I thank Nick Ramsay for his contribution. Very interesting, the rewriting of history at the very start, confirming, in his view, that it was profligate spending rather than a global economic downturn that affected the economy in the UK, but we'll put that to one side and consider the other questions that were asked.

The first was what kind of engagement we've had with the UK Government in terms of the spending round. So, we had a finance Ministers' quadrilateral at the end of August, where we sought some information. Nothing was forthcoming there, I have to say, but I did push the point, which Nick Ramsay also mentioned, which was that the 'leave' campaign and members of the Conservative Government have been very clear that Wales would not be a penny worse off as a result of Brexit. I made the point that we need to ensure that that promise is honoured, but I was deeply concerned that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury actually said, 'Well, that was a promise of the "leave" campaign; it's not a Conservative Government's promise.' But then the Prime Minister was leading the 'leave' campaign, so I think that we should be holding him to account for that promise. On the day of the spending round, I did have a brief conversation, again, with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, which is traditional, so that he can inform us of the allocations in advance of any formal statement.

Nick Ramsay accuses myself and the First Minister of being a little downbeat in terms of our approach to this, but I think we have every right to be because, as we've recognised on a like-for-like basis, our budget in 2021 will still be 2 per cent lower, or £3 million lower in real terms, than a decade before. And had the Welsh Government's budget grown in line with the economy since 2010-11, it would be £4 billion pounds higher in 2021. Imagine what we could do with that. And had the Welsh Government's budget grown in line with the long-run trend in public expenditure, it would be £6 billion higher in 2020-21. So, I think that is really, really stark in terms of what we could be achieving and the additional money we could be putting into our myriad challenges and our priorities that we have here in Wales.

We had been promised a comprehensive spending review at the previous finance Ministers' quadrilateral, but unfortunately, that didn't materialise. That's disappointing for several reasons, but one of which is that we really are sympathetic to the calls from our public sector partners who want to be able to budget over a longer period to support their forward financial planning. But this fast-tracked one-year spending round doesn't allow us to give our colleagues in local government and other services the opportunity to do that. And, as I've said, we've got no confidence that this particular spending round will be sustainable, that the announcements that have been made will necessarily materialise, because the First Minister's quite right that any funding will have to be voted through the finance Act in the UK Parliament and, as we can see, the UK Parliament is currently not sitting.

In terms of Nick Ramsay welcoming the fact that we intend to bring the budget forward, as I say, I've already written to the Finance Committee and the Business Committee. We had a conversation about it in the Business Committee this morning and I know the Finance Committee intend to address this issue in their meeting on Thursday. So, I hope that we'll be able to make announcements as soon as possible. But the work on the budget has been going on, really, since—last March I think I first started having conversations with colleagues. We agree our overall strategy in Cabinet in early spring every year, and then a series of bilaterals occur between myself and other Ministers—and we're going through another round of those now—identifying priorities, opportunities and pressures and so on, and those will inform the budget, as will the series of visits that I undertook over the summer and the series of other meetings that I have planned with interested parties in the coming weeks.