I don't begrudge Plaid Cymru the opportunity to laud their influence on the decisions made by the finance Secretary at all. I totally agree with Adam Price's statement that, where one can agree with other parties, it's very desirable that you should do. And, of course, I've spent a fair share of my years in politics opposing very vigorously the policies of Plaid Cymru and the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, but I'm very happy to work together on various things too, and that's a good thing.

This budget is the first one that begins to join the dots and connect, therefore, revenue raising with expenditure, and that will lead, I hope, to more responsible Government and to an enhanced reputation for this Assembly. I strongly support my Plaid Cymru friends' work over the years to bring about more devolution of taxes in Wales. I'm very much in favour of that because that does give us, then, the opportunity to have real budget debates in this place where priorities will differ between the different parties.

The debates in the past have all been about how we spend the money that we're given. We can't influence the size of the pot in the first place. The tax policy in future will increasingly inform these debates, which is an excellent thing. I said in the last debate that, actually, what we're talking about here today is quite a small portion of the total budget, because most of the budget is not discretionary, it has to be spent on health, education and big budget items. Plaid Cymru have managed to secure their priorities for about £500 million of it, and I very strongly support the things that they want to spend the money on, particularly on the Welsh language. I think that's a vital necessity to help to achieve the Government's objective of 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050.

But there is a certain air of unreality about these budget debates that the finance Secretary again perpetuated today by starting off talking about austerity. Anybody would think that the Government at Westminster has actually been cutting the amount of Government spending in the last seven years, whereas the truth of the matter is that Government spending has doubled in total in the last seven years. The national debt is now approaching £2 trillion. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to provide the money for a very large party for us all when we do actually hit that £2 trillion figure. It would mean that we could all celebrate it with him. The idea that this Conservative Government has pursued a policy of austerity is absolute nonsense. The Chancellor has recently relaxed the date yet again when he aims to balance the budget. Between now and 2021-2, Government spending is planned to rise by £30 billion over the plans that were laid out just a few years ago.

Of course, we could all follow the policies of the Governments of Zimbabwe and Venezuela, by taking the brakes off spending altogether and spend as though tomorrow never comes. But the trouble with socialism is, eventually, you run out of other people's money to spend, which has been the excuse of the Wilson Governments in the 1960s and the 1970s and the Callaghan Government—[Interruption.] I give way, of course, to Mike Hedges.