Diolch yn fawr, Ddirprwy Lywydd. I move the Welsh Government’s draft budget before the National Assembly.

We live in the most sustained adverse economic conditions faced for many generations, but even in this age of austerity, this has been a budget created under peculiarly testing circumstances. I’m grateful to the Finance Committee for the recognition in its report on the draft budget, published last week, that this has been an exercise framed in uncertainty. Certainly it has been one where planning for the future has been constrained by events, partially within Wales, but more significantly still, beyond our own boundaries. The Welsh Government’s usual budget cycle begins in March every year, but in 2016, the election of a new National Assembly in May, the formation of a minority administration, the ensuing agreement with Plaid Cymru to discuss key aspects of our programme over the summer months, have all produced an inevitable impact on our budget preparations. Beyond Wales, the European referendum result, the formation of the new administration in Westminster, the incoming Chancellor’s decision to formulate a fiscal reset and to delay that announcement until the autumn statement on 23 November, combined to shroud our own planning in uncertainty.

Nevertheless, Dirprwy Lywydd, my own ambition throughout the summer was to lay a budget of more than one year’s duration. I was then, and continue now, to be alert to the case that our partner organisations make, that planning is aided by longer budget periods. By September, however, it was clear that the lack of clarity about the revenue resources available to the National Assembly beyond 2017-18 meant that this ambition would not be possible. The budget before Members today therefore sets out revenue spending plans for one year, but capital budgets for four years ahead.

Dirprwy Lywydd, as a result of the work of my immediate predecessor, Jane Hutt, there has been an increasingly sophisticated focus on equality impacts in the budget round, and in the alignment of policy priorities and spending allocations. This draft budget draws heavily on the legacy of that work, both in individual departments and centrally. But while this year’s budget has been developed on a truncated timetable, I want to be clear that there is more we can and will do to apply these equality principles over the longer timetable, which will be available for budget planning next year.

This draft budget, Dirprwy Lywydd, is both a first and a last of its kind, and I want to say something on both counts. This is the first budget to be shaped by the passing of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, placed on the statute book by the fourth Assembly. I accept the views expressed during the scrutiny process, but at this point in time the impact of the Act is more evolutionary than complete. Nevertheless, the Act is there to be seen in the alignment of individual spending decisions with the five ways of working and the seven goals that it sets out. I do intend to introduce changes next year to the internal budget preparations that I undertake with Cabinet colleagues and others, to ensure that the Act goes on making a growing impact on our budget processes and outcomes. In a world of shrinking resource, growing demands and sharply competing priorities, however, no-one should believe that the Act provides a simplistic blueprint through which all tensions can be resolved. We are at the start of the journey that the Act provides, and more can and will be done to use it in next year’s budget making.

If this is the first year of the well-being of future generations Act, this is the last draft budget before the National Assembly before we become responsible for raising taxes in Wales. Provided the necessary legislation is approved by Assembly Members, in next year’s budget round, the finance Minister will be responsible for proposing the rates and bands for land transaction tax, and for the implementation detail of land disposals tax. I believe that this will change the nature of the scrutiny of future budgets. When the Chair of the Finance Committee made his introductory statement to the Assembly, he said that in future there would be a need to make changes to the budget process in order to deal with these new fiscal developments, with a new focus by the Finance Committee on Welsh Government’s spending, taxation and borrowing plans. I agree with the conclusions that he drew.

Turning back to this budget, I don’t intend to repeat what I said when I made my statement here on the floor of the Assembly on 18 October. This budget is very deliberately a budget for stability and ambition: stability in its efforts to ward off the worst impacts of revenue cuts to the Welsh Government’s budget over this term, and in providing longer term certainty for capital planning; ambitious because of the way we are investing in all our headline commitments as set out in the programme for government. This will help us to navigate through the treacherously difficult times in which we live, helping us to invest in growth and prosperity for all.

So, I repeat, Dirprwy Lywydd, what I have said many times in this Chamber and beyond since the budget was first laid: this budget provides a temporary period of relief from the UK Government’s worst impacts of austerity. We must, therefore, use this period to plan now for the tougher times and the more difficult choices that lie ahead.