Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 7:12 pm on 18 July 2017.
I will be very brief, Llywydd. We will also be abstaining because that is in accordance with what we did on the budget that this supplementary budget changes, of course. I know that I do have some previous with supplementary budgets, but I thought I should tell the Cabinet Secretary that we are going to allow this supplementary budget to go through. I think I’ve upset him once today already, so I’m not going to do it a second time. I don’t think that I have too much to add to the detailed scrutiny that has taken place. The only thing I would say is that there’s a great deal of scrutiny of supplementary budgets, and that’s a good thing of course, but are we getting the balance right in terms of the main budget and the level of information available to us? There was reference to the fact that there’s no need for additional funding for implementing the new policy on the new vehicle park in Ebbw Vale because funds can be vired within current resources, which does raise a question whether there is enough transparency and detail in passing the full budget in terms of the specific purposes of the sums allocated under the main headings. So, it’s a matter of getting the balance right. There’s a great deal of scrutiny of this supplementary budget, which in reality, as the Cabinet Secretary said, is mainly administrative in nature, where perhaps we haven’t had sufficient information yet, in looking at the full budget, to enable us to do our work as a Parliament.