I've heard Conservative Members here over the years making this point and Conservative councillors telling us not to touch it— [Interruption.] The fundamental point—[Interruption.] The fundamental point I make, though, is a different one—that is, the destructive way in which the debate was framed. It's north against south, east against west, rural against urban. Blaenau Gwent was eighteenth, I think, in the current range of funding. It's never been first, it's never been top, but I've never, ever made an allegation of the sort that's been made from the Conservative benches this afternoon, and I would invite Conservative Members to reconsider their tone and approach to that debate.

Can I also say that I do regret that the Government is not finding the funding to support the continuation of bus subsidy at current levels? We heard at Finance Committee that there is going to be a cut in the subsidy available to provide for bus services. I will say very gently to the finance Minister that it's all very well to deliver electric buses for some of us, but if we haven't got any buses at all, quite frankly that's not very much of a commitment. So we do need to see—. And if the Government is able to look at the budget during this process, and to ensure that there is an increase in the subsidy available for bus services, that would be very much appreciated.

But the fundamental point I want to make, rather than simply looking at budget lines, is this: we have seen here not quite Theresa May's words become reality—that austerity's over—but we've seen a loosening of purse strings and we've seen additional funding for public services. I regret that we're not also seeing the radical reform of public services to ensure that that money is well spent. The debate we had on education funding wasn't simply about the amount of funding, but the complexity of the structure of that funding leaving this place and arriving in the classroom. There's no purpose at all in increasing the quantum of funding available if the system remains so complex as to ensure that teachers and others aren't able to access that amount of funding. So we don't simply need to increase the funding available in the traditional, old-fashioned way, but we also need to reform the way in which we operate our public services, and this is more important today than it has been in the past, because when you read the budget documentation, whether it's the chief economist's report, the Office for Budget Responsibility analysis, or even the Welsh Government's own tax policy report, the word that comes at you time and time again is 'uncertainty'—uncertainty about tax revenues, uncertainty about the tax base, uncertainty about future funding levels, uncertainty about future economic performance, uncertainty about our ability to both deliver the funding required and raise the funding that we need.

In a position where you have future uncertainty, where you have resources available, it is my view that the Government should have been far, far more radical in what it is producing today. It was the Conservative approach to simply increase all budgets by a fair degree, which we all welcome in the short term, but the radical budget would have been a budget for reform, a budget that would have ensured that our public services don't just receive the funding they require to survive next year and this year, but are in a fit state to survive in the long term. I agree very much with the point that Huw Irranca made earlier in this debate about the squeeze being faced by local government, but if we continue to fund the health service at current levels, as we all commit on all sides of this Chamber to do, then all other services will suffer as a consequence of that single decision.