Llywydd, we are incredibly lucky in our time to have benefited from the investment decisions that people who went before us were willing to make. Had they listened to Neil Hamilton, they would simply have stopped doing all the things that we now rely on. It is possible, in a way that I think the Member never seems to understand or recognise, to borrow to invest, because investment creates the conditions of economic success, and that economic success then allows you to pay back the money that you have borrowed. That is the simple lesson that progressive Governments throughout the last 100 years and more have understood, and we say that it needs to be better understood today.

Mike Hedges made a series of very important points. He understood absolutely that you can invest your way to success, not just in places, but, as he said, in people too. A new deal for Britain is exactly what we need to get our economy onto that track. As far as tax volatility is concerned, he will know that the fiscal framework gives us access to a £500 revenue reserve to allow us to smooth out tax volatility from one year to the next. I’ve made no plans to use that reserve in the budget in front of the Assembly, but it is there should it be needed in the future. The way that we have used our capital in this budget is exactly the way in which Mike Hedges advocated. I’ve said to all my Cabinet colleagues that I will place a priority upon capital investment plans that release revenue in the future, and that is why buying rolling stock in the way that Vikki Howells outlined is so important.

I was grateful to Mark Isherwood for the things that he said about housing, because I want to say to him that this budget has the needs of housing right at its very heart. Whether that is the Supporting People programme, and the £10 million in each of the next two years that we are able now to invest in homelessness services; whether it is the actions we are taking to build 20,000 affordable homes; or whether it’s the announcement I’ve been able to make today about taking first-time buyers in Wales out of tax altogether—all of those things are about making sure that on housing, which affects every family in the land, we are able to do more to help people in that position.