Deputy Presiding Officer, the Member opposite both intervenes and answers her own intervention. There hardly seems any point in me allowing that to happen. But, I will say to her that I don't think that this Parliament needs lectures from the Conservatives on economic management. I really don't think we need that today. [Interruption.] Well, if you wish to stand—I hear the Member from Aberconwy—who supported Liz Truss, of course—is telling us that we've got some things to learn. I'd be happy to give way to her as well, if she wants to intervene on this matter—. She doesn't; of course she doesn't.

But it's important, Deputy Presiding Officer, that we have a debate on the budget and not just the spending plan, because one of the concerns I have about the debates that we have, and the processes we follow in this place, is that every Member who stands up wants to spend more money in different places, and what we don't do is debate and discuss sufficiently and in sufficient depth how we raise that money. We've had conversations about our tax base; I have serious concerns about how we're able to raise funds in the future. But we also need to have a conversation about the balance of taxation. Now, I hear what's being said about taxation rates, and I support an increase in taxation rates, as it happens, and I support it for ideological as well as practical reasons. I believe in the public sphere; I believe in public responsibility; I believe that the public collectively can do more together for our communities than we can do individually as single individuals and therefore, I believe in taxation in the same way as my friend Mike Hedges does—who I seem to be quoting almost as often as Mark Isherwood quotes himself. [Laughter.]

And I hope that we will be able to look hard at taxation rates in the future, but also to ensure that, in doing so, we ensure that money goes where it is needed. Because one of the concerns that I have, if we do not have sufficient funds available in the public sphere, is that those people who will be most dearly affected, most harshly affected, by reductions, are the poorest people, whether those people live in poor communities or live in relatively wealthy communities, because when you cut public services, the people who suffer disproportionately are people who rely on public services to a greater degree, and that is almost always the poorest people in our society.

And at the same time, if we move taxation or the weight of taxation from a progressive taxation such as income tax to a regressive taxation such as council tax, what happens again is that poor people pay proportionately more, and poor people who live in poorer areas pay proportionately more again, and those local authorities who represent poorer areas are less able to fund services, which again hits poorer people harder and more harshly than those people who are relatively well off.

I won't test your patience any more, Deputy Presiding Officer, but I will say this: what I hope we'll be able to do is have a debate on the future of the Welsh budget that is a richer debate in the future, that enables us to actually debate a budget and not just a spending plan. And I will commend the Welsh Government in closing, because the level of information and analysis that we get from the Welsh Government today is far greater and far more important to our debates than it was, say, a decade ago. And I think that we should recognise the work that the Welsh Government is doing on informing and enabling us to have the sort of debate that we need to have. But I hope that, as we move through this budget round and into next year's budget round, we will be able to collectively agree that we need to have a different sort of debate and a debate that is a far more fundamental debate about how we raise and spend money on behalf of the people of this country.