Can I welcome today’s debate on the supplementary budget? It’s probably not the budget that is getting the most press coverage in the world—at least in the UK—this week. Welsh Conservatives recognise that this budget does contain an in-year management process aimed at aligning resources with priorities—that rather difficult process, as the Cabinet Secretary referred to it in his sessions with the Finance Committee. We also recognise the increases resulting from increased Government spending and other transfers that have been factored in. Can I also concur with the sentiments of the Chair of the Finance Committee? We had a number of useful sessions in committee looking at this and identifying many of the areas that the Chair alluded to, particularly that referred to by recommendation 1, which questions the effectiveness of the implementation of the future generations Bill. I think there is a broader question here about the legislation that the Assembly passes, and whether it does actually achieve what it sets out to do on the ground. Many of the voices concerned—. Many of the concerns voiced, I should say, at the time of the passing of the Bill seem to be coming to fruition. We do need the Welsh Government to reapply itself to making sure that this legislation is properly embedded within the decision-making culture of the Welsh Government. It shouldn’t just be an add-on; it should be there at every level, and it should be perceived to be so.

I’ll leave recommendation 2 on the invest-to-save fund to my colleague Mike Hedges—I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m sure he’s going to say something about it; yes, I can tell by his smile that he is—other than to say that I do think that invest-to-save has proved a good scheme in the past and delivers results.

Of greater concern, I think, and this does follow on from some of the comments made by Adam Price, is the issue of transparency. We return to this again and again, in the subject of budget debates but also in other areas that we debate here. It’s alluded to in recommendation 3, specifically in this case the lack of transparency over the funding allocated in the health, well-being and sport portfolio, and the reasons for funding decisions that often seem to be more reactionary and linked to dealing with problems as they emerge rather than addressing the root of these problems.

The Welsh Government can, and probably will, argue that this is a supplementary budget—a second supplementary budget—so maybe we shouldn’t be expecting too much on this front today. But, it is a budget nonetheless and it does make some key changes to the situation that we had before. So, we do look for changes to be well supported and well evidenced, and we certainly look in future, as the Finance Committee has said, for these changes to be tracked and to be evident in future budget-setting processes. We’ve been calling for this for a very long time, and we do really want to see solid, robust evidence for this as we move forward.

Turning to the roads section of the Finance Committee report, again Adam Price mentioned the £15 million for the eastern bay link road. As I’ve pointed out in previous budgets, this is of course not for the whole eastern bay link road—this is for one part of one section of the link road that will terminate at the roundabout to nowhere, as it’s known, on Rover Way. I’ve had issues with this in the past—I still do. I support the road as a whole, but I do question whether there is going to be value for money delivered from delivering one section of that road in the short term. There is the potential for some major congestion problems being moved elsewhere in Cardiff without any future plans for continuation of the building of the rest of that road.

As for the £22 million for the M4 route development, the saga continues there, doesn’t it? The committee was concerned that there was insufficient information in the budget about this £22 million. To be fair, the Cabinet Secretary, in the evidence session, did give more details, but that wasn’t there at the start. I understand that this money is there to provide support for more work for the public inquiry and to deal with a higher than expected number of objections. I’m not quite sure why it was expected that there would be a lower number of objections, because it isn’t the least controversial scheme in the world. I think that that could have been factored in at the start.

As I say, in conclusion, Presiding Officer, I hope that future budgets can see improved transparency—the holy grail for the Finance Committee. As I said at the start, the Welsh Conservatives recognise the rationale behind the decisions made in this second supplementary budget and the transfers of funding involved. However, because we do have issues with transparency and we do have issues with the original budget on which the two supplementary budgets have been based, we cannot support this supplementary budget.