Speech on Supplimentry Budget 10 March 2015

Supplementary Budget

Thank you Presiding Officer

The committees view on the draft budget was that the setting of priorities was a matter for the Welsh Government

This is a view held by the committee and fully endorsed by me on the supplementary budget

The role of both the committee and the Assembly is to scrutinise this expenditure and I intend to discuss two areas Health funding and invest to save.

Health funding appears to go through the same cycle each year.

First quarter substantial overspend

Second quarter a small reduction

Third Quarter serious end of year problems predicted

Substantial additional money given to health in the supplementary budget or just before it

Fourth quarter major hospital service cut backs

To be repeated next year

Three questions arise

Firstly the Assembly has granted health boards the ability to plan three year budgets so that overspends in some years can be offset be savings in other years.

Will we get an out turn report showing underspend or overspend this year and how that fits into the three year budget.

The second question is what is being done to ensure medical interventions that are in the opinion of NICE are either of no benefit or likely to do harm to a patient are not carried out

Thirdly is the split between primary and secondary care correct and is the funding for each fair.

General Practitioners are paid so much per patient whilst hospitals are paid per intervention

Is this a fair way of funding because what it has produced is a widening of the gap in both monetary and percentage terms between primary and secondary care expenditure

Finally on health two rhetorical questions

How much of the Welsh budget can be spent on health

If Social care is not adequately funded will that not have serious effect on health needs?

On Invest to Save

I believe this is an excellent scheme to use a capital funding injection to reduce future revenue expenditure

I also believe that the simpler the scheme is the more likely it is to succeed

I am also relaxed in schemes paying back over 5 years rather than 3

What does concern me is those schemes that are making no payment in the first year and the finance committee will be failing in its duty of scrutinising expenditure if it does not keep a close watch on those schemes in future years.

A major recipient of invest to save money has been Natural Resources Wales.

It has had substantial sums from invest to save since inception.

It has postponed payment from the year after the investment into future years.

If the problem is that the cost of merger is substantially higher than was predicted, which in my experience of mergers is normal.

Then a better way would be to fully fund the merger costs and not use invest to save as a method of filling the gap and allowing the invest to save money to be used to create future years savings especially in health.

Finally budgeting is about using resources as effectively as possible and this is the aim of this supplementary budget.