4. Debate on a Statement: Draft Budget 2020-21

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:40 pm on 7 January 2020.

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Photo of Darren Millar Darren Millar Conservative 3:40, 7 January 2020

I think what I find extraordinary is that Wales receives £1.20 for every £1 and yet it's spending £645 less per pupil per year. There's no excuse for this underfunding at all. You might want to defend it, Mick, but I am not going to defend it, and I will challenge your Government all the way so we have a level playing field between England and Wales so that our children can have the same opportunities that children have over the border in England. 

Local government—we know that we've seen local government settlements that smack, frankly, of cronyism. We've seen local authorities in north Wales getting lower settlements than local authorities in the south, and it seems to be that the political colour of your local authority has a bearing on the proportion of additional cash that you might receive. [Interruption.] Again, I can hear the carping and I'm very happy to give some information to the Chamber on this.

Let's compare this year's settlement. Let's compare this year's settlement. I've taken plenty of—. I've got not much time left—[Interruption.] If I can just make a reference to this year's settlement, the proposed draft settlement. The funding increases vary from 3 per cent in Conservative-run Monmouthsire to 5.4 per cent in Labour-run Newport right next door—two local authorities right next door. And we know that the average increases for north Wales are far worse than they are in the south. 

So, can I urge the Government to consider introducing a funding floor so that we can even out some of these differences? Because, frankly, it's unacceptable that some parts—[Interruption.] There's not a funding floor in place for this year. If I can just correct your Cabinet colleagues, you haven't announced a funding floor for this year, as you well know, finance Minister. But, it will be interesting to see what that funding floor might be and perhaps you can put some more meat on the bones and tell us a little bit about it. 

You mentioned some of the pressures on the social care issues. You've talked about the integrated care fund, for example, in your statement. What you haven't done is ruled out any kind of social care tax, which we know that your party was sort of contemplating before. Perhaps you can give us some more information as to whether you're wanting to tax people in respect of social care, because we'd like some assurances that you're not going to increase the tax burden on the people of Wales in order to pay for that. 

In terms of the environment, we've heard that this is one of your priorities and yet you can't even get a decent network of electric vehicle charging points up and running here in Wales. We've got the worst record in the whole of the United Kingdom. What on earth are you doing? You've had some money as a Barnett consequential to improve the network and yet you can't plug in between north and south Wales sufficiently in order to get an electric car up and down our roads. It's not acceptable and we need to get things improved. 

So, in conclusion, Llywydd, if I may, I regret that, despite the great opportunities presented by this record-breaking budget that you have at your disposal, you are still failing to address the people's priorities here in Wales. We're failing to see the improvements in the performance of the NHS that people and patients need to see. We're failing to see you address the underfunding in our Welsh schools and we're failing to see you close that gap between England and Wales in terms of the per pupil spend per head. We're failing to see the ambition that we need to support businesses to improve the growth and the wealth of our nation. And we're seeing a complete inertia, frankly, in terms of the climate change agenda. I hope very much that you'll reflect on these things and change this budget before it comes back to this Chamber so that we can deal with people's priorities as we get Brexit done as a nation.