A Budget Minister?
Before Christmas our new First Minister appointed his new Cabinet, including the surprise promotion of Jane Hutt as the Minister for Business and Budget. The use of the word budget sounds like she was found in “Pound Stretcher”!
After her failings in health and education I suppose the natural next step was to take control of the Assembly finances. In the debating chamber today I asked her what discussions she has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer since her appointment. Cutting through the waffle in the reply she obviously hasn’t.
In all fairness she has met with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and she does keep in touch with officials but the man in charge is the Chancellor. I find in incredible that she hasn’t even had a telephone chat with him in light of the 17% cut to public expenditure which he has ordered. The Treasury are making plans for significant reductions in public spending in an attempt to reduce the deficit. In the Financial Times on Monday the Chancellor said that this was “non negotiable”.
Surely any capable Minister would want to know what the thinking at Whitehall is and what the likely impact will be for Wales. We are roughly one month into the new Assembly Government and already we are seeing a poor performance by our new budget Minister.
But I suppose that’s always the risk with budgeting
January 20th, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Jonathan. Here you make a splendid case as to why the Assembly should have greater fiscal powers. Indeed, in a nation where the public sector is the largest single employer (notably NHS Wales), the non-negotiable 17% cut ordered in London is quite a smack in the teeth for Wales.
Surely any capable Minister knows that the thinking in Whitehall is not “what the likely impact will be for Wales.” It rarely is.