Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 5 July 2017.
Llywydd, well I notice that, when it was their own jobs at stake, the Conservative politicians were able to find plenty of money to pass to the Democratic Unionist Party in order to make sure that they stayed in work. There was no problem with austerity then. We have an end to austerity in one part of the United Kingdom, paid for by people in the rest of the United Kingdom. I think we can see just how far an adherence to austerity went when it was the Conservative party politicians’ own jobs on the line. The Member’s serious question was the one that he ended with, and that’s to do with the capital budget. He will be aware that I was able to lay a four-year capital budget in front of the Assembly as part of last year’s budget-making round, and I know that that was widely welcomed, both by our partners and by private businesses, because the need to plan public expenditure over that longer run is inevitably important to them. I am engaged, as I said earlier, in a series of budget meetings with Cabinet colleagues as we move into the next budget round. I am discussing with every one of them how we may be able to deploy the very modest additional capital allocations available to us over the next four years. I will look to make the very maximum use of the public capital available to this Government for a series of important public purposes, prioritising those investments that release revenue, so that we are able to cope with the ongoing cuts to our ability to sustain public services over the next three years.