Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:16 pm on 23 November 2022.
I can assure you that my officials are working on this as we speak. There's a lot of work being done. I do think people need to understand that we do have a legal requirement in terms of safe staffing levels. If you're saying, 'Don't use agency staff', what that will mean is that we'll have to close wards. There will be accident and emergency services that will have to stop. That's the consequence of doing it too quickly. We know we have to do more, but we can't do it overnight.
It's true that we do have choices. We've heard calls today to increase Welsh rates of income tax to pay nurses. I explained earlier that prioritising one group of public sector staff over another has significant consequences. We would want to consider giving all public sector workers an inflation-matching pay rise, but that is going to be extremely difficult. We'd need to raise at least an extra £900 million. To raise that through the Welsh rates of income tax, we'd need to raise the basic rate not by a penny, but by 4.5p. Such a rise could generate about £900 million. So, we could cover it, but imagine what that would mean. It would mean that, in Wales, one of the poorest parts of the UK, we would have some of the highest tax rates. It would have to become permanent, and let me just give you an example of what that means in practice. Somebody earning £20,000 in Wales would be paying an extra £424 a year in tax, and someone earning £30,000 in Wales would be paying £784 more in tax. And don't forget that nurses would be covered by that. So, if they're earning £35,000, even nurses would have to pay an extra £1,009 in tax.
Another lever available to us would be to make deep cuts into existing and future health and social care budgets. That would mean job cuts and cuts to services. It would mean longer waiting times and fewer new medicines. Of course, that is possible. The Scottish Government have decided to do that, and what they've done is massive cuts to budgets to front-line services. That's the reality of what you need to do. If we were to do the same, it would—