Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for Finance for his statement, and also for the co-operation he has given, both to me during the budget-forming process and with the Chair of the Finance Committee and the members of that committee?

I have to say that I did find your speech a rather strange mixture, Cabinet Secretary, and I would say that it was a little bit like the budget, good in parts and not so good in other parts, in that you did speak about the negative effect you think that the UK Government and its programme has had on the Welsh budget. And whilst I accept that there have been cuts over the last number of years—and we won't go into the whys and wherefores of those cuts—I do have in front of me the written statement by yourself, issued today, I believe, where you speak about the consequentials that have come to the Welsh Government from the UK Government as a result of that budget, which are increasing extra spending within Wales, and which you have allocated in a way that you would expect Welsh Government to do. So, I do think that the overtly negative tone of your contribution was probably more political than it was realistic, but I suppose we are in a political Chamber, so you would expect that.

Now, I don't want to go over too much ground that I set out in the draft budget debate before Christmas. However, back in December, I did pose the primary question, 'What is the Welsh Government budget seeking to achieve?' Is it simply trying to allocate funding to different budgets or is it trying to do more than that to address longer-term challenges and to seek a fundamental economic change to the economy? Now, given the new fiscal powers that Simon Thomas mentioned that are coming to the Welsh Government—borrowing, and, indeed, tax power devolution—I would have thought that the latter should be our goal, as I believe the Chair of the Finance Committee believes. Sadly, I think that this budget falls short of this. Now, I appreciate that it is still early days and those powers are still in the process of transferring, but I would expect the Welsh Government to be looking at ways that those powers can be utilised, and given that by the time of the next budget the Assembly and Welsh Government will have significant extra financial powers, I think that this budget has fallen short in making use of those.

If I can just refer to some of the points that were made by the Finance Committee report on the draft budget, there have been ongoing concerns around transparency, and these are key to some of our concerns. The links between the budget allocations and the programme for government simply aren't strong enough. From 2019 to 2020, we know that there will be a single grant for a number of projects, including Flying Start and Supporting People, and the Finance Committee took evidence from a number of organisations. I think Cymorth Cymru were strongest in their concerns in saying that it becomes increasingly difficult to track the funding that is currently coming through Supporting People under the new regime, and that is a source of concern. Things seem to be going backwards in some areas in terms of transparency, rather than forwards.

If I can turn to the big part of the Welsh Government budget, the health service, which you mentioned additional funding for—as a result of UK Government consequentials—in your written statement today. Of course, we all welcome any additional funding for our NHS. Welsh Conservatives have, of course, been calling for this for a long time—back, in fact, when there were some real-terms cuts being made to the Welsh health service budget during the last Welsh Assembly. However, I do agree with points that have been made by Mike Hedges and others that you do have to strategically plan where that money is going and the sort of benefits that you're going to get out of it. And there's no doubt at all that there is certainly a perception, at the very least, that money that has been funnelled into the NHS over the last months and year or so—is that going to actually develop proper transformational change within the NHS or is it going to be absorbed by some of the budget holes that our health boards have been suffering from? I think that the general consensus out there is that currently the latter is probably more likely to be the case. So, that won't lead to the sort of transformational change that we want to see.

Prevention hasn't been mentioned, and yet it is mentioned in many debates that we have in this place about the health service. If, at the same time, you're saying that prevention is a very important part of keeping future health costs down, it doesn't seem to make sense that local government is facing severe cuts, which will then impact on leisure centres and will impact on sport, the other part of the health brief, which, ultimately, is going to lead to a problem with promoting prevention—it's not going to improve it. So, as I said at the start of my contribution—