Questions now from party leaders. Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, on the weekend, there were a series of incidences where ambulances could not turn up to critical incidents. Ben Symons, a 22-year-old, was laying on a football pitch in Cefn Cribwr with a serious back injury. His mother said at the time that there was a disgraceful wait involved, five hours, and that the system is broken. Do you agree with his mother?

Llywydd, I agree that the Welsh ambulance service is under enormous pressure. It’ll be under far greater pressure when his party has finished cutting the budget of the health service, as Jeremy Hunt has said he intends to do. Yes, you can groan and you can moan, but the responsibility lies where it lies, and people out there understand that too. Yes, the system is under huge pressure; we know it’s under huge pressure. I spoke to someone who was at the game where that incident took place, and they told me that when the ambulance driver arrived, they explained the other calls that they had been on already that day, including a number of calls to 999 that didn’t need an ambulance to be there at all. So, the system is under enormous pressure from legitimate demand and demand that should have gone to a different part of the system.

But, when he asks me his next question, let him just reflect for a moment on what will happen to ambulance services in Wales when we face the cuts. Cuts to the health service: unbelievable. [Interruption.] But cuts to the health—[Interruption.] Yes, look. I know, I know. You think that by making a lot of noise that you distract people from your responsibility. Believe me, you absolutely do not.

I, unlike you, First Minister, have never voted to cut a health budget. You have, First Minister. Your party has been running the health service here, which the ambulance service is an important part of, for the last 23 years. [Interruption.]

Another incident happened in Merthyr Tydfil, where a patient was left on the floor after a 15-hour wait—a 15-hour wait—where the individual's daughter said—and I'll quote her words; they're not my words, they're her words:

'In Wales we're like a third-world country when it comes to our healthcare...I'm sure Aneurin Bevan would be turning in his grave.'

They're not my words, they're from someone whose father was rolling around on a floor for 15 hours. You have been responsible for the health service here in Wales for 23 years. You voted to cut the health budget here in Wales. You can throw your pen down, First Minister, but you are responsible. What are you going to do about it?

Llywydd, I understand the pressure that the Conservative Party is under. I understand how difficult it must be for the leader of the opposition to come here and ask questions today. But don't let him believe that by shouting at me he will persuade anybody outside this Chamber that his responsibility—I've not heard ever a single word from him assuming responsibility for the actions of his Government. Let's hear it from him next time— 

He supported Liz Truss.

Yes, he supported Liz Truss. We know that. He is partly responsible for the mess we're in. Just shouting at me about the difficulties that are there in the ambulance service, which I acknowledge, and we are working very hard with people who work in the ambulance service to get that service where it needs to be. There's no solution to that by shouting at me as though all the right in this argument belonged to him, which we certainly know it doesn't, and everybody else is at fault. I completely refute, on behalf of those people who work so hard every day in our health service in Wales, that it is accurately described in the way that he did, whoever he may be quoting. Our health service does miracles every single day in the lives of people here in Wales, and it does it because we have dedicated people, doctors, nurses and others, who will have heard him describe the service that they provide in the way that he did. If he thinks that helps at all to improve the service, to make people come in and drive those ambulances and staff those accident and emergency departments, I tell him now, it absolutely does not.

First Minister, I used a direct quote from Mr Keith Morris's daughter. Pressure is when you see someone you love rolling around on the floor in pain and the service that you are looking to for help hasn't arrived for 15 hours. That's pressure, First Minister.

You are the First Minister, you haven't said once in response to my two questions the solution that the Government is proposing to take this pressure out of the ambulance service and allow them to get on with the job that they do, which is a fantastic job when it works correctly.

Now, this is happening time and time again. I could have cited—[Interruption.] I hear sedentary voices. I accept that there are pressures across the United Kingdom, but the issue here in Wales is particularly acute. What I want to leave this Chamber understanding is what the road map from the Welsh Government is, as we go further into the winter months, to alleviate these problems, so that Aneurin Bevan will not be turning in his grave, and that our Government, which is responsible for the health service, has a solution to the problems that Mr Morris's and other families are facing day in, day out.

Llywydd, the prescription of the Welsh Government is to invest more money in the ambulance service, to have more staff working in the ambulance service, to have a wider range of people able to provide those services and for ambulances to know that, when they arrive at hospitals, the hospital will be in a position to receive that patient so that the ambulance can get back on the road again and attend in a timely way to other people who are waiting. That is the prescription of the Welsh Government.

What do people who work in the service—? And as I say, they'll have heard the way that the Member has described the service they provide this afternoon. What do they face? They—[Interruption.] He has chosen to use that language this afternoon, he didn't—[Interruption.] And you have chosen to use that language here this afternoon. What do those people face? They face cuts to their pay because of the policy of your Government, and now they face cuts to the budgets that the health service itself will have at its disposal. It is shocking. It is absolutely shocking to me that you think that you can turn up here this afternoon, with the mess that your party has made of the budgets of this country, of the reputation of this country around the world, and that you promise those people that there will be more to come—[Interruption.] And you think you can turn up here this afternoon and claim some sort of moral high ground. What sort of world do you belong in?

