Carol Vorderman has hit out at the UK Government for taking back £155.5m allocated to Wales because the Welsh Government didn't spend it fast enough.
The former Countdown presenter lashed out on Twitter after it emerged that the Treasury had reclaimed the money because the Welsh Government had not spent it in the same financial year, and had refused a request to use it to pay for a £149m overspend in a different Welsh budget. You can read the full story here.
Writing on Twitter the Welsh maths whizz wrote: "Westminster takes back £150m from Wales as it hadn't been spent fast enough. Are you b***dy joking?"
Read more: UK Treasury takes back £150m from the Welsh Government because it hadn't spent it quickly enough
TV and radio personality Carol also drew attention to the fact that in previous years the Welsh Government had been allowed to carry over more cash. She wrote: "Underspend happened before but money NOT recalled. Punished because Welsh Gov didn’t hand buckets of cash to their mates like the Tories?"
Commenting previously on this issue a Welsh Government spokesman said: "The Finance Minister has made clear that the actions of the UK Treasury on this issue were wholly unacceptable. We stayed within our overall control total but the UK Government refused a switch between revenue and capital budgets, a process which has been agreed many times before.
“Our underspends during the exceptional 2020-21 financial year were very significantly below those of UK Government departments and our focus on achieving value for money meant we didn’t have the scandals of PPE contracts as we saw in England. The Treasury’s arbitrary application of its guidance in this instance was deeply regrettable and left Wales deprived of £155 million.”
However the chair of the Senedd's Public Affairs and Public Accounts Committee Mark Isherwood expressed concern about the poor financial management by the Welsh Government. Mark Isherwood, a Conservative Member of the Senedd for North Wales who chairs the committee, said: “We are very concerned that significant funding was lost to Wales as a result of the underspend in 2020-21. This money could have been used to fund essential services and it is especially frustrating now when there are such pressures on public funding. “It is one of many examples where poor record keeping and mismanagement of public accounts has cost the people of Wales.”
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