Questions, now, from the party spokespeople. The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. In the absence of our finance spokesperson, I hope that the Cabinet Secretary will forgive me for mentioning health. But don’t worry—it’s in the context of budgetary allocations.

Cabinet Secretary, how does the Welsh Government, in allocating funds to large public bodies such as the health service, ensure that those funds are spent in a way that is consistent with the principles set out by Government?

Well, Llywydd, that is essentially a matter for the Cabinet Secretary with responsibility for the health service, but I am familiar enough with that field to know that he will have very direct ways in which, through his contacts with chairs, and then with chief executives, he will be keeping a direct track on the way in which the money that we are able to provide for the health service in Wales is then properly applied by those large organisations, as Rhun ap Iorwerth has said—that they apply the money we're able to provide for them in the most effective way. I meet monthly with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services so that, from my responsibility as managing the overall budget, I'm able to keep in touch with the way in which he is managing that very significant slice of the Welsh Government that falls to him.

Thank you very much. I do consider that to be a useful answer. It is an ambition of Government to enhance healthcare services in the community, but it’s difficult to check whether that’s happening in terms of where the funds are going because we get only a single budget line from you as Cabinet Secretary. Don’t you believe that there is scope to provide some sub-budget lines, in order for you as a Government to check whether the health service is doing what you expect them to do, but also to make it easier for us, as Assembly Members, to hold you, as a Government, to account?

Well, Llywydd, I am familiar with the point that the Member makes, and in the process of creating the budget for this year, we have given more detail on a lower level than previously in the second phase of the new process. And where we are able to do more to give greater detail in order to assist the Members to scrutinise as a Government, we are very happy to collaborate with the Finance Committee and others in order to see how best to achieve this. I do believe that we have made progress in the new process that we’ve used over the autumn.

There’s a responsibility on you as Cabinet Secretary to ensure that public funds in Wales are spent as effectively as possible, and I appreciate, from your earlier answer, that you do hold meetings with Cabinet Secretaries in different areas in order to assess whether things are going in the right direction. To give one specific example, we know that expenditure on primary care has reduced significantly over the past years: it's some 7 per cent of the total healthcare spend now, as compared with 11 per cent years ago. I believe we should go back to 11 per cent and your colleague the Cabinet Secretary for health says that we do need to strengthen primary care. But how do you, as the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, actually put pressure on your colleagues in the Cabinet in order to ensure that primary care in this context does receive the support that we hear it needs and that that support is provided in financial terms?

Llywydd, the Member was careful to make a distinction, but it is an important distinction, between the proportion of the budget that goes to primary care and the absolute investment in primary care, because the absolute investment in primary care has gone up over the years, albeit that as a proportion of the total budget it has taken less. Now, I know that the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services is very keen to address that issue. That is why we fund primary care clusters directly. That is why we have preserved the integrated care fund again this year.

But I put this point to the Member, that one of the reasons why, as a proportion of the health budget, primary care has not had the share that other parts of the health service have had is because of the way in which public debate and debate here too focuses so heavily on hospital services, and we talk far less about primary and community services. So, every time there is a debate about services that might be altered in a hospital setting, we have huge debates. When changes happen at primary care level, there is far less attention to them. Partly, the reason that hospitals have taken a larger share of a growing budget is because of the way in which debates around the future of the health service are conducted. 

Conservative spokesperson, Nick Ramsay.

Diolch, Llywydd. Finance Secretary, yesterday, the First Minister didn't fully answer the leader of the opposition's question on an upper funding cap for the proposed M4 relief road. Are you prepared to give details of a cap, or is the Welsh Government happy for the costs simply to spiral?

Wel, Llywydd, I tried to say earlier it's not my responsibility to have the policy decisions in relation to the M4 relief road. My responsibility is to manage the budget and to make sure that there are finances available to pursue key priorities. In this case, the new M4 is being considered through an independent local inquiry, and until that inquiry reports I will not make direct allocations, because the need for allocations will be dependent on what that inquiry concludes.

Diolch. I don't disagree with what you've just said, finance Secretary, and I appreciate that there's currently an ongoing public inquiry looking into the different possible solutions and routes for the M4 and that should be allowed to take its course. I also appreciate that there's a policy issue to be debated here, and you're not the Secretary to do that with. However, I'm asking you specifically about the financing of the scheme, and, as finance Secretary, you do have an overall view for achieving and securing public value for money for the taxpayer. As I understand it, the current estimated cost is in the region of £1.4 billion. However, apparently, this doesn't include estimations of VAT, inflation, or future maintenance costs. Have any of these been factored in and what is your current estimate of the total cost of the M4 relief road?

Well, Llywydd, the way in which costs for the M4 relief road are presented to the Assembly are entirely in line with the conventions that are used across Governments in reporting such sums. So, there's nothing unusual in the fact that we report the sums in current prices, rather than in prices as they may be later on. What I can report to Members is this: where there is a need for funds for taking forward the public inquiry, for example, this year, and some enabling works that have been required, I am in a position to provide those funds to the Cabinet Secretary involved, and I remain confident that, should the scheme get the go ahead as a result of the independent local public inquiry, I will be able to use the levers available to me to be able to put the scheme into practice.

Thank you, finance Secretary. I'm getting increasingly concerned, because once again today there appears to be a distinct lack of figures. It wasn't that long ago that the Welsh Government told the Assembly that the cost would be less than £1 billion. I think a guarantee of some form was issued to us, whether it was that word or not, back then. But it now seems that this was grossly underestimated. Now, if you look at examples of other large road schemes in Wales, such as the A465 Heads of the Valleys widening—and, again, policy issue aside on that—that has been subject to many delays and is currently costing an estimated 25 per cent over the original budget. So, you can understand the public's concern about these kinds of projects. The M4 black route will, if chosen, run through sites of special scientific interest and across wetland, making it more complex than many other road schemes would be. Do you not think that, aside from the public inquiry, it's time for a full review of the potential costs of this project to ensure value for money for the taxpayer? 

