Plaid Cymru has called for taxes to be raised in Wales to provide extra funds for struggling public services.
During First Minister's Questions in the Welsh Parliament Mark Drakeford was repeatedly challenged by Adam Price about nurses pay in Wales. The Plaid leader called for nurses pay to rise to match inflation.
In response a visibly annoyed Mark Drakeford said: "It is the emptiest of contributions to offer us further and further iterations of the problem, without a single sentence that helps us to find a solution. This Government pays the real living wage to social care workers; the first time that's ever been done in the history of devolution.
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"Our budget in Wales next year is already cut by over £1 billion. We know that, because the UK Government has said in terms that it will not increase funding for public services, and the impact of inflation on our budget is that it is worth over £1 billion less than it was when the Conservative Government set that budget in November of last year."
He also challenged Mr Price to explain how he could fund such a pay rise saying: "For every 1% rise in the pay bill across the public service in Wales costs another £100 million. Every 1% costs £100 million. If he can tell me where that money is to be found, then I'm happy to enter into dialogue with him. If all he has to offer me are pious aspirations and accusations that somehow other people are not as holy as he is, then I'm afraid that debate is hardly likely to prosper."
In response Mr Price called on the Welsh Government to use tax raising powers in already has. "Isn't it time to take matters into our own hands?" he said. "You said you were committed to using all the powers that you had to defend the people of Wales from this Tory onslaught. Well, use all the powers that you have. We have the ability to use our tax powers to keep the 20p basic rate of tax in Wales and to be more progressive by putting a penny on the higher and additional rate.
"We argued for those powers, we campaigned for them, for situations precisely raise like this. Doing as we propose would raise close to £250 million and go some way, at least, to tackling the crisis in pay and morale in our public services, as well as in the wider crisis of liveability. It would protect our public services and save lives. Isn't that the Welsh way of solidarity, of community, of chwarae teg , for which this place was precisely created?"
Wales has the power to vary UK government-set income tax rates by up to 5p in the £1. So the Welsh Government could keep income tax at 20% when is lowered to 19% by Liz Truss's government in April 2023. It could also increase taxes on higher earners if it wished to.
First Minister Drakeford said that using tax raising powers would be "powerfully considered". He said: "Both I and the finance minister have said that we will make decisions on the fiscal powers available to the Welsh Government in the way that we always do them, as part of the budget-setting process, when we have the full information we need in order to be able to do so.
"Now, he has made a case this afternoon; that case will be powerfully considered within the Welsh Government, but it will be done in the way that we always do it, in an orderly way, in the budget-setting process, as the Finance Committee would expect us to do, and when we are aware of all the decisions that will have an impact on our ability to fund public services next year."
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