THE Welsh government is facing its “starkest and most painful financial situation faced since the start of devolution,” it said today.

Ministers were responding to a critical report from the Senedd’s cross-party finance committee, warning that Wales’s most vulnerable people will be hit by cuts to the funding of free childcare and other front-line services.

The committee, comprising two Labour members, one from Plaid Cymru and one Tory, said that the Budget came “at the expense of long-term measures to reduce poverty [and] will lead to a serious shortfall for local authorities, which will impact the services they deliver and hit the most vulnerable in society worst.”