National Assembly for Wales

I call the National Assembly to order.

The first item on our agenda this afternoon is questions to the First Minister, and the first question is from Llyr Gruffydd.

Whilst decisions on branch closures are commercial matters for the banks, we recognise the negative impact that closures can have on local businesses. We welcome the recent review by Professor Griggs, which made recommendations to improve the way in which banks engage with communities.

Thank you for that response. We know, of course, that the Federation of Small Businesses report in October demonstrated the clear impact that it has on small businesses—for example, businesses having to close earlier and losing business because they have to travel further to bank their money. The British Bankers Association has also clearly demonstrated that loans to companies in areas where banks have closed fall substantially. You referred to the report in your response, so can you expand upon what you as a Government are going to do, and what discussions have you hade with the banks in order to look at alternative models of retaining services in some of these towns that have lost their branches?

One of the things we’ve done, of course, is to ensure that funding is available to post offices, particularly in rural areas, so that they can ensure that the services currently provided by banks are maintained by them—for example, paying in cheques, withdrawing money, and so on. But, what I would tell the banks is that it’s very important to ensure that, where businesses do use the banks at the moment in order to cash their takings, those resources should be available in future to allow them to do that, be that in a post office or through some alternative method that is convenient for those businesses.

In the past few months, two major banks have closed branches in Delyn—HSBC in Flint and Barclays in Holywell, with NatWest now being the latest to announce they’re closing a branch in Holywell as well. Whilst I recognise the steps these banks have taken to ensure that personal banking customers can access their accounts within the post office, in many areas, the future of these post offices are far from certain as well. On Friday last week, I was discussing this in Sweeney Ted’s Barbers in Holywell—and I can confirm people have only walked out with their hair cut—with regard to the problems created by this other bank closure and the specific impact perhaps on rural communities and those businesses that have to travel further with substantial amounts of money. So, I’m sure, you, First Minister, share my concern, and other Members, of the impact of these branch closures, and I’d like to ask what Welsh Government advice and support is available for small businesses in town centres that are impacted by such closures.

Well, it comes down to ensuring that the post office is able to deliver the kind of banking services that businesses would expect. The nature of banking has changed over the years. Fewer and fewer people visit banks. What is absolutely crucial is that people have the facility to withdraw cash, that people have the facility to deposit cheques and cash into a financial institution and also, of course, that small businesses are able to deposit cash at the end of the day when their businesses close. It’s hugely important that where banks leave communities, the post office is able to do that, therefore providing a continuity of service. And that’s why, of course, we’ve provided financial support to post offices over the years, to make sure that communities do have their post offices that can deliver a wide range of services.

First Minister, you may be aware that Lloyds Bank is proposing to close three branches in my constituency. Presiding Officer, I should declare an interest in this question as a former employee of Lloyds Bank. Not only are these closures in my constituency totally out of keeping with the numbers closing at a UK level, but the branches are crucial to many people who live in and around those communities and their closure would have a destructive impact. I accept that this is a commercial matter for the bank, but, following on from previous questions, what specific support can the Welsh Government provide to these communities, and what can the Welsh Government do to mitigate the negative impacts that these branch closures will have on communities?

I understand that Newport, Fishguard and Milford Haven have plans to close branches. What’s vitally important is that those services that are available now through the banks are available in an alternative method, and that means working through the post office to ensure that those services are available there. That will ensure that the services are available for local people and will ensure more work and business for the post offices, helping to make the post officer sustainable. However, what we don’t want to see happening—and this is something that we have ensured has not happened in rural areas in the past—is post offices closing and services wiped out completely from communities. That is something that we don’t wish to see and it’s why we’ve been supporting them financially.

Yes. It enables Welsh Ministers to revoke a development plan, if requested to do so by a local authority.

Okay. Thanks, First Minister. Well, last week, you described this as a nonsense; it clearly isn’t. So, first of all, will you accept that you were wrong last week? And I’ll re-pose the question that I asked last week: will you support, in this Chamber, saving Cardiff greenfield sites by voting to revoke the LDP?

Well, those are matters for Cardiff council. Unfortunately, he didn’t listen to my answer. Last week, he said that the Assembly had the power to revoke local development plans. That is not true; it’s Welsh Ministers who have that power. In the original legislation, in 2004, the Assembly was mentioned, but, of course, those powers were transferred to the Executive after the Government of Wales Act 2006. So, again, as I said, there is no vote on the floor of this Assembly. It’s a matter for a local authority to make an application to revoke its local development plan, and it’s then for Welsh Ministers to consider and not the National Assembly itself.

First Minister, one of the problems with local development plans is that local authorities are constrained by the guidance issued by you and your Cabinet colleagues. And the big problem we’ve got up in Conwy and Denbighshire—areas that I represent—is that the requirements to create lots of new housing are completely unsustainable in terms of the local infrastructure that is there. What are you doing to improve your guidance on the infrastructure that is going to be required, to ensure that there are GP services, schools and roads, and other community services, available to those areas of new development that are going to be created?

Well, local authorities are responsible for that and there are tools available for them, of course. Section 106 enables them to look for community gain. They are able to see infrastructure develop, whether that’s buildings such as schools or roads, via section 106. The community infrastructure levy, of course—soon to be devolved—is another way in which benefit can be drawn to a local community. It depends on how clever a local authority is willing to be. But it should never be the case that a major development takes place without any contribution by the developers to infrastructure, and that is something we would encourage local authorities to do.

We now move to questions from party leaders. The leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Lywydd. First Minister, Labour has led the Welsh Government for 17 years. Do you take responsibility for today’s Programme for International Student Assessment results?

Well, the PISA results have seen some improvements in some areas but disappointment in others. And, from our perspective, we want to see the journey continue, because, if you believe the PISA tests are important—and I do believe they are important—then you have to recognise that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development itself has said that we are doing the right things, and we are on the right journey. So, it’s a matter of making sure we continue with what we have been doing. Now, those are not my words—those are the words of the OECD. Nobody can be complacent and nobody can accept the situation as it is. We’ve seen some improvements but not enough. It’s a matter now of staying the course, as the OECD has advised us to do.

Well, that sounds pretty complacent to me, First Minister. And I think it says quite a lot that you won’t take responsibility for the results that we’ve seen today. Now, the Labour Government has predicted improvement. We’ve heard it all before. Last year, your education Minister said a huge amount has happened since the disappointing 2012 test results. He also said,

‘I would anticipate, and I would hope for palpable improvement’.

So, Labour has promised improvement, and you’ve yet to deliver. First Minister, you yourself admitted that you’d taken your eye off the ball when it comes to education. And the result is that, today, Welsh scores for reading are worse than a decade ago, Welsh scores for maths are worse than a decade ago, and Welsh scores for science are worse than a decade ago. Pupils, parents, teachers deserve the improvement that you said would happen. First Minister, when will we see improvement? And, if you can answer that question, can you also tell us, how can we believe you?

Look at the GCSE results and you will see that those results have improved greatly since 2010, an improvement of nearly 10 per cent in terms of those getting the right grades at GCSE. They are encouraging. We’ve seen improvement in maths performance, but disappointment with reading and with science. So, we are seeing the gap closing. We’re confident that that gap will continue to close in the future, because we see the results such as GCSEs and A-Levels, which are providing us with the evidence that the education system is moving in the right direction. But, as I say, the leader of the opposition doesn’t have to believe what I say, but if she accepts, as I said, that the PISA tests are important—and she does, of course—then she must accept what the OECD, who set those tests, is saying to us that we are moving in the right direction and we should stay on course. What they’re absolutely clear about is that we should not suddenly have wild reform or widespread reform now, but rather that the direction is correct. If she has other alternatives that she wants to put forward, that’s a matter for her, but we listen to the OECD. We see that there is great room for improvement, we accept that, but we do listen to what the OECD says in terms of them saying to us that we are on the right track.

First Minister, you are the Government. You are the ones who have promised improvement. The reason that I ask you about those improvements is that you’ve got a record of moving the goalposts on this. You are the ones who have chosen to fully participate in PISA and to use it as a credible benchmark. In October 2014, the target of reaching the top 20 in the world by 2016 was dropped. Labour brought in a new target at that point, to reach the average of 500 points for reading, maths and science by 2021. Can you tell us now: are you still committed to that, or are you going to move the goalposts again?

I am confident that, when the next PISA results come, we will see more improvement. The reason why I say that is because I mention the GCSE and A-level results. We’re seeing the first of that improvement in maths. We’re seeing the gap closing in areas such as reading and in science. But it’s not good enough—not good enough. There’s still work to be done.

We do know that, in other countries where improvements were effected, those improvements do take years. Improvements cannot be turned round within three years. Yes, of course we take responsibility. We were the Government who actually went into PISA in the first place. We must accept that PISA is a way in which the education system of Wales will be measured. There is more work to be done. The education Secretary will be outlining that in more detail when she makes her statement. We are seeing improvements in some areas, but, no, things are not as they should be, and we’ll never be content. We’ll always want to see improvement in the Welsh education system, and that’s exactly what we wish to see and we will do.

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, if I can take forward the points on PISA again, it was notable in your responses to the leader of Plaid Cymru that not one backbencher behind you had the wit to listen to you. All of them were looking at their computers, and rightly so. The Labour Party needs to be embarrassed by today’s results, after 17 years of leading education here in Wales. That is a damning indictment—a damning indictment—of your failures, First Minister, and the Labour Party’s ability to lead education here in Wales.

When you took office as First Minister nearly seven years ago—I think the anniversary is this Saturday—you rightly pointed out that education was a cornerstone of your policy positioning as First Minister, and you rightly point to the proud heritage that you have of being the son of two teachers. Now, you also pointed out that education was the key to unlocking success for the Welsh economy. Why on earth hasn’t that key turned to the benefit of pupils in Wales when you look at the PISA results today?

Well, I’ve already given detailed answers to the leader of Plaid Cymru and accepted that there is no room for complacency and there is much room for improvement. But I have to say, when I went to school in the 1980s, the schools were awful. The buildings were awful. We had no library—it was falling apart. The buildings—if the windows were broken, they remained broken. The standard of teaching was good, and we were lucky to have good teachers. But that is the reality of it for those of us who went to a comprehensive and those of us who remember it as it was under the Tories.

Now, let’s examine his party’s education policy, if indeed—[Interruption.]

Okay, let’s quieten down and let the First Minister continue.

Let’s examine his party’s education policy, if indeed there is one. Hands up anybody who knows what the Tory education policy is, beyond cutting funding for schools. They stood on the basis of cutting education funding by 20 per cent. They’re still saying that schools funding should be cut. Now, we accept that there is work to do when it comes to improving education. What we will never accept is that schools should have less money, which is exactly what he advocates.

For goodness’ sake, First Minister, show some humility—for goodness’ sake. Referring back to the 1980s, referring to policies—you’re in Government. You’re the First Minister. The Labour Party have been in Government since 1999. You’ve written off a generation. Are you prepared to write off another generation? It’s your own education Secretaries who have come to this Chamber time and time again—. Huw Lewis, back in 2013, said,

‘I expect to see the impact of our reforms reflected in the next set of results’.

These are the set of results that we’re looking at today. What has happened in reading? What has happened in science? And we’re still behind the figures in maths from 2006. So, why can we not unreasonably expect you to show some leadership? You have a new mandate. I congratulate you on that mandate. But what we can’t put up with is more of the same so we write off another generation. Give us some vision, First Minister. You’ve got the keys, unlock the door.

The clanging of an empty vessel, I have to say. But he asks the question about vision. Let me say to him, let me repeat to him what I said to the leader of Plaid Cymru, and it’s this: the OECD have said the last thing we should be doing is having a wholesale change in education policy. That’s exactly what they’ve said. They have said we are on the right track. What he is advocating is to throw everything up into the air and have complete disruption, which might be justified if the OECD said to us that we’re on the wrong track—he might well be right—but that’s not what they say. What the OECD have said is, ‘You are moving in the right direction, stick at it.’ And that’s exactly what we mean to do. We are seeing those improvements. We’ve seen it in maths, we are seeing it in GCSEs and A-levels, and we will continue to see it in the years to come.

Well, with respect, you just need to look at what’s gone on in Scotland with the results today when you’re looking at some of the changes that have gone on in other parts of the United Kingdom. But I’m holding you to account about the vision that you obviously do not have for education in the future. I’ve quoted Huw Lewis, who was the previous Cabinet Secretary. Someone we do miss from this Chamber is dear old Leighton Andrews from the Rhondda—and I congratulate the Member for the Rhondda he lost his seat to—but, ultimately, at least he had a go. And he said to us in 2010 that honesty, leadership and a new approach to accountability was what was required. He wanted, by this stage in the cycle—not two years ago, but in 2010—for the Welsh Government to have got Wales into the top 20. Now, that was dropped, as we heard earlier from questioning, and you wanted to hit the 500 mark. Now, you said that you were confident that you were going to hit the 500 mark next time around, but we haven’t heard anything to give us confidence that we won’t be in the same place in three years’ time from you today.

Why on earth can you not give us some hard and fast commitments here today about where we will be in three years’ time when PISA does its next set of tests, so that at least we can mark the scorecard then, First Minister, and actually not have the same old excuses coming out from Cabinet Secretaries and the First Minister standing here blaming everyone else and not taking a long hard look in the mirror and wondering why it’s all gone wrong?

As I say to the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, he cannot say on the one hand that the PISA tests are robust—and I agree with him on that—but on the other hand say that the OECD advice that we’ve had should be ignored, which is what he’s saying. [Interruption.] He is saying exactly that. The OECD have said that we are on the right track and we should continue on the track that we’re on. He cannot ignore that and pretend that hasn’t been said, because it has.

I’ve listened carefully to him and his party over the years in terms of their policies. I know nothing about what their education policy is, beyond cutting schools’ funding and having a dalliance with grammar schools, which is exactly what the OECD have said shouldn’t happen. So, yes, it is uncomfortable reading. I don’t deny it. It is a sign that we can never be complacent. I agree it is a sign that there is still work to be done. Although there are some signs of improvement, it’s not good enough. There’s still more to do. What we will not do, however, is panic and throw everything up in the air when we know that the advice that we have had says that we should stay on the track that we are on. That is what the OECD have said.

Now, if he’s prepared to disagree with the OECD and chuck their advice in the bin, when they’re the very people who set these tests up, then that is a matter for him. But it’s not something that we will do as a Government. We will continue to see improvements in GCSEs, improvements in A-levels and a move towards better figures for PISA next time around.

Leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Lywydd. Since last Tuesday, I’ve had the advantage of reading the Government’s printed case in the Supreme Court case, which is being heard today. And apart from what it says at the beginning that the result of the referendum to leave the EU should be respected, it completely ignores the fact that the British people, by majority, gave the Government a mandate to trigger article 50. That mandate from the British people includes 26 of the 29 seats that Labour won in the election in May for this Assembly. Although the fine words at the start of this case say that the referendum result should be respected, the rest of the Government’s case is an obstacle in the way of respecting that result.

Well, I am not the Supreme Court justice and he, thank the Lord, is not a lawyer. So, we’ll have to wait and see whether his submissions are correct or whether those of the Welsh Government are correct.

Well, the First Minister is misinformed, because I am a member of the Bar, as is he. But that’s not the first time that the First Minister has displayed his ignorance in this Chamber. [Interruption.] But in the last 10 years, the Parliament at Westminster—[Interruption.] The Parliament at Westminster—

Allow the Member to be heard, please. I’d like to hear the question.

In the last 10 years, the Parliament at Westminster has passed two very important Acts to restrict the Government’s powers in respect of the prerogative in relation to European Union legislation—the 2008 European Union (Amendment) Act, and the 2011 European Union Act, which provides, in certain circumstances, that the Government should not take any decisions without a resolution or an Act of the House of Commons, or an Act of Parliament, or a referendum. In none of those Acts does it refer to article 50. Therefore, the prerogative powers of the Crown were not intended to be restricted by Parliament in this respect, and the Welsh Government’s attempt to frustrate the expressed wish of the British people in a referendum where 17.5 million voted to leave the EU, is absolutely disgraceful.

Before the First Minister answers, could I tell all Cabinet Secretaries, especially the one I’m looking at, that the First Minister does not need any support from the Cabinet bench—or I don’t think he needs any support. First Minister.

Well, unless the Member is registered as a practising barrister, he’s not a lawyer. I’m not, and nor is he. I haven’t been in court since 2000—January 2000. But there we are. But he’s making a case that he should make to the Supreme Court, not to me—and we shall wait and see what the Supreme Court does. But I did notice that his former party leader—he of the misspelling of a constituency yesterday, of course, famously, on the tv—threatened to lead a march of 100,00 people to the Supreme Court yesterday. That didn’t happen, and rightly so, because it’s only right that judges should be able to make up their own minds without ridiculous pressure being applied on them by the media and by politicians.

This is the most important constitutional case, as the Counsel General has put it to me, since Charles I, although hopefully without the same outcome for anybody involved. There are important issues here—not just of prerogative, but in terms of what this means for the Welsh and Scottish legislatures, and for Northern Ireland, particularly with the border issues there. And these are issues that must be resolved as a matter of law. This is not something that’s going to stop the referendum result from happening—that clearly will happen, but it has to be done, surely, in a lawful way.

Yes, I entirely agree. But the Welsh Government has intervened in this Supreme Court case in order to attempt to frustrate the wishes of the British people as freely expressed in a referendum. Otherwise, there would be no point in intervening in the case in the first place. The First Minister has said many times that Labour will respect the result of the referendum, and therefore Labour MPs will not, or ought not to be whipped to vote against triggering article 50. Well, if Labour MPs are not to vote against article 50, what on earth is the point of the case in the first place?

Well, I’m not actually the leader of the opposition at Westminster. The principle is this—we have taken the view that there are issues regarding article 50 that would affect the powers of this place. And as a result, it’s hugely important, therefore, that the situation of the people of Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland is examined so that we know, constitutionally, what the process should be. We would not accept a situation where the prerogative would be used to reduce the powers of this Assembly, and that’s why it’s important that the Supreme Court actually examines these issue to make sure that what is done is done, but is done legally, surely. Brexit was not a vote about ignoring courts or the law. We were told it was about empowering the UK Parliament, except when it’s inconvenient. Now, let the Supreme Court do its work, let it examine these issues in detail, and then we will have the answer that is needed before the process then moves on, as inevitably it will.

They’re described in our climate change strategy. We are now developing further interventions that work towards our long-term target of an 80 per cent emissions reduction by 2050, while maximising economic, social and cultural benefits to Wales.

Seven years ago, First Minister, the One Wales Government laid out plans to achieve self-sufficiency with energy generation within 20 years. Now, one third of that time frame has already passed, and you’re still way off target, lagging way behind Scotland when it comes to generating energy from renewable sources. According to an energy trends report from September of this year, Scotland generates four times more renewable energy than we do here in Wales. First Minister, what has happened to your ambition on renewable energy and tackling climate change? Are you still aiming for that self-sufficiency?

Yes, the Scots have an advantage over us, which will no longer be there in 2018, where they control the consenting process of major energy projects, which we didn’t, and that was a major difficulty for us. Nothing over 50 MW on land, and nothing over 1 MW in the sea. In the North sea, of course, the Scots have been successful in terms of developing offshore wind in a way that we had no control over. So, we were not able to develop—even though we have places like Gwynt y Môr—renewable energy in the way that we would want to. But with 2018, and the new powers that will come to this place, that will then give us the opportunity to catch up with Scotland. Scotland, indeed, were further ahead than us because of the powers that they inherited back in 1999, including the powers they actually had over the grid, which is not something that we had, but will have in the future.

I note from the First Minister’s response that he will regard our capacity to generate green energy from the sea as a significant asset in tackling climate change for Wales as a tidal nation. As we await the decision of the Westminster Government in relation to the Swansea bay tidal lagoon, and welcome the first ever large-scale tidal energy farm off the coast of the Orkneys, does he join me in hoping that the remaining regulatory steps to be taken in Wales to proceed with the lagoon can be taken quickly so that we preserve our first-mover advantage? And will he agree to keep under review the 2011 marine renewable energy framework to make sure it keeps pace with technological and other change in the sector?

Absolutely, we’re well placed to take advantage of tidal energy particularly. We know that the Swansea bay tidal lagoon could create an estimated 1,900 jobs during construction and beyond. It is hugely important now that the UK Government makes that step of ensuring that what will be an energy source that will last 100 years or more will actually come into being and we can generate more energy more cheaply over 100 years, in terms of looking at it in that way, but also, of course, in a much cleaner and greener way.

Last week it was announced that Swansea is No. 13 in a list of the UK’s most congested towns and cities, and that apparently results in a drop in the city’s productivity, as well as polluting the air. Three years ago, Swansea council installed their nowcaster system to monitor air pollution levels, identify poor air quality and redirect traffic. It’s still not ready, despite the Welsh Government committing £100,000 of its money to that system. In aiming to tackle climate change, how will you collect carbon emissions data, how will you use those data and then how will you take to task any partners that you rely upon to help you get those data if they don’t come up with the goods?

