9. Will the Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government's policy on multi-year budgeting? OAQ53522

It is always our ambition to provide long-term clarity over budgets whenever possible. However, this must be balanced with realistic and sensible planning assumptions. The UK Government's austerity agenda, coupled with the uncertainty regarding Brexit, constrains our ability to do this.

Thank you for that answer. You'll be aware, of course, and we've heard today about the serious concerns now being expressed about school funding, and one of the things that we hear is that schools can find themselves in receipt of extra money at very short notice at the end of the financial year, which makes it very difficult for them to spend it in-year effectively. It also has the unintended consequence of artificially inflating reserves at the end of the year.

Now, I appreciate the timing of this extra money isn't entirely down to Welsh Government because it does depend to a degree on when the UK Government passes money on, but there is still some time lag that is exacerbating the problem. Assembly terms are now five years. The Welsh block figure goes up in actual terms every year. Is there anything legislative that is preventing you from allowing schools to plan on two-year cycles with an indicative third year figure in a cycle that would help them solve the late windfall problem, help schools plan better, and safeguard their funding from being raided by councils to meet other demands?

Thank you very much for raising that. I'll explore the specific question you raised with my colleague the education Minister. I would say we are very sympathetic to the calls from the public sector for budgeting over a longer period whenever possible in order to have more straightforward financial planning. However, the continuing uncertainty that we are experiencing at the moment is causing a great deal of concern. We have the comprehensive spending review coming up later on this year. We still don't even know, at this point, what period that comprehensive spending review will cover. Despite this, we have ensured that the chief economist's report, which was published alongside the draft budget, does provide an analysis of the medium-term fiscal projections, so that will provide us with some of that information we need to predict, I suppose, as far as we best can, some of those scenarios moving forward, which you described as being useful for education. But, in relation to your specific question, I will have a discussion with the Minister.

I thank the Minister for Finance.