Will the Minister provide a breakdown of all the funding received from the UK Government as a consequence of COVID-19, and confirm how much of this had been spent by 14 January 2021?
The total block grant funding for 2020-21, including Barnett consequentials generated from UK Government measures related to COVID-19, will only be finally confirmed as part of the UK Supplementary Estimates due to be published by the UK Government in early February. The Welsh Government’s budget position for 2020-21 will then be set out in the third supplementary budget to be published on 9th February.
The Welsh Government has previously published two Supplementary Budgets (June and October 2020) providing updates on the funding received as a result of COVID-19 spending measures in England and allocations made since the final Budget 2020-21 was approved in March.
The Welsh Government has made a number of spending decisions relating to COVID measures in Wales since October. They include, for example, providing £450m to support businesses under alert level three and four restrictions, an extra £10.7m for the Cultural Recovery Fund and an extra £40m to support students facing financial hardship.
Outturn expenditure against the budget will be reported in our annual accounts.