Can we—? [Interruption.] Can we—? Can we take a moment here? I understand that the arguments and the feelings run high on these issues from a variety of perspectives, I understand some of the shouting taking place, but I won't have people pointing in anger, and gesticulating in anger, at other people. Can we just take a moment to calm down? I'm hoping that Adam Price will contribute to that when I call him to ask his questions.

You can be sure of it.

First Minister, Liz Truss's u-turns this week were so numerous and so breathtakingly rapid that they became a political pirouette. But she wasn't the only one, was she? Three weeks ago, Keir Starmer said that Labour wouldn't reverse the cut to the basic rate of income tax, it would be the wrong thing to do. Now, this morning, the shadow Chancellor said that Labour supported the policy to bin it. So, in supporting the Tory u-turn, Labour has performed its own. But she also went on to say that Labour wouldn't raise taxes in response to the current crisis, which begs the question, doesn't it, as to where a Labour Government will get all the resources necessary to defend public services, to do something about the crisis in the NHS here in Wales, through the Barnett formula consequential, and to pay public sector workers a decent wage. Labour, in 1997, they said they were going to keep to the Tory spending plans for the first two years, and were rightly criticised for doing so. How is keeping to the Tories' tax plans any better?

Well, Llywydd, the next Labour Government will inherit the difficulties that have been created in the last three weeks. The last three weeks have changed the context in which decisions have to be made. I heard the shadow Chancellor explain that very cogently on the radio this morning. Something that was right three weeks ago can no longer be sustained, given the turmoil and the billions and billions of pounds that have been spent that are no longer available to an incoming Government. I also heard the shadow Chancellor explain how a Labour Government will raise money through a windfall tax on the excessive profits of energy companies, rather than doing as the current Government is doing, with its now truncated offer of help to people with energy bills—they will take money from everybody else and pass it to energy companies to sustain those extraordinary profits—and that she will act to deal with non-domiciliary taxpayers as well, to make sure that they too pay their fair share to the Exchequer, so that public services can be invested in in a way that only a Labour Government will ever promise and deliver in doing so.

But the tone was fiscal conservatism, wasn't it? That's not the kind of progressive politics that we want to see from a change of Government in Westminster.

Now, in response to the Chancellor's statement, the Minister for Finance and Local Government here called on the UK Government to use its tax levers more equitably. But is that an approach that you as a Government are also prepared to powerfully consider? That's the phrase you used, First Minister, in considering whether to maintain the 20p basic rate. Now, I accept the context for that has changed, but you could, in these renewed conditions of austerity that we're about to face, look at using your other income tax levers and raise the higher and additional rates, consistent with the principle that broader shoulders should be asked to carry the highest burden. Spain, a socialist Government, has introduced a solidarity tax; Germany already has one. In these difficult times, is this not a principle that we must now consider embracing here in Wales?

I agree with the principle, Llywydd, of course, that those who have the most should contribute the most. We will do, as I explained last week—. Last week, the Member was urging me to raise income tax rates here in Wales, and we'd be looking very foolish today if we'd followed his advice then, because, as I explained to him, we will make our decisions when we have the full facts available to us, and the facts on income tax changed very significantly during the week. We will present our budget to the Senedd using the established processes that this Senedd has. By the time we come to lay the budget, we will have moved past 31 October, with whatever horrors lie in store for us then as well. And in that process, we will continue to consider all the levers that we have available to us here in Wales, but we'll come to a decision on the best way to use those levers when we have the full context available to us, rather than making decisions as we go along, only to find that the ground under us has altered in the meantime.

That's precisely what the Labour Party did in Westminster, isn't it? What could a solidarity tax do? It could help us meet the reasonable demands of public sector workers to improve the Welsh Government's pay offer, which even a Labour-affiliated union has called derisory—the miracle workers, First Minister, that you just referred to in the NHS. It could help us relieve some of the pressure on local services on which we have depended so much during the pandemic. It could help us expand free school meals in secondary school. It could help us provide the subsidy to public transport that even the Labour majority on the climate change committee have proposed. It could do these things in different proportions and to different degrees, depending on your Government's ambition. But I put to you again, First Minister—socialist First Minister: isn't this principle of solidarity something that your Government should embrace? 

Llywydd, I have already agreed with the leader of Plaid Cymru that progressive taxation is the way in which we should fund public services. What I can't possibly agree with him on is that raising taxes in the way that he suggested in his first question—. Because he asked me in his first question, you'll remember, whether we should raise the two additional rates of taxation that we are able to modify here in Wales—not the basic rate, but the other two higher rates. They bring in less than tens of millions of pounds if you raise them. There's no chance at all that they would begin to cover that long list of purposes for which he said those funds could then be applied. It's just—

It's pie in the sky.

'Pie in the sky' would be the kindest way to describe it. You can use those levers, and they bring in very, very modest amounts of money. And that assumes—which is quite heroic, really—that the people who are now being asked to pay more tax in Wales than they would be asked to pay across the border don't organise their affairs in a way that immunises them from that effect. Let's just assume for a moment—and not many economists would—that people simply stay where they are and pay the extra money. It brings in, in the context that we are talking about, a handful of millions of pounds, and there is no way at all that it would stretch probably even to the first of that very long list of purposes that the leader of Plaid Cymru has suggested you would cover from them this afternoon.