There are plenty of yardsticks in the way that we in Plaid Cymru assess the budget of a Labour Government. Fundamentally, the question that we ask is: is the Government using its fiscal resources in the most efficient and effective way possible to transform Wales? Can the Government tell us that there is funding here that is innovative and that drives not only improvement in the way that public services are run in Wales, but also changes culture in a fundamental way in terms of how we think about delivering for the people of Wales? And the answer, I fear, quite clearly, is 'no'.

What we have is a Labour Government that is unwilling to be radical and the background of a Conservative Government that has proved to be totally uncaring as to the impacts of grave cuts to public expenditure for ideological reasons over a decade and more. We can't afford to be tinkering at the edges of the budget and expect transformation. I fear that this draft budget is another missed opportunity to tackle some of the main threats that we face. Yes, there is more money in the pot this time. There is some breathing space after 10 years of harsh cuts—I fear it will be temporary respite, however—but there is no change of direction here. There is no signal that the Government has realised, at last, that we need to tread a new path, otherwise we’ll face the same problems time and time again and nothing will change.

I would like to thank my former fellow members on the Finance Committee—I've left the committee now—for the detailed scrutiny of the budget in far too brief a period. And at this point, I will again echo what I and others have said in the past: yes, the circumstances have been unusual and extraordinary in that we had a UK general election at the very period when budgetary decisions would usually be made at a UK level, and that's what led to the fact that we are dealing with a Welsh budget here without knowing exactly how much is in the pot for the next financial year. But the fact that that has happened—that we are having to follow a scrutiny process without knowing exactly what we are scrutinising—is proof to me that being so closely attached to the Westminster system doesn't work for Wales.

There are a number of individual elements of this budget that I'd like to refer to, but there's also a theme. There is a fundamental weakness running through this budget, and that is the failure to start to think in a truly preventative manner in order to engender the kind of transformation that we need. If you look at the budget for tackling climate change—the most preventative funding possible, perhaps—yes, there are not insubstantial elements of this budget that are targeted at tackling climate change, but if we put that in the context that we are in, the fact that we as a Senedd and you as a Welsh Government declared a climate emergency recently, then the response in this budget to that, I believe, is inadequate.

The commissioner for future generations estimated that there is as much as a 28 per cent increase in the funding allocated for decarbonisation, which sounds great, but she also reminds us that we're starting from a very low level. And, crucially, what the commissioner has told us, which is damning, is that it appears that there’s very little evidence of strategic action from the Government—[Interruption.]