Diolch, Llywydd, and thank you to all colleagues for their contributions in the debate this afternoon. The first supplementary budget is an important part of the budget process, allowing the changes that have been made to be reported to and scrutinised by the Senedd.

As I outlined in my opening statement and as colleagues have all, I think, recognised, this is nothing like the more kind of routine supplementary budgets that are relatively small scale that we've seen in recent times. To support the Welsh economy and ensure our public services are equipped to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, we have acted swiftly in this first supplementary budget to allocate this funding, together with repurposing our existing budgets and realigning European funding, and I will say to colleagues that what you'll see in the supplementary budget in terms of reallocation of funding is very much that funding that was identified within Ministers' budgets and returned to the COVID reserve. Alongside that, though, you'll see Ministers taking decisions within their remaining budgets that are very much also in response to the COVID crisis, both in terms of the immediate, acute response, but then also with that eye on the recovery.

So, looking ahead to when we get through the pandemic, we know that we're facing a period of recession, which does pose some severe risks to our public finances. As you know, I'm working with the Counsel General, who's been charged with overseeing the co-ordination of the work in Welsh Government to respond to the COVID-19 crisis, and we're drawing expertise and experience from outside of Government to ensure that the preparations for the future recovery are creative and comprehensive.

The choices and the opportunities that we will have moving out of lockdown and through to the recovery will very much depend on the financial choices that we're making now and our capacity and our ability to get more money to the front line, which is currently constrained by the rigid financial rules imposed on the Welsh Government by the UK Government, and that really does lead me to some of the contributions that have been made in the debate.

With regard to the Barnett formula, clearly it's not based on need, although there is a needs element of it, which does give the additional 5 per cent to the Welsh Government. But, in my first meeting with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury right at the start of the crisis, I did impress upon him the fact that there should be a needs-based element of funding over and above, in respect of the particular challenges that we do face in Wales. I gave the example of our older population, for example, and our larger reliance on the manufacturing sector. On top of that, of course, we've got a larger tourism sector here in Wales and a greater proportion of small businesses. So, all of these various factors do have an implication there. 

Before the crisis began, you will have heard me talking about the work that we're doing to try and secure that and progress that review of the statement of funding policy, and that relates to some of the inter-governmental relations that have been mentioned in the debate today. I think it's really important that we do have that independent appeals or arbitrator where those disagreements between the devolved nations and the UK Government can be discussed, and examples that I would have liked to have taken to an independent arbitrator, for example, would have been the impact of the UK Government's decision on teachers' pensions, which had a knock-on effect on the Welsh Government's budget, and, of course, the additional funding for Northern Ireland, which we don't begrudge at all, but we would have wanted to see our fair share of that funding as well. So, those are some examples of things that I think an independent appeals process would helpfully resolve.

The committee has helpfully recommended that there should be better information sharing from the UK Government, and I absolutely agree with that and endorse that recommendation because it is very difficult to plan a budget, especially in a year like this, when you don't have a full sight as to what consequential funding might be coming your way during that year, so there's a risk, isn't there, that you potentially lose opportunities, because you're not convinced that you'll be able to afford them, or you go ahead at risk and do some things that you believe are vitally important, but in doing so, you're not confident that you will have the funding for that.

Mention was made of the fact that we've only included the £1.8 billion from the UK Government, which was in the main estimates, and the reason for that is again about confidence, because you would have remembered that at the very end of the last financial year, we had that situation where the UK Government applied a negative Barnett consequential, which meant that there was a reduction of £100 million of capital and a £100 million of financial transactions capital. So, as I think Julie James was referring to her in questions this afternoon, we have to be absolutely confident that that funding is coming to us, and that's why you only see what was reflected in the main estimates in the supplementary budget.

And then just to comment very briefly, Llywydd, on the importance of assurance in decision making, because we are working in a situation where decisions have to be made at pace, but at the same time we have to maintain those essential safeguards of looking after public money properly. The current crisis does mean that we need to increase selectively our appetite for risk, and whilst we aim to be as flexible and swift and responsive as we can, we must still be mindful of our responsibilities to protect the public purse. The funding allocations from the COVID reserve have all been considered in the context of risk appetite, key risks and mitigation actions, and they're approved when I'm assured that the risks have been reasonably considered and, where necessary, some appropriate arrangements have been put in place to manage those risks.

I did want to very briefly refer to tax. Welsh rates of income tax were referred to during the debate and, of course, the 2020-21 revenues from the Welsh rates of income tax and the associated block grant adjustments are fixed for budgetary purposes, and that does mean that any reconciliation payment that might be required once the outturn information is available in the summer of 2022 will need to be applied to the Welsh Government budget for 2023-24. So, this will be an ongoing area of interest, I think, for finance Ministers for the years to come. And in terms of those fully devolved taxes, the land transaction tax and landfill disposals tax, they will also be affected by the COVID crisis. Reductions, though, in 2021 are expected to be mitigated largely by reductions to the block grant adjustments, which will be revised using the OBR's forecast, published alongside the UK Government's autumn budget this year, because the way the system works does mean, of course, that we are protected to some extent by those UK-wide shocks to the economy.

So, just to conclude, Llywydd, the supplementary budget does put in place a firm foundation to support the range of interventions to respond to and mitigate the impact of the crisis, and lots of those contributions this afternoon very much had the eye on the recovery, so this obviously is by no means the end of the story and we'll need to continue to closely monitor and assess how the situation in Wales develops. And as I said, I'll be bringing a second supplementary budget before the Senedd later in the year, and I very much look forward to that debate on 15 July where we'll able to explore priorities and ideas for the recovery and for moving forward. And so, to close, Llywydd, I move the motion.