major package of investment in decarbonisation and biodiversity, which I'm sorry that he can't bring himself to welcome. So, we'll see £5 million used to create town centre green infrastructure and encourage biodiversity. How often do we talk in this Chamber...
Rebecca Evans: So, these particular schemes came about as part of the work that we did cross-Government, where every Member of the Government took on one of our eight cross-cutting areas, which is an area that they normally wouldn't have oversight of, and then endeavoured to work across Government with colleagues to look for opportunities for new ideas, new areas of spend, that could really make a...
Rebecca Evans: I think the two areas that Mark Reckless focused on—well, two of the areas that he focused on—are actually two of the areas where the evidence from the UK CCC indicated that decarbonisation efforts should be focused on. So, one is the road transport sector—one that's crucial to delivering a net-zero target—and so, in response to that and the evidence that the UK CCC provided, over...
Rebecca Evans: I have regular discussions with the Minister for Health and Social Services about a range of financial matters within his portfolio, including issues that impact on the provision of dental services.
Rebecca Evans: I've had a number of discussions with the health Minister with regard to the contract reform and with regard to the issues facing dentistry across Wales, because I know this is an issue that comes up frequently in the Assembly. We've acknowledged that the current contractual system does need reform, and that's something that we are absolutely getting on with, and significant changes are...
Rebecca Evans: This year, we're providing over £146 million to the Welsh NHS for the provision of primary care dental services. We are seeing increased use of dental services, which is a good thing. So, the latest published data shows that 1.7 million people were regularly accessing NHS primary care dentistry, and that's 42,000 more people than was the case five years before the latest figures. We now have...
