Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservatives' spokesperson, Peter Fox. 

Diolch, Llywydd, and thank you, Minister, for coming before us today, and I look forward to a healthy working relationship with you over the coming period.

Minister, the Welsh Government's decision to delay major relaxation of restrictions by some four weeks has dashed the hopes of many sectors, in particular hospitality, which had been hoping obviously for an earlier return to trading after those difficult, disastrous 15 months we've had, and, for businesses to stay afloat for the duration of the current restrictions, it's now crucial that additional support is quickly made available. However, I noticed in the supplementary budget, which we received last night, it's only allocated funding for businesses to the end of this month—to June. So, Minister, as a matter of urgency, will you today answer my call to provide additional financial support to Wales's businesses beyond the end of this month?  

Thank you for the question, and I very much am looking forward to finding that common ground on which we can work collaboratively in the future, and congratulations on your appointment to what is an absolutely fascinating and wonderful portfolio, which I know you'll enjoy. 

Welsh Government has been really keen to provide the absolute best possible package of support for businesses right through the course of the pandemic, and, as a result, we've already announced and committed around £2.5 billion in financial support, and that safeguarded 160,000 Welsh jobs. Clearly, we're very mindful of the impact of the continued restrictions on certain sectors of the economy, which is why my colleague the education Minister recently announced an additional £2.5 million being made available to compensate those businesses, such as indoor attractions and wedding venues, who are still affected by the staged transition to alert level 1. The supplementary budget sets out the allocations which have been made to date. However, you'll be aware that, in the final budget, I did earmark up to £200 million of additional support for businesses. So, there is certainly some funding left to allocate, and I know that my colleague the Minister for Economy is speaking to officials about what schemes might look like in the future, and I know that he'll be keen to provide as much information as soon as possible. 

Well, thank you, Minister. That's reassuring, because Wales's businesses have warned me in no uncertain terms that they fear collapse. Many of them fear collapse unless more financial support is given now by your Government. And, with that in mind, it makes no sense why the Government is perhaps choosing to leave—. Well, I hear what you said, that business won't be left behind, but we're looking forward to seeing some of that support come forward sooner rather than later. The very recent research that we found from the Wales Fiscal Analysis suggested that there's roughly £500 million—and excuse me if I've got that wrong—in unallocated COVID-19 funding, which could be used to kick start Wales's financial recovery by extending the business rate freeze beyond the financial year—which is a great thing, don't get me wrong, but to extend it further—and perhaps with additional incentives. So, Minister, it's also imperative that our businesses are able to bounce back post pandemic. So, what are you going to do to ensure a long-term sustainable financial recovery for businesses and communities?

Well, I'm really pleased we were able to provide that 12-month business rate relief for businesses in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors here in Wales, which, of course, goes further than what's available to businesses across the border, and actually cost us more than what we received from the UK Government in consequential funding, but that's because we put such a premium on supporting businesses in those sectors, which are largely small and medium-sized enterprises. 

So, we will obviously look to continue to support businesses in any way that we can, and you're absolutely right that there is significant unallocated resource in the COVID reserve. However, that will need to meet needs across Welsh life. So, I would be expecting in the fairly near future to be making further announcements on support for the NHS and further support for local government, should it be needed through the hardship fund and so forth. There are lots of pressures on that additional funding, but I do want to provide reassurance that there will be announcements in respect of COVID funding in various areas in due course.

I really do welcome that; thank you, Minister. Many of our businesses are still here today, despite that massive damage inflicted by COVID. Of course, I think that is because of the £6 billion in support to Wales from the UK Government. Without that support, I think we all dread to think of the jobs and businesses that would not have been here now and would have been lost.

Now I know that the Welsh Government has claimed to have provided more funding for businesses than actually has been handed over by the UK. We heard Mrs Watson yesterday mention it in this Chamber, reaffirmed by the First Minister. If that is the case, then, without delay, the people of Wales must be given the full picture. Where has this money originated—the additional £400 million? Was it repurposed and how much of this may have been repurposed? How has that left other services, which that money had been repurposed from? How are they going to manage going forward? There are obviously some questions and some clarity needed around that.

