3. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance: The Draft Budget 2019-20

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:10 pm on 2 October 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 4:10, 2 October 2018

Very briefly, Llywydd, if you don't mind—I've got a minute to respond to just a few selected points from what other Members have raised. In what Jenny Rathbone said, let me focus on what she said on active travel. We announced £60 million earlier in the year, £10 million this year, £20 million next year, and £30 million the year after, directly for active travel. But the £78 million local transport fund and the £60 million for road repair, plus what we're doing on clean air and the money we're providing to local authorities in capital and revenue to improve traffic in that way—all of those will, I believe, contribute to our active travel agenda.

Mark Isherwood told us about Maynard Keynes and, of course, Keynes is a counter-cyclical way of dealing with the economy, not as his Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne carried out his responsibilities. He always seemed to me to be like a medieval doctor, really: you bled the patient and, when the patient showed even greater signs of illness, the only answer was to bleed the patient some more. That's exactly the opposite of Keynesian economics. I'm sure it must feel to some Members like I have been standing here for more than a decade, but Mr Isherwood's questions of how I responded to something that was said in 2004—. It was a finance Minister well beyond my own time who was responsible for that. I share, however, what he said on co-production; there's a long way still to go, and it is for our public services to mobilise the human capital that comes from users of services, alongside the financial capital that they have, to make a real difference.

Mike Hedges asked me a series of specific questions. The Treasury has changed the rules in relation to financial transaction capital in England. They are not, as yet, able to tell us how those changed rules apply here in Wales. I have written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury asking to extend our borrowing capacity in the forthcoming comprehensive spending review and we are well on our way, now, to having bond-issuing powers here in Wales.

Suzy Davies's questions about education and Welsh-medium education will emerge more clearly in the second part of the budget, but I can tell her that amongst the education aspects are £15 million in a new specific grant that will go directly to schools from my colleague Kirsty Williams's budget, together with £9 million to deal with sixth-form funding and £9 million to sustain the grant for minority ethnic achievement.

On the funding formula, a number of Members have asked me about the funding formula in local authorities and in education. I say to them what I say to my colleagues in local government: if anybody can bring me an improved formula on which local authorities are agreed, they will find me very receptive to that. As yet, they've never been able to meet that challenge. Can I say to Dawn Bowden that, if there is any sign of change in the 29 October budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in relation to austerity, we will use every penny of that, as we did last year, to invest in preventative services and, as she said, to make sure that organisational barriers do not stand in the way of achieving best outcomes for patients and for social care user services? My colleague Vaughan Gething and I have met twice during this budget round to reaffirm this Government's determination to use the resources we have to invest in the social care and health system in the round. As Members will see the detail of the budget, they will see that reflected in it.

Finally, Llywydd, to respond to Julie Morgan's points, going to Llangrannog is a Welsh rite of passage that many of us across this Chamber will have experienced in our own lives and in the lives of others and I'm very glad that, working with Eluned Morgan, we've been able to find some additional money to upgrade the facilities both there and at Glanllyn.

As far as the mutual investment model is concerned, we now have complete clearance from Eurostat and the ONS. Our model has been featured in a recent United Nations handbook, advising countries around the world as to how to design a model of this sort, and I was pleased to see the reference that the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, made to building on the Welsh mutual investment model in the Scottish Government's plans to expand the level of capital available for important public purposes there too.

We are well on our way in relation to Velindre. There are planning issues to resolve. There are clinical design issues to resolve. But we are determined that the model will be there to support that very important development for cancer services across south-east Wales.