The data were collected via a number of organisations, with Natural Resources Wales of course being one of them, so that we’re able to understand what the particulate levels are in some parts of Wales—not just the PM10s but the PM2.5s. We know that if traffic is idling, then that creates worse air quality—Brynglas tunnels is an example of that. We know that Swansea has challenges in the sense that its rail network disappeared pretty much in the 1960s and was never as integrated as that of Cardiff. Nevertheless, there are plans going forward now for a Swansea bay metro, which will do much in terms of enabling people to get out of their cars and therefore improve air quality.

Would the First Minister agree that, rather than spending tens of millions of pounds on wind turbines—which are said to be only around 35 per cent efficient, environmentally damaging and cost the very poorest in the country in increased energy costs, whilst, incidentally, putting large amounts of money into wealthy landowners’ pockets—it would be better to spend the money on home improvements, such as insulation, double-glazing and new boiler installation, which would not only be more efficient at cutting environmental pollution, but would also positively benefit the poor in society?

That was a cheap shot at the leader of the Welsh Conservatives I thought. [Laughter.] The Member is not aware, I know, but it is Christmas after all. The reality is that there’s no point in simply providing people with the means to make their homes more energy efficient. Yes, that’s important, but it’s not enough in and of itself. It’s hugely important that we continue to access energy reserves that have a mixture of energy. The Member is right to say that you can’t have everything done by wind power, but they certainly have a role to play, and they do in many, many economies around the world. He mentions being environmentally damaging—in coal-fired power stations, and the coal that is won to feed them, that is done in a very environmentally damaging way. Communities who live next door to opencast sites have something very strong to say about that. The reality is that everybody wants the lights to come on. That means that we have to have means of generating power. Wind is free. The infrastructure has to be built, that’s true. The tide will always be there as long as the moon is there. It makes absolute sense to me to harness these sources of powers that are not just clean and green, but actually, in the longer term, much cheaper.

Yes. Our community cohesion strategy was launched in 2009 and was recently updated. Its delivery is supported across Wales by eight regional community cohesion co-ordinators, based in local authorities and funding to continue this work in 2017-18 was approved last month by the Cabinet Secretary.

I thank the First Minister for that response. Last week, the Member of Parliament for Aberavon said that we must move away from multiculturalism and towards assimilation, and that we must stand for one group: the British people. Will the First Minister condemn these comments in no uncertain terms, and will he reassure this Assembly that such views are not representative of Welsh Government policy, and will he join me in celebrating the rich diversity of this country?

I didn’t hear the comments, if I’m honest, but what I can say is that there has never been an occasion ever in the history of this island where there’s been one culture, ever. It’s always been a multicultural island, whether it’s in terms of religion, whether it’s in terms of linguistic diversity, whether it’s in terms of the colour of people’s skin. The reality is that there have been people with black skin on these islands since the third century; it’s a myth to think that this is something new. It’s always been the case that Britain has been multicultural, and that is something we should celebrate, not be afraid of.

In the Welsh Government’s community cohesion national delivery plan 2016-17, the then Minister, Lesley Griffiths, for communities and tackling poverty stated:

‘We are moving to a new climate where a Wales of Cohesive Communities is enshrined in the national goals through our Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. This will ensure cohesion remains at the heart of how Public Bodies deliver policies and services in the future.’

Will the First Minister outline how the Welsh Government currently sees the state of community cohesion in Wales, and what future actions can be taken to enhance it further?

I refer the Member again to the answer I gave earlier in terms of the community cohesion plan and, of course, the work of the regional co-ordinators in making sure that plan moves ahead. We know that there have been challenges in the aftermath of Brexit where, in some communities, there has been an increase in hate crime. That is something I hope is temporary and not something, clearly, that provides us with a worrying trend for the future. We know that cohesive communities are happier communities. When people are not in conflict with each other, then their lives are better as a result of it, and we’ll continue to make sure that what we do in terms of promoting community cohesion helps to raise people’s sense of well-being, falling in line as well, of course, with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

Although the future generations commissioner has said that the aim is to make public bodies think more about the long term, work better with people, with communities and each other, and seek to prevent problems occurring and tackle common issues by taking a more joined-up approach, something also reflected in duties required under the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, too many local authorities are still interpreting this as a hierarchical, ‘we decide first and then consult’ requirement. How will you, therefore, finally, work with the brilliant all-Wales co-production network for Wales, which is on the ground delivering projects on this basis, enabling professionals and citizens to share power and work together in equal partnership? And also, one of the organisations, Oxfam Cymru, specifically has called on your Government to embed the sustainable livelihoods approach in all policy and service delivery in Wales, helping people identify their own strengths in order to tackle root problems preventing them and their communities from reaching their potential.

Community cohesion can’t be imposed. It has to grow organically from grass roots in order for it to be sustainable and robust, and so I would expect local authorities to work in genuine partnership with organisations that have experience of delivering on the ground in order to make sure that cohesion is robust within the communities that local authorities serve.

Agriculture is a vital industry and I would say a vital culture to Wales in terms of the food it produces, the economic contribution it makes and the wider public benefit it delivers. Following the referendum, we’ve been actively engaging with stakeholders on the vision for the future for this area.

Thank you, First Minister, I would agree that agriculture is often as much a culture as it is an industry, and it maintains our culture. But it is clear now that some who are opposed to devolution, or anti-devolutionists, are using the opportunity that the decision to leave the European Union is giving as a way of unlocking, through the back door, the devolution process that has provided powers for agriculture and the environment to us here in the Assembly. Of course, the leader of the Conservatives here in the Chamber, unfortunately, is one of those people. Would you therefore, First Minister, join with Plaid Cymru, and with anyone else in this Chamber who wishes to do this, in a cross-party campaign with rural organisations and the farming unions to ensure that whatever happens in the wake of leaving the European Union that we wouldn’t lose a single power for agriculture or rural Wales?

I’ve said this from the very beginning, of course, that agriculture is devolved. This is not an opportunity to take away powers from the people of Wales; not at all. There may be a case for considering for some issues, as I’ve said before, such as animal welfare, having a pan-Britain policy, but only through agreement, and not by Westminster imposing it and saying, ‘You won’t have any choice on it.’ So, it’s consensus that is important here and nothing else. It may be worth talking about some kind of loose and general framework, but it is discussion and agreement that are all important. This is not an opportunity to take away powers from the farmers of Wales, the Government of Wales or the people of Wales.

You’ll no doubt be aware, First Minister, that there are administration issues for farmers who have land that straddles the Welsh-English border in terms of the basic payment scheme that, each year, lead to payments being delayed. European rules concerning cross-border claimants require each single payment agency in England and Wales to have a separate agency. Do you feel that, as a result of the UK leaving the EU, there is an opportunity here to find a system that can resolve the issue because, clearly, this is a significant issue for many farmers in Montgomeryshire?

This would mean, of course, the Welsh Government taking over payments for farmers in England, because we are far superior as a payments agency and have been for many, many years in terms of payment and in terms of speed of payment, and the last thing Welsh farmers, I suspect, would want would be to see the Rural Payments Agency delivering farming subsidies in Wales. There have been issues over cross-border farms; he is right. The reason for that is because the RPA have been slow in delivering data to us. There are better ways of doing things, that much is true, but I think it would send a chill down the spine of most Welsh farmers if they found they would have to face the same delays as their colleagues have faced in England.

Will the First Minister agree with me that leaving the European Union gives us a great opportunity in Wales to fashion agricultural policy according to our own needs? UKIP will play its full part in helping the Welsh Government to develop such a policy, which makes it all the more incomprehensible that the Government should be pursuing the line in the Supreme Court today that the powers of this Assembly are in some way going to be diminished. As a result of leaving the EU, we’ll get more power in the Assembly, not less. This is something that we should be looking forward to and welcoming, not trying to frustrate and prevent.

That’s not the view of the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, of course. Whether he is ploughing his own furrow on that, to use a term he’ll be familiar with, or whether he is speaking as a kind of proxy for the UK Government, only he knows, but he has said that he thinks this is an opportunity to remove powers from the people of Wales and, indeed, from the Welsh Government—a view that is not shared by the farming unions. He’s been pretty much hoisted by his own petard in that regard.

The one issue, and the farming unions identified this correctly this morning, that we need to get absolutely right is access to the single market. They know full well how much of a disaster it would be if they cannot sell in that market on the same terms. The difficulty is that when it comes to free trade agreements, agriculture is almost always omitted. Countries are very protective of their agriculture. We know that World Trade Organization rules if they were imposed on agriculture would mean a 70 per cent tariff on Welsh lamb going into Europe. Welsh farming cannot withstand that kind of tariff. And so, I take him at his word, but I have to say to him that what is absolutely vital for—. Well, there are two things that are vital for the future of Welsh farming: certainty over subsidies post 2020 and a fair division of the money—not a Barnett share, otherwise we’d be 75 per cent down from where we are now; and, secondly, the ability to sell in Welsh farming’s major market, which is the European Union. So, any kind of barrier, if Welsh farmers face that barrier in terms of selling to Europe, would be—and I choose my word quite deliberately here—disastrous for Welsh farming, which is why full and unfettered access to the single market has to be the defining principle for any UK Government in its negotiations with the EU.

Yes. The phase 2 project of the metro has been estimated at £734 million and the final cost will be determined during procurement negotiations. That funding does include match funding from the European regional development fund, which we expect the UK Government to honour in terms of providing this funding.

Yes. Thanks, First Minister. I’m glad you referred to the pledge by the UK Government to match the funding. Paul Maynard, the UK’s transport Minister, specifically advised the Welsh Government to apply for the ERDF funding, so would you agree that the Brexit vote is not necessarily any impediment to going ahead with the south Wales metro project?

Not to going ahead with it, but in terms of its scope, yes, potentially it will reduce its scope. If the European funding element of £125 million is not made up by the UK Government, then clearly the metro cannot go ahead at the same speed and in terms of the same ambition as it otherwise would have done. So, yes, there is a £125 million gap that the UK Government has to make up, otherwise the metro project cannot be as ambitious as we would want it to be, although, clearly, it can move forward but not in quite the way that we would have wanted.

Ambulance performance across Wales since the introduction of the clinical response model pilot has been extremely positive, exceeding the target in every month in the first year—the national target, that is—in every month in the first year of the pilot.

I welcome that news, and it is extremely positive. It’s vitally important to my constituents because the response time for those that are life-threatening issues makes, clearly, a major difference to their lives, but also to their families as well, knowing that they have that reassurance that an ambulance, on a red call, will be there in due time.

It’s noticeable, however, that we still have this ongoing problem in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with the wastage of time of ambulances at A&E units. It’s not unique to Wales and it’s been long and enduring. I think the same freedom of information request suggested that over 500,000 hours within the UK were actually wasted. Of course, these are ambulances that could be out doing the good work that they need to do very efficiently. I wonder what you can say in terms of how we address this issue, not only now as the winter pressures also come on top of us, but in years to come as well. There are tremendous inroads that we’ve done into the red-call response time, but how do we actually deal with those wasted hours that are sitting there outside A&E? It’s not just a Wales issue. How do we do this right across all the different nations as well?

There are several ways of doing it. One is to make sure that people are properly assessed when they arrive in terms of where they go for treatment, making sure that ambulances are able to get away as quickly as possible. That means focusing A&E in particular centres across Wales. We’re able to provide a certain degree of specialisation—that’s been difficult—but nevertheless we know that it provides people with a better outcome. I would say that we see the improvement in terms of ambulance waiting times at A&E through the response times to the most immediately life-threatening calls. The fact that more and more of these calls are being got to within the time allocated is a sign that ambulances are getting away more quickly as a general rule from A&E departments. Yes, there will be some pressures now and again on some dates, where a larger number of people unexpectedly do come through. But he’s right, if you look at the most immediately life-threatening calls, response time in Northern Ireland 51.2 per cent; in England around about 65 per cent; Scotland 66.4 per cent; and Wales 79.5 per cent. That’s a tribute to the paramedics that we have in Wales and indeed the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust.

We are working to support the farming industry in Pembrokeshire, as in all parts of Wales, to ensure that the industry can become more profitable, sustainable and resilient.

First Minister, farmers in Pembrokeshire are hugely concerned about your Government’s proposal to introduce nitrate-vulnerable zones in Wales because it will be financially challenging for farmers to comply with any new regulations that are proposed in the consultation. So, considering your comments in July that it’s up to the Welsh Government now to decide which laws should be retained and which shouldn’t be retained following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, could you explain why the Welsh Government has proceeded with this consultation to introduce nitrate-vulnerable zones, which is as a result of a European directive, because the introduction of such regulations will certainly leave farmers in my constituency at a huge disadvantage?

Nitrates are a problem in some parts of Wales. There is no avoiding that, and we have to deal with this because of the negative impact it has on the environment. It is very important to listen; we understand that. The consultation is open until Christmas, but a meeting was held between officials and also representatives of the farming unions and farmers in October to deal with these issues, and it was a very positive meeting. The farmers themselves wanted to ensure that they consider ways of ensuring fewer nitrates go into the water system, and they wanted to collaborate with each other and with the Government to ensure that that was the case.

Yes. Despite the £442 million additional capital, the capital budget will still be 21 per cent lower in 2019-20 than in 2009-10.

The Welsh Government has done its utmost to protect public services in the face of Tory cuts from Westminster, but continued austerity has inevitably meant that difficult choices have had to be made, and there has been a significant reduction in the budget for the community facilities and activities programme. I know that many community groups in Wales find this an invaluable source of funding and Cwmbran Centre for Young People in my constituency, which does a sterling job, has recently submitted a bid only to find that the future of the programme is in doubt. In the light of the additional capital moneys, will you discuss this with Cabinet colleagues with a view to ensuring that we can try and continue this invaluable lifeline for community groups in Wales?

Can I thank the Member, my colleague, for that question? This is one issue amongst many that we’re considering as a Government in terms of how we allocate new moneys. In terms of the community facilities programme, there has not been an evaluation yet—it’s still quite early in the life of the programme—but monitoring visits carried out to completed projects indicate that the facilities are well used and sustainable into the future. There are difficult choices as to what we do with future finances, and I think it’s probably fair to say that only the very best applications can expect to attract CFP funding in the future and we will see what can be made available during the course of discussions that we have in terms of dealing with any extra resources we get from the UK Government.

Thank you, First Minister.

I have accepted two urgent questions under Standing Order 12.66, and I call on Llyr Gruffydd to ask the first urgent question.

Yes. We’ve been working with Wrexham County Borough Council and other local authorities in north-east Wales for some time to help identify and support a sustainable local bus network. We’ll continue to work with them and with others, including Bus Users Cymru and Business Wales, to help to create circumstances in which a sustainable bus network can be achieved.

Well, thank you for your answer. I’m not sure that tells us much more in relation particularly to the services that are now going to be lost in a week or so’s time. After the shambles of the GHA Coaches situation over the summer, of course, the last thing we need is more uncertainty about the services over Christmas and the new year period. Now, I understand that a new tendering process is under way, but, apparently, with a new contract start date of 1 April 2017. So, could you tell us whether that means that there’ll be no services in the meantime and where that leaves passengers who need the services to get to work, to education, and to access essential services?

Surely, the revocation of these licences wouldn’t have been a surprise given the history around GHA Coaches, so where were due diligence and financial standing checks when the local authority issued the contract to RJ’s of Wem? Surely, this could have been foreseen, and does that not raise the question as to how they got the contract in the first place?

Yes, the Member will be aware of local controversy that accompanied the announcement of RJ’s of Wem’s contract with the council. Wrexham County Borough Council went into a contract with RJ’s in the knowledge that the directors were formerly overseeing GHA Coaches. Now, the loss of the operating licence means that Wrexham council will be responsible for assessing local circumstances and priorities, including any service that can be provided to those residents who will now be left without a service, potentially, for a period following 19 December, when the revoking of the licence will take effect. I can tell the Member today that I am currently considering offering local authorities in north Wales financial assistance, and I’ll be determining that over the coming days to assist with the pressures that not just Wrexham face, but also Flintshire and Denbighshire. I’ve also decided to provide funding for a dedicated bus resource within the local authorities to ensure that the sustainability of the bus network can be guaranteed.

In a statement in October, you told the Assembly that you were

‘surprised and saddened by the recent and sudden demise of three local bus companies’,

including GHA Coaches, providing services on school bus routes across north-east Wales as well as Cheshire and Shropshire. However, you were written to on your appointment in May—seven weeks before GHA Coaches shut—by a range of companies and organisations stating that they would be unable to sustain their services if grants continued to be received late, and that they were in danger of closing down because of the cash-flow problems that this was causing—of course, referring to the bus services support grant, which is also funding community transport schemes. The problem in Flintshire has been compounded by the council’s unique proposal to transfer bus services to the community, despite the excellent community transport providers there stating that they’re not bus companies and they’re not interested in providing community bus work. How, therefore, will you address these issues, not only because of the imminent and current problems, but the bigger problems coming down the road that will impact on community and wider community bus route users in terms of the continuity and advance payment of the bus services support grant, noting that we can’t wait for another review in the new year, this money needs to be in their bank accounts before the start of the next financial year?

I think the criticism specifically of Flintshire County Council was politically motivated, if I may say so, because there are other local authorities utilising GHA’s services. The fact of the matter is that Flintshire County Council—actually, unlike other local authorities—have retained a service support grant of over £1 million. As a consequence, they have been able to restore services in many parts of Flintshire. That said, I am currently considering additional resource for the local authorities in north-east Wales to be able to overcome what I hope to be short-term difficulties whilst powers that we require over bus services can be gathered, and for change to actually take place. I recognise that the Member has reflected the concerns of bus operators from earlier in the summer, but, actually, those concerns have been around since deregulation, which has been, quite frankly, a disaster.

In terms of the support that we offer local authorities, in spite of huge financial cuts to our budget, we have maintained, at £25 million, the level of support for local authorities for several years now. As I’ve said on a number of occasions, we would hope that local authorities would show a similar degree of commitment to bus services by maintaining the sort of support that Flintshire County Council has done. We will go on working with Bus Users Cymru, and with other organisations, as we lead into the new year and the bus summit that I have decided to host on 23 January in Wrexham.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.

I now call on Mark Isherwood to ask the second urgent question.

I haven’t actually got the wording, but will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement in relation to the announcement of a GP closure in Wrexham?

The Ruabon surgery has given notice to the health board that it will terminate its contract on 31 March 2017. The health board, which is responsible for the provision of healthcare services, has written to patients to assure them that the surgery will not be closing, and services will continue.

The Member may ask a supplementary in a moment. If a question is urgent, it should be asked in an urgent way, and I expect Members to be ready to ask urgent questions next time. But ask your supplementary.

Thank you for that, and I apologise. This surgery, the Ruabon Medical Centre, is only the latest to announce that it will be ending its NHS contract with the health board because it’s unable to fill two vacant doctor posts. Last month, it was the Rashmi practice in Colwyn Bay. Over the last year, we’ve seen the same in Prestatyn, Rhuddlan, Wrexham, Conwy, and the British Medical Association’s Dr Charlotte Jones, general practice committee chair, has said:

‘Surgeries handing back their contracts to the health board is a real time demonstration of how some general practices are at breaking point and see this as the only solution open to them.’

The north Wales local medical committee warned at a meeting in the Assembly in June 2014 that general practice in north Wales was facing crisis, with several practices unable to fill vacancies, and many GPs considering retirement. Early this year, GPs in north Wales wrote to the First Minister, accusing him of being out of touch with the reality of the challenges facing them. How, therefore, do you respond to the concern expressed by the Royal College of General Practitioners in the Assembly in June this year, that the multidisciplinary team model being introduced instead in north Wales by the health board is needed, but it’s based on an overseas model with a higher ratio of GPs to other disciplines, and that it will lose the holistic view and continuity provided by GPs, damaging the well-being of patients, and that the health board needed to step up in times of—should step up—shouldn’t wait for a crisis to step up? It should have stepped up well in advance, as should the Welsh Government, given the years of warnings it has received.

Thank you for the question. There are a number of practices that are in the direct management of health boards. It represents less than 5 per cent of the total number of GP practices, which is comparable with the situation in Scotland. There has been a small increase over the last year or two. We recognise there are very real challenges for the future of primary care, and we recognise that, alongside both the BMA and the royal college of GPs, there will need to be a change in the way that primary care is delivered in the future. That’s why we have a model of clusters, bringing together practices to support each other, to work with other members of the wider primary care team—pharmacists, therapists, and social care and other partners, too. We recognise there are significant challenges that are out of our hands. The pension changes, for example, are seeing a number of GPs think about leaving the practice earlier. That’s why we’re happy to work alongside our colleagues in primary care. It’s why we have a ministerial taskforce aimed directly at improving the offer for GPs within Wales as part of a wider team. It’s why I’ve had a very successful engagement with both those partners and the wider group of primary care professionals.

