Questions now from the party leaders. Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Could I, Presiding Officer, wish you and the First Minister and all Members a very merry Christmas and hopefully a peaceful and happy new year?

Yesterday, First Minister, the health Minister met with the Royal College of Nursing and other unions in relation to the pending strike action that is proposed for Thursday of this week and next week. As I understand it, no offer was made at that meeting to try and resolve the pending strike action so that hospitals could function and people could get the appointments that they require. Why was no offer submitted to try and resolve this dispute?

There is no money in the Welsh Government budget from his Government in London to allow us to make a better offer than funding in full, as we have, the pay award proposed by the independent pay award body.

First Minister, you have the levers to actually generate more money if you choose to pull those levers. You have additional money coming in the announcement that the Chancellor made in his recent announcement of £1.2 billion coming forward over the next two years. You have taken a political choice not to resolve or at least enter meaningful discussions by not tabling any offer whatsoever yesterday, as the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing highlighted in her statement this morning. 

I can hear your backbenchers whingeing and moaning; they are the ones who pressed the button in a debate only two weeks ago to deny the nurses a pay increase to meet the cost of living. You have the means to do it, will you re-engage in those negotiations and use those levers to put a meaningful proposal to the Royal College of Nursing and other medical professions to avoid the strike action?

The leader of the opposition, Llywydd, is utterly shameless—utterly without shame. He comes to the floor of the Senedd here when his Government in Westminster ended a meeting in acrimony with the Royal College of Nursing only last night, because they refused to put, as the leader of the RCN said, a single penny on the table to increase the pay of nurses in England, which would have led to, as they all know, a Barnett consequential that we could have used for pay here in Wales. That is the only way in which we are able to make a better offer here. We are tied entirely by the decisions that are made on pay by his colleagues in Westminster. That is the place that he should be lobbying. The minute that his Ministers are prepared to make a better offer for nurses in England, we will be able to make that offer here in Wales. If he is serious—I can't imagine for a minute that he would be— that we should divert all the money that we have received from the UK Government not for pay but to invest in the service of the NHS, that we should divert all of that away from sustaining the service and into pay, he should say that explicitly this afternoon, because people in Wales would be interested to hear that.

What is shameless, First Minister, is that people across Wales are in the worst waiting situation of any NHS. Only this week, we had to hear about the issue in Cwmbran where a grandfather was put on a plank in the back of a van, because the ambulance service could not respond to the cry of help from that family to convey him to hospital. What is a serious Government is a serious Government dealing with these issues, and putting something meaningful on the table to get those negotiations off the ground. The point I made to you in my first remarks was why was no offer coming forward from your Government. I understand that it is a difficult situation, I understand that money is tight, but you constantly talk about wanting more powers; you have the powers over terms and conditions within the NHS. You have the levers financially to raise more revenue if you choose to do that. You have, by this budget today that you've laid, chosen not to do that, but you've had £1.2 billion-worth of extra money. You also have an uplift in the finance from Wales for every £1 that is spent in England to £1.20 in Wales. You have taken a political decision to have this fight here in Wales, rather than use the tools available to you to resolve it. It's at your door that this is lying and no-one else's, and I implore you to get back to the negotiating table and resolve this issue as a matter of urgency, so that we don't see the despair and despondency that people are facing week in, week out, with increased waiting times and stories like I've just told you about the people in Cwmbran who had to rely on a plank and a van to convey their grandfather to hospital.  

Well, I'm afraid, Llywydd, that shouting at me does not disguise for a moment the emptiness of the points that the leader of the opposition has made this afternoon. He urges me on the one hand to use the money we've had from the UK Government to pay staff in the NHS, without for a second recognising that, if we were to do that, the service pressures that led to the sorts of difficulties that the ambulance service had to experience this weekend could only possibly get worse. So, his proposals would lead to more Cwmbrans, because we would have taken that money under his suggestion away from that service, and, instead, put it into pay. 

