Part of 2. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:03 pm on 14 November 2017.
Diolch, First Minister. The UK Tory Government's Chancellor, Philip Hammond, will deliver his budget on 22 November in the House of Commons chamber. Recently, the Welsh and Scottish finance Ministers jointly met with Treasury officials at the finance quadrilateral meeting in London. At that meeting, the Welsh and Scottish finance Ministers delivered a clear and unambiguous call for the UK Tory Government to set out plans to lift the public sector pay cap and reverse the planned further £3.5 billion of unallocated cuts in expenditure in 2019-20. What message does the First Minister have for the Chancellor of the Exchequer in advance of the budget for the need for the Tory Government to abandon its ideological obsession with austerity, considering the Welsh Government has seen its budget cut by 7 per cent in real terms since 2010?