I'm pleased to contribute to today's debate on the supplementary budget before us. Can I thank the Minister for her willingness to meet and engage during the process of laying this budget? I've had many useful discussions with your predecessor, and I'm pleased that that spirit of co-operation has continued. I'm also pleased to be taking part in the Finance Committee's work on the supplementary budget and I will be referring to some of the committee's recommendations and conclusions during my remarks today, although many of those have been touched on by the Chair.

The committee's lead recommendation, recommendation 1, calls on the Welsh Government to provide a comprehensive objective-setting plan to align the budget with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. We come back to this again and again. It's one thing to have a piece of groundbreaking legislation like the future generations legislation, welcomed by all other parts of the UK and other parties, but it's another thing to ensure that that legislation takes into account all aspects of policy and budget setting, and that it's taken into account by all departments in the Welsh Government. Steffan Lewis used to constantly question, on the committee, whether this was happening in practice and what it meant for the Act, and, indeed, the whole act of legislating. Now, I appreciate that it's no mean feat to try to achieve this, but we do have to have greater clarity on how it can happen to make the legislation worth while in the future. In-year announcements of activities cannot be a

'replacement for a comprehensive narrative of the budget in the round'.

That's a quote from the report.

Turning to some of the individual changes, and some of the transfers from MEG to MEG, as was eloquently put by the Minister—not the talk of clubs and pubs across the country, I'm sure, but we all know the importance of the MEGs and the DELs—. Turning to some of those individual changes, and, first of all, the important one—the health and social care budget—any additional funding for the health budget is, of course, to be welcomed. My party has been calling for that extra funding for the health budget for a long time, and the £5 million that's been announced—part, I understand, of the £15 million promised last summer—is to be welcomed.

But, you do have to ask, as the committee has: is this the most efficient way of doing things? I think, as Mike Hedges has said in the Finance Committee, winter does have the habit of coming most years—every year—and the Welsh Government knows there are going to be pressures each year, and local health boards know there are going to be pressures each year. They might not know exactly what those pressures will be, but we know that they will come each year, yet there's always this kind of surprise in the committee by the Government that suddenly winter's upon us and there have been all of these kinds of problems out there, which, of course, could and should be predicted, at least in a general way. So, can we look at the way this is done in future so that we know where we are earlier in the year and that sustainability of funding is ensured? That ties in with previous recommendations from the Finance Committee regarding the need for longer term rolling budgets within, admittedly, the political cycle.

The funding of health boards continues to be a sore point. They do seem capable of absorbing ever larger amounts of money that are poured into them. They are, of course, required to break even by law over a three-year period, but that hardly ever happens, certainly not with all of them. We need a far earlier assessment of the impact of winter pressures, instead of providing this funding in-year, or at least not relying all the time on this funding in-year, so that LHBs are given every opportunity to plan ahead and, indeed, the Welsh Government can better liaise with them on that planning. 

Turning to transport and, yes, we did, Llyr, have some interesting discussions on financial preparations for a solution to the M4 congestion around Newport—amazing what a fresh pair of eyes on the committee can do, isn't it? We were surprised that limited discussions had taken place between the finance Minister and the First Minister. There will obviously be implications for expenditure from such a large project if it goes ahead, and the Welsh Government's borrowing capacity. There are questions about the amount of money that may have been spent since the decision was originally going to be made in December, and I think we need clarity around that. We know that a large amount of money has already been spent on preparations for the M4 if it does go ahead. What has actually been spent since December when we were expecting, or most of us were expecting the original decision to be made? That needs to be known.

Without going into the ins and outs of it, we need to have clarity as soon as possible on whether that road is going ahead. If it's not going to be going ahead, then we know what preparations are in place for an alternative solution, whether that be an alternative route or public transport funding, or a mixture of the two; it's for the Welsh Government to look at that and decide what's best, but the public do expect that.

It is, of course, not possible to discuss budgeting at the moment without touching on Brexit, and I fully understand the Welsh Government's position that it needs greater clarity on where we are going to be in a relatively short time now, but recommendation 8, Llywydd, calls on the Welsh Government to provide a full narrative on activities relating to the UK's exit from the EU. Yes, we are looking at the UK Government to come forward with plans, but we also need the Welsh Government to be prepared to get off the mark very quickly when we do have clarity to make sure that we can make the most of the new political situation within the UK and in Wales after March, or whenever Brexit happens.