The offer that we have made is the offer that was recommended by the independent pay review body. We've paid that in full, and we have negotiated with our colleagues in the trade union movement to shape that offer in a way that actually means that nurses on bands 1 to 4 of 'Agenda for Change', which is almost half the nurses in Wales, will receive 7.5 per cent uplift in their pay. Nurses on band 1, the lowest paid, will get an uplift of 10.8 per cent in their pay; they will be paid more than any other nurse in that position in any other part of the United Kingdom. And the discussions that my colleague, Eluned Morgan, had with the RCN and others yesterday were all about looking to see whether there are things beyond pay that we can do to make those jobs more attractive to people here in Wales.

The leader of the opposition says to me that we could raise money through raising taxes here in Wales. He's made that suggestion to me in the past. It's an astonishing suggestion for him to make. As a result of the decisions made in the autumn statement, taxes levied on people in Wales are higher than they have been for the last 70 years. Now, his proposal is that we should tax people in Wales even more than his Government's record levels have already imposed upon them. Does he think for a moment that that is a serious proposition to put to a Government here in a Wales—that, at a time when people cannot buy food and they cannot afford to pay for energy, that we should take even more money out of their pockets than his Government is taking already? That is not a choice that a serious Government would make here in Wales. And even if we did so, how does he imagine that that would allow us to make an offer to public service workers in Wales that would go anywhere near matching the level of inflation in the economy? It costs £100 million to raise 1 per cent more on public sector pay here in Wales. 

Llywydd, this Government is clear: front-line workers in the NHS and elsewhere in the public service deserve to have their pay protected and not to see it being undermined by levels of inflation of the sort we see today. The only way that that can happen—he knows it; quite certainly people outside in Wales know it—is by the UK Government being prepared to fund those settlements in England and allowing the Barnett formula to allow us to do that in Wales. That will be a serious conversation, and a very different conversation to the one that he has offered us this afternoon.

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. Over the last few days, Labour's shadow health Secretary in Westminster, Wes Streeting, has referred to the RCN and Unison's offer to suspend strike action, if the UK health Secretary was prepared to discuss pay. That is an offer that is too good to refuse, but that is what the Tories are doing at Westminster, and that's what you are doing in Wales. Steve Barclay met with the unions and refused to negotiate over pay; Eluned Morgan met the unions and refused to negotiate over pay. For Wales: see England. And you say your hands are tied, but how, then, has the Scottish Government been able to get to a position where two health unions have called off their strike action, and others have paused it pending a new ballot, because they have negotiated a better agreement for those workers? You yourselves as a Government, through Transport for Wales, have averted strike action in Transport for Wales. Why? Because you were prepared to negotiate a better agreement than was offered to those workers than in England. If you can do it in Transport for Wales, why not in the NHS?

Well, let me just make two points: we know how the Scottish Government has been able to make that offer, and it's a decision for the Scottish Government to make. They have made it by taking £400 million out of the NHS and transferring that money into pay. That is not a decision that we have felt able to make here in Wales. And, as for the deal struck by Transport for Wales, it is self-financing. They have been able to agree changes to working practices with their workers that mean that they are able to afford to make a different pay offer, and no such opportunities exist in the NHS.

They haven't taken £400 million out of the NHS, they've invested it in the NHS workforce and have recognised that, without actually sustaining the morale of that workforce, then there wouldn't be an NHS, because, actually, who is there to deliver it? Now, Rishi Sunak has said that an inflationary pay increase for all public sector workers would cost £28 billion; the Institute for Fiscal Studies points out that that's an inflated figure, because it doesn't include the pay deals already offered. Now, last week Eluned Morgan said that an inflationary pay increase would cost £900 million in Wales. But again, that's across the entire public sector, it doesn't acknowledge the over-£200 million that you've already committed as part of your current offer to NHS staff. So what, First Minister, would it take to top up what you've already offered to the 7.5 per cent pay award that has averted the strikes in Scotland? It's around £120 million. Are you seriously saying that you don't have any money left in the Welsh reserve; there is no unallocated funding left, that you could not use some of the £200 million you spend annually on private sector services in the NHS, that you couldn't better spend that on public sector staff?

