5. Debate: The Draft Budget 2018-19

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:47 pm on 5 December 2017.

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Photo of Hefin David Hefin David Labour 4:47, 5 December 2017

I listened earlier to Nick Ramsay's question, which was: what is this budget setting out to achieve? And I think that's been answered, certainly from these benches, and the benches on this side of the Chamber, in delivering the Welsh Government's programme. But also, I would say what it is setting out to achieve as well is limiting the damaging effects of his Government in Westminster. That is part of what it is setting out to achieve.

I speak having been a councillor for 10 years and having sat through many budgets in the last 10 years. Through consultation with members of the public, you are able to get an idea of where to cut, but nonetheless, it is incredibly hard to sit through a list of cuts over which you have no control. But, one of the things you are able to tell yourself, as a councillor in Wales, is that it is much worse to be a councillor in England. I think that is one of the credits that this Welsh Government has had over the past 10 years.

The UK Government has had a golden opportunity. I live in a different political world to Neil Hamilton; I just don't understand where he was coming from. And Mark Isherwood seemed to engage in a brilliant piece of doublethink whereby on the one hand he waxes lyrical about austerity, and on the other he calls for more targeted spending. But the UK Government—