10. Debate: The Draft Budget 2019-20

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 7:04 pm on 4 December 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Gareth Bennett Gareth Bennett UKIP 7:04, 4 December 2018

Thanks to the Finance Minister for bringing today's budget debate. Of course, we agree with some aspects of the Government's draft budget. The news we had—. Mark Drakeford said today that the full amount from the consequential of the UK Government's high-street relief scheme—the full amount will be spent in Wales. That's welcome news. Although, as Darren Millar added in his contribution, we will need more detail on that.

The agreement with Plaid—Mark Drakeford again made this point, which was just referenced by Rhun. There are the feasibility studies into two interesting and promising projects—the national football museum and the modern art gallery. Of course, we could well support those schemes; they sound highly promising. Again, we'll have a look at the detail as we go forward.

Onto broader points, we are now moving more and more into a situation where health spending is swallowing up approaching half the Welsh Government budget. Of course, health is the major spending area and one that is surrounded by a large degree of public concern. The problem is that health spending is inflating at a greater level than overall Government spending, which, obviously, can't carry on forever; it's not sustainable. So, at some point, we do have to be cognisant of points that have been made by the future generations commissioner in the past, now supported by many others from various political parties, and move to more effective preventative spending, which will save us money in the long run. It's good that there is now an agreed definition of what actually comprises preventative spending, but, of course, this is still a complex issue. We've heard that the definition is liable to change. The whole situation does need to be monitored, and we hope that the long-term issue will now start to be at least addressed. But we are going to want to see a cross-cutting approach from the Welsh Government and we will need to closely monitor this going forward to see if the preventative spending principle is being adhered to in future years.

Overall, we see good things in it, as I said, although there seems to be a lot of pessimism. Mark Drakeford said that the budget had been set beneath the twin shadows of austerity and Brexit. I don't want to get too much into those areas because they're always given a lot of leverage by other parties and we've had the Brexit debate today already. Darren Millar referred to horrors lying beneath the surface. Surely, it can't be as bad as all that—maybe we do have to slightly lighten up.

Overall, we oppose the Government's draft budget and we do support the Conservative amendment. Diolch yn fawr iawn.