Firstly, can I say how nice it is to see so many people taking part in this debate for such a major debate? Far too often, four of us used to debate the budget and the Minister used to reply. We're dealing with substantial sums of money, and I think it really is worthwhile for the Assembly to give it a full debate. I want to address this debate in two parts; firstly, on the overall budget, and then on the budget covered by the areas scrutinised by the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee. I want to address how money is spent, because the increases are welcome, but how it is spent within departments is at least as important—I would argue more so.

The role of Government can be broken down into three areas: health and well-being, security, and the economy. Starting with health and well-being: health is no more all about hospitals than car maintenance is about cars being repaired in garages. People's health and well-being begins with having a warm, waterproof and safe home with enough nourishment. Stopping people being homeless and providing supported accommodation will keep many people out of hospital. I want to highlight two areas that are important: the provision of social housing so that people have a home; the provision for supporting people who aren't able to look after themselves to have a home in which they are supported. These are fundamentally important for the lives of people.

Within health provision—and my concern about the size of the geographical areas of the health boards is well known—the funding of primary care needs to increase. What is happening is that people cannot get an appointment in primary care and then go to A&E. Often, the default position in A&E is to keep patients in for 24 hours' observation when they come in with non-specific symptoms. On hospital discharge, it's ensuring that the hospital pharmacy provides the medication, so that patients can go home rather than waiting until the following day when the pharmacy is able to provide their medication. Why do so many patients who go into hospital able to look after themselves get discharged either to nursing homes or to a substantial care package? Whilst understandable for stroke patients, I find it less understandable for people who go in, sometimes for orthopaedic operations they've asked to have, and they end up then being no longer able to look after themselves.

On the economy, we can either try and make a better offer than anyone else to attract branch factories, or we can produce a highly skilled workforce, creating our own industrial sectors and having employers coming because of our skills mix not our financial inducement. Education is key to producing a workforce that can transform the Welsh economy. Money spent on education in schools, colleges and universities is an investment in the Welsh economy and economic growth, and I believe that really is important.

Having declared a climate change emergency, I don't think I'm the only person who felt it was disappointing to see that this area had the smallest real terms revenue budget increase. On the budget, can I ask that future budgets are accompanied by a comprehensive assessment of its overall carbon impact? The current spend on decarbonisation and a long-term funding plan is needed. Whilst I very much welcome the development of an environmental growth plan and the funding allocated to that plan, the plan is not intended to be published until later this year. How are we going to ensure that money is effectively spent?

The climate change committee is currently undertaking an investigation into fuel poverty. The Welsh Government target of eradicating fuel poverty by 2018 was derailed by the economic crash and the austerity of the Conservative Governments that followed, so I'm not going to blame them for that. But what I am going to say is, in my constituency, I have older properties in both the private-rented and the owner-occupied sector that lack basics such as central heating and double glazing. Surely dealing with these should be a first step to dealing with fuel poverty? Also, the fuel poverty definition excludes those who keep their property cooler than optimum or go to bed early—and I've talked to people who go to bed at six o'clock at night because they can't afford to keep their house warm—in order to save on heating costs. These people are not in fuel poverty against the definition. I think they're in fuel poverty against what most of us would describe as fuel poverty, because they cannot keep their houses warm.

Money is needed to protect the environment, and NRW needs to be adequately funded. I'm one of those people who is not convinced that merging three distinct bodies was a good idea, but we have an organisation that is as it is now, and it does need to be adequately funded. There's a huge amount of work that needs to be done in protecting the environment. For some of us, that really is important. Can I just talk about something that doesn't often get much mentioning, apart from by my friend Joyce Watson, and that's marine conservation areas? That does need funding. We need more marine conservation zones, and they need to be designated, but not just designated, but having adequate staffing. It's pointless saying, 'We'll have a marine conservation zone there', if there's not the money and the staff to support it. And finally, money needs to be spent on stopping species becoming extinct. That's what climate change is doing to this country, and I think it really is important we do all we can to stop that happening.