Welsh Conservatives in the Assembly have outlined their spending priorities for protecting the health budget in Wales.
Labour-Plaid’s Draft Budget will take £1 billion out of the NHS over the next three years. With frontline services already feeling immense strain following over £400 million worth of cuts during this financial year, it should be very clear that further vast reductions in this budget must be avoided.
The Party has today said that waste within the NHS must be rooted out, inefficiencies ended and the health budget protected in line with inflation. Welsh Conservatives believe anything less will put Welsh patients and NHS staff at a huge disadvantage to their counterparts in England and Scotland, where health has already been protected.
In the table below, departmental budget reductions to enable the protection of health are clearly outlined. To help comparisons, the Welsh Conservative Party’s proposals appear alongside Labour-Plaid’s plans. Each column lists the real term reduction (revenue and capital combined) over the three year spending review period.
WAG’s plans Welsh Conservative alternative
Health and Social Services -7.6% NIL
Social Justice and Local Government -7.4% -12.5%
Education, Children & Lifelong Learning -8% -12%
Economy and Transport -21.3% -30%
Environment, Sustainability and Housing -21% -25%
Rural Affairs -12.7% -15%
Heritage -13% -20%
Public Services and Performance -24.4% -30%
Central Services and Administration -19.1% -25%
A number of strategic decisions will permit these alternatives. Major decisions include:
- A public sector pay freeze for salaries over £21,000
- Further postponements in the Trunk Road building programme
- A further reduction of 1.5% in the local government settlement
- The replacement of Communities First with a voluntary sector “Big Society” programme
- No further increase to offset student fees (ie frozen at current level)
It is our expectation that the reductions to capital spending will be partly offset by the introduction of a bespoke Welsh PPP (Public Private Partnership) scheme. This will take forward the best aspects of the Scottish model and add distinctive Welsh solutions to them; involving the private sector in capital projects.
As the programme will take approximately 18 months to develop, the resources it is likely to generate do not appear in the budget plans above.
David Melding AM, the Party’s Director of Policy, said: “Welsh Conservatives remain unequivocally committed to the protection of the health budget and today’s very rare publication of an opposition party’s public spending priorities clearly confirms this.
“We have spent the past few weeks composing a considered response to the Assembly’s Draft Budget; that clearly sets out how protecting health is affordable, possible and in our view highly desirable.
“Its implementation will be aided by a number of strategic decisions. These also incorporate our continued war on waste, which includes slashing consultancy fees and bloated WAG departments, and ending free breakfasts and universal free prescriptions.
“From now until the vote on the Assembly Government’s final budget in February, we will intensively lobby Labour-Plaid to revise its plans and protect the health budget in line with inflation.”
