I am grateful for the support that we've had this afternoon in respect of flexibility. The Chair of the Finance Committee repeated the Finance Committee's support for our request to have a full calendar year to deal with late allocations, and that's something that we've had in recent years, but for some reason UK Government has stopped that from happening, and, again, that has serious implications, I think, for our ability to plan and to spend as well as we possibly can. The Finance Committee says that we should have that flexibility as a matter of course, and I absolutely agree with that. We do have a finance Ministers quadrilateral, or the new Finance Interministerial Standing Committee arrangement next week, and Wales is tabling a paper at that meeting that does relate specifically to the financial flexibilities that we require in order to properly manage our budget. So, I'll be very clear to reflect on the conversations that we've had this afternoon and contributions in respect of flexibilities, so that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is aware that this is something that the Finance Committee in the Senedd is very supportive of as well.

In terms of some of the specific areas that were raised within the debate, there were several comments in respect of health, and this is an area where I agree again, I think, with all the challenge that has been brought forward by colleagues during the debate, in the sense that we can make allocations, but actually what really matters is what it delivers for people in Wales. So, you'll see the additional funding in respect of health—so, that's £411 million revenue to support national and local plans in relation to the pandemic. The funding is also there for NHS stabilisation following the pandemic, continued COVID tracing, vaccination costs, PPE and other COVID response work. So, that's a really important investment in the NHS. And then, there's also £100 million allocated for recovery measures, and that, of course, is in addition to the £100 million announced in the first supplementary budget, and that, again, will support the work of the NHS.

In respect of the capital allocation, the aim there is to improve patient flows, to improve ventilation and to tackle some of the waiting lists through the additional orthopaedic theatre, which will be at Neath Port Talbot, and a new ophthalmology day centre at Singleton. So, we'll be making those particular investments to improve the situation within the NHS and deal with some of those backlogs. We have had estimates of the number of people who would have been on the waiting list had we not had that additional investment. Things were delayed somewhat in respect of the omicron variant—that did pull things back a bit in terms of the progress that we were making—but I was able to share with the Finance Committee, in scrutiny, some examples of the ways in which we know the investment that we are making is working.

There was a lot of interest again in our investment in social care. We have a £42.7 million package for funding social care, helping to address some of the system pressures, and the specific areas where that will be invested are those areas that were identified by our care action committee as being the areas where we can make the most difference. That includes £20 million to fund support services for children; there's additional funding of £3.8 million to support early intervention and prevention, and that's been allocated to the third sector organisations; and £1 million to support unaccompanied asylum seekers, along with a range of other investments as well.

There was some interest again in the support that we're providing to public transport. The budget does provide an additional £53.1 million in respect of rail, and the reason why we've had to give so much additional funding to public transport, rail and bus, both in this supplementary budget and right through the course of the pandemic, is because of the impact that the pandemic had on the fare box. When we think back to the lockdown, that resulted in a drop in both bus and rail patronage of 95 per cent, and as the restrictions have eased, we have seen a slow recovery but we're still not back to previous figures. So, it is the case that those sectors do continue to need Welsh Government support.

So, I think I responded to a range of those issues that were brought forward this afternoon, but I do want to say and repeat that I will be accepting all of the Finance Committee's recommendations, and I will be providing a more detailed response to each of those recommendations in written form.