NHS Wales faces an exceptionally low funding settlement by historical standards for next year, finance experts have warned.

Taking evidence on the outline draft budget, the Senedd’s finance committee heard the NHS would receive a lower increase than average over the past 15 years.

Ed Poole, from the Wales Fiscal Analysis team at Cardiff University, said the health and social care budget is rising by about £261m – 2.1 per cent before inflation or 0.5 per cent in real terms – “and that’s way below the historical growth rate in health spending”.

Dr Poole said: “It’s below the 3.6 per cent real-terms annual increase that we’ve seen in the NHS, and below the 2.1 per cent real-terms increase we’ve seen since 2010.”