I’m very grateful for those questions and would certainly associate myself with your comments at the start of the contribution, which set out that we are seeing what is, essentially, a new wave of austerity. We’ve barely managed to catch a breath since the last one, and it will have impacts in terms of squeezes on living standards, on increasing poverty, on increasing the number of children growing up in poverty, and, as Llyr Gruffydd said, that is a choice—austerity is absolutely a political choice, and a calculated political choice.

We know that there are other ways in which the UK Government could have responded. The Resolution Foundation has said that there’s been a 19-year downturn in wages, and the weak forecast for pay and high inflation mean that wages won’t return to their 2008 levels until 2027. Had wages grown at the same rate as before the great financial crisis in 2008 they would actually be £15,000 a year higher. And, again, this is all part of the response, really, to the way in which the UK Government has introduced austerity and is looking to do so again, which is obviously of great concern to us in terms of what it means for people here in Wales.

In terms of this year’s financial management, of course you’ll be aware that we published our first supplementary budget earlier on in this year, and it’s the intention to publish a further supplementary budget in February, but, as I’ve mentioned before to colleagues in the Chamber, we have been doing a piece of work looking across Government to see what we might have to do in terms of reprioritisation to be able to meet the pressures of inflation in this financial year, and to do so whilst protecting public services, at its core, protecting the support that we provide for the most vulnerable.

So that work is ongoing at the moment. There are tremendous pressures right across the piece, particularly in health, but also elsewhere. But, when we do come to finalising the supplementary budget, we’ll be able to provide more detail in terms of where we’ve been able to reprioritise funding from to meet some of those pressures, and what the implications of that will be. But we’re always really conscious of cumulative impact assessments and the importance of understanding the impacts that our choices have on those people who have protected characteristics, or a number of protected characteristics. So, we look through that particular lens. But, as I say, I’ll be able to say more on that when we do come to the point of the supplementary budget, but that is absolutely the kind of space that we’re in at the moment.

The First Minister, in his discussions with the Prime Minister, was able to set out a range of things that the UK Government could do that actually wouldn’t cost a lot of money—things such as abolishing standing charges on prepayment meters, support for credit unions and providing a guarantee against loss of funds to help individuals secure loans there—not terribly expensive things that UK Government could be looking to do. But he also asked that the borrowing and reserve limits agreed as part of the 2016 fiscal framework are updated in line with inflation, and that’s something that I’ve also raised with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. That seems a pragmatic thing that the UK Government could do.

On borrowing, in every year since we’ve had borrowing powers we’ve always intended to use our full borrowing powers within that financial year, but it’s usually the case that, by the end of the year, the UK Government provides us with additional funding very late on in the financial year, which means that we don’t have to borrow in that particular year. To help us account for that, in this financial year I did overprogram capital by £100 million. Of course, this was a decision taken prior to the existing inflation and existing scenarios, so it does make management this year particularly challenging. But I think it is the right thing to do, to maximise the funding that we do have available to us. But we’ll continue, and I know others will continue, to make the case that we should have an increase in our annual and aggregate borrowing limits, and we support the arguments that have been made by, I know, members of the previous Finance Committee that we should have prudential borrowing limits here in Wales, so that the Senedd can agree what's an appropriate level of borrowing and agree our repayment plans. And I think that still remains the right way forward. 

On Welsh rates of income tax, of course, we consider this every year. It just feels that this year there seems to be much more interest in it, bearing in mind everything that's been happening across in Westminster, and also the extreme pressures that households are under. So, yes, of course, we always consider the levers that are available to us, but we do so being mindful of people's overall tax burden. So, you will have heard me say at the start of the statement today that the tax burden is at a 70-year high, and, obviously, we've heard what the impacts will be in terms of disposable income on households. So, when we do take those decisions, we're mindful of the wider context, including council tax and what local authority leaders are telling us about how they might need to respond to using that particular lever as well. So, it's a decision taken in the round, but we will provide the Senedd with those decisions, alongside the draft budget, on 13 December.