Of course, our capital budget falls by 8 per cent in real terms in the next financial year, so hearing about additional ideas from the Conservative benches as to how we could be spending capital is difficult to swallow when there wasn't a single extra penny of capital coming in the autumn statement. Of course, the Chancellor has the opportunity to rectify that in the spring statement, and we look forward to continuing to press the Chancellor for additional funding in that respect.

Thinking, now, of the reprioritisation exercise, to help us protect our front-line public services and support people through the cost-of-living crisis, we did undertake that reprioritisation exercise to release £87.4 million from within those existing budgets, which I've referred to as being agreed as part of our spending review. I did give certain areas a degree of protection, so front-line health services, local government through the RSG, and part of the education budget were excused from that exercise to try and reprioritise across Government, but, I mean, I have to say it was such a difficult exercise. We've been asked why we couldn't reprioritise a greater amount, but actually once we got past that we really did get into the realms of talking about cutting some of the programmes that help the most vulnerable people, and you end up going completely against the kind of preventative agenda that we all want to embrace by cutting some of those proposals.

In deciding which areas to reprioritise, Ministers across Government were searching out areas that were perhaps demand led, where they could, at risk, put a small amount into those budgets to release some funding. Other options included looking at whether contracts could be terminated or redeveloped or reduced in scope. For example, I did that in my own MEG through the reprocurement of our e-procurement contract, and also some work took place in that space in relation to public appointments.

I know that portfolio Ministers did have some really good and thorough scrutiny in their own committees about the choices that they made, but I'll just give a few examples to put them on the record. So, in the rural affairs MEG, the budget repriorisation was limited to farm funding outside of the basic payment scheme. So, the Minister provided protection to the BPS, and we did see then, of course, though, a reduction to the rural economic and sustainability budget line. This MEG, though, did have an increase of £63 million through the multi-year settlement last year. That's now been reduced by just under £9 million to £54 million, and I know that the Minister is working through the difficult choices now that that makes for her in terms of some of the farming and land management activities. That's just one example of the difficult choices that we talk about.

In health, there were a number of areas where funding was refocused to ensure that resources could be focused on our front-line services as far as possible. Those, for example, include changes to the plans for the establishment of an NHS executive, so there will be a reduction now in scope and capacity over the short term, in order to refocus some of the funding towards the front-line services.

In other areas, we've had to revise the timeline of delivery, due to the inflationary pressures, but not the scale of ambition, and an example there would be that whilst obviously excellent progress has been made in terms of maintaining the sustainable communities for learning programme, our programme to improve and develop schools and colleges in Wales, the availability of construction materials and labour has seen costs rise by around 15 per cent, so inevitably we'll be delivering less with that programme even though the amount that we intend to spend will be the same.

And, of course, you'll have heard my colleague, the Minister for Climate Change, talking about the commitment in relation to 20,000 social homes. That now will include an element of homes beyond new builds compliant with development quality requirements, but it's clear that given the multiple sector challenges and the cost increases in the supply chain, and the inflation rates that we face, we may now see, out of necessity, some more homes being brought into the social sector though non-new-build routes. But I do think that gives us good opportunity to take further action in respect of empty homes.

As well as reprioritising, having more flexibility would of course assist us. A number of people have mentioned the fuel support payment. Well, that was something that we were able to do because we were carrying over money that had arrived very late in the financial year in 2021-22. We were able to carry that over outside of the Wales reserve. That was a pragmatic decision on the part of the UK Government, but if that kind of carry-over of very late consequential funding could just become part of our normal way of working, that would help us a great deal.

I don't have too much time left, but I do want to say a few words on tax, although I know we'll have much more opportunity to talk about this in a lot more detail tomorrow afternoon. But there is a recommendation from the Finance Committee that we talk more about the work that we've been doing to understand the potential use of various tax-raising powers. Of course, we did publish our income tax ready-reckoner alongside the draft budget, and that takes account of behavioural impacts of tax changes. It does use His Majesty's Revenue and Customs estimates for certain elements, but it also does include some additional estimates for the potential migration effect of varying income tax rates within the UK. Those were based on a Swiss academic study, because it's the most appropriate proxy for the situation in Wales, although it's not perfect, but we do build that into our ready-reckoner to understand what the impact would be if we were to raise those higher and additional rates of Welsh rates of income tax. We know that the recent changes to income tax rates and thresholds in Scotland provide us now with that first example of income tax varying policies within the UK, and as the relevant detail does now become available as to the impacts of that, hopefully that will provide us with some further information to help inform our policy in this area in future.

And then, just on the rates and bands, the devolution of powers to vary income tax thresholds would prove an additional policy tool, but I think that it would be very difficult to do so without the full devolution of all income tax on non-savings, non-dividend income, and that would be a step that the Welsh Government's devolved tax responsibilities would take, but it would lead to a very, very big change and much greater exposure to the relative tax-base growth risk within Wales and the rest of the UK. So, I think that this is something that we'll discuss in a lot more detail tomorrow, but again, whenever we're talking about the further devolution of tax powers, we have to do so in the context of balancing the risk and the reward, but I look forward to tomorrow's debate on that.

Finally, just thank you to everybody for their contributions this afternoon. I know all of my colleagues will be responding to those committee reports, but also giving some thought and reflection to the important points raised this afternoon.