The Labour-led Welsh government has promised an extra £293.5m for the NHS, in a move that it claims will protect the services its citizens cherish the most.
Announcing the draft 2016-17 budget, the Welsh finance minister, Jane Hutt, said the administration in Cardiff was boosting the health service despite funding cuts from Westminster. The budget is the last before next year’s Welsh assembly elections.
The Conservatives, who have long criticised the Welsh government’s record on health, called the increase “too little, far too late” and said that Labour continued to “hack away” at the NHS in Wales.
Increased funding for health means that cuts will have to be made elsewhere. During the budget debate, opposition politicians flagged up concerns about cuts to higher education, homelessness prevention, culture and the Welsh language. Cuts of 2% will also be made to the money the Welsh government passes on to local authorities.
In recent weeks, the UK government’s clashes with junior doctors over a new contract have been used by the Labour administration in Cardiff to hit back.
The Welsh health secretary launched a recruitment campaign last month aimed at luring disillusioned English doctors across the border.
On the eve of the strike by junior doctors – which was called off at the last moment – the Welsh first minister, Carwyn Jones, wrote to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, expressing concern over the impact the industrial action could have had on patients from Wales.
The majority of the Welsh government’s £15.3bn budget comes from the UK Treasury. Hutt claims the Welsh government is facing a 3.6% cut in UK government funding over five years, once the effects of inflation are taken into account.
“This is a budget which will secure a fairer, better Wales; it is about investing for the future,” Hutt said, adding that the financial settlement from the UK government had been challenging. “It has meant us taking difficult decisions, but we have done all we can within these financial constraints to protect the services that matter most to the people of Wales.”
The so-called intermediate care fund will also be increased from £20m to £50m. This money is designed to enable the NHS and social services to work together to support older and vulnerable people, helping them to stay at home rather than going to hospital and to be discharged earlier if they do need to be admitted.
A Welsh government source said: “The record level of funding going into the Welsh NHS is politically significant. Following years of cuts, we received £110m extra to our total budget as a result of the [UK government’s] spending review, but we are going way above and beyond that with today’s investment direct to the NHS.”
The Welsh Conservative shadow minister for finance, Nick Ramsay, said: “This budget provides too little, far too late for our hardworking NHS staff.
“The damage has been done. Hospital downgrading, huge delays in waiting times, a failure to recruit staff – this chaos is a direct result of Labour’s record-breaking NHS budget cuts. By failing to protect the budget, our health service has been starved of £1bn since 2010-11 … We cannot support a budget that continues to hack away at our NHS.”