Well, I'm afraid that's a deeply confused question, Llywydd. It is the Scottish Government itself that published figures that showed that it had taken £400 million out of plans that it otherwise had to spend on NHS services and had transferred that into pay. Now, that is a perfectly legitimate decision for them to make. But they didn't find £400 million of new money; they took it out of things, and that's what he's got to recognise. They took it out of things that they had planned for the NHS to do: more operations, more ambulance capacity, more in primary care investment—all the things that Plaid Cymru Members advocate on the floor of this Chamber, week after week. And in Scotland, there will be less of that, as a result of the decisions that the Scottish Government has made. And, he says to me that we should follow them and that we should take £120 million out of the service of the NHS and use it to top up the pay of workers. Well, that's fine, he can make that case; we have stared at that case as well, and we have decided that, given the stresses and the strains that we see in the NHS every single day, where we see the need still to recover from COVID, with people waiting for treatments that they otherwise would have received, to take £120 million out of that effort and to put it in pay would not be the choice that we would make. I agree with what the shadow health spokesperson said in England; it was an offer too good to refuse. It's a matter of great disappointment, I think, that, when Steven Barclay had an opportunity to meet the RCN, he didn't find a way of making an improved offer to them, because we would then have had the opportunity to have made that improved offer here in Wales. 

I think it's astonishing that you're attacking the Tories in Westminster when you're doing exactly the same in Wales in refusing to talk about pay to the unions. I just disagree philosophically with the First Minister: I do not see that actually investing in better pay and conditions for the workforce is actually diverting money out of the NHS; it's investing in the long-term, sustainable future of the NHS, because, without those nurses, those doctors and NHS staff, what future is there for the service at all? 

You referred to the independent pay review body. Why not, as the unions are calling for you to do—? If you're not prepared to have face-to-face negotiations over pay, why not actually turn to the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and have independent arbitration? This is what we've heard from the Labour Party in other trade union disputes, and yet you're not prepared to actually practice what you preach in terms of your own values. You yourself have said that any dispute, ultimately, has to be ended through negotiation. Why not have the negotiation to avert the strikes rather than actually have the strikes continue right through the winter, adding pain upon pain in the crisis that we're already facing? Surely there's a better way forward, First Minister.

The difference between us, Llywydd, is not philosophical at all; it's simply practical. He wants to take £120 million out of activity that the NHS in Wales is committed to undertake, and would use that money to pay people. That's a practical choice; our choice has had to be different because we see the enormous pressures that the NHS faces every single day. Now, I repeat what I said: all disputes in the end end by negotiation. I urge the Westminster Government to negotiate in a way that allows us in Wales to be able to do what we would wish to do, and that is to make sure that the people who carry out those front-line services, the things we rely on all the time, are properly rewarded for their service. But, without the funding that we need to be able to do that, the idea that you can dream up—and we've had it dreamed up on both sides of the Chamber this afternoon—magical solutions that say that somehow we are in a position in Wales to do something uniquely that isn't available across the border—. By raising taxes, according to the Tories—astonishing, absolutely astonishing. 'Use the powers you've got', I keep hearing from the leader of the opposition, and the powers we've got, that he points to, are to take more money in taxes from people in Wales. So, it's 'raise taxes' on one side of the Chamber, and it's 'take money away from services in the NHS' on the other. This Government has made its decision. We support all those people whose working lives have been so badly affected by a decade of austerity and the profound economic mismanagement that has led us to the position of the economy in the UK today. And when fair pay is available through the UK Government, then we will make sure that we use any of that money to advance the cause of fair pay here in Wales.

Question 3, Joel James.

Sorry about that—

That's okay.

—just a wardrobe malfunction there, sorry.