Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 24 January 2023.
The capital budgets available to the Welsh Government go down every year; they are 8 per cent lower next year than they are this year. Where does the Member think the money comes from to do the things that he suggests? Not only that, but our capital borrowing limit has remained unchanged since 2016. These are not decisions of the Welsh Government; they are decisions of the Government that he supports.
I would just say to him again—I'll do it slowly, so that he can think about it—that the amount of money available to the Welsh Government is—[Interruption.] I would prefer that he didn't point at me from where he is sitting. I'll try again, because he doesn't listen, but I'm going to try again to explain to him that if your capital budget is falling every year and your ability to borrow is capped at the level that it was, now, seven years ago, then our ability to do the things that we would like to do is constrained by decisions that are not in the hands of the Welsh Government, but are in the hands of his friends and his colleagues, and there we are. Let him think about that and maybe he'll have a better question for me next time.