Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
What is the point of a Welsh Labour government if it merely passes on UK Tory cuts?
By Dave Reid
Happy New Year! – the Welsh government has put forward a devastating budget for public services in Wales for 2024.
The figures are terrifying: £1.3 billion of cuts in real terms since 2021, even though Welsh Government ministers have said that the real value of the WG budget has fallen by £3bn already in the current spending review period. And the real-world consequences will be horrific – lives will be lost and others ruined by these cuts.
The Welsh government claims to be “protecting” core services – health and council services – by not cutting them so much, but even these increases do not keep up with inflation: i.e. they mean cuts. And we will be expected to pay out of own pockets for many more public services.
Health spending will increase by about 4% and local government will receive an increase of 3.1% while core inflation runs at 5.5% and has been over 10% this year, but other services will not even get these insufficient increases.
The NHS is already on its knees in Wales, unable to provide basic services in many cases. What a state of affairs in 21st century Wales when the ambulance service as a matter of course advises many 999 calls to get a taxi to hospital, because they will probably never get an ambulance. NHS workers are leaving the service in droves because the pressures of work are so great while real pay has been cut year after year. One third of sickness absences in the NHS are caused by stress at work. Yet its budget means even more cuts.
If anything local government is in an even worse state. Councils face the prospect of going bust or just providing services required by law – statutory services. That means more library closures and more charges for social care.
The Welsh Labour government tries to pin the blame on the Tory UK government who have cut the funding for the Wales. And, yes, 13 years of Tory austerity has devastated services across the UK. But the decline of public services in Wales are also a testament of a failed political strategy by Welsh Labour.
Welsh Labour leaders claimed they could mitigate the cuts imposed by Westminster and use devolved powers to run things more fairly than the Tories in England. They told us that it would be disastrous to fight the cuts – that the Tories would impose them anyway. But where have we ended up? The NHS in Wales is in an even worse state than in Tory England. Council services are just as threadbare. The Tory policy of charging for basic public services in health, education and social care has been implemented by a Welsh Labour government and will now be extended with more charges for dental services, social care and university tuition fees.
Welsh Labour’s strategy in practice has been to manage the decline of public services in Wales, implementing the Tory cuts for them to make them appear more palatable – acting as a heat shield.
And the idea that we should hang on and wait for a UK Labour government has been exposed even before it has been elected. The Tories are so discredited that even though Starmer is unpopular he is likely to win a significant majority in parliament. But Rachel Reeves, the next likely Chancellor, has promised to continue the Tory spending levels until productivity increases – something that has not happened since the 1960s. Starmer told business leaders who were welcomed at this year’s Labour conference that “if we do come into government, you will be coming into government with us.”
The only way to protect services is to fight the cuts emanating from Westminster in the way that Socialist Party Wales has consistently advocated – whichever party is in power there.
There must be a change of course from Wales’s trade union movement too. Trade union leaders have slavishly clung to the coat tails of the Welsh government imprisoned by the false promises of social partnership which means that while they wring their hands at the effect of the cuts the majority of public sector union leaders and the Wales TUC have blocked action by their members against Labour councils or government services. A notable exception has been Unite’s support for its council workers in Cardiff and Wrexham who have been on strike for pay rises that keep pace with inflation. But in general public sector union leaders have been even more pro-actively trying to settle below inflation pay increases in Wales in the NHS strikes than in England.
