Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:42 pm on 10 July 2018.
Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. I thank all those Members who had relevant contributions to make to this debate. As Mike Hedges said, while the first supplementary budget is relatively limited in nature, it is an important part of the budget process, allowing changes to be reported to and scrutinised by the Assembly. His warnings of the evils of epistolary practices will no doubt be reported to finance Ministers in the future, should they ever deviate from that path.
Mike also pointed to the way we've treated financial transaction capital in the supplementary budget. We've been able to carry forward the £90 million allocated very late in the last financial year, and while the restrictions on the use to which financial transaction capital can be put are real, our ability to do some innovative things, for example, in the funding of credit unions, is an example of the sort of imaginative uses that I am committed to trying to make of every penny that comes to the Welsh Government.
Mike repeated the warnings he gave in the Finance Committee in relation to the student loan book. We are, as he said, less exposed to some of those dangers than across our border. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and her officials are taking a close interest in the findings of the review of student finance that is being conducted in England, to see, when it's published, if it has any implications for Wales.
Nick Ramsay raised the issue of health spending. Health spending is a priority for this Government, and it is my job to make sure that there are always sufficient funds available to provide services and to pay bills in all parts of Wales. The NHS allocations announced by the Prime Minister recently are, of course, not for this supplementary budget or even for this financial year. Once we have some certainty over the actual sum of money that will become available to Wales as a result of those announcements, then I'll be pleased to report to the Assembly on how we intend to use them.
The supplementary budget does indeed provide additional funding for the school uniform grant, which is now to be an expanded grant scheme, doing more than the previous one. I was keen to make sure that the education Secretary had the funding she needed to put that new scheme into place, as I have been to make sure that we are able to go on making provision for the minority ethnic achievement grant.
The active travel routes allocations are there to accelerate the programme, and I don't think it is a fair characterisation to say that nothing has happened in active travel, but an extra £10 million allocated in this supplementary budget, £20 million next year, £30 million the year after that is a significant investment in making sure that we can do more than we have before in relation to that very important policy area.
I followed very much what the Chair of the Finance Committee said. I thank him again for the report. The conclusions that the report comes to set out a clear agenda for the Finance Committee in the work that it intends to do in the budget work that will be in front of us in the rest of this year, and it's very helpful to me to have seen the approach that the Finance Committee intends to take.
Dirprwy Lywydd, can I end by echoing the point that Jane Hutt made, that the budget for this year was set against the longest period of sustained austerity in living memory? It has a very real impact on our budget. Despite that, the first supplementary budget aims to place the foundations for the current year, and to prepare the ground for difficult budgetary decisions that may yet lie ahead.