You only need to read the explanatory notes with this third supplementary budget and you will see what an unprecedented year this has been. I'm sure we can all agree to that. Huge allocations like this within financial years isn't something that we've traditionally seen as part of the usual budgetary processes over the years.

May I praise the comments made by Llyr Gruffydd as Chair of the Finance Committee and make some further comments of my own? I understand the temptation for the Conservatives to say, as soon as any funding becomes available, 'Well, spend it immediately', but I do believe, generally speaking, that caution and holding some funds in reserve has been important, particularly when, on the one hand, you consider that the landscape has been evolving from month to month over the past year, but also that there is a symptom here of the fact that the Welsh fiscal system isn't one that works for us, particularly at such a challenging time.

I'll refer to two issues. First of all, the Barnett formula has proved to be a very ineffective tool—far too simplistic in how it distributes funding from Whitehall to the devolved Governments. I can take you back to one of the earliest papers written by Wales Fiscal Analysis at Cardiff University at the beginning of the pandemic, which suggested that allocating funds on a population basis wouldn't reflect the specific challenges posed by COVID for public services in Wales. And they were quite right; Wales has a higher proportion of older people and people with health complaints than is the case in England, something that isn't taken into account by what's described as the 'needs-based factor'. The paper also suggested that although the Welsh Government made a commitment to provide the same support for businesses through business rate relief and so on as is provided in England, the cost of providing that support wouldn't necessarily be provided for sufficiently by Barnett consequentials. I'll quote from the paper: