Welsh budget: Labour AM calls for more cash for GP surgeries

Welsh ministers' spending plans for 2020-21 were debated in the Senedd on Tuesday

A Labour assembly member says the Welsh Government needs to spend more money on GP services.

Swansea East's Mike Hedges says people were going to A&E as it was "the only place where they could see a doctor".

He made the comments in a debate on the Welsh Government's spending plans for the next financial year.

Every Welsh Government department will see an increase in funding - the first time in a decade that has happened.

Labour AMs and government ministers passed the £20bn budget in a vote on Tuesday.

Mr Hedges said he would support the government's plans but called for more money to be spent on the NHS, education and the environment.

• What is in the budget?

Meanwhile, the Welsh Conservative opposition said the budget was a "missed opportunity", saying spending on the A55 trunk road in north Wales and claiming there was limited detail provided on the government's green agenda.

Nick Ramsay, the Tory group's finance spokesman, said: "This is an uneventful, unimaginative budget full of missed opportunities, and taxpayers in Wales will rightly question a number of the Welsh Government's decisions when it comes to investing in the Welsh economy and building a better Wales in the wake of Brexit."

Mr Hedges told AMs: "The funding of primary NHS care has to increase because patients need access to a doctor on the first day they make contact with a doctor.

"What is happening is that people can't get an appointment with their GP and then they go to A&E.

"A&E is no longer accident and emergency - it's a place where often some people go as it's the only place they can see a doctor - albeit you might have to wait 12 hours to do so."

Around a fifth of the NHS budget is spent on primary care.

Mike Hedges called for GP funding to increase in a tweet

Plaid Cymru's Rhun ap Iorwerth said his party would be vote against the Welsh Government budget, criticising it as lacking in "ambition" and "strategic thinking".

He said the budget was a missed opportunity to invest in a "long term vision for the future of Wales" and a chance to "do things differently".

For the Welsh Government, Labour Finance Minister Rebecca Evans said much of the budget was aimed at tackling poverty.

She said: "Around £1bn in this budget is aimed at just doing that and it's important to recognise that there will be individuals and families who are £2,000 better off, money in their pocket, as a direct result of the decisions that this government has taken.

The minister added that she unable to make any further spending commitments as the Welsh government was going into the next financial year with a contingency fund "only in the region of £100m".

"If the last month or so has taught us anything, it's that we have to have that level of contingency available.

"We've seen the flooding; we've seen the challenges now with the potential funding needed to deal with coronavirus, depending on how that situation plays out.

"So, I think that it is important to go into a financial year with a level of contingency, and it would be, I think, irresponsible to take things far beyond that £100 million."