Rebecca Evans: The tax changes announced in the fiscal statement favour the rich and will worsen inequality. The statement provides no additional help to fund public services at a time when costs are rising sharply.
Rebecca Evans: I’m very grateful for that question. I can hear the Conservatives chuntering away behind me; I do admire the way in which the leader of the opposition is doubling down in his support for the UK Government, even though the markets—and everybody—are obviously making a response to it that is very different to that of the leader of the Conservatives. I have to say, I heard him saying that...
Rebecca Evans: I prioritised funding for local government in the Welsh Budget. But the Welsh Government has not received additional funding to respond to the impact of surging energy prices on people and public services in Wales. Additional funding is urgently needed from the UK Government to support our vital public services.
Rebecca Evans: I hold regular bilaterals with the Minister for Health and Social Services, which include discussions on pay, alongside working in social partnership with trade unions. I also continue to press the UK Government to provide the additional funding necessary for fair pay rises for public sector workers.
Rebecca Evans: Diolch, Llywydd. Yesterday, the latest Chancellor reversed many of the flawed and reckless decisions that were made by his predecessor and the Prime Minister in the mini-budget less than a month ago and which were a central pillar of the new Prime Minister's so-called programme for growth. The new Chancellor's statement yesterday was made ahead of his medium-term fiscal plan on 31 October,...
Rebecca Evans: All this while household budgets have been squeezed even further and a gaping hole has been created in public finances. The new Chancellor may have undone most of the tax-cutting measures brought in on 23 September, which as we know were designed to benefit the richest, but he cannot undo the damage the mini-budget has unleashed. Let me be clear that people in Wales will be paying for the UK...
Rebecca Evans: Thank you to the Conservative spokesperson for those comments this afternoon, and I agree with him, it's not been a good few weeks, to say the least, and it is certainly disappointing. I think that he's done the best he can there to send a strong message to his colleagues in Westminster in terms of the Welsh Conservatives' assessment of the recent shambles that we've seen in Westminster. But...
Rebecca Evans: I'm very grateful for all of those remarks. I'll just start where we started the last time that we discussed the UK Government's mini-budget, and that is it's my view that it's not the UK that's the problem, it's the UK Government that's the problem, and we do have the opportunity to change that. I think that the current Prime Minister's position is completely untenable, in my view,...
Rebecca Evans: But I think that the broader points are really important in terms of having that wider conversation about the powers that are available to us here in Wales, and what an improved set of powers might look like. I think that that is a discussion that is ongoing. It's very live. The Institute of Welsh Affairs is doing some really interesting work at the moment in that kind of space, to try and...
Rebecca Evans: I’m very grateful for those questions. Alun Davies is absolutely right that there are real-life, real-time consequences for people as a result of the UK Government’s decisions and the chaos that has ensued recently, not least, for example, with the mortgage rate hikes that the First Minister was referring to in his statement earlier on today. I absolutely recognise what’s been said...
Rebecca Evans: Thank you very much for raising that and also giving a really stark picture of the challenges facing local authorities, particularly the ones that you've referred to in north Wales. I've had the opportunity to meet recently with the finance sub-group of the partnership council for Wales, and also with the Welsh Local Government Association executive committee, to talk about budget pressures....
Rebecca Evans: Formally.
Rebecca Evans: Diolch, Llywydd. The Welsh Government is absolutely on the side of Welsh businesses, and we fully recognise the challenges faced by businesses, and other ratepayers under the current economic conditions, and, indeed, the Welsh Government is also exposed to the same budget pressures.
Rebecca Evans: Non-domestic rates have been an important part of the local government finance system for more than 30 years, raising more than £1.1 billion annually, and this is not a trivial contribution to the funding required to sustain the local services that we all rely on, nor, indeed, is it a trivial contribution to the Welsh Government's annual budget. But we have to remember that every single...
Rebecca Evans: I know that the UK Government is exploring a range of ways that a digital tax might be introduced, and I know that they'd be keen to hear from colleagues in the Senedd as well, in terms of ideas of how such a thing could be brought in. Because, as I say, officials in the Welsh Government are having some discussions to further understand what the plans and opportunities might be and different...
Rebecca Evans: At the spending review, we maximised the use of all of our available funding. I prioritised funding for local government in the Welsh budget so that every authority in Wales received an increase in funding of more than 8.4 per cent.
Rebecca Evans: I'm not sure that's a fair characterisation of local authorities and the way that they look towards their reserves. But, to be perfectly frank, I am glad that local authorities generally are in a much better position than they otherwise would have been, and that's partly thanks to the additional £50 million that we provided to local government at the end of the last financial year. And that...
Rebecca Evans: Absolutely I can explain that, Llywydd, and it's called 'the pandemic', and that is one of the reasons why local government was provided with significant additional funding through the pandemic. And I have no doubt that local authorities, given the huge gap in funding that they've identified not only for this year, but into future years as well, will be looking at those reserves. But, let's...
Rebecca Evans: I absolutely agree that the approach has to be one of social partnership in terms of addressing the cost-of-living crisis. And this is one of the reasons why the First Minister has set up a cost-of-living Cabinet sub-committee, which I and other Ministers attend, but also we invite to those meetings representatives of the third sector, local government and other social partners to ensure that...
Rebecca Evans: So, in the first instance, we're seeking to impress upon the UK Government the importance within HMRC of raising that per-mile payment in respect of travel related to work. So, that's our first way in which we're trying to address this, and I know that my colleague Vaughan Gething's officials have been active in their discussions with HMRC on this. My officials have also raised it with...
