Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:35 pm on 15 February 2017.
Mark Drakeford
Labour
1:35,
15 February 2017
Let me begin by agreeing with what Mike Hedges said. The policy of austerity is a self-defeating policy. It makes things worse rather than better, and that’s demonstrated from the practical impact that we see elsewhere. On the direct impacts of the spending cuts set out in the IFS’s green budget, what we know is coming the way of Wales is a reduction in our revenue of 8 per cent between the years 2009 and 2019, and a cut of 21 per cent in our capital budget between 2009 and 2019, and this is without the cuts of £3.5 billion that the UK Government continues to say it will impose in budgets in 2019-20. I met the Chief Secretary to the Treasury yesterday, with finance Ministers from Scotland and Northern Ireland. Together, we pressed on the chief secretary the need for the UK Government to abandon its plans for those very damaging cuts and the impacts that they would have on devolved administrations right across the United Kingdom.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
