The Member gave an example: he said that the future further funding for flood protection was one of the prizes he would defend through this process. Actually, there is some increase in the flood protection budget between this final budget and the draft budget, but the overall budget I believe for flood protection is still very significantly reduced. And, yes, our Finance Committee has been listened to and there has been some put back on the capital side to Lesley Griffiths’s budget, but there are still very significant reductions affecting what for a signalling of great virtue are described as ‘climate change projects’. There are cuts there, and he talks about defending these further increases with pride, but that is not actually the situation. If he looks at the full budget—[Interruption.]—rather than the specifics. Well, I’m not quite sure that you did, Adam. I’m talking about this section here. You agreed a series of very specific things, which Labour then have to find money elsewhere to pay for what they’ve agreed to give you in order to abstain, and the largest single element of that, mostly on the capital side, is those reductions to climate change projects. I think you need to recognise that, rather than like to claim support for the things you appreciate but not for others.

However, I do recognise what you say and what Simon said in terms of a move to what I think Simon said was a more parliamentary process of a fully amendable finance Bill. Of course, in the Westminster Parliament, the finance Bill solely deals with tax and that will, even next year, remain a fairly modest amount of what we do. The key criterion for me is whether the spending side of this budget is going to be amendable and, in particular—and some of our comments in Finance Committee have been listened to and I appreciate that—will there be an opportunity to amend spending lines of the budget in Finance Committee, where, at least notionally, we have an opposition majority.

We have some changes. The finance Minister spoke about the £46 million increase in revenue spending between the draft budget and the final budget. He described that as coming primarily from reserves. I’m not quite clear how he assesses it that way, given that, between the draft and the final budget, we had an increase in £23.4 million in revenue spending available from the UK Government through the autumn statement. That’s slightly over half of the increase he now has in the revenue. So, I’m not clear that that does come from reserves. Some of what that’s been spent on—£10 million for the business rates relief and some of the big increases being mitigated there—I just wonder whether we could perhaps indicate more clearly in advance through the valuations as to what businesses would be required to have. I particularly welcome the £6 million for the homelessness prevention. I note that there’s a number of other items that feed through to local government that was given a broadly flat budget before and my worry still is that there are severe cuts coming in the local government area, but that the Government has found it politic to put those off until after the local elections.

Note the further changes in capital budgets: we’re going to have another £7 million for roads next year and then £83 million over the course of the four-year period on capital. That sum, of course, is swamped by the amount of money that Welsh Government would put into the black route, estimated at £1.1 billion plus. I just make a final appeal: couldn’t we consider that money better spent on the cheaper, but, I think, faster, more deliverable version of the blue route, and look at putting that very large sum of capital to other projects that might get quicker and more appropriate returns across Wales?