I don't think it's possible to separate the two issues in quite that way, Llywydd, because the costs will be contingent upon the conclusions that the inquiry comes to. So, I don't think it's possible to separate matters in quite that way. Let me say in general to the Member that of course I share his concerns always that spending plans right across the Welsh Government are implemented in the most efficient and cost-efficient way, and that would apply to this scheme in exactly the same way as it would apply to all other ways in which capital investment available to the Welsh Government is paid out in practice.  

UKIP spokesperson, Neil Hamilton. 

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. We're all awaiting with interest the Cabinet Secretary's decision on the shortlist for new taxes to be published shortly, but does he agree with me that, whilst no tax is ever going to be popular, there'll be greater acceptability amongst the public if they can directly relate the costs that they will incur with the benefits that they will receive? Some of these taxes, of course, embody that principle better than others. Given the pressures on public spending and the inevitable increases in costs that will come about in the area of health and social services in the years ahead, the proposal for a social care levy could be promoted, as long as the scheme that goes along with the tax is a sensible one, in such a way as to maximise the degree of public support for a tax. 

Well, I understand the point the Member makes, and hypothecation in the sense that people can see what they get for what they pay does have an influence on public acceptability. He will know that successive Chancellors at the UK level have always had antipathy to hypothecation in that way, but where I think the Member is right is that, in the scheme that Professor Gerry Holtham has put forward, and is the basis for these discussions, he does draw on the issue of public acceptability elsewhere, and he uses the example in Japan where there is unhypothecated tax towards social care, but you don't start to pay it until you're 40. Now, I suppose in crude terms you could say that people up to the age of 40 don't believe they're going to get old and don't think this is ever going to be them. Once you turn that corner, you begin to realise that investment in these services may be something that you yourself will have an interest in before all that long, and, in fact, in the Japanese model, as I remember it, the amount you pay towards the tax goes up as you get older. So, the closer you get to the point where you may benefit from it, the more acceptable making a contribution to it appears to get. So, in that sense, I think the Holtham work tends to bear out the general proposition that Mr Hamilton made.   

The Cabinet Secretary, like myself, is perennially youthful—we're seeing the horizon recede further from us as we get older—but I accept the general point that he makes. Given that adult social care costs are, on the Health Foundation's predictions, likely to rise by 4 per cent per annum for the next 20 years, and that costs should rise probably to about £2.5 billion by 2030, clearly there is here a potential massive funding problem for the Welsh Government. And therefore it's essential, in my opinion, if there is to be such a levy, that a fund should be created that can't be raided by Governments for other purposes. The Cabinet Secretary will remember that the National Insurance Act 1911—not remember because he was there at the time, but because he's a student of history—the whole basis of that scheme, which created national insurance in Britain, was to create a national insurance fund. Sadly though, that has been regularly raided ever since by the Treasury and the whole contributory principle has been undermined by Conservative Governments as well as by Labour Governments over the years, I think to the lasting disfigurement of the funding of social insurance in this country, and it would be a lot better if we were to hypothecate for a specific purpose. I know the dead hand of the Treasury has precluded this at Westminster but I hope, as a result of devolution, that the Welsh Government will be more enlightened in its consideration of these issues.  

Well, Llywydd, it was Marx who said, 'The older I get, the older I want to be'—but, of course, that was Groucho Marx rather than Karl Marx. The Member is absolutely right when he says that the national insurance fund became a fiction in around 1957, when the Macmillan Government of the time decided to dip into it and to pay for current expenditure out of the receipts that had built up in the fund. Ever since then, national insurance is, in fact, a pay-as-you-go system rather than an insurance-funded system. Professor Holtham's report is very clear that the scheme that he wants to advocate would be one in which money that Welsh citizens might pay for social care purposes in future would have to go into a dedicated fund outside Government, in which there were strong assurances for members of the public that Government couldn't reach into it in times of difficulty, and where there would be strong governance arrangements around it to give people the confidence that, if their money is being paid over for these purposes, that money would be there to be drawn out for these purposes in the future. 

Another way in which the national insurance fund has been described, of course, is as 'the world's largest Ponzi scheme', as it has developed. I hope we will never recreate something in that image here in Wales. What we have the opportunity to do here, I think, is something similar to what Norway has done, for example, in relation to the windfall that it obtained when North Sea oil came on stream and they created a sovereign wealth fund, which is now producing vast dividends for the Norwegian people, on the basis of which their very high standard of living and social insurance and health provision and so on is substantially funded. We don't have wealth of oil but we do have the wealth in the creative abilities of our people. If we could isolate a small portion of national income for a sovereign wealth fund of this kind then we could perhaps help to square the circle of funding of the growing needs of an ageing population and of a health system that is going to be able to cure so many more conditions that, in the past, have led to early deaths. So, either way, part of the growing prosperity of a nation is in the health and well-being of its people and this fits in neatly with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and consideration of taxes with that Act, I think, is absolutely vital if we're to make a success of devolution in this particular sphere. 

Well, Llywydd, can I thank the Member for his questions this afternoon? When we published our shortlist of potential taxes under the Wales Act 2014, it was exactly in order to generate a debate about the way in which these potential new powers for Wales could be used for important purposes that matter to people in Wales in the future. Some of the issues that the Member has raised this afternoon I think help to create that sort of debate and have done so in an area, which we all know, given the age structure of our population and what that means for public services in the future, is a debate that is unavoidable if we're to prepare properly for that future.

Question 3 [OAQ51607] is withdrawn. Question 4—Angela Burns.