I'm grateful to the Minister for her introduction to this debate. This is the most political budget that I've considered in my time here. We have the combination of not only the pandemic, but the continuing impact of austerity, we have the impact of Brexit, we know that we have the impact of climate change, and I believe we also have a crisis of inequality that means that the needs of this budget need to meet not only Wales as a country, as a whole, as a nation, but also the needs of the people who have suffered the impact of austerity over the last decade as well, and those are very real challenges.

I welcome the fact that the Welsh Government has, over many years, and does in this budget as well, protected key local services. We've not privatised the national health service, and we've invested in people and not given contracts to friends and to donors. Those are the values of a Government that is in touch with the values of Wales and the values that we will need to guide us as we debate the way in which we emerge from the shadow of this pandemic, the values that mean that children in Wales are not receiving £5 worth of food for a week or for three days or for two weeks—an appalling situation that disfigures the Government across the border in England.

This Government does, nevertheless, face some real challenges. The first challenge it faces is that in terms of its finance policy. It's the easiest thing in the world to create the dividing lines, as I've just done, between ourselves and the Government in Westminster. But is it enough if we are to rebuild Wales in a different way? Do the finances available to us provide us with the tools that we require in order to do that? For me, I don't believe so. I believe the Tory taxation rates have sought to loosen the burden on the broadest shoulders but have not provided the tools that we require in order to address the crisis of inequality. For me, we need to provide more funding for public services, and we need to provide more funding and more investment in the weakest and the powerless in our society, and that means taking the hard decisions over taxation. This budget does not do that, and I believe that we need to have that hard and difficult and tough conversation, and not just simply standing up and providing shopping lists of pet subjects for funding.

In investing in the public sector and public services, nobody can support the current structure of the public sector in Wales. In the last 12 months we've seen the power of the public sector to be a force for good across Wales. We would not have been able to respond to the pandemic in the way that we have had we had a privatised public sector. But we know that that public sector is not fit for purpose, and we cannot put money into that public sector without also reforming that public sector, and that is something that the Government must and needs to face up to.

In investing in those communities that have been hit hardest by austerity, the post-COVID response package needs to form the basis of an economic recovery plan for the Welsh economy, but also an economic redevelopment plan. I will talk about Blaenau Gwent because it's my own constituency, but the whole of the Heads of the Valleys region has been badly hit by the economic consequences of the poor choices of austerity over many years. We want to see a revival, a renaissance of our towns, our Valleys towns, but also, in other parts of Wales, our market towns, and that will not happen unless we invest in our people and our places and our communities. We need to be able to ensure—and this is one area where I do agree with Mike Hedges—. The impact of the pandemic has taught us a different way of working and a different way of living, and we need to be able to put that into practice. What does that mean for a town like Tredegar or a town like Ebbw Vale or a town like Aberdare or Maesteg? What does it mean for us in the future?

And finally, Presiding Officer, climate. It is the greatest long-term crisis facing us. A crisis of ecology, a crisis of our environment and a crisis of our planet. One of the things that we've seen time and time again is a series of reports telling us that this crisis is accelerating. We are not responding to that crisis with sufficient urgency and sufficient emphasis on the actions that we must take. And that is not simply a matter for Government; it's a matter for all of us. It's a matter for us as a community, as a society, as a country. If we are to allow future generations to inherit a planet that is either liveable or saveable, then we have to take actions today. The actions that are described are simply not adequate enough to do that, and I think the Government recognises that. Therefore, we as a community, as a society, need to ask ourselves the really tough questions about not only this budget but what it seeks to achieve for our own generations, but also for future generations. Thank you very much.