Part of the debate – Senedd Cymru am 2:42 pm ar 28 Mawrth 2023.
Thank you. In relation to the additional funding for swimming pools, as you say, the UK Government budget did announce further funding for that. As a Cabinet, we are looking at the additional funding that came forward from the spring budget, and obviously decisions will be made collectively.
In relation to the £155 million, obviously that was our money. As a Government, we had plans for how to spend that money, and the rules were changed. In relation to what you were saying about UK Government departments, you're quite right: departments in Whitehall returned about £25 billion to the Treasury. If you look at the Department of Health and Social Care in England alone, they returned £18.6 billion to the Treasury. If you think about what our Barnett consequential share would have been of that funding, we would have had an additional £1 billion. But we didn't return that £1 billion, because we spent more in Wales. Our offer to businesses during the COVID pandemic was much more generous, for example, and we also spent better, avoiding the scandals of those dodgy PPE contracts.