There is nothing complacent about this Government. We recognise that primary care needs to change and we want to work with partners to deliver that to make sure people receive high-quality primary care. It will be organised and delivered in a different way, but the main point is, it will be high-quality primary care to help people meet their healthcare needs, and, hopefully, to help more people avoid long-term health conditions in the future as well.

I note that patients have been contacted to put their minds at ease that the practice is not at risk of closure. But people are very, very uneasy, the length and breadth of Wales, as surgery after surgery hands back the keys or have their contracts ended. As in Ruabon, what we see in many other places is a failure to be able to recruit the adequate number of GPs to keep a practice going, and that’s why we need to face up to the crisis in training and recruitment and retention of doctors in primary care with much more urgency than is certainly currently the case. I’m not suggesting the Government is doing nothing about it, but it’s this urgency that we need to see much more evidence of.

What we’re seeing in Ruabon now is happening all too frequently in Betsi Cadwaladr. Previously, your Government has hinted that bringing GP services in-house isn’t a problem. You’re cool about that. This hasn’t been regarded as something that should be of huge concern. Some might see this as a sign that you’d be more than happy to get rid of the independent contractor model anyway. So, perhaps you’re not doing enough to help surgeries recruit until they can go in-house. I’ll leave you to comment on that. But, will you commission independent research examining what the impact on patients is when this happens? Because they are the most important ones in all this.

Thank you for the series of questions. I don’t accept your opening gambit that surgery after surgery are handing back the keys as if there is a widespread movement. More than 95 per cent of practices are still managing themselves. To suggest otherwise is to overplay it in a manner that does not get borne out by the facts. The overwhelming majority of primary care and GP services are delivered by the independent contractor model. For the future, the independent contractor model will continue to deliver the great majority of GP services. What we are saying, together with partners in general practice, and other parts of the healthcare world, is that we think there will be different models alongside the independent contractor model in the future. For example, in Brecon, we’ve seen a community interest company created by GP surgeries working together to help to deliver care in a different way. We see the federation model in Bridgend. We will probably see, as I said before, a smaller number of single-handed practices in the future, and more of a federation between different parts of general practice, but also with that wider primary care team. And it’s not for the Government to try and impose a single model across the whole primary care sector. It is for us to support them and work alongside them. Actually, the way that clusters are bringing people together has been really exciting and genuinely successful, and encourages people to share their problems, but also share answers too.

I think this is a time to recognise the challenges that exist, and this Government certainly does so. We’re having those conversations about what we could and should do, together with our partners right across primary care, to make sure that primary care has a fit and healthy future to continue serving the people of Wales—in a different way of working, yes, in the future, but to continue a high-quality healthcare service.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.

The next item on the agenda is the business statement and announcement, and I call on Jane Hutt.

I have no changes to report to this week’s business and business for the next three weeks is as shown on the business statement and announcement, found among the meeting papers available to Members electronically.

Andrew R.T. Davies.

Hello—thank you, Presiding Officer, sorry. I was in a world of my own then, I was. [Laughter.] That’s what comes from messing around with your computer.

Leader of the house, can we have three statements please? The first is around the Government’s negotiations with Ford Motor Company in relation to the engine plant in Bridgend. When the Minister responded to the urgent question, he did allude to the fact that he would be going to Detroit to speak with the headquarters management of Ford in America, who made the decision about reducing production at the Bridgend engine plant. In a written response I had back from him last week, he’s indicated that he has no plans in the foreseeable future to attend any meetings in relation to Ford’s international management team. I think this is a worrying concern, given the assertion that was given in response to the urgent question, and now there are no meetings planned. So, could we have a statement from the Cabinet Secretary to outline exactly how he is taking forward his negotiations to secure assurances around the long-term viability of the engine plant at Bridgend?

Also, could I ask for a statement around business rates? This term, that has occupied many Members’ postbags and many Members’ contributions in this Chamber. We have one week left before the Christmas recess. The First Minister, in fairness, has alluded in responses to this Chamber that there might be some flexibility in the transitional moneys that have been made available from the Welsh Government—and when I talk about flexibilities, I mean increasing that amount of transitional relief that could be available to businesses. It would be very, very welcome news that if, before this institution broke up for the Christmas recess, the Government could bring forward a statement to either confirm that it is going to make progress on this matter, or to say, ‘No, you’ve just got to put up with what you’ve got and that’s what’s coming in April’. I think businesses are at a stage now where they want certainty, however bad that certainty might be, or hopefully, however good that certainty might be, if the Government were to move on the transitional relief.

The third statement, if possible, is from the Minister for health around ambulance response times. My colleague Darren Millar has highlighted on several occasions that heart and stroke 999 calls are not included in the emergency categories of the ambulance service. That is a very, very worrying situation when, if you think that, for every minute lost on a heart attack in responding to it, there’s a 10 per cent decrease in the survivability of that patient. So, I would be grateful—and I can see the Cabinet Secretary chuntering away there—I would be grateful if he could put pen to paper and actually gave us a written statement to confirm whether it is the case that heart and stroke calls are not in the categorisations of urgency. Can we have that certainty from the Cabinet Secretary via a written statement before we break for Christmas?

Thank you, Andrew R.T. Davies, for your questions. The Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure has met Ford’s senior manager in Europe, and is fully engaged in securing the engine plants in Bridgend.

On your second point, as you are well aware, there has been a consultation in terms of the business rates and the transitional relief. Of course, we note your comments. The First Minister has responded, as, indeed, has the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, and will be taking note of the consultation responses.

On your third point, this is a matter of concern, what you have raised today. I just want to, again, make the point, in response to questions to the First Minister, that it is this new clinical response model that has resulted in the Welsh ambulance service leading the way, as was acknowledged nationally, outside of Wales, in terms of media and press and interest, of course, in the way in which we are showing our speed of response for acutely ill patients, which, of course, would include patients with suspected stroke and heart attacks—so, meeting the national target in every month in the first year of the pilot. It is about clinically driven changes, enabling patients to receive the right response, based on their clinical need, and it is encouraging. I hope you would join me in welcoming the fact that other parts of the UK are taking note of our progress, and that the Scottish Ambulance Service have announced they will shortly implement a very similar system.

Earlier this afternoon, in response to a question from my friend and colleague the Member of Parliament for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, the UK transport Secretary told the House of Commons that the UK Government had not agreed to devolve the Wales and borders franchise to this place. This is contrary, of course, to my understanding of the outcome of the St David’s Day process. Can we have a statement—either written or oral—as soon as possible, to clarify the situation on the future devolution of the Wales and borders franchise?

Yes, we need to be very clear about this point. Of course, the Cabinet Secretary has got his oral questions tomorrow, but he will also ensure that he will make it clear, in an answer to that question, Steffan Lewis, in writing, following today’s business statement.

May I ask the Cabinet Secretary for two statements, please? The first is on local authority policy on letting office spaces to elected representatives. I’ve decided to seek new office premises because my existing one proved unsuitable, due to security concerns. After much time and effort, my staff found premises at Beechwood House, which was currently empty. Initial negotiations to rent the property proved favourable. I am therefore very angry and upset that Newport City Council have blocked the move, as they say it is not their policy to rent council properties for political purposes. Cabinet Secretary, my office—at the moment, if I use it during election time, I reimburse the rent, rates, electricity, gas, and telephone back to the Assembly. For some percentage of the property space that is used, the money goes back to the Assembly. I find it totally absurd. I do not—

I do not think that this is a question for the Government, and you should wait until you have the opportunity for questions to the Commission to ask a question of that nature. Either ask a question to the Government that is appropriate for them, or refrain from asking the question and place it in its appropriate place.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I do not understand why the council, at the time of budgetary constraint and pressure, would prefer to leave a building empty, rather than receive income from an unused asset. Thank you.

The second statement: Natural Resources Wales say they have had a very successful year last year, with more than 660,000 tonnes of timber leaving the public forestry estate. Forestry is going to be reduced. Concern has been expressed to me as to whether this figure is sustainable in Wales and what happened to the income generated through it. Please could we have a statement on this? Thank you.

That question does relate to Natural Resources Wales and their responsibilities. I’m sure you would want to raise this with the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs.

Leader of the house, can I ask for two statements? First of all, earlier, in First Minister’s questions, Gareth Bennet asked the First Minister for an update on the south Wales metro. Could I reiterate those calls for an update on that, particularly with regard to the next phase? As you know from my concerns during the last Assembly, the town of Monmouth has been on some metro maps and off others. There are now concerns about the effect of leaving the European Union on funding for the full network as proposed before. So, could we have an update on where we are with outlying areas being on that metro map, particularly with the proposals for a transport hub at the Celtic Manor, I believe? I think that would give a potential for outlying areas in my constituency and south-east Wales to be connected with a frequent service to the metro map.

Secondly, Andrew R.T. Davies mentioned business rates earlier. This continues to be an ongoing concern in my area. I attended a packed meeting last night in Usk where concerns were raised with me about the business rates situation. A representative from the Welsh Government civil service was there and provided some information, but I feel it would be very helpful if we did have a ministerial update on business rates and a statement that addresses the concerns of business rate relief. Many businesses do fear that, when it comes to next April, without additional relief—an equitable relief to that across the border—they are going to be forced out of business. So, I think an update or a statement on an equitable business rate relief scheme before the Christmas recess would be very, very helpful to my constituents and other Assembly Members.

Well, of course, Nick Ramsay is very vigilant in raising issues on behalf of his constituency and also, on a number of occasions, about the needs of your constituency in relation to infrastructure developments such as the south Wales metro. Of course, I know that the First Minister has responded in part this afternoon to questions and is, of course, looking at the issues relating to being able to continue to access European funding, which is so important for the metro. He is also recognising, as I think he certainly did in answer to previous questions, the importance of this being part of the city deal for the Cardiff capital region and the fact that the leader of Monmouthshire is very engaged in the city region and making sure that all local authorities are benefitting from that. So, you know, in terms of updates, I know that the Cabinet Secretary will want to update at an appropriate time on progress with the south Wales metro.

On your second point, I have already responded to Andrew R.T. Davies in terms of the outcomes of a consultation that’s taking place on business rates and, of course, the recognition that this is a key issue in parts of constituencies across Wales.

I thank the Minister.

The next item is a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Education on the PISA results. I call on the Cabinet Secretary, Kirsty Williams.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Today sees the publication of the 2015 PISA results. Let me get straight to the point: we would all have liked to have seen greater progress. I think we will all agree in this Chamber that we are not where we want to be. These tests, taken last year, included half a million 15-year-olds in 72 countries. Here in Wales, our national report describes a stabilisation in our reading results. We saw the biggest increase in the UK in our maths score. Of those higher-performing countries that scored over 450 points, only four countries out of the 71 who participated in PISA saw a bigger increase in maths. But, on science, the focus of this round of assessment, the results are, frankly, deeply, deeply disappointing. And although the average score for science has declined across the OECD, this should be of no comfort to us. I will say more on science in due course. I have made clear that international evidence, and learning from the best, will guide our reforms. We will hold firm to that course. We will use these results and the rich data that they give us, allied to the forthcoming OECD report, to support and challenge my priorities and programme. When I invited the OECD last month to look at how we were doing in Wales, their advice to me was unambiguous: stay the course; be brave; you are doing the right things.

And I see the commitment to staying the course of our reforms up and down Wales.  I have visited many schools across the country in my short period since taking up this post. There is an eagerness to be part of our education journey. No longer are we reform fatigued, which was the OECD’s assessment of Wales back in 2014. Wales now has a clear direction of travel. We have plans in place to develop an excellent professional workforce. We know what we want our new curriculum to deliver. We are introducing robust qualifications that will be nationally and internationally respected. A work in progress, but with much, much more to do.

The 2014 OECD report into the Welsh education system also told us that we should, and I quote,

‘Treat developing system leadership as a prime driver of education reform’.

I am convinced that promoting and supporting leadership must be central to our reforms. However, if I’m honest, not enough progress has been made in this area. That is why, last month, I announced plans for a new national academy of educational leadership. It will develop the current and future leadership talent for Wales and ensure that all schools—all schools—can deliver our new curriculum. Now more than ever, Wales needs strong leaders that are up for the challenge.

The results published today have highlighted issues around science that chime with our own understanding of what has been happening. The new science GCSEs were introduced for teaching for the first time only this September. I am pleased that schools are already moving away from teaching a mix of BTEC and GCSEs, which were failing to properly equip our young people. Presiding Officer, it pains me to say that a combination of cynicism, dumbing down and lowered ambitions meant that a significant number of schools were in the habit of entering a high number of pupils just for BTEC science rather than for GCSE. I’m pleased to report that, over the summer, we saw an increase of over 5,500 more entries into GCSEs across all the sciences. Whilst that is promising, it is just the beginning. In the coming months I will be announcing new ambitious plans to tackle this issue head on so our young people are given the opportunity they deserve to study science at a high level.

I know that PISA divides opinion. I hear it from some in the profession. That must change, as, make no mistake, it remains the recognised international benchmark for skills. Countries around the world use it as a signal to entrepreneurs, employers and investors. Just as importantly, it is used to help enhance public confidence in the school system. It has never been more important to demonstrate to ourselves and to the world that our young people can compete with the best. Old securities are on their way out. Other small nations have stolen a march on us on their reform journeys. But if Ireland and Estonia can do it, then so can we.

Our sense of national mission must recognise this truth. PISA is, and will be, the shop window for the success of our reforms. I am confident that my, and our, emphasis on leadership, teaching excellence, equity and well-being for learners, and collective responsibility, will enable us to reach the highest standards. PISA allows us to judge ourselves against the world, and everybody in our system must understand this. It is a check and review against our development and it will remain so.

If you consider the OECD PISA tests to be of great importance, then I hope you will also listen to their prescribed prognosis for Wales, on which our reforms are based. These reforms are rooted in what works. The easy thing to do would now be to rip up the plan and start all over again, and I’m sure some will make that case, but we owe it to our pupils, parents and the profession to do what is right. The OECD has identified Portugal as a country that has much improved. It has taken them 14 years, pursuing reforms that work and holding steady to the course. They took the much-needed tough decisions and now they reap the rewards. Wales must now have the courage to do likewise to deliver on our national mission of education reform.

Well, well, well, Cabinet Secretary, this is another fine mess that Carwyn has gotten you into. I have to say, I do appreciate your statement and the briefing that was provided by your officials this morning, and, of course, you’ve spent recent weeks desperately downplaying expectations in respect of today’s results, and we can, of course, all see now why that has been the case.

The children of Wales deserve a first-class, world-beating education system, but the reality is that successive Welsh Labour-led Governments have failed to deliver one. In spite of all the tough talking, all of the promises to do better from the First Minister and previous Cabinet Secretaries, today’s figures leave us yet again languishing at the bottom half of the global education league table, and they reconfirm our shameful status as the worst-performing school system in the United Kingdom. That our results in 2015 were actually worse than back in 2006 signifies a decade of underachievement and a scandal of monumental proportions. And that’s not the half of it: there’s been a sustained decline in science skills since 2006, especially for the highest achieving pupils.

One third of Welsh pupils were deemed to have been low achievers in one or more subjects—the worst performance in the UK. Welsh reading scores were on a par with Hungary and Lithuania. Pupils in England are three times more likely to be higher achievers in science, reading and maths than here in Wales. And while there’s a smaller gap in achievement between people from the wealthiest and poorest backgrounds here in Wales, PISA suggests that this is mainly due to the most advantaged pupils in Wales not performing as well as they ought to be. Welsh pupils are doing more learning outside of the school than their English counterparts, yet still they perform more poorly. These results are a litany of failure—failure by successive Welsh Governments to raise our game.

Now, Cabinet Secretary, your statement suggests that we need to give the reforms that are taking place more time and more time to bed in, but the Welsh Government—and I appreciate you’ve only recently joined the Welsh Government—. Successive Welsh Governments, have had a decade, since 2006, yet have still failed to deliver improvements. Now, tell us: how is it that countries like Poland have been able to turn their education systems around in less than a decade, but the Welsh Government can’t? Poland are managing to sustain that improvement, too.

Now, I am not arguing that the reshaping of the curriculum shouldn’t continue or that the literacy and numeracy frameworks, which were developed by some of your predecessors, should be abandoned. We don’t want you to, and I quote you, ‘rip up the plan’, as you said in your statement, but these things alone are not going to deliver the sea-change in the PISA rankings that you need to deliver. And we must recognise that similar reforms to the curriculum in Scotland, which have been implemented and are further down the line and have bedded in, have not delivered improvement there. In fact, their performance in the PISA results today in reading and science have deteriorated too. Instead, what we need from you, Cabinet Secretary, is a clear strategy with some measurable targets that will sit alongside other pieces of work to turn this performance around. And not just in science, but in maths and reading, too. Our children and our young people deserve nothing less. So, tell us: will you develop such a strategy, and, if so, when will we see it published? Will you set some targets and timetables and stick to them, unlike your predecessors who set targets and abandoned them as they saw time slipping through their fingers, or kicked them down the line?

Will you release good and successful schools in Wales from the shackles that currently prevent them from expanding? Will you do more to support able and talented learners to allow them to fly and reach their potential? Will you trust teaching professionals more so that they can innovate, develop their skills and learn from one another’s good practice, and will you stop closing good schools in communities the length and breadth of Wales and instead invest in them? Will you also introduce PISA type tests into our classrooms on a regular basis so that our young children can familiarise themselves with the sorts of challenge that might come in terms of a PISA test in the future? Because these are the sorts of changes that we would introduce if we were in Government.

Will you also learn, because you have failed to do so so far as a Government—and as I say, I recognise you have recently joined the clan—from international examples such as Poland and some of the others, and you quoted some of the others, who have succeeded in improving their performance and maintaining it? Let’s not forget, Poland found itself with very similar scores to the ones that have been published today back in 2000, and they managed to turn things around by 2009 and they’re now well up there in the top 20.

Cabinet Secretary, these PISA rankings are important. They provide an international benchmark for the performance of our education system, which can impact on investment and employment in future generations. If these things go unchecked, if this poor performance continues and goes untackled, then it will be devastating for Wales. Holding steady to the course alone is not the answer to our problems; we’ve got to be more ambitious, we’ve got to be more bold. Future generations are counting on you, and we want to see what action you’re going to take.

Thank you very much, Darren. I don’t regard this as being dumped in a mess. I regard this as a fantastic opportunity to do what I have consistently said since 2011, and consistently argued in this Chamber, from that position over there, which is that we need to focus relentlessly on school standards, leadership, continuing professional development and ITET reform, and that’s what I intend to do.

Now, Darren, nothing that you say here in this Chamber today can make me feel personally any worse about these results. I want better for my nation, I want better for our children, and I am determined to take the decisions and actions that will deliver it. You said, ‘Will there be a revived strategy?’ There will be and it’ll be published in January. You want us to teach to the test, but that’s not where success lies. Success lies in whole-system reform. But let’s be absolutely clear, our new qualifications at GCSE level in maths, English and science will demand a better alignment with a depth of knowledge and understanding and critical thinking skills that will allow our children to thrive in PISA tests. Now, we need to support the profession to do just that. That’s why you will be aware, just a month ago, I announced the development of a maths national network of excellence, supported by £800,000 of funding to develop and extend peer-to-peer support, new resources and better development for our maths teachers. I intend to do exactly the same for science, working in collaborating with our higher education institutions so that we can drive up standards across the piece.

We will be sticking to the timetable. Only last week in questions, I was being urged by Members in this Chamber to slow down our reforms of the curriculum. We need to push on. That curriculum will be ready for teaching by 2021. Our new ITET courses will be marketed in the summer of 2018. We will have new professional teaching standards available in the spring of this year. I will reform the governance arrangements of our schools when the consultation that is currently open is closed. And I will leave no stone unturned in my work with the professionals, with LEAs and with the consortia to ensure that we do better as a nation. I will indeed look to good practice. It is important to note that there are very different approaches to reform in this country, as opposed to Scotland. I look across the rest of the world to ensure that what we’re doing is the right thing. I tested that by asking the OECD to come back last month. They will be back in two years’ time because I’ve asked them to come back in two years’ time, because I will regularly challenge myself and this Government that we are doing the right thing.

Clearly, these results tell us a very grim story. Wales is still the lowest-performing country in the UK, Welsh scores are worse now than they were a decade ago and we’re further behind, of course, the UK average than we were in 2006. So, would you not agree with me, Cabinet Secretary, that this is a damning indictment of Labour’s performance and that they’ve failed, failed and failed Wales in the education system that we have?

