Thank you, Presiding Officer. I just want to raise three very brief points. First, I welcome the decision of the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to produce a first supplementary budget for scrutiny by the Finance Committee. I strongly agree with the Finance Committee’s recommendation, and what’s been said by Nick Ramsay and Simon Thomas, that:

‘Whilst the changes in this supplementary budget are not significant, the Committee agrees with the Cabinet Secretary that bringing forward a supplementary budget is an appropriate mechanism at this stage and wishes that this procedure continues to be used.’

Unfortunately, it wasn’t put into the Standing Orders, but I think it’s becoming, now, custom and practice that we do have it, and I think that any future Cabinet Secretary who didn’t bring it forward would have a very unhappy Finance Committee and a very unhappy Assembly.

However small the change, I believe that a supplementary budget should be produced. It give clarity to both the Finance Committee and to this Chamber, far more than the alternative of a letter to the Finance Committee would do, just telling us what just happened. I think this the right way, and I’m very pleased that the Cabinet Secretary has kept on doing this.

The second point I’d like to make is how pleased I am that the additional social services money is provided to local authorities not through the full standard spending assessment, but through the social services part of the standard spending assessment. This will only make a small difference, but the principle, I believe, is an important one, and one I’ve called for previously. I think it is important, because if there were much larger sums involved, it would start having a significant effect on which authority got the extra money.

Finally, on health, the committee noted that, for some local health boards, the Welsh Government is still providing additional cash support to enable local health boards to meet their financial demands, and that repayment of these overspends is yet to be agreed. The committee recognises the importance of following up on the impact the National Health Service Finance (Wales) Act 2014 has had in terms of identifying improvements to financial, service and workforce planning, future sustainability of services and work to address whether the allocations between local health boards accurately reflect needs. Put simply, are the overspends due to poor financial management or is the funding share wrong?