1. Will the Cabinet Secretary confirm how much money can be drawn under different capital funding streams for the M4 relief road? OAQ52916

I thank the Member for the question. The M4 relief road proposals are currently subject to a statutory decision-making process. As finance Secretary, I will provide advice to colleagues on the funding implications of the scheme. Details of all the Welsh Government’s planned capital funding, including borrowing draw-down, are as set out in our draft budget for 2019-20.

Cabinet Secretary, in April, you asked the Treasury for more borrowing powers to fund the M4 relief road. Yet, when they agreed in the budget, you attacked them for disrespecting devolution. Now we hear the vote may be delayed, yet in your manifesto you said, and I quote,

'We will deliver a relief road for the M4'.

Cabinet Secretary, have you any intention of keeping that promise?

Well, Llywydd, the Member is wrong in his interpretation of the letter that I sent to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Luckily enough, I have a copy of it in front of me, in which I said to her,

'I want to signal now that I will be seeking an increase in the Welsh Government's annual and aggregate borrowing limits as we move into the next spending review in order that we can deliver our investment priorities for Wales'.

That includes the M4, but it is not a letter about the M4, which is what he said in his supplementary question. It is a letter about the totality of our borrowing requirement and the totality of the investment priorities for Wales. That was my objection to what was said in the Chancellor's speech—that he attempted to hypothecate any increase in our borrowing requirement for a particular purpose. That is quite outside the statement of funding priorities, and we look for an increase in our borrowing limit because of the many investment priorities very often advocated on the Member's own benches that are important here in Wales.

Will the Cabinet Secretary confirm that the Welsh Government has the power to issue bonds to raise funding for major capital projects, such as the M4 relief road—if they decide to proceed with it—in much the same way as Transport for London had the ability to raise bonds, which they did for Crossrail?

I thank Mike Hedges for that supplementary question, and it's an issue that he has pursued regularly in the Finance Committee and here. I'm happy to confirm to the Assembly this afternoon that we have had good co-operation with UK Ministers in relation to the bonds matter. The UK Government has confirmed that it will lay the Government of Wales Act 2006 (Variation of Borrowing Power) Order in the House of Commons. It's expected that that will be debated very shortly and, subject to the approval of the House of Commons, it will come into force at or around 1 December this year. As Mike Hedges regularly reminds us, the ability to issue bonds does not increase our ability to borrow; it simply allows us a new way in which we are able to do that, should the UK Government increase the interest rates charged through the national loans fund.