5. Will the First Minister make a statement on the use of unallocated funding included in last year’s annual budget? OQ56385

Can I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that, Llywydd? The third supplementary budget of this financial year, to be debated in the Senedd later this afternoon, completes our fiscal spending plans. From a total available resource of £23.3 billion, 99.6 per cent of that funding has been committed by the Welsh Government as set out in the third supplementary budget. 

First Minister, I thank you for clarifying that, and I asked you this question because Welsh Government, despite allocating what you've just told us was 99.6 per cent of its resource, has continually come under fire from the Tories here in Wales, whilst at the same time their Chancellor in Westminster holds a COVID reserve that currently stands at £19 billion. So, First Minister, it is clear now that if the Welsh Government had run down all its available COVID guarantee by October 2020, as suggested by the Welsh Conservatives in Wales, then you would not have been able to match the firebreak and the Christmas restrictions with the far-reaching business support that was rapidly put into place. Now, if there's one consistency, First Minister, with the Conservative party currently in Wales, it's to feign fury when our Government in Wales makes the right decisions to keep Wales safe, only to fall silent when their party in Westminster follows suit. So, do you agree with me that the Welsh Conservatives are now so far off Rishi Sunak's radar that they feel confident that he won't even notice when they inadvertently attack him and his policies?

Well, Llywydd, I agree with Huw Irranca-Davies. It is surely one thing not to be able to be wise before the event, and that is certainly the record of the Welsh Conservative party, but it's a party that doesn't even manage to be wise after the event, either. Had we taken that party's advice back in October, then, of course, Huw Irranca-Davies is right, we would not have been in a position at all to support Welsh businesses in the way that we have during the remainder of the current financial year. Back in October, we had spent two thirds of our budget at the two-thirds point of this financial year. We had spent three quarters of our budget when we were three quarters of the way through the financial year, and as I said in my original answer, at the end of the financial year, we will have spent 99.6 per cent of all the funding available to the Welsh Government, and that, Llywydd, is a pattern repeated year after year during the whole of the devolution era. Every year, this Welsh Government uses to the maximum the funding that we have available to support businesses and public services here in Wales. And our record compares extraordinarily favourably with UK Government departments, who never manage anything like the same match between funds available and the ability to put it to good use. The record of the Welsh Government here stands up to examination by anybody, and the advice of the Welsh Conservative Party and the nonsense, the absolutely nonsense, that they offered people back in October has been exposed very badly since then by the events that have since unfolded. 

The Welsh Government's reserve can hold up to £350 million; on 1 April 2020, the balance was at £335.9 million. Three weeks ago, the Welsh Government and UK Government agreed additional flexibility, beyond the Wales reserve, going into 2021-22, enabling the Welsh Government to carry over any unallocated element of the extra £650 million provided by the UK Government into the 2021-22 financial year, on top of the existing provision to transfer funding between years. This financial year, the Welsh Government is carrying forward around £660.2 million of extra 2020-21 funding to 2021-22. The Finance Committee has recommended the Welsh Government publish an outturn report for 2020-21, with a similar level of detail to that for 2019-20. So, how does the Welsh Government respond to this, and how will you ensure additional transparency regarding Welsh Government budgets where, for example, the Welsh Government has failed to allocate any of the extra UK Government funding, unlike Scotland, meaning that you have failed to allocate £1.3 billion in the budget your Government is announcing today?

Well, Llywydd, I don't think this Government will need any lessons from the Member on additional transparency. This is the third supplementary budget that we have laid during this financial year. It sets out in absolute detail all the way in which the funding that is available to the Welsh Government has been used. His Government, his Government in Westminster, did not publish a single supplementary budget, and it was only when, very late in the year, many weeks later than they promised, when the estimates were produced, that the additional funding was provided and, sensibly at last, the Treasury agreed that it was too late in the financial year for that money to be sensibly used and that it could be carried forward into the next financial year. That is exactly, therefore, what my colleague Rebecca Evans proposes to do. 

We have reported faithfully and regularly on every spending decision that we have made to the Senedd, quite unlike the performance of his party at the UK level. Of course we will publish an outturn report. That happens every year, as a matter of course. We have to report on the final outcome of our budget, and we will do exactly that. It's a great disappointment to me that the Chancellor refused, and continues to refuse, to allow us any additional flexibility with our own money, Llywydd. That is what we have asked for when it comes to the Welsh reserve. We haven't asked for a single extra penny from the Chancellor; we have simply asked that the money that we have as a Government can be managed by us in a way that would maximise the value of that public money at the end of the financial year. Instead, we continue to be treated by the UK Government as though we were simply another Government department, rather than a Government and a Senedd in our own right. And I think that is just another example of the way the UK Government continues to refuse to recognise the realities of the United Kingdom 20 years into devolution. 

Question 6, Lynne Neagle.

I can't hear you at this point, Lynne Neagle. I can see that you're unmuted, but are you hard muted on your—?

Shall I try again? Is that better?

Yes, second time around it's much better. Thank you.