Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:19 pm on 23 November 2022.
Thank you very much, and thank you for everybody's contributions to this debate this afternoon. We've heard from Member after Member why we appreciate nurses so much. Yes, we've thanked them on our doorsteps, as we've thanked all staff in the health and care service for their tireless work, but the point comes where we do have to show true appreciation, and that has to include through pay packets.
The Minister has explained to us today why she feels that her hands are tied by the financial settlement of the UK Government. Of course, I agree entirely with her about the impact of the ideology underlying the cuts by one Conservative Government after another. It's a choice to cut the budgets of public services. And a word of advice to the Conservatives: don't draw too much attention to the pitiful increase given to public funding in Wales by your Conservative Government in Westminster, and say that £1.2 billion over two years is anything more than the crumbs that it represents. And another word of advice: don't use a debate like this one to attack devolution and the work that is being done to develop our democracy here in Wales through making up figures about the cost of the reforms that are taking place here in the Welsh Parliament.
But there is a more bitter taste, of course, now, to the economic deficiencies of the Conservatives in Westminster, because we're all paying the price for their inability, and our nurses are paying the price for that inability. But the Welsh Government still has a role to look at their priorities. There are no excuses for the lack of action. We were challenged as an opposition to find the funding. The First Minister, like the Minister today, was critical last week of the Scottish Government saying that they had pulled money out of the NHS to make a better pay offer, as if the nurses themselves aren't one of the most important elements that the NHS can pay for. At the moment, we are seriously asking nurses themselves to fund the NHS that they themselves work for. How can that be justified or acceptable?
We had a promise that the bursary is forever. It's not that unequivocal promise that the bursary won't be downgraded. I am happy to receive an intervention from the Minister if she wants to give us any assurance that there won't be any change to the bursary. She chooses not to make that intervention. We'll leave it there—[Interruption.] No, I was asking that there wouldn't be any downgrading of the bursary either. We've heard that it is remaining, but I look forward to hearing those further promises, because it is so important.