Yes, well, what brought America really out of the recession, of course, was the war. There are various ways in which you can raise economic activity, but I don't think that war is necessarily the most attractive of the options.

But tomorrow does eventually come. We're spending £50 billion to £60 billion a year on debt interest in the UK. If we take Wales's proportion of that, that may be £2 billion a year. Would we rather spend £2 billion a year extra on the health service or on the holders of national debt? Actually, what the Government has done is to nationalise a great part of the national debt in the last few years, because the Bank of England has actually been buying the bonds from the private sector. Monetisation of the national debt of that kind cannot continue indefinitely without the same kind of inflation implications that have consumed countries like Venezuela or Zimbabwe.

Although I think the Government is wrong nationally in Westminster in many of its priorities, its overall policy on public expenditure, in my view, has been lax not austere and they've been stoking up problems for the future. We make a great song and dance in this place about the future generations Act. I think it's a very good thing, in principle, to think of the impact of our decisions today upon the generations to come. What we're doing, of course, is to shuffle off the cost of repayment of the debts that we are incurring today on future generations, and I don't think that future generations will thank us for that. But, of course, they don't have votes today, so we don't need to worry about it, and we won't be here when they do vote—at least, I won't be; it's unlikely.

I think an air of responsibility is one that we should have in any budget debate. Sadly, I fear for the future if the kind of speech that the finance Secretary has made today, when the Welsh Government really does have the ability to raise taxes and to make spending decisions and to make borrowing decisions over a much greater area, as it now has the power to do, falls to be made, because that way, I think, lies the kind of economic ruin that has consumed so many Labour Governments in my lifetime.