But one thing is for certain: it's crucial that hard-hit families, as well as vitally important small and medium-sized businesses, do not foot the bill for the extra spending commitment. So, whilst I welcome that extra money being spent, there is always an opportunity lost in the cost to doing that. What we need is clear understanding. We certainly don't want those burdens, those additional costs, to fall onto families and businesses. So, will you today, Minister, answer these important concerns and will you also rule out any tax rises in the near future that would hamper Wales's financial recovery? Thank you.

I thank you for those questions. I always aim to be as absolutely transparent as I can be and I'll give my commitment to be as transparent as I possibly can be in the course of this Senedd as well. That's one of the reasons why we published three supplementary budgets in the course of last year. We were the only part of the UK to do that, because it was important to me that people understood where the money was coming from and where we were allocating it to.

In terms of repurposing funding, in the last financial year, I undertook an exercise with colleagues across Government to scrutinise their budgets and explore what could be returned to the centre to support the COVID response. That came forward with around £0.25 billion of repurposed funding. You'll find the details of that in our previous supplementary budgets, but largely it was in relation to activities that could no longer take place because of restrictions. So, they weren't cuts in the traditional sense, if you like, there.

But we've also been fortunate; because of decisions take here, things have cost us less to deliver, which has meant that we've been able to deliver more. A good example, I think, is our test, trace, protect system, which has been delivered by local authorities, by health boards and other public service partners here in Wales, and has delivered excellent value for money on top of being a really top-class service. Those are the kinds of decisions that we took here that allowed us to get a service for less financial outlay, but also a good service, and then allowed us to repurpose additional funding elsewhere.

We've said really, really clearly in our manifesto that we would not be looking to raise Welsh rates of income tax for as long as the economic crisis continues, and certainly we are absolutely in that crisis at the moment.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Llyr Gruffydd.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. May I take this opportunity to congratulate you and put on record my formal congratulations to you on your appointment as Minister in the current Government? I look forward very much to shadowing your work during this Senedd term.

Several layers of public administration have been created anew in Wales over the past few years. One of those is the public services boards, emerging from the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. One clear weakness in the framework of the Act and in the creation of the public services boards is the lack of consistent financial arrangements for these boards. Given the importance of the public services boards as the main vehicle of the delivery of the well-being Act on the ground in Wales, and bearing in mind that the membership of the boards is very similar, or is almost exactly the same, across Wales, and that they have the same statutory responsibility, the lack of a consistent, national financial approach and lack of access to joint funds is shocking. It's even stranger bearing in mind that some of the other entities, such as the regional partnership boards and the proposed corporate joint committees, also will be operating on a different basis. So, may I ask what your intention is, early in your term as Minister, to tackle this inconsistency?

Thank you for the question and your warm words welcoming me to this particular role. Again, I look very much forward to finding those areas of common ground that we can work on together.

In terms of public services boards and the other statutory boards that we have in Wales, you'll be familiar that there was a review carried out by the Welsh Government, reporting towards the end of last year, and that review set out some of those challenges that you've described in terms of the funding arrangements and the perceived duplication of some of the roles of the boards. But the report was very, very clear that any change should absolutely come from the ground up, rather than being imposed by the Welsh Government.

My immediate priorities within the local government side of my portfolio are the successful delivery of the decisions on the boundary reviews, and then also the successful delivery of the subordinate legislation underneath the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021. But I've been thinking about what the priorities will be moving towards the end of the year, and absolutely, looking at public services boards and the other boards in terms of their roles and how they're supported and so on will be important. That's a conversation that I've yet to open with local government and others, although I did have the opportunity to talk to Alun Michael about his views on this. But I feel, at this point, before I set out any way forward, I have to have those conversations and do some listening, clearly taking on board everything that you've said this afternoon too.

Well, lucky Alun Michael, I say. There we are. I'm sure there'll be others that you will be talking to.

Of course, this point has come about as a result of the Public Accounts Committee, a cross-party committee, at the end of the last Senedd, which looked at the implementation of the well-being of future generations Act. The committee said that the

'inconsistent funding arrangements for Public Services Boards limit their effectiveness.'

It's 'inefficient', and there is no justification for that. So, whilst I appreciate and understand that you're eager to work from the bottom up, the nature of the Act was that the diktat came from the top down, in terms of creating these boards in the first place. So, I would very much hope that this would be something that you would take seriously and seek to address.

