We are around seven years into a period of economic recovery, albeit from an absolutely terrible recession. There’s been substantial growth in the overall UK and Welsh economies. Unemployment is really very low by historical comparisons, at least over the last 30 years, in both Wales and the UK. The budget deficit at a UK level is still approaching £70 billion, approximately 4 per cent of GDP. Yet, the majority of people in this Assembly appear to speak as if there could be a great new borrowing binge, as if austerity is a choice rather than a necessity. If at this stage of the economic cycle you are still borrowing 4 per cent of GDP, then the idea that you can go on a borrowing binge from here is, I think, for the birds. Actually, the only reason, responding to Adam Price, that we’ve been able to sustain the situation is because £425 billion of that borrowing has been cancelled, in effect, by the Bank of England. Yet, we cannot presume that that loose monetary policy of a 0.25 per cent bank rate and £425 billion of quantitative easing is going to continue. And when it reverses, which I believe may be sooner than people in the main expect, then it is going to be very difficult to carry on borrowing at this level. We’ve seen, in the last month or two, that long-term interest rates have increased by about a third compared to where they were. And that will, over time, flow through into budgeting on a UK basis and, through that, to this Assembly.

I speak with relative modesty and I don’t plan a great partisan spiel today. It’s my first year within the budgeting process of this Assembly and, as the finance Minister has said, the system is changing. I have some experience of budgeting at a council and at a police authority level, and, indeed, to the extent it happens there at all, at Westminster, but I don’t want to presume from similarities that things are the same, because there are key and important distinctions.

I’m particularly disappointed to be informed that today we vote on a take-note motion on the draft budget, and then when the final budget comes to us in January, I am informed that there is simply an up-down vote on the motion, and the budget itself is unamendable. I think that’s disappointing—it reflects the situation at Westminster, but only since the 1930s. Prior to that, MPs could and did amend Government spending plans, and I think it would be a more healthy system if party groups or Ministers or Members were able to put amendments to the Government’s budget, and have votes in this place on whether they should be agreed or not. Another thing I find--