The Education Portfolio

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 18 July 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:10, 18 July 2018

Well, Llywydd, John Griffiths makes a persuasive case on behalf of education spend, and he's made it regularly in this Chamber in recent years. He will know that, on the capital side of our budget, the twenty-first century schools programme, band A and band B taken together, is the single largest investment that we make right across the responsibilities that the Welsh Government exercises, and that is a sign of the very high priority that we do attach to education and lifelong learning. Where revenue spending is concerned, where the auditor general's letter to the Public Accounts Committee confirmed that our budget has been cut by 10.5 per cent over the last decade, the choices are starker still. But I can assure him that, in making those very difficult decisions, the case he makes and the case that is repeated by the Cabinet Secretary with that responsibility is never overlooked.