We'll now turn to spokespeople's questions. The first this afternoon is Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth.

I'm sure the Minister will have read the damning article in BusinessLive on 2 February, which highlighted the fact that the Welsh Government failed to use its full borrowing powers in 2019-20 and 2020-21. Can the Minister explain why the Welsh Government underused the current borrowing powers, particularly given the problems that we are facing as a result of the pandemic? Why did the Government decide not to take the opportunity to fund capital projects that could have had a positive impact on the Welsh economy?

I don't accept that assessment at all. The 2020-21 budget was, of course, impacted by the very late in-year adjustments by the UK Government at its supplementary estimates, which meant that we were provided with additional funding at the very end of the year, which made it very difficult for us to manage that particular situation. Throughout Wales, our Wales infrastructure investment plan has delivered really ambitious capital plans. Over the administration, we've allocated £12.2 billion of investment for capital projects right across Wales and £27.8 billion since we published the Wales infrastructure investment plan in 2012. You'll have seen investment, for example, of £1.7 billion to support the delivery of our £3.7 billion twenty-first century schools and education programme. That's having an impact in communities right across Wales. A sum of £2 billion was invested during this term for housing, delivering more than 20,000 affordable homes, smashing our target, even though we've gone through this crisis. So, the Welsh Government has been making significant infrastructure investments right the way through the course of this whole Senedd.

The Minister says she doesn't agree with my assessment. It's not my assessment; it's just a statement of where we're at. We're not the only ones advocating using the facilities that we have. In that article I mentioned, economist Gerry Holtham is quoted as saying that the Welsh Government should be able to manage its budget to ensure it makes far more use of its capital borrowing powers. He went on to say that late payment of capital receipts from the UK Government couldn’t really be used as an excuse and warned that a lack of appetite for capital borrowing could undermine the Welsh Government’s case for current levels being increased. Now, the Minister knows that Plaid Cymru and myself have been calling for greater fiscal powers during the course of this pandemic, as has she. She's told us a number of times that negotiations are currently ongoing with the UK Government over allowing greater fiscal flexibility. I've encouraged her to pursue that vigorously, but does the Minister agree that Welsh Government is undermining its own case by failing to use the full extent of the borrowing powers it already has? 

I don't need Plaid Cymru's encouragement to pursue that particular line with the UK Government vigorously, because it's something that we have been doing for some time. However, we have not yet had that clarification as to our request for flexibility, which will become much clearer to us as we move towards the supplementary estimates, which the UK Government will be publishing in due course. However, we have published our budget for 2021-22, and that shows that we do plan to borrow the maximum £150 million that is available to us within our annual limit. You'll see right across our budget for next year really ambitious plans. You'll have seen that even where we can't do everything that we would want to do within the powers that we have, we've created the mutual investment model in order to help us undertake those larger projects that simply would not be possible within our existing capital settlement and within the borrowing that we currently have. So, we've found innovative ways to address the issue that is being described.  

The Minister can make as many excuses as she likes about what happened in 2019-20 and 2020-21, but the reality is that the Government has failed to use an opportunity there to invest in the future of Wales. I'll quote Gerry Holtham again:

'Failing to borrow in two successive financial years seems unambitious. Not knowing the capital allocation is not a decisive reason because they know what it will be within a 10-20% error margin and could plan for contingencies.

Does the Minister disagree with his assessment and analysis, I wonder? We know there are significant projects that need to be under way—the metro, retrofitting houses, there's a long list—and with interest rates at an all-time low, now is the time to invest. In contrast, looking to Scotland, since the Scotland Act 2012, the Scottish Government has borrowed £1.6 billion in capital and plans to raise a further £300 million in low-interest-bearing debt by the end of the current financial year. Will the Minister admit to the reality that an unwillingness to fully utilise already inadequate fiscal powers is further evidence that this Labour Government lacks ambition for Wales? 

Absolutely not. Of course, we have a very different settlement to Scotland, so I don't think those comparisons are necessarily valid. If you want to look at the ambition that the Welsh Labour Government has, you only have to look as far as the Wales infrastructure investment programme and the pipeline that we've set out. That extends well beyond the period for which we have set budgets, but we nonetheless have identified important projects that we will want to explore taking forward: the A55 third Menai crossing, for example, a £130 million plan to start in 2022; the A55/A494/A458 Flintshire corridor, a £300 million plan to start in 2022; the north-east Wales metro, £504 million, and our Welsh Government will be making a contribution towards that; £1 million in the Tech Valleys programme; the next phase of the twenty-first century schools programme, £2 billion; and the south Wales integrated transport metro, £738 million. These are all serious investments in communities, which will no doubt have an impact on job creation and providing economic stimulus. So, it's absolutely not the case to say we're not ambitious in this area; in fact, we have a Wales infrastructure investment plan that says quite the contrary.  

Conservative spokesperson, Mark Isherwood. 

