Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 7 February 2023.
We are a socialist Government, and I think just what we've done in this last week absolutely shows that; it shows the difference between us and the UK Government. But our position on tax is very clear; any analysis of the levers that are available to us as a Government via the Welsh rates of income tax demonstrates we simply cannot raise enough fairly enough to make good the holes that have been created by the economic crisis and ensure higher pay in our public services. So, I don't think it would be right in a cost-of-living crisis to ask anyone that pays the basic income rate to pay any extra money. And you refer to the higher rate, and we don't know if there would be any unintended consequences. I think you will have heard the Minister for Finance and Local Government saying in the same programme that you were interviewed on on Sunday that there could be unintended consequences. People who earn the levels of salary that they would have to earn to pay that higher rate of income tax, they're not like other people. They could just up and leave Wales and move to England, for instance. We don't know what would happen, and I think that is a piece of work that really needs looking at very carefully. I'm really not sure that your judgment on this is correct.