Effective budgeting is about both how much and how well money is spent.
The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the failings of successive Labour Welsh Governments in managing our vital public services.
In the year before the pandemic, NHS waiting times doubled in Wales, and increased eight times during the pandemic.
As Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported last year, Wales has retained the highest poverty rate of all the UK nations throughout devolution since 1999.
Further, their “Poverty in Wales 2020” Report two months ago found that Wales still “has lower pay for people in every sector than in the rest of the UK” – and that “Even before coronavirus, almost a quarter of people in Wales were in poverty, living precarious and insecure lives”.
As the Bevan Foundation states, “poverty was a significant problem in Wales long before the arrival of COVID-19’.
These shocking statistics highlight the failure of successive Labour Welsh Governments to adequately use their resources and devolved responsibilities to tackle long-standing social injustices in Wales.
For example, despite spending £500 million on its flagship Communities First policy, it “did not reduce the headline rates of poverty in the vast majority of communities, still less in Wales as a whole’’.
Further, the Centre for Towns has found that Wales is the worst performing area of the UK with regards to economic well-being.
This Draft Budget provides wholly inadequate support for the third sector and charities in Wales, at the forefront of Wales’ response to the pandemic whilst experiencing a dramatic decline in vital income that supports services.
It states that an additional £700,000 will be provided, on top of the £3 million to support the sector in its response to COVID-19 and the £24 million Welsh Government Third Sector Covid-19 Response Fund.
However, the Wales Council for Voluntary Action/WCVA estimate that charities in Wales have lost around 24% of their income this year, or £1.2 billion for charities based in Wales.
This Draft Budget therefore needs a greater focus on helping our communities to build back better.
For example, the Bevan Foundation have called on the Welsh Government to use some of the unallocated hundreds of millions from the additional £5.4 billion provided by the UK Conservative Government, as part of a multi-year investment strategy to support families in poverty.
Responding to the Finance Committee’s consultation on the Welsh Government’s draft budget proposals, the WCVA stated “the voluntary sector must be supported and resourced to fulfil its central role in the recovery from the pandemic” and “Co-production must play a key part in the design and delivery of preventative services”.
The WCVA response to the Welsh Government’s Draft Budget proposals goes further, stating:
- “The voluntary sector continues to require greater resource to respond to increasing demand on its services”
- “a thriving third sector has a vital role to play in the prevention agenda. The sector has many groups and organisations which have developed to redress specific problems or prevent them worsening.”
- “it is also able to bring wider benefits to society through community engagement and make communities feel more empowered and connected.”
- “And co-production of services must play a key part in this.”
For the first time in many years, a Draft Budget is not proposing to cut the Housing Support Grant, which is welcomed, as is additional funding for Social Housing.
However, Welsh Labour have overseen a Welsh affordable housing supply crisis, which did not exist when they first came to power in 1999 – and although the sector states that we need 20,000 new social homes over a 5 year Senedd term, Labour’s 20,000 new affordable homes target includes a range of housing types, not just social homes.
As for Local Government:
- despite the impact of COVID-19 on local services and communities in Wales, Councils will receive a smaller increase in their settlement than this financial year.
- North Wales Councils are again losing out, with an average 3.4% increase compared to 4.17% in South Wales and 5.6% for top-placed Newport
-AND this Labour Government is once again refusing a funding floor to protect Councils like Wrexham and Ceredigion, expected to cope with increases of just 2.3% and 1.96% respectively.
As I have been repeatedly telling successive Welsh Governments for many years, working with the public and voluntary sectors to design, deliver and fund key early intervention and prevention services will spend money better, deliver more, reduce cost pressure on Statutory Services - and therefore save more from the Welsh Government's budget too.