16. Finance Committee Debate: The Welsh Government's Spending Priorities for the Draft Budget 2021-22 in light of COVID-19

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:28 pm on 15 July 2020.

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Photo of Rhun ap Iorwerth Rhun ap Iorwerth Plaid Cymru 5:28, 15 July 2020

(Translated)

Thank you very much, temporary Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you for the opportunity to participate in this debate today. Thank you to the Finance Committee for bringing this motion forward. Unfortunately, because of timetabling in this place this year, I can't be a member of the Finance Committee and I do regret that fact, but I am grateful to the committee for its thorough work in giving consideration to the priorities that that we face in an entirely new context.

As ever, there is a broad range of priorities that have been set out by those who responded to the committee's engagement work, but these are not normal times, and therefore the priorities can't be normal either. We have an unprecedented context, following an unprecedented period of four months, which will mean a lot longer than four months in terms of difficult times ahead. And the implications of what we've lived through, and continue to live through, are going to be with us in terms of spending decisions for years to come.

I do think that we have to be bold in our response to this situation. There are so many individual things in our lives—just look around us—that have changed as a result of this pandemic. There are things that we hope to put behind us as soon as possible, and return to normality, but there are other things that we all hope will remain with us—the positive experiences, the lessons that we've learnt, and the change in mindset that has emerged over the past few months. And that's what I would like to see reflected in the way budgeting happens within Welsh Government and in terms of the scrutiny that our Senedd provides of it.

There are specific things, such as our understanding of the value of local government. As Mike Hedges said, we must ensure that, through our budgetary process, we reflect the fact that we have once again come to appreciate the work done by local government. We must bear in mind that care for others has become a more valuable commodity in all of our minds now. And whilst I and Plaid Cymru have been calling for the adoption of well-being budgeting as has happened in other nations—I've been calling for this for quite some time—there's a different context for that now and I think that thinking about making spending decisions in a way that truly takes account of their impact on people and their individual circumstances has become more important than ever. I suppose that decisions on spending on environmental issues is also part of that.

We've come to appreciate the world around us and the threat posed to our environment in a very different way during this pandemic. So, whilst many of us have been calling for the prioritisation of expenditure on the climate crisis, that has become more important still now. What the research of the Finance Committee has done is to demonstrate very clearly that people want that to be reflected in Welsh budgets. If I remember correctly, 78 per cent of those that responded to the Twitter poll—. Of course, we can't be entirely confident in such a poll, but it does give us a signal that almost 80 per cent of respondents felt that environmental decisions should be driving decisions on expenditure and the budget.

There are some specifics that we could mention and that I would want to see included in a budget that responds to the crisis—things such as an employment guarantee for young people between 18 and 24 years of age; funding for reskilling Wales as a result of this crisis, and the need to build back economically and to upskill our young people to do that; the need for a Welsh renewal fund, billions of pounds, and more borrowing powers in order to deliver that. And I will be encouraging and supporting the Government in pushing for changes to our fiscal rules in order to ensure that we can make those investments now, in the ensuing period, because this is the time when we need to look at things differently and build a Wales that is fit for the future.