When I was planning for this week's business, I think it was Friday last week, I was taking a look through some of what we'd be doing and I saw this statement, 'Future Outlook for Public Spending in Wales', and I was quite excited. I thought we were going to be looking at some of the big, long-term issues affecting public spending in Wales: the demography of Wales, our ageing population, the impact of when we lose younger people to England. What can we do to keep more of the younger people generating taxes in our economy, particularly when we've got the Welsh rates of income tax now? Why is our population ageing so much, relative to England? Do we have levers, and would we want to consider using any of those levers to affect, perhaps even at the margin, the demography? What are those challenges? How are Welsh Government preparing for it? But instead, we get this. I mean, what a whinge. We've just had a long litany of complaints, as though, looking forward a decade, we're going back a decade, and it's just a great screed against austerity. We were told that there is a continuing programme of austerity from the UK Government, that the UK Government's narrative has been that austerity is ending, and that the reality is very different. And then you treat us to this comparison between 2023—well, at least that's looking forward. But you go back to 2009-10. I mean, what does that say about whether austerity is ending? Surely, what matters, at least in that respect, is: what's our budget this year compared to last year? How might it be next year compared to this year? Is there a change in trend? Are we actually going to begin having a bit more money again? Yet, all you talk about is austerity, and I just don't think that it's very helpful. [Interruption.] Well, if you'd like to examine my voting record, you'll find that some of them I didn't actually vote for.

But, I mean, let's—. The one good thing if Boris does come in is that, perhaps, there will be some optimism. That's one thing that you can say for him. Whether it will be well grounded or not, we will come to see. You said nothing positive, at least that I recall, in that statement. This morning, have you looked at the economic numbers that came out today? Seventy-six per cent employment across the UK—an absolute record. We've never seen employment on that scale before. And we have wages going up by 3.6 per cent year on year. That's more than we've seen—significantly more than we've seen—for the last decade. In real terms, that 3.6 per cent increase, inflation at 2 per cent—. We're now seeing real wages going up year by year between 1.5 and 2 per cent, yet we're still seeing employment creation on top of that. So, if you look at both employment creation near 1 per cent still, year on year, and that 1.5 to 2 per cent real wage growth on top of that, you could be looking at growth in employment income this coming year of 2.5 to 3 per cent in real terms. Surely that gives the scope for GDP to surprise to the upside compared to some of the gloomiest forecasts that you've been talking about. We've also seen, at least at the UK level—you don't give us the numbers here—some surprises to the upside in terms of how the borrowing numbers have been coming in. One of the key drivers of those borrowing numbers is that employment income. It is hugely important to the tax take, and some of the areas—the only ones you talk about—where the economy's disappointed, for example investment, are ones that are not the big tax-take areas. If you have a certain level of GDP, if you see a shift away from investment towards employment income, at least in the near term the fiscal impact of that is very positive, because you raise more tax from it. We didn't hear anything about that at all, and I have to say I am disappointed by that approach.

You have this Jeffrey Archer sort of title, Nick Ramsay suggested—not a penny less, not a power lost—and, again, you accentuate the downside. You could at least have listened to your First Minister in the previous statement. He was a lot more positive. He said we'll be acquiring thousands of new powers and functions in policy areas that were previously set by EU laws. Surely that is something to celebrate. Clearly there's a discussion with UK Government and others about exactly how the shared prosperity fund will work. Now, Boris has said that the decision to cancel the M4 relief road needs to be reversed, and he's said there's going to be significant Conservative Ministers' influence on how the money is spent, so I infer from that that the UK Government may be offering to pay for the M4 relief road, or at least a substantial proportion of it. Now, surely, given the impact that could have in boosting our economy, helping young people stay in Wales—what better way to boost shared prosperity than actually to fund that M4 relief road?

Isn't it time the Minister started actually looking at the positive, at least some of the positive elements? I'm quite happy to plan for scenarios that are less positive, but the Bank of England numbers she's quoted—they were the worst-case scenario to start with, and they've revised them away because they're preposterous. They are based on the assumption that people don't respond to changes in economic circumstance, whereas they do, and that's what drives human progress. So, let's just have a bit of optimism.