Thank you to the Cabinet Secretary for his statement today and for introducing the final budget of the Welsh Government. As has already been mentioned, of course, this budget is partly the fruit of discussions between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government—discussions that arose from this new method of collaboration that we have devised. I have to say that I do believe that our politics and our democracy benefit from this kind of dialogue, and perhaps we need more of this approach. Through improving the budget—[Interruption.] If the Member opposite wants to stand on his feet, he is welcome to do so.

This is the very root of democracy, isn’t it? We are elected to this place on the basis of a manifesto, and our main duty, of course, is to deliver on those promises that we have put before the people who have elected us. Of course, we haven’t been able to secure agreement between us on everything in this budget; we don’t agree on everything, but, as a minority party in this place, we have been able to have an influence for the benefit of the lives of the people of Wales. Isn’t that at the heart of democracy, ultimately: improving things? It would be a very bad thing to see democracy as a way of opposing things, and only to oppose at all times. I would encourage other parties to have this more constructive attitude towards politics, to put forward ideas, and if they disagree, then be part of the dialogue. I do welcome Simon’s comments about creating a more parliamentary method for the budgetary process.

We succeeded, through the agreement, to secure additional funding for sectors that have, in our view, suffered financially over the past few years—sectors such as further and higher education, the arts, the Welsh language and local government, capital investment for diagnostic equipment, as we heard in the statement over Christmas, and funding for mental health, and so on. And, of course, in the discussions that we had after the autumn statement, we succeeded in getting further funding to get to grips with problems that arose as a result of the revaluation of business rates, for example, and it was good to see further funding for flood prevention. That’s the prize for those of us who are willing to be part of democracy on the basis of dialogue, and I would defend that as an important principle if this place is to do its work properly.

In looking to the future, I do think that there is room for improving the process and I think that the Cabinet Secretary is open to that. We have to ensure that this Senedd, this parliament, grows in maturity and capacity in terms of its ability to influence the budget, and that’s true for all parties. We need additional transparency if we are going to do our work as Assembly Members and as groups. For the draft budget, we collated, with the assistance of the Government, ultimately, the different items—the main expenditure groups, the expenditure programmes, the action points, the BELs, and so on—around 7,000 different budget lines. If we’re going to do our work, then we have to give that information and present it in a clearer way and a more open way to all Assembly Members and to the groups. I agree with Nick Ramsay, I think that we have to connect expenditure with aims and objectives. I referred in the debate on the draft budget to the programme budgeting of Robert McNamara from the 1960s in the United States. That is, in laying a budget, it’s important to set out what outcomes you aim to ensure through that expenditure so that you can measure against achievement at the end of the budget period.

Finally, I think that it’s totally unacceptable, of course, with the process that we have today, that we can only approve or reject the budget. That is, if you look at the OECD, over half of those parliaments have an unrestricted right to amend a budget. We’re right at the other end of that, where we can only, at present, say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a budget and, through that, we lose all of the ideas that we have. Nobody has a monopoly as a party or Assembly Member on good ideas, and through this binary process that we currently have, we’re losing that wealth of different perspectives that exist across the Chamber. So, I do very much hope that we will be able to move towards a parliamentary system that includes everyone—and I do mean everyone—as we put together budgets for the future.