Questions now from the party spokespeople. Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Thank you, Llywydd. In discussing the draft budget yesterday, quite some attention was given to the very important issue of decarbonisation. So, what are the Government's priorities in terms of encouraging decarbonisation in transport in Wales?

Our Government's priorities in terms of decarbonisation are very much taken on the advice that we take from the UK Committee on Climate Change, which does, as you say, recognise transport alongside housing as those two areas where Welsh Government does need to be making, or putting our efforts. So, you'll see that we've invested £430 million already—well, by the end of next year—in the south Wales metro. And that really does reaffirm a major commitment to carbon reduction. 

Trains running on lines north out of Cardiff will be 100 per cent electric traction, with the electricity sourced from 100 per cent renewable sources. And the budget, obviously, continues to invest in the electric car infrastructure, although I do appreciate that we are at an early stage on that piece of work.

And that's where I want to go next, because yes, you are at a very early stage—a very early stage indeed—in terms of the investment that should be happening on a wide scale in terms of a charging network for electric vehicles. I look forward to participating in a debate here in the Chamber this afternoon on how to encourage the use of electric vehicles through the planning system. But in our budget agreement two years ago, your Government agreed to a Plaid Cymru request to invest £2 million in a national charging network. Was that spent, and, if it was, on what?

I'll have to give you the reassurances that I will discuss with my colleague the Minister for Economy and Transport that that was spent, but, as we've discussed previously, I've been very clear with my colleagues that they need to be updating Plaid Cymru on the progress towards those items that we did jointly agree in our budget, and I will endeavour to provide that update to you.

I have to say that it's been a cause of great frustration for me, having succeeded in reaching that agreement, to see these delays in spending the money. In a written response I received in November on Government expenditure over the past five years on charging infrastructure, we see that as little over £0.5 million is provided in grants to the councils of Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Swansea back in May last year, and a little more allocated in September. Two million pounds wasn't much as it was, but it was very important to have that funding in place in order to give this sector a boost.

But do you accept that spending only half of that throughout the whole of Wales on public charging points up until the end of last year is a proof of the Government's failure in turning spending pledges into reality? And if that's your attitude towards the charging network, doesn't that pose some very grave questions about the pledges made more broadly now in terms of tackling climate change and the willingness and ability of Government to turn those plans into reality?

I would disagree with that, because I think that when we do make pledges, then we keep them. So, this budget that I have published now delivers on our major pledges that we made at the last election. So, it delivers on the 100,000 apprenticeships for all ages across the term of this Assembly; it delivers on doubling the amount that people can keep before paying for social care; it delivers on providing small businesses with support for their rates; and it delivers on all of those other items that were our key pledges, and so we can go to people next time, saying that we did deliver on those pledges.

Insofar as electric vehicles are concerned, it is a very important issue and I'm pleased that you've secured the debate for it this afternoon. I think that there's a lot that the market needs to do yet. So, Mike Hedges, in the debate yesterday, was just reminding us that different kinds of vehicles will require different kinds of chargers. Now that, clearly, seems to me to be problematic.

Just this week, the European Union has put into law a requirement that phone chargers for whichever kind of device, be they Android or Apple, will now need to be the same. That's good news for consumers. I don't know why we can't explore what we can do that could be good news for consumers to make this easier. 

The Conservative spokesperson, Nick Ramsay. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, yesterday saw a debate brought to this Chamber on the draft budget. Of course, key to placing the Welsh economy on a better footing is to better support Wales's small businesses. Can you tell us how this draft budget proposes to help the 95 per cent of Welsh businesses that are small and micro, employing, in many cases, under nine people each?

Certainly. The budget sets out our commitments to supporting businesses, particularly small and medium enterprises, through our support for business rates. You'll know that, in Wales, around half of businesses pay no rates at all thanks to Welsh Government support, and that compares very favourably with across the border in England, where only around a third receive that level of support. 

Minister, you are right to say that there are a number of businesses that pay no rates at all. I visited Chepstow high street recently and on one street there, there are a number of businesses that aren't paying rates. Unfortunately, in the same street, there are then businesses that are of a very similar size but may fall into a different zone that find themselves clobbered with really high rates of business rates relative to the size of the business. So, would you agree with me that there's an argument here for reviewing this whole system to make sure that it's fairer?

If you look at land transaction tax for non-commercial properties over £1 million and business rates, it seems to be that these are outstripping our counterparts in Scotland and England at the moment—an issue I raised yesterday. So, could you undertake to look again at business rates? They are a tax, effectively, and they are affecting many of our particularly small businesses, which are the backbone of the economy.

We are currently looking at the future of local taxes, so looking at business rates and council tax, in partnership, to explore whether there is some local government finance reform that needs to be undertaken. We've undertaken a suite of research to help us with that, including what would the implications be if we were to move to a land value tax, for example; looking at the implications of potential revaluation, who would be the winners and losers; and then also some work that looks at the implications of universal credit, specifically on the council tax side of local taxation. So we're certainly bringing together a suite of research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, from Bangor University and elsewhere, which we'll be publishing in a series of documents over the course of the coming three months, I imagine, and they'll be available for all colleagues to explore in terms of exploring a potential better way to do local taxation. What I will say is that we don't want to introduce reform for the sake of reform, but I think that there certainly is a case to introduce some further fairness and some further coherence into the system. 

