3. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on any Barnett consequentials arising from the Chancellor’s Spring Budget? OAQ(5)0114(FLG)

I thank Julie Morgan for the question. The Welsh Government will always aim to make best use of any new funding available to us. The consequentials that arise from the spring budget do nothing to reverse the UK Government’s pursuit of the damaging policy of austerity.

Before you ask the supplementary question, I believe you’ve requested a grouping of this question with question 4.

And you’ve been able to agree that, Llywydd?

Yes. Consider it done. [Laughter.]

Thank you.

4. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the implications of the UK Government’s 2017 Spring Budget on the Welsh block grant? OAQ(5)0110(FLG)

The Chancellor announced in his budget a £5 million fund to celebrate next year’s centenary of the first British woman to get the vote in 1918. This is, I know, a small amount of money in relation to the whole of the budget, but I wondered if the Cabinet Secretary could tell us how much of that money we would receive in Wales, how would that money be distributed and to what sort of projects.

I thank Julie Morgan for that question. Wales’s share of that £5 million fund is £294,000. That’s the consequential of it. The Welsh Cabinet will meet on Tuesday of next week to consider how we will use budget consequentials, and that will be part of our consideration.

Minister, I really welcome the fact that this Welsh Labour Government has continued to prioritise investment in social services, in contrast to the approach that’s been taken in recent years in England, but it remains the case that pressure on social services is immense. I hope that you are giving very serious consideration to using the additional funding to tackle those pressures. I know that you’re well aware of my continued concern about the reduction in funding for the Family Fund. What assurances can you offer that addressing the pressures in social services will be a top priority for you, and would you agree with me that this additional money presents an excellent opportunity to review the support for disabled children in general and the cut to the Family Fund specifically?

Well, Llywydd, it’s because of the priority that we have always attached to social services that social services in Wales have not suffered from the cuts that have been experienced across our border. Our social services do face very considerable pressures from demography and other factors—I absolutely acknowledge that—but they are in a better place to face those pressures than other services are elsewhere. The Member will have seen the report published only last week by Wales Public Services 2025 that confirms that, again, in this financial year, spending on health and social services in Wales is 106 per cent of spending in England, and it’s why, in the budget that was put in front of this Assembly for next year, in agreement with Plaid Cymru, £25 million extra was identified in the RSG for social services, and then a further £10 million recurrent funding was identified between the final and draft budget, to help social services departments come to a tripartite solution to the pressures of the so-called living wage in social care. In the run-up to the budget, I wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, urging him to find additional funding for social care, and that matter will certainly be on the table when colleagues in the Cabinet meet on Tuesday of next week to discuss the consequentials. How that money is used, if any of it can be made available for social services, will of course be a matter for the Minister concerned, but she will certainly be aware of the Member’s views and will have heard what she has said this afternoon.

Cabinet Secretary, will you join me in welcoming the £50 million increase to the Welsh Government’s capital budget that will now come as a result of the budget, which builds on the £400 million increase announced in the autumn statement? This does give us some real flexibility in terms of capital development.

Well, Chair, I welcome any extra money that comes to Wales. The £50 million additional capital is over a four-year period. When you take it into account with the autumn statement money, it means that our capital budgets will only be 21 per cent, now, less in 2019-20, compared to what they were in 2009-10. So, the Chancellor has gone some way—some small way—to filling the hole that his predecessor had created.

In previous UK budgets, there has been considerable disagreement on how the UK Government has classified certain spending lines, particularly in capital spending—so, whether they designate a project UK-wide where there is no Barnett consequential, or England only where there is. Has the Cabinet Secretary made any assessment on the recent budget in terms of whether there has been any evidence to suggest similar accounting jiggery-pokery as far as Barnett consequentials are concerned?

Well, the Member can be sure that we are eagle-eyed in looking for exactly those sorts of manoeuvres, and my officials have been looking very closely at the detail of what was said by the Chancellor last week. As you know, the budget turns out to be a very moving feast indeed, and moved again only within the last hour with a further retreat from the proposals that were made only a week ago. But we do look very directly at the point the Member has made and challenge where we need to, where we think that classifications are being wrongly deployed to the disadvantage of Barnett consequentials.

The spring budget provides a £150 million boost to the Welsh Government resource budget and £50 million to its capital budget, as mentioned earlier. The Welsh Government recently announced an additional £10 million a year for social care in Wales, to help meet the additional costs of the national minimum wage. Will the Cabinet Secretary agree to give strong consideration to using some of the increase in the block grant to provide additional finance for social care in Wales, please?

Well, as I think I’ve said this afternoon already, Llywydd, Members can be assured that social care will be properly considered when the Cabinet meets to look at ways in which we are able to deploy any of the additional resources that have come to Wales as a result of last week’s budget.

I was indeed going to ask you about the impact on the block grant of the national insurance rises, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises in rural Wales, but the smell of the rubber from that particular u-turn is still fresh in my nostrils. So, let me ask, instead: one issue that wasn’t addressed in this budget that does impact on a lot of Welsh residents is that of state pension inequality for women—the WASPI campaign. Is it still the position of this Welsh Government that you are seeking a resolution of that issue, and have you had any conversations with the Chief Secretary or anyone else in the Westminster Government about addressing that in further budgets going forward?

Llywydd, we were very disappointed that the Chancellor failed to take an opportunity last week to grasp that issue and to respond to the points that are very properly made by that campaign. We take the opportunities that are available to us to continue to raise matters of that sort with the Chief Secretary and with the UK Government more generally, and had hoped that the budget would have been thought of as an opportunity to redress some of the injustices that that campaign has highlighted.