The UK Government's Autumn Statement

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:59 pm on 30 November 2022.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 1:59, 30 November 2022

I'm very grateful for that question. Just to give an idea of how we're approaching the budget discussions across Government, we are looking, really, very, very much so, at three particular aims. First, obviously, is to table a balanced budget, and, actually, that is much harder than you would imagine, given the fact that there is such a gap in funding, and that's where the difficult decisions will take place, in terms of what we're able to continue funding, where we might have to reprioritise funding away from. But also the second of the key areas that we want to continue to protect is public services. So, the protection of public services is our second pillar. And the third is the continued delivery of our programme for government, because of course that contains so many of our promises to people in Wales, and we're focused on delivering that. It might be that we end up delivering some things over a longer period than we'd initially anticipated. That's something that we need to consider, particularly, I think, on the capital side, where our capital budget falls in every year of this spending review, and there was no additional capital whatsoever in the autumn statement. So, again, that's the kind of difficult decision that colleagues might need to take. But just to reassure the Member that public services, by which we are obviously talking about health there, will remain a priority for the budget process.