Following the near collapse of the banking system and the subsequent credit crunch and recession, no serious politician or economic commentator has been able to pretend that public expenditure could continue to grow and be maintained at the levels of recent times. Therefore, we need to ensure good value for money and the elimination of waste, as ineffectual spending can no longer be afforded by any institution.
The Coalition Government in Westminster has been left with the mess that was created by the previous Labour government and we now have the duty to fix the problem and we have said that this will be done in a fair way. We recognise that Wales will have to play its part in the cuts but the Labour-Plaid coalition government must play its part in making sure that the cuts passed on to the Assembly are also made in a fair way and get rid of waste in its spending.
The Welsh Liberal Democrats believe that the Labour-Plaid government needs to redouble its efforts to ensure that every penny of taxpayers’ money is spent effectively and delivers for the people of Wales. Unfortunately, recent reports from the Auditor General for Wales have found that, across Welsh Assembly Government departments and Assembly government-sponsored bodies, expenditure does not always match strategic objectives. We’ve seen poor or little monitoring of expenditure on government schemes, and, given the substantial amounts of money that the government has undoubtedly spent on programmes in specific areas, the outcomes were disappointing.
There are other few examples that strike me in which we could have done better. In evidence to a recent meeting of the Finance Committee, we looked at the example of merging the former quangos into the Welsh Assembly Government. At the time, among the reasons given for bringing the Welsh Development Agency, the Wales Tourist Board and Education and Learning Wales into the Welsh Assembly Government were to achieve better public service delivery, the supposed greater accountability of those particular bodies, and efficiencies. The gaining of efficiencies was one of the main drivers stated by the government in pursuing that policy. Yet, as the Finance Committee saw, it was impossible to identify an efficiency saving gained form those mergers.
A more shocking example of the Labour-Plaid government’s failure to get to grips with government waste was the evidence given to the Finance Committee by the representative of the NHS finance directors. It was revealed that £1 billion of public money was being ineffectively spent in the NHS budget.
We wrote immediately to the Minister for Health to ask about her plans to look at that statement and to find out whether it was true, in the hope of disproving it, but she said that she had no intention of doing so.
We acknowledge that this money was being spent on patient care, however, it cannot be acceptable for a government to be told by one of its public servants that one fifth of the largest single budget that the National Assembly gives to a particular service can be spent ineffectively and on the wrong things without there being any worry or an urge to get to the bottom of the claim.
This government’s failure to address that stark statement by that finance director is a dereliction of its duty. As a result, that statement is not just bad for the budget, but bad for patient care, because the services are not being commissioned in the right places at the right time for the right patients. This attitude is replicated across most government departments in Wales.
It is unbelievable that the Labour-Plaid government here in Wales berates the cuts coming from London while they are doing little to prepare for the difficult times ahead. They must understand that money is tight and that they can’t spend, spend, spend. The sooner they understand that, the better prepared we will be to protect our front line services.
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