In 2009, the then Minister told us there would be no alibis and no excuses. In 2012, the then Minister told us that we’d all need to take a long hard look in the mirror. Today, I’m not quite sure what the First Minister told us, to be honest, or at least what we learnt. He certainly didn’t take responsibility. You in your statement tell us that we’re not where we want to be, so maybe you could tell us where you want us to be. We know that we dropped, or the Government dropped, the target of achieving a top-20 ranking by 2016, and introduced a target or an ambition of achieving 500 points across the different areas by 2021. Are you sticking to that? The First Minister wouldn’t explicitly commit to that in his answer to the leader of Plaid Cymru earlier, although he did say something about being confident we’ll see an improvement. So, are you committing to that same target and if not, what is your ambition and your target?

You tell us that you’re holding firm to the course, and I say that’s the right course of action. The reforms are taking us in the right direction, but that’s not to say that I still don’t have concerns that I have already raised with you, and that you sort of alluded to earlier. And I have raised previously the need for a pause in this process for reflection. And will you—I ask you again—consider implementing a break in this process so that we can take stock, so that we can address the number of emerging issues around the two-tier system between pioneer schools, non-pioneer schools and the other concerns that have been expressed by the sector, and also an opportunity to reflect on these PISA results and where they leave us in the context of the proposed reforms, so that we can consolidate those reforms and move forward more confidently and more coherently as a sector? The important thing is that we do what is right and not force through change too quickly. It’s doing it properly that’s the important thing.

We’ve heard how the reforms in Wales are based on experiences they’ve had in Scotland. Indeed, Professor Donaldson was engaged because of his experience in relation to the change in Scotland. We have heard, of course, that there has been a dip in results in Scotland this time, so maybe you could tell us what that maybe tells us about the reforms here in Wales, if anything, and if you believe that there are any lessons that we can learn from that in Wales.

You assert in your statement that Wales is no longer reform-fatigued. Well, there may be some in the profession that might not agree. Then you go on to say that you’ll be announcing new and ambitious plans, and I could hear the sharp intake of breath from the sector as well. But capacity is, of course, an issue that has been highlighted under the current reforms, and you recognised as much in your answers to me last week. So, what I’d like to know is: how will you strike a balance between introducing your new plans whilst not adding to the burdens of teachers, and doing so in a way, of course, that complements and does not cut across the reforms that are currently under way? And are you confident, Cabinet Secretary, that teachers truly believe in PISA? You do, clearly, and the Government does, but are you and the sector singing from the same hymn sheet, because I don’t feel that the sector in its entirety is buying into PISA? There are questions about the level of uptake of secondary schools that were given the opportunity to look at PISA-style testing; I think it was 89 out of 213. That’s not, maybe, the kind of endorsement for PISA that the Government, I’m sure, would be looking for.

In 2012, when the last results were published, you said that you were sad and angry that Labour policy had led us to 14 years of poor PISA results. Well, it’s now 17 years of poor PISA results. I presume, therefore, that you’re even sadder and even angrier. And you did ask the First Minister back in 2012 whether he was not ashamed at the results. Now, these are worse results, so I presume you will also be asking the First Minister whether now he’s even more ashamed of his record.

Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thank you to Llyr. Llyr, I’ve sat where you are and asked those questions, but I can assure you that no amount of hand-wringing and complaining about what has gone on in the past is going to take us forward. My job is to ensure that we move forward because that’s the only way we are going to see the improvements that we need. Now, you are right, there have been concerns expressed around the difference between the pioneer and the non-pioneer network and we are addressing those concerns, as I outlined to you in questions last week. But it is absolutely my intention to ensure that the curriculum is delivered on time. You asked whether we will be pausing to learn the lessons of this set of PISA results—there are many, many things in this set of PISA results that we need to reflect on and ensure that our reform agenda addresses it.

So, in particular on the issue of science, we know that across England—sorry, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, the reasons why we have done badly in science is because of the drop in performance of our highest performers. I believe that is directly related to decisions not to have high levels of ambition for our children in sciences in our schools, and that we’ve have some schools that almost predominantly have only entered their children for BTEC science, which we now recognise has not equipped them with the scientific reasoning skills that they need to succeed at a higher level. We’ve made it quite clear—of our expectations and the reform of our GCSE science papers that are being taught from this September—that that has to change.

But it’s not just in science where our more able and talented children have not performed as well as we would have expected them to. There has been, over many years—quite rightly—a large focus on level 2 plus indicators as performance measures for schools, because we needed to up the number of Welsh children who were leaving schools with five good GCSEs including their English, maths or Welsh first language. But I recognise that in doing that, perhaps we have taken the opportunity not, at the same time, to push our most able learners. That’s why capped point scores will now be included as part of the accountability measures for our secondary schools. It cannot be beyond the wit of us to be able to ensure we turn Ds into Cs but also to be able to turn Bs into As and As into A*s. Our system should be able to make the most of every child’s talents and opportunities, and that will be reflected in our accountability measures to ensure our more able children are being stretched. That’s why our expectations for children leaving primary school—where once it was level 4, we now expect children to be leaving primary school at a level 5. So, our expectations across the piece are about raising standards and demanding more of our education system, so that our brightest children aren’t just left at level 4—because that’s all the Welsh Government asks us to do—but that our brightest children are pushed to the next level, to level 5.

With regard to targets, again I’ve been there. I’ve never actually asked for the setting of PISA targets in all the questions that I’ve asked the First Minister because you can hit the target and miss the entire point. We have seen—we have seen that perhaps in the past some of those targets were misconceived. I’m absolutely clear that we need to improve our scores, not within the margin of error, but we need statistically robust improvements in our schools, and that is my expectation.

Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for her statement today? I do appreciate her honest appraisal of the situation and, like her, I also believe that we are not where we want to be yet and it’s important to recognise that. But I also recognise that all countries that have improved their PISA rankings have taken some years to do it, and I don’t think we would do our children any favours by changing course now, being mindful of the advice that’s been given by the OECD that we need to hold our nerve and pursue the reforms that are in train.

You referred in your statement to the importance of school leadership. Can I just ask what you plan to do, going forward, to give additional support to existing and inspiring headteachers in Wales?

Thank you, Lynne, for that. I do want to reflect on, and let the Chamber know, because the Chamber may not be aware, what Andreas Schleicher—I can’t even say his name properly—who is in charge of the education department of the OECD, the director of education, said about our results today. He says:

‘It is true that there is a big performance gap but there are signs of improvement, if you look at the latest mathematics results—they’re going in the right direction’.

He also goes on to say

‘there’s no reason why Wales is so far behind but I see many things in place now that are putting it on a more promising track.’

He said that we were building a new curriculum, and that we were moving from reform fatigue to people taking ownership of change, which was an important ingredient for success in the longer term. And we have to keep testing ourselves against that advice. So, I am confident that we are making the right decisions.

With regard to leadership, however, in the report of 2014 by the OECD, leadership was identified as a crucial component, and if we’re being honest—and we need to be honest today—not a lot changed between 2014 and now with regard to leadership. Perhaps that’s because there were other aspects of the reform agenda that were being taken forward and were regarded as more time-sensitive and important. But I announced, last month, my intention to establish the new academy for leadership. It will focus initially on headteachers and aspiring headteachers. We need to be much more proactive in how we manage the career and support the development of people who aspire to be school leaders. We need to ensure that they have the opportunities throughout their careers to develop the essential skills that will make school leadership a success for them. We have revamped our headteacher qualification to make sure that it is fit for purpose and ensure that those people who are taking it will go on to develop a career in headship.

The leadership academy can’t stop there. Once we have embedded issues around school leadership at head level and senior management team level, we need to look to see what we can do to support governors—an essential part of the accountability regime. Too many of our governors, if you read Estyn reports, don’t have the skills that they need to hold headteachers to account, and we need to look at leadership throughout the education system, in local education authorities, in consortia, indeed, I would say, at Welsh Government level too, so that we have the very best people leading our education system at every level.

I’m sure the Cabinet Secretary will agree with me that today’s PISA results are disappointing—for the Government, parents, and, most importantly, the children of Wales. The 2006 results showed that Wales was below average in maths and reading; 2009 revealed that we had performed lower in all areas compared to 2006; 2012 results showed that we had fallen further in maths and science, and although the score had increased in reading, it was still lower than the figures for 2006. Now, we have the 2015 results, and despite a slight improvement in mathematics, Wales trails behind Northern Ireland, Scotland and England in all three areas. It is particularly disappointing that Wales has fallen further still in reading and science. And, again, I’m sorry to add, Wales falls behind its own record in 2006. Furthermore, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland are above the OECD average in all three areas, but Wales falls below average in every single category. Some might draw the conclusion that consecutive Welsh Governments have failed and, more worryingly, that this Government is continuing to do so.

Other countries are improving, so why can’t Wales? It strikes me that not only should the Welsh Government go back to the drawing board, or at least think about it and consider the future for children in Wales, but while it does this, it should open its mind to new ideas and a fresh approach. The Labour Party opposite are so stuck in their educational dogma of the 1970s that they cannot see how destructive their policies are to the children of this nation, and that they are devoid of new ideas. The Government must divert from its current path of mediocrity and fear of competition. Only last week, the Cabinet Secretary responded to my colleague Mark Reckless, stating that he had—and I quote—

‘come across from a system that believed in competition. The Welsh education system is based on a system of collaboration and co-operation.’

But competition is exactly what Wales needs. The education system should be based on an ethos—[Interruption.]

Allow the Member to be heard. [Interruption.]

[Continues.]—each generation on bettering themselves, whether it is in a classroom or on the playing field. [Interruption.]

I said, ‘Allow the Member to be heard.’

We exist in a time where there is competition for places in higher education, in the workplace and generally in all elements of life. So, why not teach our children to be the best they can possibly be? These results also demonstrate that this Government must prioritise core subjects in the classroom. It should reflect on the other areas in the curriculum where time can be better spent on maths, English and science. Let’s move to a system that really does educate our children.

We should allow existing schools to apply to become grammar schools, and select according to ability and attitude. [Interruption.]

Look, you may not agree with what the Member is saying, but the Member has a right to say it. Allow the Member to be heard, once more.

This will allow all schools, both selective and non-selective, to craft an education fit for their students, encouraging each and every child to excel in their abilities. A one-size-fits-all approach clearly is not the answer. We ask our children to have vision and aspire. I now encourage the Cabinet Secretary to do exactly that. Don’t underestimate future generations; have a system that gives them targets, permits league tables, allows them to compete, and fundamentally gives them the opportunity to enter an increasingly competitive world with the best possible start in life. Thank you.

Look; allow the Member to be heard. The Member has now finished. Thank you very much for your contribution. I ask the Cabinet Secretary to respond. I’m sure you’ll all be very quiet now. [Laughter.]

Michelle, I had hoped that I had made it very clear in my opening statement and in my subsequent answers to colleagues across the Chamber that these results are not good enough. There is no doubt about that. It should also be noted that, today, the OECD has issued a stark warning to countries not to move to greater forms of selection within education systems. With all due respect to your contribution, I will be following the advice of the OECD.

Let’s be absolutely clear: to suggest that we are not differentiating our teaching in school to adapt to the different needs of children is to not understand what is going on in the best of our classrooms. Good teachers know that they need to differentiate their lessons. They plan in that way, they deliver their lessons in that way, and they make sure that each child performs to the best of their absolute ability. Now, that goes on in our best schools; but if we’re honest, that is not going on consistently in all of our schools, and that’s what we need to do to ensure that we make progress. That’s why we will be introducing new teaching standards for the profession in the spring of next year.

You say that we don’t want mediocrity, and I would absolutely agree with you. I have no time for mediocrity in our system. I do not believe, like some say, that adequate is good enough. It’s not. And I have no time for those who think they are the finished article. Every teacher—every good teacher—knows that they will be a better teacher tomorrow than they were today, because the biggest student in the classroom should be the teacher themselves, continuously reflecting on their practice, looking at international best practice, learning new techniques and new skills, and incorporating that into their work. That’s the very best of teaching, and that’s what our teaching standards will expect of the profession.

You say we need competition. I suggest we need competition like I need a hole in my head. Although after today—. [Laughter.] Let me be absolutely clear: we know that high-performing education systems in the world rely on a system of self-improvement and collaboration and co-operation across the profession. Our best schools and our best teachers don’t keep that practice to themselves because they are fearful of somebody coming up on the rails and overtaking them in a league table; they share that best practice. They share those good ideas, and they do so knowing that they can be generous with their skills and generous with their time, and not have to worry about being overtaken by somebody on the flanks. We need our schools to co-operate, not to compete, because doing that will drive up standards for all.

Cabinet Secretary, amidst the disappointment, we can at least be encouraged by the performance in maths, where Wales saw the biggest increase in the UK and, as you mentioned, of the 71 countries that took part in PISA, only four outperformed us in the rise in maths performance. So, what lessons can we draw from the improvements in maths that can be applied to the other subjects?

As the OECD themselves have said, the progress that we have made in maths is encouraging. What we can learn from that is the successful implementation of the numeracy framework, which of course has only been formally assessed for a couple of years now. We have reformed the GCSEs and we have put substantial resource into getting schools ready for the uptake of those new GCSEs. So, a substantial amount of money has gone into supporting maths development already. We’re also working with outside networks to look to expand maths skills within the profession. I think there is stuff that we can learn from that for other areas. We are building on that progress in maths, as I said earlier, by the new specialist network that I announced in November. There’ll be £800,000 going into that.

It is my intention to do exactly the same in science, and we’re looking, as I announced following the GCSE results in the summer, at a new collaborative programme for English teaching as well, because we need to make improvements in English—not just for the reading test, but we need improvements in English GCSE and English A-level results. So, I think that network of bringing professionals together with identified lead practitioners who can develop the practice of other people is something that we can learn the lessons from, but we need to find the resources to do that. In discussions with the Minister responsible for the budget, I’m confident that we will have the resources to develop our new science network and to support the work in English, too.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. The wide-ranging educational reforms introduced by the Welsh Government in areas including the curriculum, qualifications and teachers’ professional development have been welcomed by teachers and fully supported by the OECD. I welcome your categorical assurances that we will hold firm to this agenda, not deviate from the path we’ve set ourselves and give reforms the opportunity they need to bed in. PISA may be the international benchmark, but it is widely regarded as being a crude educational measure, bearing, in many respects, little relation to the skills required for GCSE. GCSEs are quite rightly the focus of teachers and students at the age of 15, and these are the measures that, in reality, lead to the qualifications that have a direct impact on our students’ futures. So, while PISA grabs the headlines today, it’s GCSE results that make a real and measurable difference. My question is: how can we merge these two often-competing progress markers together to continue improving and delivering the very best for our students?

Thank you for that, Vikki. I should have—. Apologies to Llyr because I didn’t address the question about my ongoing commitment to PISA and how important it is. I do believe PISA is important. It is my absolute determination to continue to participate in the PISA study. We do need to see it as an important test, not of individual schools and not of individual pupils, which is what GCSEs are about, but it is a reflection on the health of our system as a whole. They measure different things, I believe. But you’re right, there has previously been a disconnect between the types of skills that are best tested in PISA, and allow pupils to do well in PISA, and the nature of our GCSEs.

Our GCSEs are not changing to enable us to do better at PISA. Our GCSEs are changing to ensure that they are fit for purpose, modern, testing, stretching, but also ensuring that the children have the skills that they need to go on to further study or into the world of work; but the way in which they are being taught and the way in which they are being examined are better aligned to the type of knowledge and skills that children also need to participate and do well in PISA. Our new maths qualifications are a very good example of that, with what I would regard as pure maths and calculations and applied mathematics in terms of numeracy—the ability to use a mathematical technique to solve a real-life problem—and that’s why we have gone down that path.

In terms of our English, for instance, we still consider the ability to present orally as an important part of how we grade English GCSE—something that’s gone out of the window in England. But their ability to read competently and speak competently, which is still part of our English GCSE, is something that is tested in PISA. So, I think there is greater alignment going forward, but we’re not doing it so we can just do better in PISA, we’re doing it because our GCSEs will better prepare our children for the challenges that they will face when they leave school or go on to study at a higher level.

Cabinet Secretary, many of us raised an eyebrow or two when you joined the Welsh Government and accepted the education portfolio. Today’s PISA results are a great disappointment for all of us here in Wales, especially for parents with children in the education system right now. The only good news for you, I guess, is that you can legitimately blame your predecessors for today’s results. But in three years’ time, it will all rest firmly on your shoulders.

I noted that you commented to our colleague Michelle Brown that you would rather listen to the OECD and listen to their advice over the advice of the people here in this Chamber. Well, may I just point out to you that—? Well, I guess I’ll make one statement about the OECD: like they get it right all the time, don’t they? I’m just reminding you about their Brexit forecast and the doom and gloom that they gave us, and the fact that, as we leave the year, Britain is actually going to be one of the best performing of the G7.

I have a question for you. [Interruption.]

Let’s hear the question.

If you listen to the most successful people in our nation, they will all tell you one thing about goal setting, and that is that if a goal is imposed on us by someone else, we do not have ownership of that goal and it is harder for us to achieve that. Can I ask you, have you engaged with the heads of our schools to ask them what targets and goals they have regarding PISA? If they set the goals themselves, they will own those goals and they will be more likely to achieve them.

Also, how do you intend that our children will benefit from an outward-looking Wales post Brexit? Brexit is going to provide fantastic opportunities for our young people, but unless they are given the right tools, they won’t be able to grasp those opportunities. This Welsh Labour Government are guilty of many things, but their failure to equip our children for an ever-more-competitive twenty-first century must count as their greatest incompetence.

Thank you, Nathan. It’s good to see you. [Laughter.] Can I say that blame will not improve a single PISA score? It’s easy to do, it might provide entertainment for those of us here in the Chamber, it might get you on the tv tonight, it might provide fodder for a Twitter feed, but it will not, in any way, shape or form, improve the education of our children. So, rather than spending and wasting my time blaming people, I am here to get on with what needs to happen to reform our education system.

Now, you ask what we are doing to have an outward-looking country. I’m assuming—but, in this world, you should never assume anything—that you have read the Donaldson report, and you will know that one of the expected outcomes of our new curriculum is to have ethical and informed citizens. That is one of the stated goals of curriculum reform, and we will be developing areas of learning and experience to ensure that all our children leaving our schools are ethical and informed citizens.

You asked whether I have been engaging with the sector. Well, I can tell you that, in recent weeks, I have met with and addressed the headteachers unions, the school and college leaders unions. We’ve had two national education conferences—one in the south and one in the north—at which I’ve addressed over 50 per cent of the headteachers in school. We will have another headteachers conference for secondary schools in the spring term. So, I spend a great deal of my time talking to the sector about how we can take this forward. And, as I said in my opening statement, I detect an absolute willingness, indeed, a passion, to get this right in our schools. And those schools are leading from the front, and I welcome the engagement with the sector in that way.

And finally, Huw Irranca-Davies.

Diolch, Lywydd. Today, particularly, I want to pay tribute to the efforts of the teachers and the governors, and the young people in my local school, some of whom achieved record GCSE results earlier this year. And I say that because PISA is important, but to pretend that it is the only indicator of success is wholly wrong. Now, I commend the Cabinet Secretary on her frank recognition of the continuing challenges for education in Wales laid out in the PISA report, but also on accepting the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s view that we must continue steadfastly with the reforms we’ve already set in place to get the results we need, and we need to be ambitious for our young people.

The centrality of excellence in teaching has been cited by the OECD authors of the PISA report, as well as the correlation between the best results and the reach of science into lessons. Could I therefore commend to the Cabinet Secretary the work of those like the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, engaging between schools and colleges and industrial partners, providing applied work experience for school pupils, and, through their insight programme, providing opportunities for teachers to learn more about the real world of engineering in different sectors, showcased at an event today hosted by Hefin David, my colleague, and running events to inspire pupils in engineering such as the one that I was pleased to speak at only recently in Techniquest, just across the other side of the bay? This is only one of the organisations doing great work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects, opening the eyes of young people to the world of careers available to them and boosting their academic attainment at the same time.

So, would the Cabinet Secretary encourage schools in Wales to engage with partners like these, like the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and others, so that we can boost the educational attainment of our young people, help them access exciting potential careers, and contribute towards rising school performance as well?

Thank you, Huw. You’ll be aware of my agreement with the First Minister that highlights our shared priority to develop better links between the world of education and the world of work and industry. And, building on those links, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, which you’ve highlighted, is just one organisation that is doing great work in this area. It’s not so long ago that I was at Sony in your constituency to see the outstanding work that Sony is doing with both primary and secondary schools in the area in the field of digital competence.

We need to show children why it is important to study science, and the opportunities that will open up for them. And that’s difficult to do if you have no experience of that in your family or in your particular area. So, we need to create those opportunities for children. Because, if they don’t see it, they will never aspire to be it. And we need to do that, especially, in the case of girls, when it comes to studying science subjects. But we need to be able to make sure that our children are equipped to pursue those careers in science, which is why we have reformed our science GCSEs, which are being taught for the first time this September, which will equip them with the level and depth of understanding and knowledge that will allow them to go on to do A-levels or other qualifications in science at a higher level.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary.

