Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:58 pm on 1 May 2018.
To answer his first couple of questions first, looking back over the first period of the WIIP, what will be some of the lessons I think we would learn from it? Well, I think the first is that we are putting considerably more emphasis in the mid-point review on the way in which Welsh Government investment has to act in a complementary way with the investments that other public sector bodies make in local government, for example, but also the major investments that go into transport, energy and water, and so on, by other major investment players in Wales. I think we've learnt the need to make sure that those things are better aligned.
I think we've learnt as well of the need of public authorities to have a finer-grained grasp of infrastructure within their own localities. So, the national assets working group we've set up, which has done—as I know Adam Price knows—a mapping exercise in the Cwm Taf area, trying to make sure that all partners on the ground are aware of the infrastructure assets that are owned by others, is therefore able to make better investment decisions, sharing facilities, releasing land for housing, creating better jobs in the management side of infrastructure and making the public pound go further. And I think that's something else we have learnt in this first part, and that's why we've produced a relatively modest sum of money—around £2 million—to make sure that that mapping exercise can be replicated right across Wales.
Adam Price asked about whether we had succeeded in strengthening the way in which business cases are brought forward for investment, and the five-stage business case model has now been adopted as standard, and that was very much driven by some of the work that went into the original WIIP.
I don't dissent from the proposition that geography has to play a part in the way in which investment decisions are made, but I've never believed myself that it ought to be a determining criterion. I think, in the end, it has to be the quality of the proposal that comes forward, the return on public investment that it provides and the impact that it will have on the future of our economy. Those have to be the things we look at first, and then, of course, we have to see how investments can help us to spread and sustain prosperity in all parts of Wales.
I didn't mention in my statement the over £600 million of capital investment that will come with the city deals that have already been announced. And, of course, the growth deal for north Wales is now making further progress. There's the metro in Swansea, mentioned by Dr Dai Lloyd earlier this afternoon; the north-east Wales metro; the major investments that are going on in Anglesey to make it an energy island and the ambitions that we have there for marine energy in the future. I think we are able to show that we are investing in all parts of Wales. It's an important criterion that we use, but it is not the decisive one.
As far as ambition is concerned, I'm grateful to Adam Price for welcoming the news on bond issues. It is a matter I know he has raised regularly in the Chamber. I can tell him as well that I have already written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury alerting her to the fact that I intend to make a case for extending the borrowing powers available to the National Assembly as part of the forthcoming spending review.
The difference between Scotland and Wales, however, is rooted at least partly in the level of PFI debt that Scotland drew up in the first decade of devolution, which we, thankfully, decided to avoid. And there is a choice that he and I have rehearsed many times outside the Chamber and here: every time you finance borrowing, you have to eat into the revenue that is available to the Welsh Government for other purposes. And a case can be made for diverting more of our revenue to support additional capital borrowing, and it's a perfectly respectable case that can be made. But every £1 we divert in that way is £1 less for the very urgent revenue demands that the Government faces on all sides of the Chamber. We know that we don't have the money we need for our schools and our hospitals and all other great public services. So, it's a matter of judgment and there's a balance to be struck, and it's a challenging one to get right.