As Health spending in Wales currently makes up almost half of the Welsh Assembly Government budget, it is more than a tad deceitful for the Welsh Conservatives to claim that they would ring fence entire health budget, revenue and capital, in line with Retail Price Index.
Think about it - if the health spend is ring fenced in cash terms then every other budget (including the Education budget) would have to be cut by 20%, without the ring fence this comes in at around 11.9% across the board - which is bad but at least attempting to make the best out of bad job.This would be seriously massive cut to ring fence one department.
In Gwent local Conservative AMs are doing their best to try to distance themselves from their own Government's cuts including the threatened closure of the Passport Office in Newport. Yet, if you follow their ill-thought out logic then when you ring fencing in health, we will end up facing even deeper more damaging cuts than the billions that have already been proposed by the Conservative dominated Con-Dem Government in London.
The Conservatives (and their Lib Dem little helpers or willing allies - take you pick?) are already planning to take some £5 billion out of the Welsh budget, if we go with their plan to ring fence the health budget, then we would have to take that £5 billion out of only half the budget available. Every time you see a local Conservative offering their support for public spending or campaign against a cut, we should all remind them of this ill-thought out plan that they have proposed.
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