The next item on our agenda is the statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs on energy. And I call on the Cabinet Secretary to make her statement—Lesley Griffiths.

Diolch, Lywydd. Our energy system is going through significant change. This statement reflects this changing context, and sets out Welsh Government priorities in relation to energy.

The Paris agreement is driving the international decarbonisation agenda. We are seeing rapid developments in renewables, storage and demand reduction. At COP22 in Marrakesh, I met leaders who’ve made progress in developing low-carbon societies more resilient in coping with future challenges. In contrast, the UK Government has created policy uncertainty and undermined investor confidence in energy. I want to be explicit about the priorities for Wales and how we will deliver them.

This Government remains committed to the ambitions set out in ‘Energy Wales’. I have three clear priorities for this Assembly. First, we will reduce the amount of energy we use in Wales. Second, we will reduce our reliance on energy generated from fossil fuels. Third, we will actively manage the transition to a low-carbon economy. We will drive this transition to deliver maximum benefits for Wales, providing strategic leadership, and reducing uncertainty. We must continue to grow the economy at the same time as reducing emissions and managing affordability. I will ensure our policies and support are aligned and work towards delivering a low-carbon energy system for Wales.

First, reducing the energy we use in Wales: we will continue our flagship energy efficiency programmes, focusing on vulnerable people at risk of fuel poverty. This futureproofs homes against rising energy prices, reduces emissions, and helps people stay warm and healthy. We have spent £217 million improving over 39,000 homes in the past five years. Last year, the Nest scheme delivered average energy bill savings of over £400 per household. I know my colleague the Minister for Finance and Local Government is looking at the detail of the autumn statement and discussing Welsh Government priorities for additional spending. When the current building regulations sustainability review is complete, we will turn our attention to improving the energy performance of new buildings.

We will build on changes we introduced in 2014 to further reduce the climate impact of new developments in Wales. I anticipate this work will start towards the middle of 2017. We’re also increasing investments in public sector energy-efficiency projects. By the end of this financial year, we expect to have invested approximately £35 million in cost-reducing projects. I will continue to work with the Permanent Secretary to consider how we can achieve our energy-efficiency goals on the Welsh Government estate. We will continue to support energy-intensive industries, including steel, to become more energy efficient through our environmental protection scheme. Our scheme alleviates some of the issues of high overall energy costs. However, we continue to call on UK Government to deal with systemic problems of energy pricing for these industries.

Second, reducing reliance on energy from fossil fuels: this Government’s commitment to support renewable energy projects is set out in ‘Taking Wales Forward’. It will form a key element of the four cross-cutting strategies driving forward our priorities. The low-carbon transition will impact on how we generate and use electricity and heat, and transform the way we meet our transport needs. As this sector is a major fossil fuel user, I will be working with my colleague Ken Skates, the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure, on the joint implications for our portfolios. We are committed to supporting low-carbon vehicles and modal shift for passengers and freight in order to reduce emissions from transport. To deliver secure and affordable low-carbon energy, we need a mix of different technologies and sizes, from community scale to major projects. In the medium term, this means transitioning to low-carbon generation, which includes nuclear. We will maximise the role of renewable generation. Storage and smart technology will play a key enabling role, and carbon capture and other innovations may play a part. We will develop our evidence base to identify the energy pathways delivering the best outcomes for Wales. This will enable us to set ambitious yet realistic targets for renewables, including community energy.

We have established ground-breaking legislative frameworks in relation to planning, natural resource management and decarbonisation, underpinned by our Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. We will implement these strategic frameworks to guide the right energy developments to the right places for Wales. My aim now is to put mechanisms in place to deliver a clearer and more streamlined system. This will include establishing our national development framework, consulting on our draft marine plan, consulting on our innovative approach to natural resource planning, producing area statements to help identify opportunities for renewable energy, and reflecting this potential within local development plans, establishing the first carbon budgets and low-carbon transition plan, and developing an effective consenting regime for Wales as we receive powers to consent developments up to 350 MW.

I’m grateful to all who contributed to the recent Environment and Sustainability Committee report and the task and finish groups on marine energy and rural energy. We will now focus on implementing the practical recommendations. Where possible, we will streamline the number of consents for a project. The Wales Bill devolves control over onshore oil and gas activity in Wales. Gas plays a role in the transition. However, we must manage its deployment sensibly. I will continue our precautionary approach to unconventional gas activity, including opposing fracking. Coal has played a central role in Wales’s economic development. However, we must move to more sustainable energy sources.

I agree with the UK Government’s proposals to phase out unabated coal-fired generation by 2025. I will shortly be consulting on changes to planning policy to restrict proposals for new coal extraction. I will provide a strong voice for Wales in the wider energy system, sharing our priorities with the UK Government, Ofgem, National Grid and others. This includes supporting renewable generation, including least-cost technologies such as solar and wind, continuing to support emerging technologies such as marine energy, ensuring regulation supports decarbonisation and decentralisation of energy, and making our grid infrastructure fit for purpose.

My third priority is to drive the energy transition to deliver maximum benefits for Wales. We will develop our skills base and provide practical and financial support for energy opportunities that accelerate the low-carbon transition. Wales has opportunities to host major energy projects, which can provide significant benefits to Wales. These include nuclear and marine in Anglesey, and tidal lagoons and innovative energy elements in the Swansea city region bid. We will continue to support generation at different scales, from farm scale to Wylfa Newydd, the largest infrastructure project Wales will see in a generation. We await the outcome of the Hendry tidal lagoons review with interest.

Our Smart Living programme brings together public, private and academic institutions around practical demonstration projects. It will create new business models for low-carbon vehicles, storage and local grid management. We will also continue to work with developers to identify whether new small modular reactors can add value to our skills base in Wales. We will continue to listen, evolving our support to the changing needs of the public sector, businesses and communities. I believe this co-ordinated and coherent approach to energy will deliver a prosperous and secure low-carbon Wales.

Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for the statement, and also for the advance copy of the statement that she’s just made? Quite wide-ranging—I think, if I could be critical, rather low-wattage: we need a bit more oomph in this, probably the most critical area of Government policy.

Can I just start first of all—? And there are many areas where we agree with the Government’s approach; it’s very much a matter of ensuring it’s implemented effectively. Let’s start with energy efficiency. I don’t disagree with what was said by the Cabinet Secretary, but I think there are some key things, now, where the Welsh Government has got to hold other actors to the fire and ensure they deliver their promises. The smart meters roll-out, for instance, needs to accelerate very sharply. It seems to me that Wales has just been left behind by most of the companies, and they’re doing all of England, a bit like the approach we had to electrification of the railways, which is an issue I think has come up in this Chamber before. I am very concerned that we really have so far to go on that. I know the energy companies are now making all sorts of promises about how quickly they’re going to do it, but gosh, they do need to catch up. Smart meters offer a great chance, both in terms of energy efficiency and getting lots of people out of fuel poverty, so that they can keep their homes warm at the lowest possible cost.

You’re right to look at the opportunities we have to create buildings that generate energy, rather than just consume it. I think the ambition needs to be as great as possible. So let’s produce the building regs, let’s lead the UK in this area, let’s train our workforce to be able to do this work, and then we may be attracting business from all over the UK through a highly sophisticated workforce. So, I think that’s a really important area. It’s also a marvellous area in terms of generating the local economy. It is really, really productive.

I think the private sector, in terms of energy efficiency, needs to play its part also. I understand from a Barclays survey that 50 per cent of Welsh manufacturers fear for their energy resilience—and they’re probably right to—and that they may suffer shortages caused by a lack of supply or cost in the future. Well, one of the things they can really do is to use energy more efficiently. And I think the idea of using energy efficiently is then to reduce the total amount you need, rather than being profligate in other areas. It really has to lead to more effective and lower consumption overall.

Can I turn to fossil fuels? Let’s state the obvious: carbon budgets will help, but why have we got to wait until the end of 2018 before we see the first one from the Welsh Government? That’ll be halfway through this Assembly. Those carbon budgets are supposed to help you make decisions and the legislature to scrutinise them. I really think being dilatory in this area is frankly a failure of leadership. I particularly welcome the Chancellor’s autumn statement in what he said for electric vehicles and general cleaner transport, including public transport, and also the infrastructure investment that will be made available for recharging points and other infrastructure, some of which you mentioned. I think we need some detail out of you, Cabinet Secretary, basically. Are you going to use some of the moneys that are going to come to Wales to ensure that we catch up? Because we’re considerably behind on electrical charging points, for instance. I would also like you to take a lead with the local authorities and other public transport providers—that we can do a lot to move them away from the often intense use of diesel fuel and look at other options, because it’s important that we take advantage of the great shift we’ve had to public transport use in the last 10 or 20 years; that’s very important, but we could be doing much better to deliver cleaner public transport. That’s a double win, if we do that. It could also extend to the taxi fleets, incidentally, if they were using hybrid and moving away from diesel, or even going totally to electric. So, I do hope that you will feel confident enough to give us greater leadership in that area as well.

Can I just, in passing, mention the need, I think, to reimagine our urban spaces? I was much encouraged by what some of the leading cities in Europe have just said, led, I think, by Paris, saying that we really need to look at the urban space and think what’s there that can be used differently. I know they’re setting very ambitious targets to make them diesel-free areas. But, you know, we’ve got cities full of roads and pavements, and we often talk that we need more infrastructure for cycle lanes and for pedestrian lanes. Well, we could redesignate quite a lot of what we already have, thank you very much, and that would change people’s attitudes pretty quickly and allow us to live lower carbon-intensive lives. I think this is really important in terms of the direction of travel.

On renewables, as a result of the Wales Bill we will be better placed to move forward more rapidly. I do acknowledge that the Welsh Government has not had as many levers here as it would like, and I’m pleased that we will have more. That will allow us to set much more ambitious targets. If we look at Scotland—and this isn’t a comparison to condemn the Welsh Government, because there are wider reasons why this has happened, but, anyway—Scotland is set to generate the equivalent of all its energy needs by renewable methods by the early 2020s. So, I think we need a target. It can’t be by the early 2020s, but we shouldn’t delay that target for very long, and we need to be as ambitious as possible as to when we may get there.

Just turning to the low-carbon economy, your vision is that this is a great opportunity, and that is also my hope. What was once one of the world’s most intensively carbon economies now has a chance to be part of a new way of doing things, and a new way of conducting our economic lives. A lot of this is disruptive; a lot of what is happening in the world economy is disruptive, but it does actually bring the barriers to trade down a lot as well, and relatively poorer regional economies like Wales have a chance here. But to do that—and this is not just in the energy sector, this goes across the board—we need to invest in the skills of our workforce and concentrate on skills in terms of energy. I referred to that a little earlier.

I also think the advantages—

Are you coming to a conclusion? You’ve taken nearly as long as the Minister.

I do apologise. Small-scale generation opportunities are there, and I think that can also create more community ownership and also more investment opportunities. In an age of low interest rates, there are opportunities here for people to get a fair return on their savings—and a general use of new technologies such as tidal. Thank you.

I thank David Melding for his comments and questions. As I said at the start, our priorities remain as set out in ‘Energy Wales: A low carbon transition’, ‘Green Growth Wales’ and other policies that have come forward. If going to COP22 in Marrakesh taught me one thing, it was about the whole decarbonisation agenda and how we need to focus on the different sectors to make sure we achieve those targets. Obviously, energy has now come together in one portfolio, so I thought it important to bring this statement forward.

In relation to energy efficiency, I think Arbed and Nest are very good schemes and certainly in looking at the outcomes, I think that’s absolutely the right way forward if we’re going to reach our fuel poverty target. I absolutely take on board what you say about smart meters, and that’s a conversation that I’ve had with the energy companies and with Ofgem.

You referred a couple of times to skills being very important in the energy sector, and I couldn’t possibly argue with that. I remember when I was the skills Minister several years ago, having a focus on ensuring we had enough people to install solar panels, for instance. But now, because of the UK Government’s support being taken away from solar—I’m a big fan of solar—I think we’re seeing the number of solar panels being installed reducing, which I think is a great shame. So, it’s about ensuring that those skills are right. For instance, on Anglesey in Wylfa Newydd, there is a big focus on ensuring that those skills are there going forward. But you’re right; across the board in energy, we need to ensure the appropriate skills are there.

You mentioned the private sector having a role to play in two ways: businesses have a role to play, and I think it’s really important, if we’re going to have that energy mix that we want to see and that security, that we need to ensure that we attract private sector funding also. But I think you are right; we need to ensure that companies are energy efficient and that we are encouraging them to—as I said, the first priority is to reduce the usage in Wales.

Prices also have a hugely important role to play. We haven’t got the powers over those, that’s the UK Government, and I know the First Minister has written, I think, to the Prime Minister and also to the appropriate Secretary of State in relation to reducing costs also.

You mentioned carbon budgets. The timing of the regulations were actually previously discussed and agreed in this Chamber, I think as the environment Bill was going through. It was voted on and that’s how those dates were set. But I am now in the process of setting that carbon budget. I think you’re right; they will be hugely beneficial.

On electric vehicles and, as you mentioned, taxi fleets, I was talking to the deputy mayor of Oslo in Marrakesh and that’s one of their ambitions—that all taxi fleets will be electric vehicles going forward. We have to get the infrastructure in place. People are telling me, you know, that they would buy an electric vehicle but they can’t charge it up, and local authorities are saying they’re not installing charging points because not enough people have got electric vehicles. So, I think I do need to have a look at where we can target support to make sure that circle is rectified, to make sure that’s not a barrier for people having electric vehicles going forward.

On renewable targets, I’m very keen to have some targets, but again, because of the paucity of the UK Government support, I don’t want to set a target that’s not achievable. We need to make sure that we’re realistic and pragmatic about this, but I think, going forward, we need to have those targets in place.

In relation to the legislation, we’ve got the legislation in place now and it’s about—you know, now we need to deliver on that legislation that we’ve got in place. It will help, I think, for us to have the right, secure energy mix that we want going forward.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary for her statement and preface what I’m going to say by saying that I don’t doubt for one second her own personal commitment and interest in this subject, but I’m afraid this statement is like a lot of Government statements we’ve had of late—very long on process, very short on detail and virtually negligible in terms of targets. I think it’s very disappointing, really, that we’ve got to this stage without more detail and more flesh on what ‘Energy Wales’ actually will mean in terms of targets for the Government.

There’s nothing I can disagree with in terms of the high-level aims of the statement. It says,

‘First, we will reduce the amount of energy we use in Wales.’

Great. By how much? By when? How? Secondly,

‘We will reduce our reliance on energy generated from fossil fuels.’

Again, great. By how much, when, and how? The only target in the statement is the UK Government target to do away with coal combustion by 2025. And thirdly,

‘We will actively manage the transition to a low carbon economy.’

Well, the same questions arise, but let’s give very immediate questions to that. We’ve got cities already banning diesel cars in 10 years’ time—Copenhagen saying, ‘We won’t have any fossil fuel cars by 2025.’ What are our cities doing? What’s the city region doing? What’s the Welsh Government doing to achieve those aims within the Welsh context?

Electric vehicles—you want electric vehicle infrastructure. Simple: no development in Wales with car parking can go ahead without electric vehicle charging points. Just get a structure put in over five to 10 years like that.

Hydrogen—where’s the role of hydrogen in mass transportation, commercial transportation, and particularly for the south Wales metro? We can jump electrification of our railways by going straight to hydrogen transport. These are the things that I want to see in a vision from Welsh Government.

I think it’s frustrating, because we know that climate change is the biggest threat facing humanity, we know the Welsh Government has targets of reduction of 80 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and we know we’ve got the tools here in Wales to deal with it. We have huge natural resources and we can easily be self-sufficient in meeting our electricity needs through renewable energy.

So, just to come to a couple of specific questions on where we can actually, hopefully, agree and deliver something on this. First of all, on energy efficiency, yes, we have energy efficiency programmes, but what now is the new energy efficiency programme for the Welsh Government? What’s its target? It is completely realistic to think of 150,000 low-income homes being made energy efficient by 2020 by using, for example, borrowing powers as well as sources such as the Green Investment Bank. So, is there a commitment now to large-scale home retrofitting programmes? Is there a commitment to phase out opencast coal mining in Wales? Yes, a ban on fracking, but let’s phase out opencast mining as well, because we know that we won’t have the combustion plants, really, to take that coal, so why are we continuing to allow opencast coal mining in the long-term future? Is there a commitment and a way of working to improve the relationship between Welsh Government and the National Grid on distributed and local grid networks?

Interestingly, yesterday, it was Cornwall, with the help of European funding, that announced the first local energy market being established here in the United Kingdome. Centrica British Gas are leading on that with local partners in Cornwall. Why isn’t Wales doing that? Why is it Cornwall and not Wales that’s taking us forward in that regard? And why, although we talk of the tidal lagoon, don’t we have more in the statement around marine energy? The tidal lagoon is a decision at the moment for the Westminster Government, but we have a lot that we can do to support marine energy here in Wales.

And finally, my final point is this: you have agreed in the past that you’re prepared to consider supporting the establishment of a national energy company, which Plaid Cymru calls ‘Ynni Cymru’—a not-for-dividend company at arm’s length from the Welsh Government, so that we can invest any profits in improved services and energy reduction and also deliver cheaper energy more directly to the consumer. That energy company could enable the development of local energy programmes; local energy markets; community energy; the mass installation of solar panels; businesses and public bodies to become more energy efficient; and the task of reducing the consumption of energy in homes and businesses. As clearly you have the ambition, but as equally clearly, Government does not have the wherewithal or, it seems to me, the appetite to actually deliver on this, what about establishing a company to do this on your behalf?

Thank you, Simon Thomas. As I said in my answers to David Melding, I do think we will need targets and I’m very happy to bring those forward, perhaps in the next statement or via a written statement. But I want to make sure those targets are realistic and pragmatic, and I saw some very ambitious targets by some countries, or by some states and regions particularly, in the meetings that I had. I’ve discussed with them how they got there; I think there’s a lot of work to do to make sure that we can do it also. But Wales has absolutely been at the forefront of this agenda, and it’s really important that we stay up there. So, we need to make sure that those targets are realistic and pragmatic, but I will be bringing forward targets, particularly for renewable energy.

I think you’re quite right about car parking and planning and it’s very fortunate that energy and planning are in my portfolio, because I can make sure that the two align. Certainly, in building regulations, there’s a big job that we can do to aid our low-carbon transition there.

On hydrogen trains, I think definitely the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure is obviously looking at the use of those, going forward, for the south Wales metro. In relation to opencast mines and coal, absolutely, I’m happy to rule out the expansion of that. I do recognise, obviously, that coal continues to have an important role to play in the current energy mix, but we know that countries phase it out very quickly and we don’t want to be left behind. So, it’s really important that we support that transition. And, yes, as I said, the UK Government is consulting on ending the use of coal by 2025. I absolutely agree with that. I’m going to go out to consultation and it could be that, again, we’ll end earlier than 2025, but I’ll be preparing that consultation going forward.

In relation to marine energy, I do think there’s a huge opportunity, and I was very disappointed that we haven’t had the Hendry review report yet. I met with Charles Hendry, alongside Ken Skates, several months ago now, and I had hoped by now that we would be in a position to know the outcome of that. You’ll be aware that I’m bringing forward the marine plan next summer, and I think that will aid companies that want to bring forward marine energy when they know what the proposals are there.

In relation to an energy company, we are exploring the potential for not-for-profit energy companies in Wales, but I think we need to be very clear about the purpose of such a company. It could tackle energy prices, it could address issues of trust in providers, it could help with the market of Welsh generators, for instance, or even all those things. But I think it’s unlikely that one single model could tackle all of those issues. I know we’ve got several local authorities looking at action in this area and I’m going to have discussions with them. I’m very happy to work with anybody who is interested in that idea, if you wanted to discuss it with me further. I think it’s important that we have clarification on how Welsh Government could add value in that area. I think, at the moment, the robust case for a single not-for-profit company is not that clear for me, but I am very interested in pursuing the idea.

I totally agree with what Simon Thomas said, but from a totally different platform, of course, when I ask you: what was the point of this statement today? Was there anything new in it at all? Was there anything that had not been announced previously? It seems to me a perfect example of what Rhun ap Iorwerth was complaining about only this week: time taken up in this Assembly for endless Government statements, when we could be having useful debates on many other issues and having votes on things that really matter. So, was there anything new in this statement at all?

