, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Yes, it is, within Government, not as maybe a wholesale programme like the invest-to-save programme was in itself, but as a kind of means of thinking through how we make Government more effective. So, for example, digital transformation is one area of work; I…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Yes, so, the challenge on the capital budget is significant, and it will be more than that 9 per cent, because of the issues that I raised earlier on the reductions as a result of the defence investment plan. Therefore, there are two aspects to the answer on…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Well, I've spoken, haven't I, about my role in managing the Welsh public finances in-year that I've inherited from the previous budget and how we've put together a programme for government and priorities into action for this year. So, there is no…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Well, what I would say is, if there is agreement through legislation to devolve new powers to the Senedd and to the Welsh Government from the UK Government, that would come alongside an evaluation of what expenditure would be needed to deliver those services…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Well, the Welsh Government wants to see a Wales Act introduced by the Westminster Government that would look to devolve those powers where there is a certain amount of consensus on what the new powers for the Senedd should be and be implemented here in Wales…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Thank you for that question. On the fiscal aspect of this work, the fiscal framework has been in place for a decade now, and therefore this is an opportunity to review that framework. The Government's wish is that we do review the fiscal framework and include…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
So, the Government had—. We had announced that we would publish the draft budget on 17 November, before the announcement of the UK budget on 28 October. We don't foresee that we will need to change that. The timeline is tight, but I think it's better for us…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Yes. I agree.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
I'm in the Andy Burnham style of school of devolving responsibilities, decentralising responsibilities, to those who deliver services closer to communities. So, I've not had a conversation in Government around any changes to that principle of enabling local…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
I can commit, where there are new priorities that Government introduce for the first time, that we have a proper conversation with any delivery partner on how that priority needs to be funded in order to get to the outcome we all want to receive. The issue…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
They will be. [Laughter.] Just to reflect on your use of the term 'pitch', because it's certainly part of how the dynamic could work, has worked, in developing an annual budget. What I've been heartened by is that Ministers do see this as a collective effort…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
I've sort of already alluded to some of this work in terms of the discussion we had earlier on outcomes and how we start to embed a system that more clearly identifies the outcomes that are related to Government budget lines and Government projects, so that…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Local government are democratically elected and they are accountable to their electorate on how they undertake and discharge the public services that they run, and therefore their analysis of how to run their own budgets and be accountable for those is really…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
I think I've spoken of the discipline that's required of Ministers, and it's required of Ministers in any Government, but in this particular year, with a new Government, a programme for government that's new and a challenging financial settlement, bringing…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Yes, in this financial year. And then, of course, the plan—. And it may well be refreshed in the UK Government budget. The interesting thing there is that the Chancellor is now the previous UK Secretary of State for Defence who resigned over this very issue…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
The defence investment plan was announced pre change of leadership to the UK Government. This would have been in my time, it would have been around July. That plan looked to curtail the budgets within year of UK Government departments, and had a Barnett…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
In the—forgive me if I don't remember correctly what the defence plan that was announced by—
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
I would hope that, as we said earlier, in providing an indicative budget and allocations for two years in terms of resource and three years in terms of capital in the budget that we'll announce later this year, that will give some assurance to local…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
I'd expect the collective of the Government to think about that, and I'd expect it as a continuing conversation between myself and the health Minister. The health Minister and the programme for government speak about shifting towards preventative and…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Well, we are obviously thinking about how preventative action and outcomes can be improved in order to avoid the spend that the NHS always has to spend as a last resort, rather than looking as to how we can prevent that spending from needing to happen for so…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Thank you. I think this is just a follow-on from what I've just been describing, really. In terms of how we seek to ensure that one aspect of the programme for government is to prioritise preventative work in its wider sense of the word, we are doing that…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Maybe it's also useful just to illustrate what we're doing by describing the process that we've gone through to date. The budgetary process is led by me, but it is a collective effort by the Cabinet to look at how cross-cutting work especially, but generally…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
The dashboard and reporting will reflect the programme for government, so that's what the test for a Government always is: what did you promise the people of Wales and then what did you promise the Senedd that you would deliver as a programme for government?…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Yes, this is most definitely a piece of work that's being driven by the First Minister's aspiration to make this Government focus more on outcomes rather than on just budget lines in an annual budget, and for us all to be thinking about whether a budget line…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2027-28 - Pre-budget scrutiny: Cabinet Minister for Finance
Well, probably I could try and answer, but it would be more meaningful, I think, coming from officials in reflecting on the work that's been done in the past.
