I welcome the moves in the budget to implement some of the key pledges in the Welsh Labour manifesto from last year, specifically, the £53 million towards delivering 20,000 affordable homes, the £15 million for widening access to apprenticeships as part of the move to implement 100,000 all-age apprenticeships, as well as some of the smarter economic measures—the £40 million for energy efficiency, which, as the Minister mentioned, will cut bills for 25,000 homes, as well as producing local jobs—and also some of the smaller interventions, such as the £1.5 million for genomics, as well as the £20 million small grants fund for rural communities, which enables communities to fund things like ICT and data and develop towards the precision agriculture model that we’ve discussed in this Assembly. So, this budget, I think, is a huge achievement and a concrete step forward towards implementing the Welsh Labour manifesto.

I think, in spirit of the discussion that’s been had in the Chamber this afternoon, it’s beholden on us to acknowledge that we do not have a majority in this Chamber, and this budget has only been possible because of the co-operation across party lines. We’ve seen that in terms of offering a place to the Liberal Democrats in Government, and also in terms of the compact with Plaid Cymru, which has borne fruit in this budget, and I think we should acknowledge their constructive influence in that. I think I should, in keeping with some of the things that have been said, offer some pause for reflection on how we’re going to conduct these discussions in future years. It is not my preference that we make annual deals like this, but, if that is to be the way, then, inevitably, we are going to be tempted towards the lowest common denominator. I think there is a real challenge in this Assembly—the first Assembly elected in the aftermath of the future generations Act—to take a longer-term view. There’s clearly going to be a tension in that in the necessary political arrangements we have to meet to get a budget passed in the short term. I’d hate to see us go the way of other democracies, most notably the American political system, where we descend towards a pork barrel politics. It’s a mark of the American budget system that hardly a budget is passed without a museum or a bridge or a bypass being awarded in the name of the chair of various committees. Much as I know people in his own party believe Adam Price to be the future prophet, I would hate to see statues to the ‘Mab Darogan’ littering the countryside of Carmarthen East.

But I think there is—the one bit of the budget I am struggling with, and Nick Ramsay did make the point, as did the Minister, about the need to reflect the future generations Act in future budgets, and I look forward to Nick following through the logic of that and revising his position on the M4. But I think, when it comes to the spending priorities we make, the figures I’ve mentioned for the manifesto priorities, compare also then to £50 million for a bypass on top of £24 million for pinch points on roads, and £15 million for local transport network funds, two thirds of which is anticipated for highway projects, and we have this cognitive dissonance we’ve discussed in the Chamber before between accepting that our commitments to planning for the long term and taking into account carbon emissions, those do have policy and spending implications that we need to build into our thinking and not simply revert to the practices of the past, and not simply to revert to projects to win support for political parties to show that they’ve exerted influence. That’s not an easy thing to do. We need to be grown up about this. There is a real tension there. It was a cross-party commitment to doing things differently. If we mean what we say, that has got to be reflected in our discussions around the budget. Thank you.