They haven't taken that opportunity in this budget. To respond to the question that was asked earlier, it's not just where the money comes from, but what message the Government is conveying through this budget as a whole. It's not just looking at environmental sustainability that the commissioner is doing. It's the commissioner's role to ask more general questions as to whether decisions we're taking now are going to have a positive impact on future generations. And how we spend public funds is at the heart of that: are we making the right choices now?

This is the fourth budget since the passing of the well-being of future generations Act, but we're still not seeing real culture change in Government. We must do more to ensure that that Act is not simply a piece of paper but the basis of future budgets. That's why we in Plaid Cymru have committed to a well-being budgetary process, similar to New Zealand's, and officials in the commissioner’s office have said that they also wish to see a similar process adopted here.

Health and care is another area where so much more could be achieved by securing a real shift to a preventative approach, thinking of the future now. It's a very small percentage of the budget that is allocated for that real preventative work. Certainly, there is no sign of transformation here, and I'm not just talking here about expenditure on the NHS, but the failure to bring together all of those elements that have an impact on people’s health.

We know full well about the relationship between ill-health and poverty. There's nothing new in this budget when it comes to tackling poverty. Time and time again, the Government is trying to do the same things rather than introducing the ambitious change required to bring those who are most in need out of poverty. We see concerns about the shortage of funding in areas such as housing, homelessness and the Supporting People programme—the Bevan Foundation say that there's little evidence of new methods being adopted to prevent poverty. For example, it's critical of the same old practice of emphasising the numbers of jobs created, whatever the levels of salary or the terms and conditions of those jobs.

Local government plays a key role in delivering preventative elements of public services. Again, while we see an increase of £184 million, or 1.8 per cent in real terms, in the support for councils in Wales, the Welsh Local Government Association has estimated that councils need an increase of £250 million just to stand still. Local government can't play its full part in the preventative agenda that we want to see develop without receiving the support to do that.

I'll turn to the Welsh language briefly. We can all agree on the value of having a target of a million Welsh speakers, but how can you square that with the real-terms reduction of £400,000 in expenditure on the Welsh language directly? In addition to that, there's a cut of £1.65 million for the Welsh language within schools. I had an opportunity in the Chamber last week to push the Minister for the Welsh language not to cut the budget for Welsh for adults. Now, I know that her view is that perhaps we need to look at spending on giving people opportunities to use the Welsh language. Now, whilst that is important, in places such as my constituency, there are plenty of opportunities to speak Welsh—it's giving people an opportunity to have those skills to participate in those opportunities that's important in those constituencies and those areas. And, as a whole, it appears that the Government's decisions on expenditure on the Welsh language are entirely contrary to what is needed in order to ensure the viability of the Welsh language in future years.

I will conclude, Llywydd: the budget is part of the furniture of this Senedd, part of our governance, but it's more than that. It is crucial in terms of setting direction. It tells us what kind of Government we have. This is where rhetoric is supposed to become reality, the proof of the willingness of Government to implement their pledges. Yes, there are challenges. There are challenges in terms of Brexit and the costs of that, there are challenges in that we still don't have that full budget available to us, there is uncertainty as to how long the increases coming from the UK Government will continue, but this is not an innovative budget, it is the contrary of salami-slicing—where we see every department getting a slight uplift. That, I fear, is the most unimaginative form of budgeting that the Welsh Government could have adopted.