Isn’t the Cabinet Secretary constantly here trying to fill a sieve? Because whatever gains we may make—if gains they be—in reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, that is going to be completely swamped and overwhelmed by the increase in carbon emissions by other countries elsewhere in the world. Let’s just look at the facts here: China produces 30 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions; the entire EU produces 10 per cent; India produces 7 per cent and is destined to overtake the EU within three year; and the United Kingdom produces 1.16 per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, any gains that we might make by closing down the entire British economy overnight would be wholly swamped by increases in carbon emissions from places like China and India in a matter of weeks. In the process, we are imposing a disproportionate burden upon the British people, and the Welsh people in particular, whether they be as consumers of electricity or as workers in industries that are highly intensive energy users.

Eighty-four per cent of the energy that we consume in the UK comes from fossil fuels; 70 per cent of electricity is generated, on average, by fossil fuels; and 100 per cent of our transport, virtually, is provided by fossil fuels.

I’m looking now, as we speak, at the national grid, and we are currently generating from wind 5.25 per cent of our energy. Fifty-one per cent of our energy is produced by combined-cycle gas turbine power stations, which are there as back-ups for the renewables when the wind doesn’t blow or blows too strongly. So, we’re vastly adding to the capital costs of energy production in this country via this requirement for duplication.

China has recently agreed to observe some targets on emissions, but what they’ve agreed to do is not cut their emissions, but actually to but their emissions per unit of economic output. But as the Chinese economy is forecast to grow very significantly in the decades ahead, actually their carbon emissions are forecast to rise by 50 per cent by 2030. Meanwhile, we are spending time in assemblies like this, wittering away about things that simply don’t matter in the context of the global economy, even if you accept the theories in relation to man-made global warming, which I know is a point of dispute between the Cabinet Secretary and me. Even if you accept her analysis of the science and its impact on the world, the kind of costs that we’re imposing on the British economy for virtually negligible gain are simply not worth it.

We’ve been talking about electric vehicles and how this is the way forward, but there’s no point in having electric vehicles if the electricity that powers them is produced by largely fossil fuel-generated electricity. I’m very much in favour of energy efficiency schemes, and I think, as Simon Thomas said, we could vastly improve our energy efficiency in Wales by a much enhanced system of insulation grants and other forms of making energy use more efficiently. The impact that that has on the lives of people on low incomes is very important as well, because let’s bear in mind that the people who are paying the biggest price for these policies are those at the bottom end of the income scale—the people for whom the Labour Party were supposed to have been created, and whose interests they purport to defend.

The last point I’ll make in this context is in relation to the other responsibilities of the Cabinet Secretary—and I raised this in questions the other day—as the Secretary for rural affairs. I’m very concerned about the conflict of interest in her portfolio between her requirement to advance the interests of renewable energy through windfarms and, in places like mid Wales in particular, we’re planting new forests of windmills all over our hills and landscape—. This is in conflict with the tourism requirements, as well as the aesthetic interests, of these areas, and I would like to see—if we are going to have these renewable projects, inevitably—that we are far more sensitive in where we’re going to deploy them. We don’t have to have every single hilltop in Wales with a windfarm on it. So, I’d like to hear from the Cabinet Secretary how she’s going to try and reconcile these conflicts in a way in which, perhaps, gives more emphasis to the needs of rural communities, rather than the kind of theories that are supposed to benefit the world at large. I’m more interested in my little world in Mid and West Wales.

Neil Hamilton is just so negative. You really need to recognise what we’re trying to achieve with decarbonisation. It’s about security of energy mix, which I am aware the UK Government are also responsible for. It’s about cost and affordability and it’s about decarbonisation. You go on about China and India et cetera; I’m focusing on Wales, and it’s not just about cutting carbon emissions, it’s about the economic benefits for Wales, and it’s about what these new technologies can do for the people of Wales. You talk about energy efficiency; that’s exactly what Arbed and Nest have done. I mentioned in my statement 39,000 homes. You’re quite right about insulation. It’s really important that people’s homes are insulated correctly, and we have assisted with that. You mentioned the National Grid, and I know the First Minister has met recently with the National Grid. We recognise we have to expand. You talked about when wind turbines aren’t turning, and it’s really important that we have the storage there for when that happens, and that is an important part of that.

As you say, you raised in questions with me windfarms and tourism, for instance, and I’ve looked into the visual impact and the research that’s been done in relation to that, not just here in Wales but also in Scotland. It consistently shows that the majority of people support wind development, or they have absolutely no objection at all, and there is no consistent impact, for instance, on house prices. The Scottish Government have done some research on this to show that there’s no impact at all from wind developments.

As I said, I’m passionately in favour of windfarms in the correct place. You don’t want them all together—well, that’s why we have the strategic search areas. We put the large ones together there to save them from being on every mountain top, as you referred to. I don’t see it as a conflict of interest. I know there are issues with Powys County Council. I know they’ve recently consulted on proposals to identify areas for wind and solar developments in their local development plan. I’m very keen that their LDP isn’t found to be unsound, so I’ve made sure that they’ve had support from Government officials through regular meetings, and other forms of assistance going forward. What they need to do, each local planning authority, when they’re looking at wind turbines or windfarms, for instance, they’ve got to look at their overall vision and strategy for renewable energy development in their area to make sure that their international and their national statutory obligations to protect designated areas or species or habitats are observed.

Thank you. There are two more speakers, and I’m going to ask them both to be very brief. I know that people will adhere to that. Lee Waters.

Diolch, Ddirprwy Lywydd. Minister, I welcome your comments about the finance Minister being willing to look at the consequentials from the autumn statement to see if there are possibilities of further development in home insulation. The Arbed and Nest schemes have been excellent schemes to tackle carbon emissions and poverty. However, their scale is insufficient to meet the challenge of climate change, and given the likely availability of public spending in future years, would you look at alternative forms of finance in order to be able to fund a much more ambitious scheme, building on this excellent work?

You’re quite right, and the Minister for local government and finance is hearing what I say also. I’m pleased you recognise the good work that’s been done with Arbed and Nest. But you’re right: we absolutely have to accelerate programmes such as this if we are going to meet our targets. As I say, the one thing that COP22 taught me, talking to other states and regions, is we’ve got to continually be ahead of the game if we are going to reach those targets. So, I’m very happy to look at anything that will help us, particularly with fuel poverty and the vulnerable people that we need to assist there. I’m having discussions with officials, because you’ll be aware that my capital budget took a big hit due to the budget that we’ve been given by the UK Government, but I said in the Chamber last week that I’d already written to the Cabinet Secretary for finance and, as I say, those discussions are going forward. But if I don’t get the funding for me to be able to accelerate the programmes or look at different programmes, then we will have to look for alternative funding.

Cabinet Secretary, you have said that you now aim to put a mechanism in place with regard to a framework to guide the right energy developments to the right places. You go on to say that this will include producing area statements to help identify opportunities for renewable energy and reflecting the potential within local development plans. But can I ask how you as the Welsh Government can reflect the potential within local development plans when these are, of course, produced by local authorities? Does this mean that you will or have directed local authorities to amend their LDPs?

Currently, Natural Resources Wales are bringing forward the area statements. I will then be able to work with local authorities in relation to that. I haven’t decided if there’s going to be further guidance, but I think it is something that we can work very closely on—or NRW can certainly do so—working in partnership, Welsh Government, local authorities and NRW, going forward with those LDPs.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.

Item 5 is the Education Workforce Council (Registration of Youth Workers, Youth Support Workers and Work Based Learning Practitioner) Order 2016. I call on the Minister for Skills and Science to move the motion. Julie James.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the motion.

Wales is at the forefront of ensuring greater coherence and recognising the contribution that the whole education workforce makes to learners in Wales. I’m sure Members will agree that the registration of the wider educational workforce is good news as it provides the reassurances that the workforce is deemed suitable for registration. The registration of youth workers, youth support workers and work-based learning practitioners is phase 3 of registration of the education sector and will set a registration requirement for these new practitioners from 1 April 2017 with the Education Workforce Council.

A consultation held earlier this year sought views on proposals for the registration of these new categories of practitioners, which received the overwhelming support of those who took the time and effort to respond, and I thank all those that did. There were concerns raised that registration could potentially impact on youth-sector volunteers who give up their free time to work within the sector. This will not be the case. However, the Order does allow for an individual to register on a voluntary basis, provided they meet the necessary criteria set out in the Order and are content to pay the associated registration fee.

The registration of these new groups with the Education Workforce Council will strengthen their profile in ways that are supportive, that will recognise the value of their work and the contributions that they make in the lives of young people.

We will be supporting this Order, but I just have a few points that I’d like to raise, and perhaps the Minister could respond to them.

I should also declare an interest as one of the honorary presidents of the Council for Wales of Voluntary Youth Services

Registering an individual who is a youth worker isn’t going to secure a better quality of service necessarily. There are other factors, such as ensuring that sufficient resources are available and access to CPD is also very important. We need an assurance, I think, that there will be clear pathways and accessible pathways in terms of qualifications from level 2 to degree level for these youth workers. Therefore, I want a commitment from the Minister, if truth be told, that that support will be available and that resources will be available to ensure that that pathway is accessible to these workers.

Also, of course, the Education Workforce Council can’t enforce registration on individuals they’re not aware of. There may be individuals and organisations out there providing services, and individuals who may well be qualified to do that, but the workforce council, as I say, isn’t aware of their existence. So, how do you anticipate that the Education Workforce Council will deal with that issue and will ensure that everyone who should be registered is registered?

Well, on the first point, this is welcome because, as the Member will know, we’ve worked very hard to make sure that youth workers in particular—this obviously extends to work-based learning practitioners as well—but youth workers in particular gain the recognition that they so richly deserve, and registration does give them access of course to the continuous professional development and learning pathways arrangements. We’ve based it on qualification after extensive consultation about how to do it and who to capture. What we’d be expecting is for local authorities that employ somebody who doesn’t have the relevant qualification to assist them to get there. And that’s kind of the point really: to get that professionalisation driven into the workforce that we want so much. So, I would expect that to happen. It’s early days for it, but we do expect that to happen, absolutely. I’m not actually the Minister for youth work any more; my colleague Alun Davies is, and he will be ensuring that the proposals go ahead on that basis.

On the other basis, in terms of how we will get to anyone who—. I think what you’re asking is: how will we know that we’ve captured everybody who ought to be registered? And the answer to that is that if they’re not registered, they won’t be able to work in the sectors that are proscribed, so it will sort itself out. If there are any more details to that then I’m afraid, because I’m not the youth worker Minister any more, I’m not aware of them. So, if there’s anything additional to that, then I’ll get a written answer for you. I’m not aware of it at the moment, but if there is more detail than that, I’ll write to you.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

We now turn to the debate on the draft budget 2017-18, and I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to move the motion. Mark Drakeford.

Diolch yn fawr, Ddirprwy Lywydd. I move the Welsh Government’s draft budget before the National Assembly.

We live in the most sustained adverse economic conditions faced for many generations, but even in this age of austerity, this has been a budget created under peculiarly testing circumstances. I’m grateful to the Finance Committee for the recognition in its report on the draft budget, published last week, that this has been an exercise framed in uncertainty. Certainly it has been one where planning for the future has been constrained by events, partially within Wales, but more significantly still, beyond our own boundaries. The Welsh Government’s usual budget cycle begins in March every year, but in 2016, the election of a new National Assembly in May, the formation of a minority administration, the ensuing agreement with Plaid Cymru to discuss key aspects of our programme over the summer months, have all produced an inevitable impact on our budget preparations. Beyond Wales, the European referendum result, the formation of the new administration in Westminster, the incoming Chancellor’s decision to formulate a fiscal reset and to delay that announcement until the autumn statement on 23 November, combined to shroud our own planning in uncertainty.

Nevertheless, Dirprwy Lywydd, my own ambition throughout the summer was to lay a budget of more than one year’s duration. I was then, and continue now, to be alert to the case that our partner organisations make, that planning is aided by longer budget periods. By September, however, it was clear that the lack of clarity about the revenue resources available to the National Assembly beyond 2017-18 meant that this ambition would not be possible. The budget before Members today therefore sets out revenue spending plans for one year, but capital budgets for four years ahead.

Dirprwy Lywydd, as a result of the work of my immediate predecessor, Jane Hutt, there has been an increasingly sophisticated focus on equality impacts in the budget round, and in the alignment of policy priorities and spending allocations. This draft budget draws heavily on the legacy of that work, both in individual departments and centrally. But while this year’s budget has been developed on a truncated timetable, I want to be clear that there is more we can and will do to apply these equality principles over the longer timetable, which will be available for budget planning next year.

This draft budget, Dirprwy Lywydd, is both a first and a last of its kind, and I want to say something on both counts. This is the first budget to be shaped by the passing of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, placed on the statute book by the fourth Assembly. I accept the views expressed during the scrutiny process, but at this point in time the impact of the Act is more evolutionary than complete. Nevertheless, the Act is there to be seen in the alignment of individual spending decisions with the five ways of working and the seven goals that it sets out. I do intend to introduce changes next year to the internal budget preparations that I undertake with Cabinet colleagues and others, to ensure that the Act goes on making a growing impact on our budget processes and outcomes. In a world of shrinking resource, growing demands and sharply competing priorities, however, no-one should believe that the Act provides a simplistic blueprint through which all tensions can be resolved. We are at the start of the journey that the Act provides, and more can and will be done to use it in next year’s budget making.

If this is the first year of the well-being of future generations Act, this is the last draft budget before the National Assembly before we become responsible for raising taxes in Wales. Provided the necessary legislation is approved by Assembly Members, in next year’s budget round, the finance Minister will be responsible for proposing the rates and bands for land transaction tax, and for the implementation detail of land disposals tax. I believe that this will change the nature of the scrutiny of future budgets. When the Chair of the Finance Committee made his introductory statement to the Assembly, he said that in future there would be a need to make changes to the budget process in order to deal with these new fiscal developments, with a new focus by the Finance Committee on Welsh Government’s spending, taxation and borrowing plans. I agree with the conclusions that he drew.

Turning back to this budget, I don’t intend to repeat what I said when I made my statement here on the floor of the Assembly on 18 October. This budget is very deliberately a budget for stability and ambition: stability in its efforts to ward off the worst impacts of revenue cuts to the Welsh Government’s budget over this term, and in providing longer term certainty for capital planning; ambitious because of the way we are investing in all our headline commitments as set out in the programme for government. This will help us to navigate through the treacherously difficult times in which we live, helping us to invest in growth and prosperity for all.

So, I repeat, Dirprwy Lywydd, what I have said many times in this Chamber and beyond since the budget was first laid: this budget provides a temporary period of relief from the UK Government’s worst impacts of austerity. We must, therefore, use this period to plan now for the tougher times and the more difficult choices that lie ahead.

The Finance Committee says in its report, that it found too little evidence of this planning taking place. Maybe in the first weeks after the budget was laid, this was understandable, but I am clear that in the months ahead this challenge really must be grasped. As to the specific recommendations made in the committee’s report, I look forward to responding to them formally and fully in advance of the debate on the final budget in the new year. Today, I’m glad to welcome the constructive spirit of those recommendations, and to recognise the significance of the issues highlighted in them; from the revenue consequences of capital borrowing, to the impact of the decision to leave the European Union on future resources available to Wales.

Now, the context for all of this has become all the more pressing, Llywydd, in the light of the autumn statement of 23 November. In terms of capital investment, I recognise the steps the Chancellor has taken and the consequentials that will flow for capital investment in Wales. I am determined that we will make the best possible use of these funding opportunities, and I am in discussion with my Cabinet colleagues and others about how this new investment can be put to work for Wales. It is to be simply truthful, however, rather than churlish, to point out, as the First Minister did earlier this afternoon, that the effect of the autumn statement is to make our capital budget only 21 per cent lower in 2019 than it was in 2009. It only goes some way, then, to fill the hole that the Chancellor’s predecessor dug for Wales. Now, all the decisions about allocating this additional capital will be made in time for them to be reflected in the final budget when it is laid on 20 December, and therefore well before it will be debated in January.

On the revenue side, the autumn statement was bitterly disappointing. In advance of the statement, I joined the finance Ministers of Scotland and Northern Ireland in calling on the Chancellor to end the self-defeating policies of austerity that have done so much to damage the economic prospects and the social fabric of our nation. But, offered the chance to do so, the Chancellor conspicuously failed. To the consternation of colleagues in the English NHS, and to the bitter criticism of many Conservative leaders of English local authorities, the autumn statement provided not a single penny piece for those vital services in health and social care. For everything we do in Wales, with the needs of an ageing population, and with inflation rising, we have £35.8 million extra to invest in public services over the whole of the next four years, and £20 million of that had already been announced. Moreover, and alarmingly, the autumn statement confirmed that the Chancellor intends to go ahead with £3.5 billion-worth of revenue cuts in 2019-20, which by itself could wipe out, by a multiple of between three and six times, the whole of the additional revenue provided to Wales for four whole years in the autumn statement.

Now, Llywydd, this is an administration without a majority. As such, we entered into a set of arrangements with Plaid Cymru to work together in the Welsh national interest on a series of matters, including securing a budget for Wales. The draft budget laid on 18 October reflected the results of considerable discussions and negotiations over the summer months. These discussions have continued since the draft budget was published and will resume again next week. The discussions are inevitably challenging, but I believe have been constructive. I have been grateful to Adam Price and his team for the level and nature of their participation in those discussions and for the common ground we have been able to identify as a result. Llywydd, we heard earlier this afternoon of the enthusiasm of the Conservative party for recycling, and such is their devotion to it that they have presented the identical amendment to this budget that they proposed last year, before losing May’s election. We will match their consistency by voting against it today. We do so, Llywydd, because this is a budget that matches up to all our commitments, it is a budget that protects our public services, invests in jobs and growth, and provides a moment to prepare ahead. I commend it to the Assembly.

I call on the Chair of the Finance Committee, Simon Thomas.

Thank you, Presiding Officer, and thank you to the Cabinet Secretary for setting out the context for the draft budget before us this afternoon. On behalf of the Finance Committee, I’d like to thank everyone who has contributed their views to assist us in undertaking this important work of scrutinising the draft budget. We only had a little time to focus on this work, and therefore we’re particularly pleased that, this time, we’ve had the opportunity to use informal methods, such as holding an online conversation and an event for stakeholders outside the Assembly—and outside Cardiff, indeed—as well as gathering evidence formally in the usual manner. This allowed people to discuss the draft budget openly and honestly, and we hope that we can build on these links in future to ensure that there is a way to feed a wide variety of comments into the committee’s work, including the work of scrutinising the budget. The committee is grateful to everyone who contributed to our work. We want to work with the Cabinet Secretary to expand on this principle of participatory budgeting as the process develops.

The committee report includes a number of recommendations that are very wide-ranging. We recommend very strongly that the Welsh Government should consider and accept all of these findings and recommendations, and I’m very pleased that the Cabinet Secretary has noted that he is at least seriously considering all of the recommendations made. There is much that I’d like to say for the whole Assembly, as we prepare to have taxation powers and the changes that the Cabinet Secretary laid out in opening this debate. This draft budget is a better settlement than many expected, and the comments that we’ve received reflected this. However, it’s clear from what the Cabinet Secretary told the committee, and what he’s just said today, that organisations should be using this settlement to prepare for much tougher times ahead. But, despite this, we’re concerned that we’ve seen very little evidence of such preparation taking place, and we would urge organisations, particularly the health service and local government, to think ahead and put steps in place to enable them to manage with less in future years. This is particularly of concern given the Institute of Fiscal Studies’s prediction that the Welsh Government’s budget could be cut by 3.2 per cent in real terms over the next three years. This, coupled with the likely loss of EU grants, would see further cuts falling on local government, and so early preparation to mitigate funding decreases will be vital.

With regard to the national health service, the committee was disappointed that some health boards do not yet have approved three-year integrated plans in place, even though it’s a statutory requirement of them to prepare these since the National Health Service Finance (Wales) Act came into force in April 2014. The fact that these plans haven’t been approved for all health boards is a cause of concern. It was also a concern for the previous Finance Committee in the fourth Assembly, and that’s a disappointment for us. We will give this further consideration next year. Furthermore, to respond to the pressures on the health service now and in future, we’ve noted that the scale of transformation needs to be faster and it must be much more ambitious. So, we’ve recommended that future draft budgets should be able to demonstrate how allocations support investment in prevention work and transformation of services.

Turning to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, now that the provisions of this Act have come into force, the committee did expect to see how the allocations made in the draft budget had been influenced by the requirements of that Act. However, we heard from stakeholders directly, and from other committees, that there’s very little information in the published budget documentation to demonstrate how the Act has impacted upon allocations. We’ve therefore expressed our disappointment at the lack of progress made by the Welsh Government in reflecting how budget allocations have been influenced by the Act. In particular, we were very disappointed to hear that some stakeholders viewed the previous draft budget as being easier to link to the Act than this one. Surely that wasn’t the intention. We think that this was a missed opportunity for the Welsh Government to demonstrate the leadership required to bring about the transformational change needed to embed the requirements of the Act as an integral part of policy decisions. I was very pleased to hear the comments of the Cabinet Secretary in opening this debate, which suggested to me that he at least, if he doesn’t acknowledge this argument, acknowledges that a debate is needed within the Government on this particular issue. We would hope to see a quantifiable improvement on this in the draft budget next year, and we’ve recommended that the Government use a strategic integrated impact assessment tool to identify how the Act influences the draft budget in future. As I said, it’s clear that the Cabinet Secretary does want to look at this and will, hopefully, improve the process.

