The UK Government's Budget

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 21 March 2023.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:09, 21 March 2023

One way or another, I have been involved in 23 years of UK Government budgets, and I agree with Huw Irranca-Davies—I have never seen a worse deal for Wales than we saw last week. It is absolutely unfathomable to me that a UK Government, looking at the stresses and strains that the health service is under in every part of the United Kingdom, could believe that this is a budget with no extra help for health services anywhere. Can you imagine? This is the seventy-fifth anniversary of the national health service, and despite the pressures—pressures to which Conservative politicians here in the Senedd point week after week—there is nothing at all to help either the fabric of the health service, the services that are provided, or the pay of those people on whom we rely.

And as for that £1 million, it is derisory; it is absolutely derisory. The Chancellor said that this was a budget for growth. How could he have concluded that all the capital needs of Wales—the need to modernise our school system, to invest in equipment in the health service, to provide for the digital services on which the future economy of Wales relies—were to be provided for from £1 million? It is £1 million; that is the additional money that we have in our capital budget in the second year of the Chancellor's prospectus. It's simple, it's there—you can look at it in the budget papers: we have £1 million more. We are 8 per cent below where we were in capital budgets a decade ago already, and this will just push us even further down. When Huw Irranca-Davies says that this is the worst budget we've ever seen, as far as the long-term future of the Welsh economy, he could not have put it more plainly.