Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 22 November 2022.
I'd be grateful if you could address the specific question: whether you have money in the Welsh reserve, and whether you have unallocated spending available to you.
Now, Keir Starmer says he wants the NHS to rely less on overseas doctors and nurses and wants to break Britain's immigration dependency. Does this kind of rhetoric concern you? When the Tory peer Dido Harding suggested, last year, ending NHS reliance on overseas staff, Eluned Morgan said this:
'We should be celebrating these people who’ve helped us through the pandemic, rather than looking like we want to shut the door on these people who’ve really stepped up at our time of need.'
So, does the Welsh Government only criticise inflammatory dog-whistle politics when it's a Conservative to blame? And isn't the real dependency in the NHS that on agency staff spending, which rose to £133 million last year for nurses alone, which is effectively privatisation by the back door? Setting a ceiling on agency staff spend this winter would give you another means of giving NHS staff, wherever they're from, the decent pay rise they deserve.