Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:46 pm on 16 January 2018.
Diolch yn fawr, Lywydd. Well, budget debates are always interesting for the way that they expose ideological differences across the floor of the Chamber. I think we'll remember Neil Hamilton's contribution, a man for whom austerity has not nearly gone far enough, who regards the UK Government as lily livered and living in an era of gross overexpenditure, and in which every investment the Government can make becomes a drain on future generations. I wish he could have met the pensioner who came to my surgery in Ely just before Christmas to explain to me that the house she lived in had been built 100 years ago by a Government after the first world war determined to build homes for heroes to live in, that the road that she used to get back and fore to it was a road created by public expenditure, that the electricity, the gas and the water that she relied on were only there because earlier generations had decided to invest in the infrastructure that allowed her to go about her daily life, that, when she'd been ill before Christmas, she'd been treated in a hospital that earlier generations had laid down, that, when she'd left hospital and had been told that she needed to take exercise, she was able to go to a leisure centre built by a Labour council here in Cardiff 30 years ago, and that, when her grandson will go to a secondary school in Ely, it will be to a new secondary school produced by this Government. For all of those things, the future of her children will matter. For Mr Hamilton, every one of those things was a waste and something that is a drain.