North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has called on the Welsh Government to ensure funding for voluntary sector advice services is addressed in the next budget round.
Questioning the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government in the Assembly Chamber yesterday about his budget provision for the ‘Communities and Children’ Ministerial portfolio, Mr Isherwood said that preventative advice is not only better for people, but also saves money.
He said:
“This portfolio covers things like families, children, welfare reform, financial inclusion, homelessness and housing advice in the voluntary sector. Getting advice in those areas is not only better for people, but it would actually save money for the public purse. Therefore, given that the Welsh Government had already commissioned, alongside the National Advice Network, prior to the 2017-18 budget, the report now published on “Modelling the need for advice on social welfare”, what consideration was given to provision to take forward its conclusions, which they say now need to be properly framed within a wider policy discussion considering the potential severity of problems, their interconnectedness, and, of course, local insights?”
The Cabinet Secretary said: “The way the budget-making process works, however, is that it is for portfolio Ministers to identify priorities within the range of responsibilities that they exercise. We then negotiate together over a budget to deliver on those priorities and it would have been for the Cabinet Secretary responsible to make the decisions in relation to the deployment of resources across the wide range of responsibilities, as Mark Isherwood said, that lies within that particular portfolio.”
Mr Isherwood added: “This report found that in absolute terms, the greatest number of problems are found in population centres such as Cardiff and Swansea, but Wrexham suffers from particularly high rates of housing, neighbour and debt problems, and the need for preventative advice is more evenly spread throughout additional areas, including Flintshire and Wrexham. I therefore hope that the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children, Carl Sargeant AM, did raise this with the Finance Secretary and that this will be addressed in the next budget round.”