Part of 2. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 27 September 2017.
Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, I have never been anything other than clear that I have an approach to capital spending as the Welsh Government’s finance Minister in which my first recourse is always to direct public capital. I’d always rather finance capital projects in that way because that is the cheapest way as far as Welsh taxpayers are concerned. And if I was in the happy position of having sufficient public capital to be able to do all the things that are necessary to secure Wales’s future, including the things that we will do through the mutual investment model, then I would prefer to be able to go ahead in that way. When we have the next Labour Government, then we will be in a much better position to do just that. As it is now, I have to plan for the position I am in today, where we will have, in 2019-20, a capital budget £400 million shorter each year than it was a decade earlier, and urgent needs that have to be met. That’s the context in which we have had to be more imaginative about the way that we secure capital investment in Wales. If I didn’t have to do it, if I had conventional public capital at my disposal with sufficient amounts, then I would always use that first.