I intend to make some general comments on the budget, followed by more detailed ones as Chair of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. On the budget, this is set against continuing austerity. We should, as the Cabinet Secretary said, be receiving at least £800 million more. But to the Conservatives at Westminster, austerity is not an economic policy, it's an ideology—a twin-track approach of cuts and privatisation. We currently have a situation where Jeremy Corbyn has more in common with the post-war Governments of Churchill, Eden and Macmillan than Theresa May does. On revenue raising, income from income tax has first-year protection, and we will see how the income relates to the predicted, as Llyr Gruffydd discussed earlier.

We again see an increase in the health budget as a percentage of the Welsh budget. This cannot continue indefinitely, if only because, at some stage, it will reach 100 per cent of the Welsh budget. Also, the share of the health that budget primary care gets is a cause for concern—when we say 'health', we mean hospitals, and that cannot be the way to make for a healthier nation. For good health, you need good-quality housing, a good diet and exercise, to not smoke and not consume large quantities of alcohol. We desperately need to do more on health improvement and lifestyle—one of the things that Communities First used to do before it was closed down.

Local government has had real-terms reductions again. The budget for local government has improved from the draft budget, which I welcome. There is a promise of any teacher pension money received going to local government to fund the increase in pension costs. Again, I think everybody has to welcome that. It does not help that Ministers, instead of supporting basic services in local government, use additional funding for add-ons—nice add-ons; there's nothing wrong with them—but the basic service needs to come first. There is also money in budgets, such as economy and transportation, that can be used to support local government.

Turning to the budget relating to climate change, environment and rural affairs, this year, the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee scrutinised the draft budgets of the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs and the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport. Earlier this year, the Welsh Government decided to add a sixth priority to its national strategy, 'Prosperity for All'. The new, sixth priority is decarbonisation. This is something that the committee welcomes, and we were eager to see the changes in the approach to the draft budget resulting from this change in priorities. However, we have found little evidence of how the inclusion of decarbonisation as the sixth priority has informed decisions about the budget allocation this year.

The Cabinet Secretary has published proposals to replace current systems of financial support for agriculture with two distinct schemes: the economic resilience scheme and the public goods scheme. The Cabinet Secretary has said that she wants to start the transition to these new schemes in 2021. We think this is a huge undertaking and we were interested in the allocations in the draft budget to prepare for this change. We were surprised, however, to see that there are no additional allocations in the budget to prepare—no additional funding for piloting or modelling and no additional funding for advisory services for the many thousands of farmers who will be affected. We were not reassured that preparations could be made adequately within existing budgets. This is an area where we have made several recommendations.

In terms of the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport’s budget, I would like to focus on the economy futures fund and how it links with decarbonisation. Our main concern was the monitoring arrangements surrounding some parts of the fund. In principle, we welcome the fact that businesses seeking investment as part of the economic contract must demonstrate progress in reducing their carbon footprint. We believe that there should be a clear, demonstrable commitment that the business in question has a serious focus on reducing its carbon footprint. This would most likely require more than just a series of conversations. We have also recommended that the Cabinet Secretary should keep under review the operation of the decarbonisation call to action, with a view to encouraging more businesses to make use of the funding to reduce their carbon footprint.

I'd like to reply to some comments. I agree with David Melding that we need to build more houses. Building more houses is very simple: allow councils to borrow to build council houses against the value of the existing housing stock. It would mean a change in the policy of the Treasury, but it would allow a huge-scale building of council houses. Some of us who were brought up in council houses in the 1960s are well aware of the huge number of estates and large number of houses built across Wales at that time. That, I think, was really important, but we need to allow councils to build again, and that can only be done by changing the Treasury's rules.