Results 161–180 of 3000 for speaker:Rebecca Evans

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: The Rising Cost of Living (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: Inflation of over 10 per cent has eroded the value of local government budgets to a worrying degree. In addition to the impact of rising costs for energy, pay, transport and food, councils are also working hard to address the impacts on their communities.

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Temporary Accommodation Spend (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: The discretionary housing payment funding, administered by the UK Government's Department for Work and Pensions, is 26 per cent less in 2022-23 than in the previous year. And bearing in mind that we are in the most dreadful time, in terms of the pressures on households, it's absolutely not the time to be cutting that vital support. Actually, that reduction follows an 18 per cent reduction in...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Temporary Accommodation Spend (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: Obviously, Welsh Government is committed to ending homelessness across Wales, and in support of this we're investing over £197 million in homelessness and housing support services, as well as a record £310 million in social housing this financial year alone. And we have also made available £10 million to local authorities to support the provision of temporary accommodation, as we move...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Temporary Accommodation Spend (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: Homelessness is a priority across Government, and I have regular conversations with ministerial colleagues about how we can work with local authorities to put cross-cutting solutions in place.

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: The UK Government's Autumn Statement (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: Your constituents are going to miss out. Every constituent that any of us has is going to miss out, because there's such a gap in public funding, and that's not going to come without without implications for public service delivery and for the services that people receive in their communities. So, I think that we need to just get real about the level of the challenges that we're facing in the...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: The UK Government's Autumn Statement (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I'm very grateful for that question. Just to give an idea of how we're approaching the budget discussions across Government, we are looking, really, very, very much so, at three particular aims. First, obviously, is to table a balanced budget, and, actually, that is much harder than you would imagine, given the fact that there is such a gap in funding, and that's where the difficult decisions...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: The UK Government's Autumn Statement (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: Despite some additional revenue funding through the autumn statement, this has not gone anywhere close to meeting the gap in the Welsh Government’s budget. This means that Ministers face difficult decisions as we prepare for this year’s draft budget.

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: We absolutely aim to use all of the European funding that has come to Wales, and that is, actually, one of the tools that we have to be able to manage our budget within the financial year—to take decisions as to when, exactly, we draw down that European funding, and help us manage the overall budget position. So, it is a tool that we're able to use and that we consider actively throughout...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I'm very happy to set the record straight on both of those issues, and I'm grateful, particularly in relation to the first question, to have the opportunity to do so. On 5 August, I did write to the Finance Committee, and the letter has since been also shared with PAPAC, demonstrating that in the 2020-21 financial year, which was, of course, the extraordinary COVID year, the Welsh Government...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I would say that local authorities are telling us that they are seeing massive pressures and gaps in their budget, both in this financial year and next financial year, and that they are looking to reserves to, in part, meet that challenge. I'm more than happy to ask my officials to have some further discussions with the Treasury on the specific point in terms of understanding reserves and the...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I understand the question, and to be fair to the Member it is a question that he does raise regularly. I don't share that level of concern at the level of reserves that local authorities have, because I think that, when we're going into what will be the most difficult couple of years for local authorities, for them to be in a better financial position than they would otherwise have been, I...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I'd just refer to my previous answer to the Member's colleague, but I will say that I do meet very regularly with local government leaders. My officials meet very regularly with officers, including treasurers across local government, to discuss the particular pressures that they are facing. I've got to say that the work that the Welsh Local Government Association presents us with is always...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: The UK Government's Autumn Statement (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I will enlighten the Member on 13 December, Llywydd, when I publish the draft budget. It's not too long to wait now, but there's a lot of work which needs to be undertaken rapidly between now and then. But, on 13 December, we'll be publishing the Welsh Government draft budget alongside that whole suite of information that we always publish—the chief economist's report, our narrative that...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: The UK Government's Autumn Statement (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I'm very grateful to the Member for the question, and for reiterating the same message I'm hearing from leaders as well in terms of the specific pressures on social care. They're also very keen to impress upon me the pressures in education as well, and those are two of the main areas of expenditure for local authorities. And I would also welcome and encourage people to engage with the work...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: The UK Government's Autumn Statement (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: Ahead of the autumn statement, I called on the Chancellor to invest in people and public services. While there was some additional funding in the UK Government announcements, it failed to address the significant gaps in funding for public services.

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Financial Reserves (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: Absolutely. I think local authorities have been incredibly transparent in terms of the financial challenges that they're facing, and I'm pleased that they have been able to offer, on a regional basis, opportunities for all Members of the Senedd to better understand those pressures at a very local level. I know they'd be more than happy to engage again with any colleagues who have not managed...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Financial Reserves (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I'll just refer the Member to my original answer, which does reassure colleagues in the Senedd that I do discuss local authority reserves with them regularly as part of our general discussions in relation to finance. But I just want to be really clear as well that the position that is reported in the annual reporting mechanism is only the situation on one day of the year—the end of the...

1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Financial Reserves (30 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I have discussed local authority reserves with leaders as part of our ongoing discussions on pressures and funding. All leaders have stressed that they are already using reserves to manage their current pressures and expect to have to continue to do so next year. 

6. Statement by the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Response to the UK Government Autumn Statement and Economic and Fiscal Forecasts (22 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I'm very grateful for the chance to conclude the statement this afternoon by setting out some of the things that the Welsh Government will do to support the most vulnerable and to protect citizens here in Wales, because that really is the job that's ahead of us now as we start to finalise and formalise our budget for laying on 13 December. It is the chance that we have to take to do our very...

6. Statement by the Minister for Finance and Local Government: Response to the UK Government Autumn Statement and Economic and Fiscal Forecasts (22 Nov 2022)

Rebecca Evans: I agree with Joyce Watson on that particular point. But, yes, I think that it's all very well quoting some selective facts, but, no, it is an absolute fact that the mini-budget cost this country, cost all of us, everybody in Wales, billions of pounds, and that is an absolute fact. That was just a direct result of the absolute arrogance of the people who were making those decisions at the...


<< < 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 > >>

Create an alert

Advanced search

Find this exact word or phrase

You can also do this from the main search box by putting exact words in quotes: like "cycling" or "hutton report"

By default, we show words related to your search term, like “cycle” and “cycles” in a search for cycling. Putting the word in quotes, like "cycling", will stop this.

Excluding these words

You can also do this from the main search box by putting a minus sign before words you don’t want: like hunting -fox

We also support a bunch of boolean search modifiers, like AND and NEAR, for precise searching.

Date range

to

You can give a start date, an end date, or both to restrict results to a particular date range. A missing end date implies the current date, and a missing start date implies the oldest date we have in the system. Dates can be entered in any format you wish, e.g. 3rd March 2007 or 17/10/1989

Person

Enter a name here to restrict results to contributions only by that person.

Section

Restrict results to a particular parliament or assembly that we cover (e.g. the Scottish Parliament), or a particular type of data within an institution, such as Commons Written Answers.

Column

If you know the actual Hansard column number of the information you are interested in (perhaps you’re looking up a paper reference), you can restrict results to that; you can also use column:123 in the main search box.