Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 29 June 2022.
Thank you very much to Siân Gwenllian for that question. I think she sets out why it is so important that we start to look at our budget through different lenses. GDP is an important source of data and we do have some experimental data looking at GDP on a Welsh-specific level. It's not usable yet, but, as Siân Gwenllian says, that is only one way of looking at things and we have to look at things more creatively to get that proper understanding of the impact of our budgeting decisions on various different groups in society and to take that intersectional look at our decisions as well. And this is one of the reasons why our budget improvement plan outlines our vision and it does include some short-term actions and those medium-term ambitions that we have over the next five years to improve the process of determining our budgets here in Wales through the lens of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. As part of this plan, we have three gender budgeting pilots under way at the moment, and all of them will be independently assessed and those findings then will enable us to take that learning through into our more regular budgeting process across the Government.
The importance of engaging widely is well made as a point as well. So, we do continue to engage with the Wales Women's Budget Group and with other interested parties through the reformed budget improvement and impact advisory group, and that helps us again to develop our approach to gender budgeting. And I'm also really pleased that the Finance Committee in this Senedd is taking a strong interest in this. At the same time, we're looking internationally and working with the Wellbeing Economy Governments network to invigorate our connections with leaders in the world in this area, including in Iceland and Canada. So, there is a lot to learn, but I think our three pilots are going to help us greatly in terms of thinking differently about the way that we look at our budgets here in Wales.