Yes, and I look forward to working with the Chair of the Finance Committee and others on that. I think the proposal that any change in a budget line that were to be submitted as a motion should at the same time have an amendment as to either an increase in taxation or a reduction in spending which would counter that. But, subject to that, I think we would benefit from having that democratic process.

I’m also grateful to Simon Thomas and also to Nick Ramsey, both of whom have been generous with their time in explaining to me the particularities of the budget-setting process here, and also to the Cabinet Secretary who has been very forthcoming to the Finance Committee, both on the two Bills that we are considering, and on to this budget scrutiny that we have fitted within that.

One other area, I think, of challenge, to my understanding of how the process works here, and perhaps to others, is quite what this relationship is between Plaid and the Labour Party. I had understood that what had been agreed was that Plaid would allow the budget to go through—I’m still unclear as to whether that is abstention or support—in return for a series of specific changes to that budget that would be agreed by Plaid, for instance the £300,000 for looking at the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth railway and whether we can bring that back. I trust that Plaid will be as keen in monitoring how that money is being spent, and ensuring value for money, as they have been at agreeing it in the first place. But it seems that by doing that, they are allowing through quite a lot of other things in this budget that they got no sight of in advance, yet somehow are now associated with. And I felt that Adam Price’s speech was quite some way to defending the budget as a whole, rather than merely just the specific Plaid elements within it. I think we would all benefit from greater clarity as to how that relationship is working.

I also think the Finance Committee—I’m proud of the document that we’ve produced in a very short timescale. I’m not quite sure of the status of that document in this debate—it’s referred to as a supporting document. I wonder, actually, if this Assembly and Plenary were to vote on those recommendations whether they would be supported by the Assembly as a whole. We have had a cross-party agreement in committee, and I think that would strengthen the position further of the Assembly in the budget scrutiny process, and I look forward to the Cabinet Secretary telling us what, if any, parts of the budget he’s going to amend in response to those.

We have this Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and as far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on whether this is an effective piece of legislation or is virtue signalling on a number of very worthy goals that aren’t then followed up and made to happen through the day-to-day process of government and legislation. So, I look forward to seeing changes that may or may not come in that area.

Overall, I would characterise the budget as a ‘steady as she goes’ budget—there’s a lot of budget lines where there’s no change to the spending. The Cabinet Secretary did find additional money for health, which we support. I’m most struck by the local government settlement, relative at least to the spending we see set by the UK Government largely for England, because it’s that local government area that seems to me to have less reductions in Wales, relative to the very, very sharp cuts that local councils in England have experienced, and the corollary of that is health having had cuts in Wales that it hasn’t faced in England. I know that some of that may reflect what is going on with social care and the NHS, and I think it’s sensible for the Government to consider that in the way it does, but, overall, the local government settlement looks vulnerable for future years. And in our Finance Committee report, we say that the

‘draft budget this year is a better settlement for many than was expected...organisations should be using this settlement to prepare for tougher times ahead, the Committee was concerned not to have seen evidence of this preparation taking place’.

And it cites particularly the health service and local government. But in local government, we’ve got elections in May, and the suspicion has to be that there are going to be severe cuts in local government that may be put off until next year and, rather than planning for those reductions now, local governments are concentrating on pump-priming for the council elections in May and we will then see severe reductions in the year or two to follow that that might well have been better planned. For the health service, I’m disappointed to see that we have this statutory requirement for three-year budgeting, we have all these interest groups and partner organisations coming to us and saying they want to plan for the long term, yet several of these health organisations haven’t actually set those three-year budgets, as required by statute.

We have seen these very significant—between 35 and 40 per cent, depending on which year you look at—cuts to the capital budget for climate change projects. I remember being assailed quite aggressively by Carl Sargeant prior to the election on how UKIP wanted to cut this budget, and yet the Government comes back and in the first budget cuts it by over a third. One must admit to being somewhat perplexed. One questions the Cabinet Secretary and is told, ‘Actually, this isn’t going to affect the climate change goals or objectives or what the Government’s going to achieve in this field.’ In which case, why was this money being spent under the climate change area, if it wasn’t actually required to meet those goals? I wonder if these climate change capital projects will be like the higher education budget, perhaps, was last year, and we may see substantive parts of that put back following what we’ve learned in the autumn statement.

I’d like to be assured that what’s happening in terms of energy efficiency and fuel poverty is well connected between the energy companies’ schemes, Nest, and what the Welsh Government is doing, and similarly with local government and its responsibilities in flood protection. And I think it would be good if we looked at these particular schemes on their merits and subjected them to good forensic scrutiny, rather than simply because they’re described as climate change projects having them extolled by the Government as self-evidently good or, indeed, criticised by others as if they weren’t. We should look at their merits, and I think it’s very, very important we get the BELs, the budget expenditure lines, out there early on. It really is unsatisfactory to have very, very broad budgets announced and then to find out significantly later that, actually, the picture is very, very different than it appeared because of what is going on at that level. I really think it would benefit the overall budget process, public scrutiny and democratic involvement in Wales if those BELs were announced at the same time as the draft budget, in order that people can work for proper budget scrutiny and effect. I’m grateful to the Cabinet Secretary and for the time, Llywydd.