Thank you for your draft budget statement, Minister. My focus, given my shadow portfolio, of course, will be on education, and I can only go on what’s in front of me.

Last month, we saw the UK Government’s autumn statement put young people at the forefront of their agenda, with an increase in funding for education. I called for this to be matched in Wales the week after the autumn statement was announced, so, initially, I was delighted to hear that, apparently, it would be matched in Wales. However, upon further reading, it wasn’t clear to me, Minister, if the £117 million figure that you received from the UK Government as a consequential of the English education budget increase, has been lumped in with the local government budget and is part of the £227 million figure in your statement, or, if the £117 million was a stand-alone figure, which is actually in addition to the £227 million announced for local government. So, some clarity on that would be greatly appreciated.

If the £117 million figure in the budget is falling in with the £227 million for local government, and the extra £117 million isn’t being ring-fenced specifically for education, then obviously, this raises some concerns. The money—the £117 million—intended for education won’t necessarily go into education, given all the extra pressures on our local authorities. As moneys potentially could be spent elsewhere, of course, and not go to where they are desperately needed in front-line education, and at a time when school budgets are stretched to the max and there are a lot of extra pressures on education in Wales, you have only announced, actually, £20 million to directly go to education in your draft budget statement. Also, does the £227 million or the £117 million announced today include money for the teachers’ pay increases, or will that come out of another pot of money?

Finally, Minister, would you be able to give a breakdown of those £227 million and £117 million figures, announced today, because I’m hoping that that will go some way to alleviating the concerns that are obviously raised by this statement today? But it is crucially important that the funding in education gets to where it’s most needed on the front line, so that it can help to relieve those severe pressures that schools are facing at the moment, and, of course, to fund the many directives put upon them by the Welsh Government.

The UK Government managed to react to the current pressures and announced extra money for education, which is going directly to education. In Wales, you have only managed to announce, as I have said, £20 million to directly go into education. The rest is not guaranteed to go into education. It seems that, once again, this draft budget statement is failing Welsh education in Wales.