We know that, from April 2018, the Welsh Government will have increased powers in relation to taxation and borrowing, and, as such, the committee’s role will change, as will the role of the Assembly. Although we welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s openness about the Government’s commitments in relation to borrowing, we note that detail on borrowing in the draft budget documentation, on issues such as borrowing, debt, repayment, and non-domestic rates, was lacking. We would expect to see a drastic improvement on this in next year’s draft budget, as the Assembly itself, of course, develops new ways of scrutinising the budget.

The Assembly and the Welsh public deserve a full picture of the Government’s budgetary performance, based perhaps on the famous red book that we have in Westminster. We must also remember that the autumn statement has changed the timing of the budget in Westminster from spring to autumn, and the Assembly will have to respond appropriately to that process.

Other committees wrote to us to highlight the key issues from their scrutiny sessions with the respective Cabinet Secretaries, and we’ve outlined these in our report, particularly those on the value for money of the Welsh Government’s draft budget allocations. There are too many to mention today, but I’d like to draw the Assembly’s attention to one in particular, which is the concern of the Climate Change, Energy and Rural Affairs Committee about the potential effects of cuts in the budget for flood prevention and climate change. The autumn statement was made following our scrutiny of the draft budget, and the Government will surely want to re-emphasise the need for capital allocations in this area in the light of that statement. We will track responses from the Welsh Government to the individual committees, and we ask those committees to continue to pursue the value-for-money aspect during their in-year financial scrutiny.

I would like to again thank everyone who has contributed to this scrutiny process. As a committee, we are acutely aware that the time available for draft budget scrutiny is short, and we are very grateful to everyone for their valuable contributions. I now look forward to hearing more political comments with regard to the draft budget.

I have selected the amendment to the motion and I call on Nick Ramsay to move the amendment tabled in the name of Paul Davies. Nick Ramsay.

Diolch. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I’m pleased to contribute to this debate today and to move the amendment in the name of Paul Davies. It’s not an identical amendment to last year’s draft budget, Cabinet Secretary—I did actually change the year. [Laughter.] Some of the problems that that amendment addressed are still there, but it is a recent amendment.

Can I concur with many of the comments made by the Chair of the Finance Committee? We appreciate the difficulty that the timing of the autumn statement has caused for the Cabinet Secretary and his team. It has also caused headaches for the Finance Committee, as the Chair has alluded to, but these are headaches that we have got used to over recent years. On the bright side, the autumn statement will deliver an extra £436 million, thereabouts, of capital funding between 2016 and 2021 on capital projects as a result of extra spending on transport in England—infrastructure in England. We all know we need to invest in our infrastructure to grow our economy, so this additional funding is to be welcomed.

Recommendation 1 of the Finance Committee report recommends that:

‘In future years the draft budget…should clearly demonstrate how the programme for government has informed and driven the budget setting process’.

As things stand, you have to say that those links are simply not there. As for the integration with future generations legislation, well, don’t even go there. There are very real concerns about how that piece of legislation is going to pull its weight and these were voiced on the committee. At the end of the day, it isn’t just about legislation and budgeting. We need to see real sustainable results on the ground and all our efforts should be geared towards that.

As with previous draft budgets that have been brought forward in this Chamber, many Members are prone to lambasting the UK Government cuts—and they are tough; there is no getting away from that. But, I think that, too often, criticism is made in this Chamber about those cuts without sufficient weight being given to why the cuts were originally considered necessary and, indeed, the huge level of borrowing that the previous Government—and, indeed, the current one—was left with, which had to be dealt with. The previous finance Secretary here has herself admitted that borrowing had to be dealt with.

Now, Government is all about priorities and making do within the constraints set, but as the Cabinet Secretary has mentioned, those constraints are set to be relaxed; this budget will be the last to cover a period in which the Welsh Government does not have tax powers or significant borrowing powers. Given that the devolution of tax is now a little over a year away, we might have expected some recognition of this and an indication of how tax will be used as a tool to support the programme for government. The fact that we haven’t had that, or an indication of that, is, I think, symptomatic of a deeper issue surrounding forward planning and the problems associated with developing multi-year budgets.

I appreciate that here, it’s not just a question of the Welsh Government planning better for the future. The UK as a whole needs to do that as well. We need a fiscal framework. I know the Cabinet Secretary shares these views; other parties do, as well. It would be easier for the Welsh Government to plan if settlements from the Treasury were better insulated against financial shocks, particularly with the devolution of tax powers. Future reductions in the block grant must be properly indexed and appropriate. We can’t afford to get this wrong.

Turning to the largest part of the draft budget, the health budget is indeed getting an injection of resourcing, and whilst we welcome any extra resources for the NHS, we should not forget that we are still playing catch-up from the decisions not to protect the health budget in real terms between 2011 and 2016, at a time when Barnett consequentials were coming to Wales as a result of the UK Government’s protection of the English budget.

I know that many AMs here don’t like us talking about the previous Assembly’s real-terms cuts to the health budget, but I do think that we need to take a balanced view of this. I’m prepared to take a balanced view of this budget, if other Members are as well. Whilst we welcome the move towards a new treatment fund—that is welcomed—I think it’s a shame that the Government didn’t heed Welsh Conservative calls for a cancer treatment fund all those years ago when our constituents were calling for equity with England and tens of thousands of people across Wales were signing petitions registering their concerns—

Will you give way?

In a moment, I will.

I had constituents at their tethers’ end considering moving across the border from my constituency to access life-lengthening medication.

Thank you for giving way. Would the Member accept that the problem with a cancer treatment fund is that it ignores the fact that many other people suffer from illnesses that also require investment and innovation and so on, and that that is a barrier to one of the things that we’ve tried to achieve through these negotiations? [Interruption.]

I’ve already said that I welcome a treatment fund; I just think it’s a shame that we are playing catch-up from a number of years ago, when our constituents—and not just mine; I’m sure constituents in your area, Rhun, in Ynys Môn were also calling for a cancer treatment fund. It is one of the biggest killers in Wales and I just think it’s a shame that we didn’t take that action at that time, but I’m willing to accept that we do now have a treatment fund. I just think we could’ve got out of the blocks a little bit earlier, and I think, probably, in your heart of hearts, you agree with that as well, Rhun.

We need more information on where health funding is going. Getting data from the NHS has always been tricky to say the least. Is the additional funding really going to go on improving the health service and building for the future, rather than simply plugging and writing off holes in the budget? As I said earlier, Cabinet Secretary, we’re playing catch-up here and we shouldn’t forget that.

Turning to education, earlier this afternoon, we had a statement on the poor PISA results. Okay, I appreciate that these results are very recently published, but I think it is reasonable to ask how this budget will address the concerns raised in that statement. Going in the right direction is not good enough. There can be no clearer sign of how serious this Assembly takes its obligations to future generations than what we do to raise educational standards in this country, and to reach the standards required. As paragraph 4.35 of the draft budget proposals reminds us,

‘Education plays a fundamental role in our development as individuals and is the foundation of a strong and vibrant economy.’

If I can turn to and, indeed, warmly welcome the abandonment of the flawed plans to reform local government in Wales, we in the Welsh Conservatives believe this will avoid wasting a huge sum of money—money that can be invested where it should be: on the front line, in public services, where people would expect it to be invested. I do, of course, have an issue with sharing out of the local government budget itself. I’ve made those concerns well known in this Chamber during many statements and debates. The old formula is still being relied on. As we know, it penalises rural local authorities, like mine in Monmouthshire—consistently at the bottom of the pile of funding. There is one small section in the draft budget on rural issues. I think it’s on page 55, relating to food and drink and supply chains. Good as far as it goes: it may proclaim an increase in funding to local government, but that is just half the battle. It needs to be distributed fairly, recognising the greater costs of delivering services across a sparsely populated rural area.

Cabinet Secretary, sustainability is at the heart of the Assembly’s constitution, but there is a perception out there that we often talk the talk without always walking the walk. If the Welsh Government is going to require other organisations to demonstrate three-year financial planning, then it has to make more of an effort to do this itself as part of a modernisation of the Welsh Government budget process. We talked earlier about the need to modernise the Assembly’s budget process. The Welsh Government needs to do that as well.

In conclusion, Presiding Officer, we need more joined-up thinking. How does this budget deliver on Welsh Government objectives over the medium term? How does it prepare us for the changes and the challenges ahead? How does it deliver our goal of long-term sustainability?

Whilst good in parts, and providing much-needed but ultimately—as the Cabinet Secretary himself alluded to—short-term relief for some of our public services, this is a temporary fix. To paraphrase the words of the late Sir Robin Day, it’s a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ budget. This is why we do not feel that this budget meets the needs of the people of Wales.

I will come to the remarks of the Cabinet Secretary in a second, but listening to the spokesperson of the Conservative Party, I was put in mind of one of those choice quotes of John Maynard Keynes who, in an earlier time of economic turbulence, said:

‘Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.’

He was referring to the necessity of cuts as a practical necessity in these times that we live in. The world has moved on since then. I don’t know whether you had Patrick Minford as a poster on your wall as a teenager. Maybe you did. Maybe you worshipped the monetarist. But look, we live in an age when the Governor of the Bank of England—not an institution that, over its history, has cared much about issues like inequality and the position of the working class—has just referred to the lost decade, comparing us to the 1860s. Mario Draghi, of all people, the chair of the European Central Bank, has just called for an EU-wide fiscal stimulus. The European Commission put a proposal across the EU, saying that unless we get fiscal expansion, then we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. The President-elect of the United States—no political friend of mine; no soft-hearted liberal—has called for a massive fiscal expansion in the United States of America. I’ll gladly give way to the Member.

Thank you. I’m not going to tell you what posters I had on my wall in my bedroom as a teenager, but they certainly weren’t of economists. I hear what you’re saying, Adam, but are you honestly saying that you do not believe that any cuts were necessary at all? Because if you are saying that, then that is completely preposterous. You have to believe in running an economy fiscally reasonably and sustainably. To say that no cuts were necessary—well, come on, that’s a fraud.

I have some very simple and bad news for him: yes, we have huge debt in the public sector, but has he looked at the state of corporate debt in the private sector? The entire economy of the western world is indebted. So, what is he suggesting? That we all cut all economic activity, and that we go back to ground zero? Re-read Keynes by all means. We are back in the same situation where collapsing trust and economic confidence has left us in the position where there is only one lever left, and it is the lever held by people like us who are elected to represent the public. Unless governments act across the western world, then we are all condemned to a future, politically and economically, that no-one—not one of us, I presume—would want to see.

Let’s turn to the budget. I have sympathy with the Cabinet Secretary, because he has to deal within the constraints that are set upon him in this situation where we do not have fiscal and economic sovereignty to the extent that this party would like to see. So, that is the backdrop, unfortunately, to our discussions here, and as we gather and gain political and fiscal autonomy then we will be able to do more in the future.

It was a pleasure to work with him in this curious form of political cohabitation that we’ve invented between our two parties, as a governing party and an opposition party, to do what is right in the interests of the people of Wales. We have our disagreements, and we certainly continue to discuss those areas of disagreement. But it was good to be able to agree support, particularly for sectors, in this year where, as he has said, it’s about creating, possibly, a breathing space in order for us to put in place a platform for some of the more radical change that will be necessary over the years ahead. We’re looking particularly in the Plaid Cymru agreement at those sectors that have had serial cuts over many years: higher education; further education, which is underfunded; the arts sector; local government, with the first cash rise since 2013-14; and mental health spending, where I know there is consensus across the Assembly that it is a sector that has been underfunded compared to its importance over many years. So, it was good to put those in place through the agreement between us.

In pooling our ideas, I think we were able to create a better budget. I want to see the whole of this Assembly, actually, being able to do that role more effectively than it has hitherto, and that’s why I welcome the recommendations from the Finance Committee. We collated, with the Government’s help, all the different items—the main expenditure groups, the spending programme areas, the actions, the budget, the BELs, the budget expenditure lines—yes, about 7,000 of them, or something like that. It should have been a red file—it’s a blue file. It could be a red book, maybe. But you won’t find this available anywhere at the moment. This should be given to every Assembly Member, of opposition parties and governing parties, so you can look through each of these individual budget expenditure lines. Otherwise, we’re not able to do our job to the best of our ability.

I’m particularly looking forward, as the Cabinet Secretary has said—and, indeed, the Chair of the Finance Committee—we live in a time of great challenge, with rising demand, huge fiscal constraints, and opportunities in terms of new technology like big data, for example. We need to look at creating a longer-term budgetary framework for the public sector bodies that rely on the budget. So, a three-year budget I think is something worth welcoming. But certainly, we need to have the information available in a more transparent form than is currently the case, and we should look at broader innovations about the way we set the budget.

They say that journalism is the first draft of history. There’s a paucity of journalism in Wales. Maybe the Welsh budget, actually, is the first draft, because of the central importance of the Welsh Government in shaping our future as a nation. Fifty years ago in the United States, they innovated in budget making through programme budgeting, and actually it relates to the first recommendation of the Finance Committee. Alongside the figures on expenditure, we should have figures on what we’re trying to achieve, on outcomes. They put the two together. Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, did some things I wouldn’t agree with, but he did some good things as well, and actually had a bit of a Damascene conversion at the end. But one of the excellent things he did was say, ‘The only way Congress can judge a budget is actually having the data on inputs and outputs set out at the same time’. There’s a reference, I think, in one of the committee’s reports, to the pupil deprivation grant—absolutely laudable in terms of its objectives, but is it achieving those objectives and how do we actually evaluate value for money? Again, maybe there’s a different way that we can look at budget making in total. We talk about moving away from silo Government, don’t we? We’ve talked about a joined-up Government et cetera for a decade and more. Yet, this a monument to silo thinking, isn’t it? It’s all done on a departmental basis.

Would it be possible to do a cross-departmental budget where we actually have main expenditure groups that are about innovation, which look at creating an innovation fund that moves across all the departments? Could we look at other areas like prevention, which is also mentioned in the Finance Committee’s report? We all know this, don’t we, that actually investing in early years intervention for children and young people saves us money in the long term, certainly in the health service, as referred to in the Finance Committee’s report? Why don’t we have prevention as one of our main expenditure groups, rather than the departmental focus that we have?

I welcome the fact that, through our discussions, we’re looking at a participatory budget, involving the citizens, user engagement, co-production—a word that I think Leighton Andrews tried to ban. But ultimately, if we’re going to achieve more with the taxpayers’ pound, we can only do that with actually drawing other people, citizens, companies and sectors in to co-delivering some of our objectives as well.

So, I would urge that we take a different look at the way that we currently go about budget setting and we involve not just other Members in this place but the citizens as well. We would like to see in the final budget, particularly as referred to in one of the committee’s reports, and as Simon Thomas has already raised, the issue of capital funding for flooding and certainly business rates. We’ve made the case many, many times, I think, for additional relief, particularly as a result of the revaluation. On housing, could we look, as the UK Government is doing, at modular housing as a means of accelerating housing development? Finally, on local transport—seeing on social media people right across Wales complaining about the overcrowding on our trains and also the problems in some parts of Wales with local bus services as well—could we make that a priority as we move from this draft budget to the final budget statement?

We are around seven years into a period of economic recovery, albeit from an absolutely terrible recession. There’s been substantial growth in the overall UK and Welsh economies. Unemployment is really very low by historical comparisons, at least over the last 30 years, in both Wales and the UK. The budget deficit at a UK level is still approaching £70 billion, approximately 4 per cent of GDP. Yet, the majority of people in this Assembly appear to speak as if there could be a great new borrowing binge, as if austerity is a choice rather than a necessity. If at this stage of the economic cycle you are still borrowing 4 per cent of GDP, then the idea that you can go on a borrowing binge from here is, I think, for the birds. Actually, the only reason, responding to Adam Price, that we’ve been able to sustain the situation is because £425 billion of that borrowing has been cancelled, in effect, by the Bank of England. Yet, we cannot presume that that loose monetary policy of a 0.25 per cent bank rate and £425 billion of quantitative easing is going to continue. And when it reverses, which I believe may be sooner than people in the main expect, then it is going to be very difficult to carry on borrowing at this level. We’ve seen, in the last month or two, that long-term interest rates have increased by about a third compared to where they were. And that will, over time, flow through into budgeting on a UK basis and, through that, to this Assembly.

I speak with relative modesty and I don’t plan a great partisan spiel today. It’s my first year within the budgeting process of this Assembly and, as the finance Minister has said, the system is changing. I have some experience of budgeting at a council and at a police authority level, and, indeed, to the extent it happens there at all, at Westminster, but I don’t want to presume from similarities that things are the same, because there are key and important distinctions.

I’m particularly disappointed to be informed that today we vote on a take-note motion on the draft budget, and then when the final budget comes to us in January, I am informed that there is simply an up-down vote on the motion, and the budget itself is unamendable. I think that’s disappointing—it reflects the situation at Westminster, but only since the 1930s. Prior to that, MPs could and did amend Government spending plans, and I think it would be a more healthy system if party groups or Ministers or Members were able to put amendments to the Government’s budget, and have votes in this place on whether they should be agreed or not. Another thing I find--

Will you give way?

Yes, I’m very happy to.

The Member makes an interesting point, which is that many other Commonwealth countries, for example, and federal countries do use that process, but they do have safeguards around it, particularly where extra expenditure is involved, and you don’t balance the budget with extra income. But he will have the opportunity to take that view forward as we do debate through the Business Committee and through the Assembly itself how we take forward a new look at the budget process.

Yes, and I look forward to working with the Chair of the Finance Committee and others on that. I think the proposal that any change in a budget line that were to be submitted as a motion should at the same time have an amendment as to either an increase in taxation or a reduction in spending which would counter that. But, subject to that, I think we would benefit from having that democratic process.

I’m also grateful to Simon Thomas and also to Nick Ramsey, both of whom have been generous with their time in explaining to me the particularities of the budget-setting process here, and also to the Cabinet Secretary who has been very forthcoming to the Finance Committee, both on the two Bills that we are considering, and on to this budget scrutiny that we have fitted within that.

One other area, I think, of challenge, to my understanding of how the process works here, and perhaps to others, is quite what this relationship is between Plaid and the Labour Party. I had understood that what had been agreed was that Plaid would allow the budget to go through—I’m still unclear as to whether that is abstention or support—in return for a series of specific changes to that budget that would be agreed by Plaid, for instance the £300,000 for looking at the Carmarthen to Aberystwyth railway and whether we can bring that back. I trust that Plaid will be as keen in monitoring how that money is being spent, and ensuring value for money, as they have been at agreeing it in the first place. But it seems that by doing that, they are allowing through quite a lot of other things in this budget that they got no sight of in advance, yet somehow are now associated with. And I felt that Adam Price’s speech was quite some way to defending the budget as a whole, rather than merely just the specific Plaid elements within it. I think we would all benefit from greater clarity as to how that relationship is working.

I also think the Finance Committee—I’m proud of the document that we’ve produced in a very short timescale. I’m not quite sure of the status of that document in this debate—it’s referred to as a supporting document. I wonder, actually, if this Assembly and Plenary were to vote on those recommendations whether they would be supported by the Assembly as a whole. We have had a cross-party agreement in committee, and I think that would strengthen the position further of the Assembly in the budget scrutiny process, and I look forward to the Cabinet Secretary telling us what, if any, parts of the budget he’s going to amend in response to those.

We have this Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and as far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on whether this is an effective piece of legislation or is virtue signalling on a number of very worthy goals that aren’t then followed up and made to happen through the day-to-day process of government and legislation. So, I look forward to seeing changes that may or may not come in that area.

Overall, I would characterise the budget as a ‘steady as she goes’ budget—there’s a lot of budget lines where there’s no change to the spending. The Cabinet Secretary did find additional money for health, which we support. I’m most struck by the local government settlement, relative at least to the spending we see set by the UK Government largely for England, because it’s that local government area that seems to me to have less reductions in Wales, relative to the very, very sharp cuts that local councils in England have experienced, and the corollary of that is health having had cuts in Wales that it hasn’t faced in England. I know that some of that may reflect what is going on with social care and the NHS, and I think it’s sensible for the Government to consider that in the way it does, but, overall, the local government settlement looks vulnerable for future years. And in our Finance Committee report, we say that the

‘draft budget this year is a better settlement for many than was expected...organisations should be using this settlement to prepare for tougher times ahead, the Committee was concerned not to have seen evidence of this preparation taking place’.

