Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 16 October 2019.
Thank you, Minister, I appreciate it’s early days and I’m looking forward to scrutinising you on the Finance Committee, with my colleagues as well, on the subject of the budget. You just said that you’re lacking money or you haven’t received money from the UK Government, but, as I’m sure you would recognise, the Welsh Government’s resource budget will increase by over £485 million through 2019-20, and the capital budget will also increase by nearly £70 million through 2020-21. So, whilst you might not have received that money today, as we stand here, that has certainly been earmarked for this institution. So, I’d like to hear from you what you intend to do with that to put it to good use.
You mentioned local government. I appreciate that local authority budgets have been under stress, as you said yourself. The Welsh Local Government Association have recently reported that core grant funding has reduced by 20 per cent after adjusting for inflation in 2019-20. If you don’t include school funding, as is the case in English local government, core funding is even lower than that, so, clearly, local authority budgets are under stress. How are you planning, in your budget, to try and make up to local government some of the money that they haven’t been getting, so that they do have that all-important money for public services locally in Wales?