That is the situation.

Now, from April, as we've already heard, the Welsh Government will have new tax levers—more tax levers than ever before in order to generate some wealth for the Welsh economy, but instead of seizing the opportunity that those tax levers represent, to give our economy a shot in the arm, the Welsh Government has succumbed to the traditional Labour temptation of tax and spend. Let’s take the new 6 per cent supertax, for example, which you impose on commercial land sales of over £1 million—a move that the Welsh chartered surveyors labelled as, and I quote, ‘crazy’. They warned, and I quote, that it would make Wales a less commercially attractive place to invest and would damage the economy. That’s the sort of punitive tax-and-spend ideology that you’d expect from a party that has, time and time again, absolutely trashed our public finances. This budget could have helped to address those concerns and helped to attract more businesses to relocate into Wales, but it hasn’t, because instead, Cabinet Secretary, you’ve ignored them. This is not the sort of twenty-first century socialism that you claim to represent; it’s the sort of socialism that stifles opportunity, holds Wales back and strangles the life chances of the next generation.

And what about these other tax levers at your disposal? The Confederation of British Industry has rightly warned you about raising Welsh income tax, saying that it should be last resort and not a first response. And I’m very pleased to see that, in your budget, there are no proposals at present to increase Welsh income taxes. But, of course, what you didn’t guarantee was that they’re not going to rise in the future—you’ve only mentioned the next financial year.

You’re a member of a party that committed itself in a manifesto before the 2016 Assembly elections that you were not going to increase income tax. Will you give us personally that commitment here again today from you, Cabinet Secretary? We’ve only got a small proportion of the UK’s higher and additional rate taxpayers and I think it’s extremely likely that these highly mobile individuals would be relocating from Wales, resulting in a loss of revenue for the Welsh coffers and also resulting in investment from those individuals going elsewhere. And it’s true, of course, of other taxes too.

I’m very pleased to hear that you’ve had a belated conversion to the need to do something extra on business rates, because, as we know, at present, we have the least attractive business rate regime in the United Kingdom, as a result of the current situation with the multiplier.

I’m looking forward—you’ve shown us a bit of leg in terms of your plans to use the £26 million consequential that you’ve received from the UK Government to support the situation with business rates, but you haven’t given us more detail about that, and I’d like to hear more detail in your response to the debate today.

You see, we Conservatives know that when you support businesses, you’re actually helping to stimulate the whole economy and you’re helping to support public services because it’s private businesses that create the wealth, that pay the taxes, that employ people who also pay their taxes, and it’s those taxes that pay for the public services that we enjoy in Wales, and the staff who work in them.

So, this budget is a let-down in many respects, not least for Welsh businesses. It’s also a let-down, of course, for first-time buyers. It does very little to accelerate house building, the house building that we need and was referred to during First Minister’s questions today. It doesn’t do a great deal extra in terms of helping people to get their foot on the housing ladder either. And you could have taken further steps to support people through extensions of the allowance in terms of the land transaction tax in order to help people onto the housing ladder. But you haven't. You haven't. It's another missed opportunity.

Turning to the NHS, we've welcomed the additional investment that your Government has put into the national health service, but I have to say that it's a little bit too little too late. Let's not forget that Wales has the accolade of having the only Government ever anywhere in the United Kingdom that has ever cut a national health service budget. And the legacy of your savage cuts in a previous administration to the NHS budget live on with us today, because as a result of those cuts—[Interruption.] You were talking about how budgets change over a period if they keep pace with inflation. Well, let me tell you, if you hadn't cut the national health service budget in the year that you cut that budget, with the support of Plaid Cymru I might add, the national health service budget—if you had kept pace with the spending increases in England—would be £1 billion healthier today in Wales than is currently the case. Because the truth is that, over the past six years, the budget has risen more than twice as fast in terms of the health service in England than it has done in Wales, and it's very clear—[Interruption.] It's very clear—these are facts. You don't like the facts—[Interruption.] You don't like the facts—[Interruption.] You don't like the facts, but that is the truth. It's very clear that it's this Conservative Party that are championing the national health service, not the Labour Party here in Wales. I'll happily take the intervention.