Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thank you to the Minister for outlining this supplementary budget. The Finance Committee agree that the main purpose of this supplementary budget was restructuring following the changes in ministerial portfolios after the election. Despite that, we would like to draw the Assembly’s attention to the report that we’ve put together and to three things stemming from the more political decisions, as it were, of the Government.

First of all, some of you present at the previous Assembly will remember the disagreement regarding the significant cut to the funding for the Higher Education Funding Council. A promise was made at that point to provide a further £10 million of funding to the HEFCW budget and the supplementary budget reflects that, with an additional £5 million for part-time study provision and £5 million for research. As the Cabinet Secretary has also noted, there is an allocation of £7.7 million for the Assembly’s electoral costs. In scrutinising the budget, the Finance Committee ensured that all efforts were made to save those costs by holding the police and crime commissioners’ elections on the same day. It’s the Home Office’s responsibility to hold those. If we have a general election quickly, then it’ll be the responsibility of the UK Government to cover those costs. But in looking at the future, we do want to keep the costs as low as possible, and we look forward to additional work by the Cabinet Secretary, especially from the point of view of the wages of some of the officials who are responsible for elections in Wales.

The final point mentioned is that the committee has noted that £1.5 million has been allocated in the budget for the business rates relief scheme in the Port Talbot waterfront enterprise zone. We’re all aware of the reason for that decision—the threat to the Tata steelworks in that town—but we were of the opinion that we should seek greater evidence to set out the rationale behind allocations of this kind, and we hope that the Cabinet Secretary will be able to provide that information that we asked for in the committee meeting in due course. We think that that will help Assembly Members and the people of Wales to scrutinise programmes of this kind in terms of their success and value for money.

So, even though the committee had gathered at short notice to consider the supplementary budget, we appreciated the opportunity to discuss it and we feel that the budget does follow the budget protocol agreed between the Finance Minister and the previous Finance Committee. So, we note the budget and we note that it’s a technical budget following portfolio changes.