NHS budget 'funds assembly costs'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/wales/7061270.stm

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Doctors' leaders claim that cash which could be spent on public services is being used instead to pay for the running costs of the Welsh assembly.

The British Medical Association in Wales wants the formula for public expenditure in Wales to be reviewed.

The assembly's £40m running cost, without civil servant costs, comes from the grant paying for public services.

But First Minister Rhodri Morgan said the issue was determined in the 1997 referendum which set up the assembly.

BMA Cymru claimed the money for the assembly's day-to-day costs was being "siphoned off" from the £14bn the assembly received from the UK government to run public services in Wales.

It urged a review of the Barnett formula - which determines the overall amount of public expenditure in Wales - so that all the money that came to Wales was spent on front line services like the NHS.

The assembly's £40m running costs equate to 0.29% of its overall budget and 0.9% of the £4.4bn health budget.

RUNNING COSTS OF INSTITUTIONS UK Parliament £450mScottish Parliament £70mWelsh assembly £40m

Parliament in Westminster costs around £450m a year to run. This is separate from the budgets for the health and education services in England.

David Samuel, vice-chair of the BMA's Welsh medical students committee, said: "We feel it's far more beneficial to the people of Wales if we've already paid for the assembly through central funding, so all the money provided to Wales can be for the benefit of patients.

"We accept that devolution does come with its costs. But we also feel now that now the assembly is well established we should actually be pushing for central government to fund some of these things.

BMA Cymru says the assembly's costs are 'siphoned' from the NHS

"By having separate funding, we'll know exactly how much money is available to the people of Wales, we'll know exactly how much is available for health and then we can plan our services far better.

"Every penny counts and every pound counts. At the moment, the health services in Wales are so far stretched that any additional funding must be a positive thing."

Mr Morgan said the issue was determined in the referendum and general election of 1997.

He said: "If it's only become clear now to the BMA, that shows that somebody in the BMA should have been around in 1997 and should have been reading, not the fine print, it was in very large letters.

"We would get a lot of benefits from it, through having local democracy.

"What we can't have is asking the English parliament, as it were, or the parliament for the UK, but in its English function, to be paying for the establishment costs of the assembly."