2. Will the First Minister make a statement on the additional funding recently provided to the Welsh Government by the UK Government? OAQ54326

Well, Llywydd, even if the additional funding to which the Member refers materialises, the Welsh Government’s budget will be 2 per cent or £300 million lower in real terms than it was in 2010-11. Unreliable one-year funding, even when additional, fails to make up for nearly a decade of austerity. 

Well, first, First Minister, perhaps I should have welcomed you back from your Brexit bunker today. But I thank the First Minister for that answer. We all understand that whatever funding is given is never enough, but isn't it true to say that a less profligate approach to financial control by the Welsh Government would release more funding into our public services? By this I mean the losses sustained with Government projects such as the M4 relief road, the Cardiff land deal, the Year of the Sea, the Circuit of Wales and Communities First, which together cost just under £600 million—a  figure that about matches the sum afforded Wales by the UK Government. And there are, no doubt, many more examples of poor financial management by the Labour Welsh Government that I could have cited. Surely we should be looking at the way we approach financial control, rather than looking for largesse from Westminster.

Well, I entirely disagree with the Member. He completely misses the point and the examples that he cites don't stand up to examination either. The money that was spent in Communities First did fantastic work in many communities right across Wales. The scheme had reached the limits of its possibilities, and we have reformed and changed it. The decision in relation to the Circuit of Wales was not to spend money, not to throw money away. It was to make sure that money wasn't badly spent.

The Welsh Government has the best record of any part of the United Kingdom in spending the money that comes to us in Wales. We spend over 99 per cent of the budget that is available to us in Wales, and we do so by investing in our very hard-pressed public services—public services that have had to endure a decade of not having the money through the UK Government that was necessary to sustain them in the face of the demands that we know are there in Welsh society. It would be a lot better if the Member were prepared to speak up for people in Wales and for the investment that they need. 

Well, First Minister, you should be on the stage. The way that you managed to put a negative spin on those statistics without breaking into even a wry smile, you're to be commended on that. I hear what you're saying that there has been a period of cutbacks in Westminster, which saw cutbacks in the Welsh Government budget as well for a period of time, but even you must accept that the recent spending review will deliver next year, like it or not—it will deliver—a real-terms increase of 2.3 per cent over and above the money that's currently in the block grant coming to Wales. That's around £600 million a year, as Dave Rowlands referred to. If you look into the deeper figures of that, that's around £195 million that's being earmarked for education in Westminster, £385 million earmarked to health. Your advisers will know this as well as I do.

Can you give us a guarantee that it's up to the Welsh Government now to decide how you spend that money? Can you give us a guarantee that that money will be passed on to the public services in Wales that need it most, so that you can get on with the job, which you were charged to do, of defending public services in Wales, of defending the Welsh way of life, because people in Wales haven't always been convinced that that's happened in the past? You have a golden opportunity here, in a perfect position, to prove people who are negative wrong and to show that you can stand up for public services in Wales. 

Llywydd, for a decade we have been lectured by Members on that side of the Chamber: austerity was unavoidable, austerity was something over which there was no choice. There was, apparently, no magic money tree. Now that they've shredded all of that and finally taken decisions to turn their back on it, they expect us to be rejoicing on this side of the Chamber. A little more humility on the part of the party opposite would not go amiss. And let me tell Nick Ramsay why it is that we are not prepared to enter into the spirit of his question. First of all, what guarantee do we have that this money will ever arrive in Wales? Governments can only spend money that parliaments vote to them, and this Parliament has not voted on the sums of money announced last week. When will this Government put a money Bill in front of the Westminster Parliament so that we could have confidence that these sums of money will arise? They're not going to do that while Parliament is prorogued, they're not going to do that while the Prime Minister seeks a general election, and they're not going to do it when they don't have a majority on the floor of the House of Commons for anything that they announce.

So, first of all, I don't feel that we can be confident that this money will arrive at all. When it does arrive, Llywydd, of course, the Westminster Government will have spent large sums of it on our behalf. We now learn that the 85 per cent contribution to the pension costs that that Government has imposed on us is to be put into our baseline. So, not only did we lose out by £50 million this year, but we're going to lose out by £50 million every year into the future. So, that money's already been frittered away by decisions made by the UK Government. And why is it, Llywydd, that whereas public services in England are told that they have a three-year settlement and they know how much money there will be for education, not just next year, but for two years after that, we in Wales are not given a three-year settlement at all? Of course the money we get will be invested in public services. That's exactly what we do with all the money that comes our way. It would be nice if we were treated on the same basis as departments elsewhere and given the same opportunity.

Welcome back to all here today.

The First Minister, of course, is right in that we haven't seen a penny piece of this money yet. We wait to see it. We hope that it will be seen, but it goes no way towards making up the widening austerity gap that has emerged over a decade. But this adds too, of course, to the lack of certainty over the future of the shared prosperity fund, the lack of sign-off, because of prorogation, on the previous Chancellor's commitments on sustaining existing EU funding commitments, which are vital for supply chain as well as higher education, training and so on, and also, of course, the fact that he's alluded to that we have no long-term multi-annual comprehensive spending review settlement because Parliament is not there to sit and do it. Nothing has been ratified. There is one thing, however, that we do have increasing clarity on, and that is the implications of a 'no deal' Brexit. I wonder if he's had time to read the report by the UK in a Changing Europe group, 'No Deal Brexit: Issues, Impacts, Implications', because that makes crystal clear what the effects in Wales and every part of the UK will be if we crash out in a 'no deal' scenario.

I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that question. There were two shocking things about the CSR announced earlier this month: first, that it only lasted for one year, whereas we were being promised by the Conservative Government at Westminster right up until July that it would be a three-year settlement that we would have, and that evaporated in a matter of weeks. And surely it was shocking to everybody in this Chamber that the Chancellor made not a single mention of the shared prosperity fund.

Month after month after month, we are told by UK Ministers that they will honour their promise to Wales that we would not be a penny worse off as a result of leaving the European Union because they have a shared prosperity fund. Month after month, we are told that it's only round the corner that they will have a consultation on that fund, and we will be able to see the colour of their money. Now we know that we're not going to hear anything until the next calendar year, and the Chancellor failed to mention it even once. The amount of money we expect to get through the shared prosperity fund would be in excess of the £600 million that Nick Ramsay mentioned as coming through the CSR. Huw Irranca-Davies is absolutely right to point to the fact that without that certainty, our partners here in Wales are unable to plan ahead in the way we would want them to do.

I have had an opportunity to see the UK in a Changing Europe report. A 'no deal' means a prolonged period of uncertainty; half of UK goods exports will face disruption. It will reduce the safety of UK citizens; the UK's international reputation may suffer. Is there any wonder why time after time after time on the floor of this Chamber we have warned about the catastrophic effect that leaving the European Union without a deal will have here in Wales?