Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 15 November 2022.
Well, Llywydd, I agree with the leader of Plaid Cymru that nothing is more important to making a difference to the future of working people in the United Kingdom than a Labour Government in Westminster, and I look forward to doing everything that we can, as a party here in Wales, as we have for 100 years, to make the maximum contribution we can to that Labour victory at the earliest possible opportunity. My discussions with trade union colleagues—and I was having them earlier this morning—make it very apparent to me that they understand the dilemma of a Welsh Labour Government here. We have a fixed budget that we have to determine, and if we pay people more than we are funded to—and we have met the pay review body recommendations, in both health and education—if we pay people more than that, then that money has to come from somewhere else.
Now, I might, for a moment, just draw attention to the experience in Scotland. There, the sister party of Plaid Cymru has indeed offered health workers a higher increase than we have been able to here in Wales. Did it prevent the RCN in Scotland voting for strike action in every single health board in Scotland? No, it did not. And because the SNP are in Government in Scotland, they have to face up to the very difficult dilemmas that come with the decisions that they have made, and I respect them for the way in which they've made those decisions. But let us be clear, Llywydd, the SNP Government, in the last two weeks, has announced that it is taking £400 million out of the budget of the Scottish NHS in order to pay for the additional uplift in workers' pay within the NHS. That's a decision that the Scottish Government has made, and it's within its own political authority to do so. What we need to hear from Plaid Cymru is if they believe that the Welsh Government should increase the wages of workers in the health service beyond that for which we are funded, where would the money come from here?