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<p>The Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021 (SR21) set departmental budgets up to
2024-25 and confirmed that total departmental spending will increase by £150 billion
in cash terms over the course of this Parliament. Since then, targeted additional
funding was provided to support key public services continue to deliver – including
£14 billion for health and social care and £4.6 billion for schools across the next
two years. This means that total departmental spending will grow in real terms at
4% a year on average over this Spending Review period.</p><p>It is for individual
departments to weigh up their priorities and consider the affordability of these recommendations
against other priorities.</p><p>The Government confirmed on 13 July that it will be
accepting the headline pay recommendations of the independent Pay Review Bodies in
full for 2023/24. This will be funded from within existing department budgets through
a combination of greater efficiency and reprioritisation. This will not mean any cuts
in frontline services.</p><p>It is for the Welsh Government to decide how to allocate
their funding in devolved areas. SR21 set the largest annual block grants, in real
terms, of any spending review settlement since the devolution Acts. This provided
£18 billion per year for the Welsh Government. That settlement is still growing in
real terms over the three-year spending review period, despite inflation being higher
than expected.</p><p>A full breakdown of changes to devolved administrations’ block
grants, including Barnett consequentials, is set out in the published Block Grant
Transparency document. An updated version of Block Grant Transparency will be published
on 20 July.</p>
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