"Last year I warned that the Welsh budget – the money that pays for our public services, our health, our education – was under threat because of cuts made at Westminster. The London parties said we were scare-mongering, but Wednesday’s UK Budget confirmed our worst fears.
The figures published yesterday showed a 5% real terms cut in the Welsh budget, hundreds of millions of pounds, not from some fantasy point in the future but in the 2010-11 financial year which starts in two weeks time. We will have £800m less to spend on Welsh public services in the next year than we should, and between now and 2014 we are likely to be much more than the £3bn worse off that we first thought a year ago.
This is neither fair funding nor a fair deal for Wales. Plaid Cymru were the only party to see this. We were the only ones who cared about our Welsh public services, about our council jobs, health and education, and the only ones facing up to the reality of the situation.
But we in Wales have no have say in these cuts. These are cuts imposed upon us by Labour and Tory masters in London, at Westminster. What’s worse is that Wales has been under-funded for many years and will continue to lose out in the future, as shown by the independent Holtham Commission, which estimates that Wales is losing at least £300m per year under the current system.
Under Labour, public spending in England and Scotland grew faster than in Wales. We in Wales have been taken for granted, and it is still only Plaid Cymru who are fighting for fairer funding, based around the needs of the people of Wales, the outcome recommended by the Holtham Commission.
Despite the successes of the One Wales Government such as ReAct and ProAct, hard working families and businesses all across Wales will still be feeling the pinch when new fuel duty rises kick in next week on what will inevitably go down as ‘April Fuels Day’.
By next January Labour will have increased fuel duty by a massive 17% since December 2008. This means that fuel duty will make up 59p in every litre when people go to the pump. It is a regressive tax that will hit families, businesses and public services budgets hard, and especially those in more rural areas who have less choice in how they travel or how far they have to go for the services they use.
When the time comes we will be fighting these tax rises and repeating our call for a fuel duty regulator which would cap prices at the pump. Labour introduced an even stealthier tax when they froze the income tax threshold. This will increase the amount of tax being paid by hard-working people and impact strongly upon low-paid families here in Wales. In contrast, Plaid would have increased this threshold by £1,000, taking thousands of people in Wales out of paying income tax altogether and putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s why, in Plaid Cymru, we’re different. We put people first
We would also have increased the basic state pension for over-80s to the level of pension state guarantee to fight pensioner and fuel poverty, whilst increasing taxes on those who are very well off through bringing down the threshold for paying the 50% tax rate and levelling capital gains tax with income tax for example.
This can be afforded – by taking away tax breaks from the already well-off. They don’t need it… our pensioners and those on low incomes, do.
When times are tough it is a question of priorities – and only Plaid Cymru would put the people of Wales first, while Labour and the Tories are more worried by fat cat pin-striped City bankers who are back to their old tricks now after we risked billions of pounds of our money to bail them out.
Our economic future in Wales depends on there being a hung parliament, with neither Labour nor the Tories in overall control. It’s only when your votes matter that they start to pay attention to ordinary people. Plaid Cymru doesn’t owe anything to the City of London, only to the people of Wales – that’s why we’re different. Our policies reflect that and we go to Westminster to get the best deal for Wales, not to listen to anybody else."
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