The Scottish Government have announced they're providing grants for Scottish hostels and bunkhouses with a £2.3 million hostel support fund. Several operators of rural bunkhouse and outdoor alternative businesses in north Wales have written to me calling for a Welsh hostel and bunkhouse support fund from the Welsh Government, equivalent to this. As they said, 'We provide a service to our local community, bringing in visitors all year round who use local pubs and shops, but we're being catastrophically affected by the COVID rules and reduced social mixing, because we provide shared accommodation for people from different households.' How do you therefore respond to the Independent Hostels in the UK report, 'The Case for Extra Financial Support', which states:

'Without extra financial support this winter 34% of hostels are predicted not to survive until the tourist season next year' and

'An ideal support would be a "Support Grant" directed specifically at hostels and group accommodation in the tourism sector'?

In the first instance, I'd be encouraging those businesses to explore whether they have made the most of all the opportunities available to them by the Welsh Government. For example, were they to be businesses paying non-domestic rates, have they received the grants that are specific to businesses within the non-domestic rates sector? And also, the Welsh Government has introduced, of course, our £180 million sector-specific fund. That was opened on 13 January. So far, over 7,600 applications have been received and 4,401 offers have been made worth £33 million. This could be somewhere where those businesses could explore to see whether or not they are eligible. It's very much targeted at businesses in the hospitality, tourism and leisure sector. I'd be more than happy to provide Mark Isherwood with some further detail that he might share with those businesses to explore whether this might be that fund that they're hoping to secure support from.

I'd be happy to provide you with a copy of that report if you don't have it, because it shows that they are aware of the existing funding streams and have accessed them where they've been able to.

Responding to the Finance Committee's consultation on the Welsh Government's draft budget proposals, the Wales Council for Voluntary Action said:

'The voluntary sector must be supported and resourced to fulfil its central role in the recovery from the pandemic' and

'Co-production must play a key part in the design and delivery of preventative services.'

Their response to the draft budget proposals went further, stating: 

'The voluntary sector continues to require greater resource to respond to increasing demand on its services' and 

'The sector has many groups and organisations which have developed to redress specific problems or prevent them worsening.'

They're also preventing massive additional financial pressure on health and care services. How will you therefore respond financially to their concern that although the draft budget states that an additional £700,000 will be provided on top of the £3 million to support the sector in its response to COVID-19 and the £24 million Welsh Government third sector COVID-19 recovery fund, charities in Wales have lost around 24 per cent of their income this year, or £1.2 billion for charities based in Wales? In other words, without the extra investment required, it's going to cost the Treasury and the Exchequer in Wales a lot more money than they would otherwise require to prevent that demand being created.

We've worked very closely with the WCVA and the charity and third sector here in Wales right throughout the pandemic. I've met with the sector myself in order to hear the challenges that they're facing, and they are very much, as Mark Isherwood described, in terms of not being able to undertake their usual fundraising activities, for example. That's why we've put in place the specific support for the sector, but also sought to give them some kind of assurance in terms of the future of the response to the pandemic as well. I'll be exploring the issues that have been raised right throughout all of the committees with my colleagues within the Welsh Government as we move towards the final budget, listening also to the comments that were made in yesterday's debate and having some further discussions regarding what support might be needed.

I urge you to look at those essential services being provided by the sector, without which everyone in Government's job would be harder, but also our job in opposition would be harder, and everybody's lives would be a lot harder also. One of those, of course, is hospices. Although the Welsh Government initially allocated £6.3 million to the hospice emergency fund, this was less generous than equivalent funds in all other UK nations, as the evidence shows, and falls significantly short of the total allocated to the Welsh Government in consequential funding from the UK Government's support for hospices in England.

However, our hospice and community palliative care sector has continued to provide vital care and essential services throughout the pandemic. Up to £125 million was added to the original hospice emergency funding package for 2020-21 in England, but nothing more was added in Wales. Hospices in Wales are facing a combined shortfall of £4.2 million by March, but after I led the debate on palliative and end-of-life care here last week, the Welsh Government only announced £3 million extra to support them this financial year. Further, there was no indication in the Welsh Government's draft budget for 2021-22 of continued support for hospices to maintain their essential services, despite their estimated combined shortfall of £6.1 million during 2021-22. Where, therefore, is the rest of the extra funding received from the UK Government in consequence of increased funding for hospices in England this financial year to provide their essential services? And how will you respond to the urgent funding needs of hospices in Wales during the next financial year?

Well, as Mark Isherwood says, hospices do provide an incredibly important service to the people of Wales and we absolutely recognise the enormous contribution that they do make. We worked alongside the hospice sector here in Wales to understand the particular financial support that they would need, and that's the reason why we've allocated £9.3 million with emergency funding to support those hospices throughout the pandemic, and this is being used to protect clinical services and strengthen hospice bereavement support.

And there's quite a simple answer, really, in terms of the consequential funding received, and it is very simple, and that is that the hospice sector here in Wales is smaller than it is across the border, so this is one of those areas where the consequentials were of a different order to the identified need that we have here in Wales. And I say, 'identified need' because we did work with the sector to identify the funding that it would require. And there are areas, of course, where we get consequentials from the UK Government that do not meet our need and where our need is much greater than across the border. So, we can't operate simply as a post box for consequential funding from the UK Government, we have to work with the individual sectors to understand the need that is identified. And as I say, when we worked with the sector, the need that was identified is the need that we have met, but clearly, if there's further discussion to be had, I would be more than happy to have those discussions with the sector.