6. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the fiscal prospects that underpin the draft budget? OAQ52722

Thank you for the question. The chief economist’s report, published alongside the budget, makes it clear that fiscal prospects across the UK remain very challenging, especially in the uncertainty created by Brexit. Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts, alongside the UK budget on 29 October, will provide a further update of prospects before our final budget is laid in December.

Thank you for that reply, Cabinet Secretary, and, indeed, the chief economist actually did state our fiscal position, and I quote. He said we will:

'depend in part on the approach taken by the UK Government to funding the recently-announced increase in spending for the NHS in England.'

It's therefore obvious to me that the consequential increase in NHS spending must be fully funded when it reaches Wales, and we can have no more of these unfunded and uncosted UK Government announcements. Indeed, given the other pressures identified in the chief economist's analysis and, ironically, raised by a number of Welsh Conservative Members today—who seem to spend more time attacking you and the Welsh Government than they do lobbying the UK Government for more and better funding settlements for Wales—would you agree with me that the people of Wales will not forgive the Tories if they let us down yet again on this matter?

Well, I thank Dawn Bowden for that question. Let me repeat, Dirprwy Lywydd, what I said during the budget debate here. On paper, we have, apparently, £365 million as a consequential of the announcement made back in July on the seventieth anniversary of the NHS. We're still to have a net figure from the Treasury. They are unable to tell us how much of that money will actually come to Wales and how much of it will be lost in cuts to other devolved budgets.

What we do know is that half that money was spent before it even crossed the border. Of that £365 million, the UK Government spent £95 million when they concluded an agreement for 'Agenda for Change' staff. They then told us, a week before our draft budget, that they'd also spent £74 million of the money they were sending us on changes to pensions that they were introducing. So, before a single pound has made it our way, half of it has been spent by Conservative Ministers in decisions that were made nowhere near Wales. None of that was said by the Prime Minister when she announced her birthday present for the NHS, and Dawn Bowden is absolutely right to say that we have to watch like hawks the way in which this Government claims to give money with one hand, only, with complete sleight of hand, ends up taking it away with the other.

Thank you. And finally, question 7, Mandy Jones.