I would say 'A good Conservative position there: reform not for the sake of reform', but I take it in the spirit that you meant it. I'm pleased that that work is going on. As I said, I only recently visited Chepstow high street, where it seemed to me grossly unfair that, on one street, because of the way business rates work and because of the zoning system, you can have businesses opposite or virtually adjacent to each other on a street that are either paying no rates at all or paying quite inflated rates. So I hope that will be looked at.

Minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth, in his opening questions, made some very good points about the green economy, particularly in relation to electric charging. You were proud to say yesterday that your budget was a green budget, and I think all of us want to see an effective green budget and green budgeting within Wales. As I've said, to all intents and purposes, business rates are a tax and we do need to make sure they're competitive. Do you think that, at the time of moving towards setting greener budgets, this is a good time to look again at the way that businesses in Wales are taxed and maybe to look more at moving towards a green taxation-type economy, where we shift the burden from businesses that might be small but might actually be quite environmentally friendly to businesses that might not be in order to encourage them to do better? In terms of your budget yesterday, you called it a green budget, but I haven't seen much evidence yet that you're looking at changing the way that structures such as business rates and other taxes work to make sure that we do, on the ground, help businesses that are doing their bit for the environment.

Well, we're not proposing major changes to either council tax or non-domestic rates in the next financial year. What we are proposing is to gather that research and that evidence base in order to inform our thinking for the years forward. But, I'm particularly interested in a discussion that I had with the cross-party group on small shops, which was chaired by your colleague Janet Finch-Saunders recently. We talked about the value of small and medium-sized enterprises, and in this case we were particularly talking about the high street. The discussion turned to what, if we were to look afresh at business rates, we would we be requiring. Is there a better way to tie business rates to the kind of issues that we have in our economic contract? How would we, perhaps, factor in fair work or decarbonisation and so on? We don't want to create a hugely laborious, difficult and complicated system, but I think that it is only fair to think about things differently, including in terms of the green agenda as well.

Brexit Party spokesperson, Mark Reckless.

Diolch, Llywydd. Stepping back from the specifics of this budget, and the particular difficulties that we've had with the timing of the UK budget relative to our own, what view does the finance Minister take about how our budget process works in the round? How well, or otherwise, does it compare to what we might see as best practice from other legislatures, whether within the UK or internationally? Does she see a case, as we have more and more tax devolution and this institution matures, for moving to a legislative budget process?

I know this is something that the Finance Committee is currently gathering evidence on, and I look forward to speaking in detail at the committee's scrutiny session on that. I think some early thoughts are, really, about the timings and the way in which this year has been particularly chaotic, it's fair to say, not least to mention the negative reductions that we just received a week before laying our second supplementary budget for this year. So, it's been incredible in many ways.

We've explored previously looking to move to a system that is more akin to that in Scotland, which would normally be about publishing the budget after the UK Government has published its budget. We explored that with the Finance Committee, and I think the Finance Committee came to the view, which we were happy to agree with, that it was better to publish it earlier in the year to give the level of certainty that we can to our partners.

One of the things that I think I'm really pleased we're able to do this year—the Minister for local government and I met with the finance sub-group of the Welsh Local Government Association just this morning—is to be able to provide greater certainty on some of those big grants that local authorities rely on. I think that's been a good lesson for us, in terms of the engagement that we've had there.

But, certainly, I think these are early days for the discussion with the committee, and I look forward to exploring it. I would say as well, in terms of the process, we're looking to embed the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 further into our budget-making process throughout the year. So, you'll be very familiar now with the five-year rolling budget improvement plan, which we've published for the first time this year to improve the way that we undertake the budget-setting process.

The way the process works, with a draft budget and then a period of at least several weeks of apparent consultation and consideration of what's in that draft budget before we then bring forward a final budget for consideration, I wonder whether that process gives the impression to people outwith the Welsh Government in particular who may receive, or benefit from, funding that there is a greater opportunity to change that budget in a more significant way than experience suggests may actually be the case.

I wonder how much the finance Minister expects to make changes to the draft budget when she comes with the final budget. For instance, one area where I think, on a cross-party basis, concerns have been raised is about the real-terms reduction in bus subsidy. Is that something where it's realistic for us to expect the Minister to have heard those representations and to make a change in response to them, or is it that the process allows people to think and perhaps be led on to expect a greater possibility of change, impact and influence than the budget process actually allows for more often than not? 

I think there is a case for earlier engagement earlier in the year, and I found the debate that the Finance Committee tabled after your listening session to be very instructive and very helpful. So, I think that's something that I would be keen to introduce on an annual basis, having the debate early on in the year. I think there's some discussion to be had with Finance Committee as to whether that should be Finance Committee-led after the committee's done its listening work, or whether it's something that the Finance Committee would prefer the Government to table, but I'm very happy to explore those issues with the committee. So, I think that early engagement is very important.

In terms of what might happen at the final budget, I'm still, really, considering what the options might be. One of the difficulties really is that just shortly after that, there'll be the UK budget, which could potentially change things again. An educated guess would be that there wouldn't be much change in terms of revenue but there might be additional capital, so I think that this is a time really for us and others to be considering what our priorities might be, should additional funding be forthcoming. But if I'm unable to make further allocations in the final budget, then I would certainly want to signal to colleagues where the priorities would be, should additional funding come forward.