I wholly endorse what the finance Secretary has just said about the choices that have to be made, and the reality is, of course, that we are constrained by the Welsh block, which is out of our hands. Half of the budget goes on health, another quarter goes on education, and the remainder is split between the other heads upon which the Government spends. The amount available for capital spending is therefore limited, and the finance Secretary's hands are tied. So, we are talking here about a small part of the Welsh Government budget. The urgent need for Wales, as the poorest part of the United Kingdom, is to raise the tax base here, now that we've got limited freedom to raise future revenues from taxation. This is going to become increasingly important to make Wales a more attractive place for businesses to locate and to expand and to attract entrepreneurs into the country and to encourage those who are already here.

I know that the finance Secretary starts all these statements with the ritual trip down austerity avenue, but the fantasy that a UK Labour Government would have done anything very much different from what the Conservatives have done had they been in office after 2010 I think is nonsense. The Alistair Darling plans, on which the Brown Labour Government fought the 2010 election, was actually more restrictive than the plans that George Osborne proposed in his first financial statements. The idea that you can carry on spending money forever and have infinite deficit spending is disproved by the experience of countries as various as Venezuela and Zimbabwe. We've doubled the national debt since 2010 to nearly £2 trillion, which is now £22,000 for every single person in the United Kingdom. Yes, we've lived in an era of low interest rates, but if the Government's financial policy had been much more relaxed, then those interest rates would not have fallen as fast and as far as they did. Now, of course, there's only one way forward for interest rates, and that's up. So, we have to be ever more cautious, I think, in balancing the books, or moving towards that. George Osborne was continually pushed off to another day—Philip Hammond similarly—the day on which the budget is balanced. Now, that has implications, of course, for us here in Wales too. But for the future, looking at it in the very longer term, we want to have a tax policy in Wales that is going to encourage growth and investment. You have to create wealth before you can spend it. If you spend it before it's been created, then you end up in the same position as Mr Micawber. 

But to move to the specifics, I just want to make a couple of points. The statement says that the plan's been at the heart of the Welsh Government's work to create and sustain economic growth, but, of course, economic growth in terms of private sector businesses in Wales has been modest since the inception of the plan, and, in fact, mid and west Wales is one of the worst. I do endorse what Adam Price has said about the need to have a more equitable spread of investment throughout the country.

Wales, according to the Barclays entrepreneurs index, has the second lowest number of high-growth companies in the UK, at only 77. The number of companies receiving venture capital funding has also increased from 23 last year now to 32. The value of this investment hasn't increased; it's stable year on year at only £9 million. These are very disappointing figures.

The StatsWales figures on active business enterprises per 10,000 population show that, overall, the Wales figures have an increase of only 57 active businesses per 10,000 since 2012. And mid and west Wales figures are very much below the best areas and the Wales average overall. Mid Wales being, for these purposes, Powys and Ceredigion combined, shows an increase of only 31 active businesses per 10,000 population between 2012 and 2016. So, we need to do something to ensure, from the Welsh Government's ability to spend, that we build upon these modest successes so that we reduce the imbalances in Wales. Looking at the increases in business turnover between 2012 and 2017, again from the StatsWales figures, Wales has seen an overall increase of 13.8 per cent. Pembrokeshire has seen only a 3 per cent increase. I know you're never going to have everybody at the average throughout the whole country, obviously, and things change over time, but we should, I think, at least endeavour to ensure that there's a greater equity in the way Government is spending. I'm sure that Lee Waters will find that it grows on him the longer it gets. The other—[Interruption.]