Fiscal Prospects

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 2:17 pm on 10 October 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:17, 10 October 2018

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.