NHS Wales facing a 'historically low' funding settlement

NHS Wales faces an exceptionally low funding settlement by historical standards in the Welsh Government's spending plans for next year, finance experts have warned.

- CHRIS HAINES

Taking evidence on the outline draft budget, the Senedd's finance committee heard the health service would receive a lower increase than the average over the past 15 years.

Ed Poole, a lecturer and part of the Wales Fiscal Analysis team at Cardiff University, said the health and social care budget is rising by about £261m - 2.1% before inflation or 0.5% in real terms - "and that's way below the historical growth rate in health spending".

Dr Poole told yesterday's meeting: "It's below the 3.6% real-terms annual increase that we've seen in the NHS, it's below the 2.1% real-terms increase we've seen since 2010 which includes, of course, the austerity budget years."

He added the increase would be significantly lower than that planned for NHS England.

Dr Poole explained headroom has been left for negotiations with other political parties, with about £380m said to be unallocated in the budget, but cautioned "that's probably unrealistic".

"If that were to be brought forward then we'd have an historically low settlement for the NHS," he said.

"So, I think the amount of additional money from those unallocated funds is quite a bit smaller than is presented."