I'm grateful to the Minister for the contribution in opening this debate. There are three issues that I'd like to cover in this contribution this afternoon: the structure of our finances, and then income and expenditure.

Let's look at the structure first. The Finance Committee is very clear in its report that the way in which the budget is structured and the context within which the budget is taking place this year is unsatisfactory, and I agree with that in that report. This situation is not necessarily the fault of either the Minister or the Government; we recognise that. But 20 years after devolution, all of our Governments across the United Kingdom rely too much on the whims and wants of the UK Treasury. There are many failures that the First Minister has outlined on a number of occasions in recent weeks where the United Kingdom state fails to deal with the realities of devolution. The mess that is public finances across the UK has to be one of the most significant, and I do hope that when we come back to debate these matters in the next Senedd—that is a matter that we will need to be able to address with the UK Government.

The second structural issue was addressed by Siân Gwenllian in her contributions as interim Chair of the Finance Committee, and that is that too much of this budget is unallocated, and that makes scrutiny and proper democratic accountability for expenditure very difficult, and far more difficult than it should be. On this occasion, I think the Government should be forgiven for this situation, because we are in a very fluid situation, we are facing very difficult decisions, and none of us knows what the situation is going to be in six months' time. But what I will say to the Government is that this acceptance of that shouldn't be seen as a precedent, and that in future years, I think it's absolutely right and proper that the Government goes back to a situation where we've got open transparency in making these budgetary proposals.

The second issue is that of income. I laud the Government's ambitions and I share their ambitions. I want to see the Government invest more in our people, I want to see the Government invest in our environment and our places, but I'm concerned that we don't have the firepower to do so. If I'm absolutely frank with you, Minister, it's not good enough to spend day after day attacking the Tories for austerity and then actually delivering it in reality in Wales. And that's the reality we face in real terms. We have got to invest either in our tax base or we have to invest in broadening and deepening that tax base. I'm not sure that this budget does much of any of those three, if I'm absolutely frank with you.

We cannot deliver on the ambitions that we have with the funding that is available to us, and we need to be able to address that. And that's particularly true at the moment, not simply because of the pandemic and the impact of the pandemic—although that is a big driver—but it's also true because of the betrayals that we've seen from the UK Government on agricultural funding and on structural funds. They have told direct lies to the people of Wales, and they have not delivered on the promises that were made. That's a real problem for us, because we've got to pick up the pieces and I'm not convinced that we have the firepower to do it.

My final point is this, Minister, on expenditure. I hope when the Government comes back for later debates on these matters they will address these fundamental issues. I agreed with what Mike Hedges said on free school meals. I think the Plaid Cymru amendment this afternoon is broadly right, and I think that the Government needs to address this. The Government's on the wrong side of this argument. I hope that the Government will recognise that and I hope that the Government will, in returning to the Chamber, recognise that its position is neither sustainable nor credible on that particular matter.

But also, we need to invest in places that are suffering disproportionately at the moment, and that is places like Blaenau Gwent, it's places like the Heads of the Valleys, it's some of our poorest people, wherever they may live, and the budget needs to recognise that. It needs to recognise that we can only achieve our ambitions and our visions, which we all agree with and we all share, if we invest in those places that are furthest away from that vision and that ambition. I represent one of those places, and it simply is not credible to say to those people, and the people that we all seek to represent, 'Do you know what? We can deliver on all these different things, and it's not going to cost you an extra penny.' That is not credible. It's never been credible. It hasn't been credible in the past, it's not credible today, and it won't be credible in the future, and I think we've got to do that.

My final point is: let's not go into another budget round saying that the structure of the public sector in Wales can deliver on any of these things. It can't. it simply cannot. We don't have the structures in place to do it, so we need a reforming budget as well as a budget that invests in people, places, the environment and the future. I hope that, as we go through this debate over the coming weeks, we will be able to address all of those different things. Thank you very much.