5. Debate: The Draft Budget 2018-19

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:23 pm on 5 December 2017.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 5:23, 5 December 2017

I haven't, Mike; I look forward to it appearing one day in a report of the Finance Committee where I will be able to pursue it in that way. 

The second big debate on the floor of the Assembly this afternoon has been on health policy, and again there are a variety of views here. I make no absolutely no apology for the fact that this Labour Government goes on investing in our health service every year, that we fill the Nuffield gap, that we make sure that our health service has the resources it needs. Let me break a habit and agree with something that Mr Hamilton said here, because he was right when he said that there are new costs in the health service every year that are simply inescapable. No matter how much we want the health service to move in the direction of prevention, no matter how much we want to be determined that the health service should bear down on costs wherever it can, the fact that we have an ageing population, the fact that there are more things every year that the health service is able to do, means that there are in-built additional costs in the health service, and we face those here in Wales and this Government faces them by trying to make sure that we provide the resources that the health service needs to meet those costs. 

There was a great deal in what Angela Burns said that I agreed with; her contribution was characteristically thoughtful. Of course my colleague Vaughan Gething wants to make sure that we move the dial of the health service in favour of general practice: it's why we have a new £40 million investment fund in the primary care estate. But she will know—she will know from her own direct experience—how difficult it is in the health service, how difficult it is with the public to persuade them to invest in primary care rather than in a hospital service. You mention the word 'Withybush' in Pembrokeshire, and people will come out on the streets because they think there's something to defend. You mention the term 'primary care', which is where 90 per cent of their contacts come, and it's much, much more difficult to persuade people to have the same sense—[Interruption.] Yes. Yes, of course.