Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:18 pm on 18 October 2022.
I’m very grateful for those questions. Alun Davies is absolutely right that there are real-life, real-time consequences for people as a result of the UK Government’s decisions and the chaos that has ensued recently, not least, for example, with the mortgage rate hikes that the First Minister was referring to in his statement earlier on today. I absolutely recognise what’s been said about the Brexit budget hole. I think, for me, COVID and now the cost-of-living crisis are both camouflaging the impact that Brexit is having on the economy. Inevitably, we will see long-term damage to the economy just because of Brexit, let alone all of the other issues in relation to the pandemic and the cost of living. I’ll just say to Alun Davies that we’re probably on the same page on a lot of this particular issue, so I’m sure we’ll have further discussions about that in due course.
I agree as well that we do need to have a wider debate on taxation. Even since I’ve been in this post, I’ve seen a real sea change, really, in the level of interest that there is about the Welsh Government’s tax-raising powers, but the power that tax can play more generally, both in terms of driving certain behaviours, but also raising public finances. I think that the work that the Institute of Welsh Affairs, which I’ve referred to, has been doing is really helpful in this space as well. The IWA’s report actually looks at borrowing powers, and I think it makes the case for prudential borrowing, which again is something that we’d very much support. Just thinking about the impact, though, since the fallout from the mini-budget, if we look at what the impact has been on borrowing for Government, £100 million of borrowing last year would have cost us £4.6 million a year to service, whereas £100 million borrowed now would cost us £6.8 million a year to service. That's an increase of nearly 50 per cent. And over the borrowing term, we would now pay £69 million in interest compared to just £16 million in interest last year. So, that again is one of those real-life examples of the impact that the chaos has had on budgets.