Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:32 pm on 26 September 2017.
Thank you, Julie Morgan, for enabling me to follow on and enhance the response that I gave to Simon Thomas earlier on. As I said to Simon Thomas, and to Members, particularly on the Finance Committee, of which you were a member in the last session, we spent a lot of time looking at ways, particularly when austerity was kicking in, in which we could, for example, assist local authorities with their borrowing powers. That led to the local government borrowing initiative, which resulted in Welsh Government assisting local authorities on an all-Wales highways environment programme, which actually addressed many of the issues that Steffan Lewis raised earlier on in terms of environmental improvements, but equally supporting, assisting—I have to use my words carefully—registered social landlords in terms of their borrowing powers, but looking at new ways in which we could assist infrastructure developments, not only the twenty-first schools capital programme. Again, this Welsh Labour Government is very proud that we moved into developing a capital programme in partnership with local authorities, in addition to our traditional public capital hospital building programme. But, of course, in terms of Velindre, we then looked at this new mutual investment model. I’ve already touched on that. It has to be a well-designed, well-planned and well-managed partnership that we have to lever in that funding to deliver this pioneering new cancer centre, which you have been very engaged in as the Member for Cardiff North, because we need to provide that new infrastructure for our first-class cancer services. And I know that the finance Secretary will want to update us—and, indeed, the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport—on how that is progressing in terms of delivering the new Velindre hospital centre.