Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:01 pm on 6 October 2020.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:01, 6 October 2020

Well, Llywydd, the Member has asked me three questions this afternoon. Each one of them has simply been a rehearsal of the difficulties that are well known and that I'm happy to acknowledge. He has not offered a single—not a single—suggestion as to how those problems might be addressed. And those problems are common right across the United Kingdom. Where his party is in charge, in March of this year there were 3,000 people waiting more than 52 weeks; by the end of July, it was 83,000 people. If there were easy answers to these very real dilemmas, they would be available here in Wales, just as they would be available elsewhere. There are no easy answers, and the Member's contributions this afternoon have not offered a single—not a single—idea as to how these real difficulties might better be addressed.

When it comes to saying to me, 'Will I guarantee that next year's budget will provide money?', let me remind him that we don't know what the Welsh Government's budget next year is going to be. Once again, his Government, having promised a budget in the early autumn, have decided that they can't manage to do that. We will not know until the end of November what money we have here in Wales for any of our public services. In that situation, how does he expect—how could he possibly expect—guarantees of how our money might be deployed when we don't know how much money we will have for any public purpose? His complaints would be better directed to those who could put that right.