But, of course, it's only one part of the work that the Public Accounts Committee described as a 

'complex and bureaucratic landscape of partnership bodies and plethora of legislative and reporting requirements' in terms of the PSBs. And, of course, the latest addition to this landscape will be the corporate joint committees, the CJCs. In providing evidence to the committee for that inquiry, one of the senior directors of your department stated, and I quote:

'in the longer term, we would envisage some of those...partnerships, some of those other structures, becoming redundant, actually, because the CJCs will be taking a much more powerful overview—and a much wider overview as they settle in—that will begin to pick up some of that work of the other partnerships.'

You've perhaps touched on this in your previous response, but perhaps you could tell us what partnerships and structures you anticipate being made redundant over the ensuing period. And, indeed, the suggestion then is that the intention is to merge many of these structures into the CJCs ultimately, and that that is some sort of reorganisation of local government and public services through the back door.

That's certainly not the intention. You'll know that the initial focuses of work for the CJCs, when they are up and running, will be along the lines of regional and local—across those local boundaries—development in terms of economic development, and also planning. These are areas that are not currently the responsibility of public services boards, the regional partnership boards and so forth. But I'm absolutely, genuinely keen and open to have these discussions about how the boards can be made to work more effectively in future and to ensure that any changes to their responsibilities are done in partnership with those who sit on those boards. But CJCs are absolutely not a mechanism at this point for making those kinds of changes that you describe, because I think they'll be first and foremost trying to get to grips with those important items, such as economic development, that they will need to work on together. So, obviously I'll be keen to familiarise myself with the work of the Public Accounts Committee on this, alongside the other reports, and to have those discussions with public services boards, regional partnership boards and others before coming to a way forward.

Thank you. The Government hasn't formally responded to the report as of yet. I think the intention was to ask the current Government to respond because the report was published at the end of the last Senedd. And given your key role now in the context of local services and finance, too, I would hope that you would be part of that discussion in responding to that. I hope that that's not gone missing in all of the work of the Government. 

Another thing that became clear in the committee's report on the delivery of the Act was that, although we legislated to create a way of working here in Wales that is based on sustainable development and the preventative approach, and so on and so forth, the truth of the matter is that the funding system is anything but sustainable. The report recognises the impact of a decade of austerity imposed by the UK Government, which has run many of our public services to the ground, to all intents and purposes. It states in the report:

'Legislation which requires public bodies to plan for future generations is more difficult to implement properly if budgets are guaranteed for as little as one year at a time.'

Whilst recognising the clear challenges of the inadequate and deficient settlements that we've had from London, the committee does set a challenge to Government to do what it can to invest in our public services in order to deliver the ambitions of the Act. So, the question I'd like to close on is: will this Government, and will you as Minister, refuse to implement more austerity over the next five years and use creative approaches to lead a recovery that is driven by investment? That is, how will you as a Government protect the people of Wales from further cuts through your actions, not just through your words?

Thank you very much for that question. I share your concern and the concerns that you've described about one-year settlements and what that means for the difficulty in planning and having sustainable approaches to services. So, I'm really pleased to be able to say that we do expect, finally, the long-awaited comprehensive spending review later this year. We would expect it to be a three-year spending review, and that will give Welsh Government the chance then to implement a three-year budget moving forward and to give that three-year confidence to partners who need it, in local government and elsewhere as well. I think that's something that can be really positive, going forward. 

It does concern me when we consider what the Chancellor said in his March budget about the financial outlook for the future. Certainly it doesn't seem, for next year particularly, that we will be looking at a particularly positive settlement. So, things could change. Inevitably, the UK Government is going to be facing some of the same challenges that we are in terms of demand on the health service, the need to support and continue to support businesses and so forth. It remains to be seen what the UK Government does in its three-year comprehensive spending review, but it's absolutely our intent to provide that kind of certainty and also to continue to provide that protection as far as we can for the NHS and for local government, recognising the role that they play in providing services to people in our communities.

I'm really looking forward to bringing forward a debate before the end of term, very much in the way in which we've done over the last couple of years. And of course, you'll remember it's been led by the Finance Committee in the previous years so that the committee could reflect on the evidence gathered. Unfortunately, this year, we're not quite there yet with the committees, but I'm still keen to bring forward that debate to hear colleagues' priorities for the three years forthcoming.