And it cites particularly the health service and local government. But in local government, we’ve got elections in May, and the suspicion has to be that there are going to be severe cuts in local government that may be put off until next year and, rather than planning for those reductions now, local governments are concentrating on pump-priming for the council elections in May and we will then see severe reductions in the year or two to follow that that might well have been better planned. For the health service, I’m disappointed to see that we have this statutory requirement for three-year budgeting, we have all these interest groups and partner organisations coming to us and saying they want to plan for the long term, yet several of these health organisations haven’t actually set those three-year budgets, as required by statute.

We have seen these very significant—between 35 and 40 per cent, depending on which year you look at—cuts to the capital budget for climate change projects. I remember being assailed quite aggressively by Carl Sargeant prior to the election on how UKIP wanted to cut this budget, and yet the Government comes back and in the first budget cuts it by over a third. One must admit to being somewhat perplexed. One questions the Cabinet Secretary and is told, ‘Actually, this isn’t going to affect the climate change goals or objectives or what the Government’s going to achieve in this field.’ In which case, why was this money being spent under the climate change area, if it wasn’t actually required to meet those goals? I wonder if these climate change capital projects will be like the higher education budget, perhaps, was last year, and we may see substantive parts of that put back following what we’ve learned in the autumn statement.

I’d like to be assured that what’s happening in terms of energy efficiency and fuel poverty is well connected between the energy companies’ schemes, Nest, and what the Welsh Government is doing, and similarly with local government and its responsibilities in flood protection. And I think it would be good if we looked at these particular schemes on their merits and subjected them to good forensic scrutiny, rather than simply because they’re described as climate change projects having them extolled by the Government as self-evidently good or, indeed, criticised by others as if they weren’t. We should look at their merits, and I think it’s very, very important we get the BELs, the budget expenditure lines, out there early on. It really is unsatisfactory to have very, very broad budgets announced and then to find out significantly later that, actually, the picture is very, very different than it appeared because of what is going on at that level. I really think it would benefit the overall budget process, public scrutiny and democratic involvement in Wales if those BELs were announced at the same time as the draft budget, in order that people can work for proper budget scrutiny and effect. I’m grateful to the Cabinet Secretary and for the time, Llywydd.

This is the sixth budget I have spoken on in the Senedd. Unfortunately, they have all been made against the austerity agenda of first the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Westminster Government and now a Conservative Government. How long will the austerity path be followed until it suddenly dawns on the Government that it is not working? As Adam Price said earlier, this is the first lost decade of economic growth since the 1860s. That was the time of Disraeli and Gladstone, and Disraeli and Gladstone as young men. [Interruption.] No, I’ll help Neil Hamilton: Palmerston was there at the beginning, Disraeli and Gladstone were there at the end. Or is this austerity agenda just a fig leaf to hide the desire of the Conservatives to shrink the public sector? Where the state cannot be removed completely, they find a way, such as academy schools in England, where the private sector can make money out of it.

Turning to the budget before us, health continues on its journey towards 50 per cent of the Welsh revenue budget; this time next year, I predict it will actually exceed 50 per cent of the Welsh revenue budget. I think it’s running at 49 per cent this year. Health is by far the most important service that the Welsh Government provides, but money on health must be used to its best effect. I remain highly sceptical of the current health board structure, which does not seem to me to be based on natural health boundaries. Some questions on health need addressing: how much does it cost for agency staff? Why is there not an all-Wales medicines service so that if medicines are about to become out of date, they can be redeployed to a different hospital even if it’s in a different health board so as to avoid waste?

Will you take an intervention, Mike?

Certainly.

Thank you, I’m very grateful for your taking the intervention. It’s in relation, specifically, to the costs of agency staff. As you will know, the UK Government took action to put a cap on the cost of agency staff per hour. The Welsh Government decided not to follow suit. That’s costing our NHS millions of pounds every year. Do you share my view that the Welsh Government should reconsider its position?

I don’t share your view. What I would say is that if you put that cap on, you end up with wards running short of nurses, and you end up with hospitals short of doctors. The problem is we need agency staff. The challenge to the Welsh Government and the health service is to get to a situation where we don’t need agency staff because we’re fully staffed.

Why are you, as stated by a former health Minister, twice as likely to have your tonsils removed in Ynys Môn than you are in Wrexham, which are both part of the same health board? Why does the cost of an operation such as cataracts vary so much between different hospitals? We recently heard reported that the cost of locum doctors in Wales exceeds £137 million—an increase from £64 million in the previous year. The highest paid locum, according to the newspapers, received £183,000 last year. We need a system where we get more doctors in, and I put my cards on the table that I believe in salaried GPs.

Why are medical interventions that do no good for the patient still taking place? The auditor general reported on this practice, as have NICE. How many patients overnight does a minor injuries unit need to see for it to be kept open overnight? Currently, the answer to that is three.

We as a committee of the Assembly scrutinised the Cabinet Secretary for health and the Cabinet Secretary for finance as to who engages in the in-depth scrutiny of health board expenditure, not over accuracy and legality, but over efficiency and effectiveness.

Whilst people generally have their major health needs during the last 12 to 24 months of their lives, they can need social care for up to 40 years, with the level and complexity of care increasing as people age, often ending up with a residential care package having to be paid for by the local council. It is also of no surprise that those living in inadequate housing tend to have greater health needs. Health is also a lifestyle. Exercising facilities run by local authorities, and fitness, diet and smoking cessation schemes run by Communities First all help to improve the health of people in Wales.

While the autumn statement has added additional capital expenditure to the Welsh Government’s budget, according to my calculation it still has not even taken us back to 2008 expenditure in real terms. Additional capital expenditure would benefit the Welsh economy. Remember that the capital expenditure that Ed Balls called for and that George Osborne described as wrecking the recovery has now been brought forward by Philip Hammond. It’s very pleasing that they’ve almost learned.

Can I just say something relating to this idea that you have to keep on cutting to make austerity for things to work? No, you grow your economy. You increase your tax take by growing the economy. You get more people working; not as we have at the moment, working limited hours and zero hours and short-term contract hours, but you actually get them working full time and you get their salaries up. When that happens, the tax take goes up and people end up better off. Can I just say that, finally, capital expenditure is desperately needed for things as diverse as new schools and flood defences, even though the global warming deniers do not believe that we need the additional flood defences?

Six years ago, the Conservative-led UK Government inherited an economy on the brink of collapse, with the highest budget deficit in peacetime UK history. To rebuild shattered fiscal credibility, it had to take tough decisions. Austerity, defined as not having enough money, is therefore not a choice. As any debtor knows, you cannot start reducing debt until expenditure falls below income. If the Treasury had pursued faster deficit reduction, cuts would have been higher. In the real financial world, borrowers borrow but lenders set the terms. If the Treasury had pursued lower deficit reduction, higher cuts could have been imposed. Those who state otherwise are at best deluding themselves, at worst deluding the people.

The Welsh Government has rightly prioritised prevention and early intervention, but as this draft budget illustrates, it says one thing and does another. Although its budgets for prevention and early intervention and for voluntary sector support are key to the delivery of its policies, and although they represent just 1.5 per cent of the combined health and local government budgets, this Welsh Government has cut them again to over £7 million below their 2015-16 level. Rather than working smarter, this false economy will add additional costs to health and local government services many times higher than the short-sighted cuts imposed. So much for the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 promoting the involvement of people in the design and delivery of care and support services. So much for the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, making public bodies work better with people, with communities and each other, taking a joined-up approach. And so much for the Auditor General for Wales’s report, ‘A Picture of Public Services 2015’, which said,

‘there is now a much clearer recognition that previous approaches have not worked as intended and that radical change is required’,

‘public services must increasingly be delivered not to people, but with people…involving people in the design and delivery of services, recognising people’s own strengths and tailoring services accordingly.’

As the founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, said,

‘While it is entirely appropriate to rescue the man or woman who has fallen into the sea, it is much better to tackle the roots of the individual’s problem at the top of the cliff from which they fell.’

Yet charities Carers Wales, Contact a Family Cymru and Learning Disability Wales are having to call for the Welsh Government to rethink its decision to cut the family fund by £5.5 million, stating it

‘Seems to have made their decision without considering the impact it would have on the most vulnerable families with disabled children.’

Adding, the reduction also seems to run counter to wider Welsh Government policy. In contrast, funding in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland has been maintained.

Of course, Labour’s Welsh Government has got form for this. When, in September 2014, it announced funding to support front-line advice services, Citizens Advice Cymru and Shelter Cymru, it shut out AdviceUK—the UK’s largest support network for free, independent advice centres, with 24 member organisations in Wales—denying people in crisis quick, emergency intervention and trapping them on waiting lists. Over the last year it has been the turn of organisations including Disability Wales and child contact centres in Wales, leading to poorer and more costly outcomes for people and families.

Despite calls by the Wales disability reference group for the devolved independent living fund to be administered in the voluntary sector with Scotland and Northern Ireland, Labour has given this to local government. When I raised concerns about the shortage of qualified nurses providing palliative care in the voluntary sector, identified by the charity Together for Short Lives, this was dismissed, as it was when I highlighted concerns raised by the north Wales safer communities board that too much was being spent on firefighting substance misuse problems and not enough on intervention and prevention, and when I criticised the 10 per cent cut to the third sector supporting communities and people budget, emphasising the crucial role the third sector plays in delivering quality services for less. Such cuts to ground-level support compromise the more user-led, preventative and cost-effective services that the third sector delivers when we should instead be transforming Wales’s public services by embedding co-production.

All too often, money washes over people and neighbourhoods rather than watering their roots. To provide better services more efficiently means taking powers out of the hands of government at local and national level, and sharing it with the people living and working on the front line. If you trust them, it will improve their lives and save money in the process.

I’ll refer to specific elements of this budget in relation to health. The agreement, of course, represents only a part of the wider budget. In that wider budget there are some decisions relating to health and social care that we would hope Welsh Government would reconsider. We would also like more money to be given to health, but we are acutely aware that it isn’t just about the amount of money being spent but how that money is spent and managed on a day-to-day basis.

To the Conservative spokesman, reflected by UKIP and their call for the protection of health budgets, let’s look at what the Conservatives have done in England. Anybody who thinks it’s possible to improve health services through cutting social care as they have done there probably needs to spend a little bit more time thinking about the real problems that we do face in real terms in the NHS in Wales. I will give way.

Do you accept that this constant mantra from the Welsh Government in relation to protecting social care has absolutely nothing to do with them here in Wales, because, of course, decisions on social care budgets are entirely a matter for local authorities and not for the Welsh Government?

With respect, the uncoupling, seemingly, of the interrelationship between social care and health in England has led to disastrous consequences. We cannot ignore the fact that if you stop investing in social care, the health service is what will suffer at the end of the day. That’s why we need to work towards integration. It is not through undermining one part of that which we wish to integrate that you build a service that is holistic and serves the people of Wales well.

The budget agreement, however, that we have worked on with this Government does, I think, represent a step towards achieving Plaid Cymru’s ambition of a healthier Wales, and whether it’s in additional money for medical education, diagnostic equipment, mental health spending, eating disorders, gender identity services in Wales, or end-of-life care, I think what we have here are improvements that will bring about tangible improvements and secure some services in Wales for the very first time. I’ll look at some of the expenditure areas in a little bit more detail.

Mae addysg feddygol yn rhywbeth rydw i’n gobeithio bod yna gonsensws yn tyfu arno fo yn fan hyn. Mae’n rhaid inni sicrhau bod ein hysgolion meddygol, ac addysg feddygol yn ehangach, yn darparu ar gyfer y gwasanaeth iechyd yng Nghymru. Mae hynny’n mynd i olygu’r angen am fuddsoddi ac am ehangu darpariaeth. Mae’r £7 miliwn a gafodd ei sicrhau ar gyfer y flwyddyn nesaf, 2017-18, rwy’n gobeithio, yn mynd i fod yn gam tuag at hynny, nid yn unig yn cryfhau ein hysgolion meddygol presennol ni, ond hefyd, rydw i’n gobeithio, yn mynd i’n galluogi ni i symud ymlaen tuag at greu haen newydd o addysg feddygol gymunedol a fydd yn mynd ag addysg feddygol i graidd yr ardaloedd hynny o Gymru sydd fwyaf angen gweld cynnydd o ran recriwtio a hyfforddi.

Mae £15 miliwn o arian cyfalaf ar gyfer cyfarpar diagnostig, ac rydym yn gwybod—rydw i wedi siarad am y peth lawer tro—fod Plaid Cymru wedi ymrwymo i wella amseroedd diagnosis yng Nghymru, gan fod diagnosis cynnar o salwch yn cynnwys yn enwedig, o bosib, canser, yn gwella rhagolygon am oroesi’n sylweddol. Mae Cymru wedi syrthio y tu ôl i berfformiad cenhedloedd eraill yn y Deyrnas Unedig, ac rydw i’n gobeithio bydd y buddsoddiad yma yn gam positif i’r cyfeiriad iawn.

Ar iechyd meddwl: £20 miliwn ar gyfer y flwyddyn ariannol nesaf. Mae gwasanaethau iechyd meddwl wedi cael eu tan-gyllido ers yn llawer rhy hir, er bod y gwasanaethau wedi gweld galw’n cynyddu ledled Cymru. I sefydlu clinigau anhwylderau bwyta a hunaniaeth rhywedd i Gymru: £1 miliwn ar gyfer y flwyddyn nesaf. Mae Plaid Cymru eisiau ein gweld ni, yma, yn arwain y ffordd mewn sawl maes ac mae anhwylderau bwyta yn un o’r rheini rydym eisiau arwain y byd arnynt, o ran cefnogi a thrin y sawl sy’n dioddef o anhwylderau bwyta, ac y mae hwn, eto, yn gam positif.

Yn olaf, cyllid ychwanegol ar gyfer gofal diwedd oes: £1 miliwn yn y fan honno. Nid yw’n ddigon, wrth gwrs, ond mae o yn ddechrau. Rydw i’n falch iawn bod hynny wedi cael ei gynnwys yn y cytundeb. Mi wnaf gloi, gan fod y cloc wedi fy nghuro i. Mae Plaid Cymru wedi dewis yn y fan hon i wthio am y pethau rydym ni’n gwybod sy’n iawn. Mi fyddai wedi bod yn haws mewn llawer ffordd i wthio am adeilad sgleiniog newydd yn rhywle, ond mae yna feysydd yma lle rydym ni’n hyderus ein bod ni’n ennill tir, ond mewn cyd-destun cyllideb, wrth gwrs, mi fyddwn ni’n parhau i roi’r pwysau yn drwm ar y Llywodraeth yn ei gylch.

We live in the most uncertain times. My colleague, Mark Drakeford, opened his budget statement back in October with those words. And he’s right. The times could not be more uncertain for the UK and for Wales and it is the Tory party that has brought us here.

Since 2010, the Conservative Government has robbed public services in Wales of around £1.5 billion. This sustained attack in particular on the most vulnerable of our constituents is unprecedented in the post-war era. Not content with that, the Tory party, in a spectacularly botched attempt to heal divisions within their own party, took us into a referendum that has unleashed uncertainty, division and alarm into civil society. Incredulity on both sides of industry, and such instability in Europe has not been seen since the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. All reasonable people look on in disbelief as Johnson, Davis and Gove stumble around Europe, scrabbling for answers to the impossible situation that they have landed us in. It’s like watching a routine by the Marx brothers, minus the humour and minus the teamwork.

The Member for Torfaen compares Brexit to the collapse of Yugoslavia. Is she really making a comparison to that bloodshed and hundreds of thousands of deaths? When she talks about civil society, is she not aware that the majority of society voted for this?

I am well aware of what the referendum result is, but I’m also aware of the chaos that we are heading towards, especially with a hard Brexit.

With Groucho’s famous quote and our future in Europe in mind, who in all honesty would want to be part of a club that would have those three as members?

In the midst of this Tory chaos we must still make a budget. Amidst the shambles, the Welsh Government must champion good government. Amidst constant attack from Whitehall, we must show the people of Wales our determination to stand for a decent public realm to protect the most vulnerable and, despite everything this UK Government throws at us, lay the groundwork for a better Wales. This, the Welsh Government has done.

Through this budget, we have shown that our values chime with the values of the people of Wales. Just look at the contrasts. While the NHS in England struggles to soak up the consequences of starving social care, we in Wales invest in social care and commit an extra £0.25 billion to the NHS. While the English school system fragments into academies, free schools and now grammar schools, with all the waste that that entails, we keep our nerve and will continue to invest in school standards and school buildings. We must not be thrown off course in the scramble for a quick headline. Raising standards in schools takes time. The OECD agrees that we have the right strategies in place. I hope that we can still, even at this stage, see a re-commitment from the Welsh Government to Schools Challenge Cymru as the detail of this budget unfolds.

Whilst local government in England is throttled year after year, in Wales we recognise the pressure they are under, value the job that they have done in hugely difficult times, and do our best to protect local services. We do, indeed, live in uncertain times, perhaps even in dangerous times, Mark Reckless. If this bunch of comedians in Whitehall lands us with a hard Brexit, then dangerous times they will be. Industry will stay or move abroad based on hard figures, not rhetoric from the Marx brothers. Regeneration will crumble as structural funds evaporate, and Welsh farming will face an existential threat.

At the dawn of dangerous times in his own country, W.B. Yeats wrote,

‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world /… The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.’

Now, in the present, we see and hear that passionate intensity from the worst—the rampant xenophobia, the online hatred—but at least here, in Wales, the best do not lack all conviction, and this budget proves it. Whilst the Whitehall farce continues, the Welsh Government budgets for investment and to look after our people. In uncertain times it’s what the best should do.

Suzy Davies.

Diolch, Lywydd. [Interruption.] No jokes from me today, I’m afraid. I do appreciate that a draft budget isn’t the place for detailed spending plans. The sort of high-level, top-line figures are more of an opportunity, really, for the Welsh Government to throw a few coloured lights around those areas of generosity that it would like us to notice. As my party’s spokesperson on culture and Welsh language, I’m happy to welcome the additional £5 million into these very modest portfolio areas, but I also look forward to following up some of the evidence given to the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee. Because there is a difficulty, isn’t there, of examining a draft budget in isolation from the outcomes that the anticipated spending or saving is intended to achieve? It’s exactly what Adam Price said, and actually what Mark Reckless alluded to as well. What impact will this year’s spending or saving have on medium and longer term plans for improving the lives of people in Wales? I’m very happy to see that extra money for culture and heritage, but I’m also keen to see whether the loss of 25 per cent of Cadw’s capital budget will be made up by capitalised income earned at Cadw sites. I’ll also be keen to see what that money actually gets us, because I am pretty sure that Neath Abbey, in my region, could easily eat up every penny of that capital budget, even if it’s topped up, which doesn’t really leave very much for the rest of the Cadw estate, looking forward.

An additional £25 million for social services sounds like a decent sum of money to invest, but what will that £25 million actually get? And, Lynne Neagle, I’m sure you’ll be interested to know this as well, as you actually mentioned it in your contribution. The Minister, on 9 November, confirmed that the extra £25 million for social services was, quote,

‘in respect and in understanding of the severe pressures that the social services sector are under at the moment. Pressures include, for example, the national living wage’.

And I agree entirely with her that, thanks to the UK Government, it is great, to further quote the Minister, that low-paid workers will be getting that increase in pay. However, earlier this year, the Association of Directors of Social Services claimed that, without increased funding combined with innovative solutions, the only way councils in Wales will be able to cope with the increased costs from the national living wage is by commissioning fewer services.

Now, I would be the first to recommend that all public services look for innovative solutions, but what I’m not sure about is how much of that extra £25 million will be spent on the difference between the old minimum wage and next year’s living wage. Will that £25 million see off the threat of a reduction in commissioned services? And we also need to know, if there is any money left over after the wages bill, whether the Government expects any of that £25 million to supplement the £4.5 million being allocated towards—and ‘towards’ is the word—meeting the costs to local authorities of the new savings threshold for those in care homes. The words suggest that £4.5 million won’t meet that total cost. In short, we need to know how much of that £25 million is left over to address the other severe pressures.

The reason we need to know that is that this £25 million is not ring-fenced; it is entirely vulnerable to competing demands for money within every single council in Wales, yet the Minister gave evidence to the Finance Committee that she did not want to direct councils’ spending other than on ensuring that we have strong, sustainable social services for the future. Well, we all want to see that, but if you have no idea what £25 million could and should pay for above paying better wages, where has the figure of £25 million come from? Why isn’t it being used to ease the pressure on children’s social services and work on partnership and integration—a core principle of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 as well, as Mark Isherwood mentioned, and indeed the parliamentary review into health and social care—instead of being moved into some other part of the main expenditure group?

Why aren’t you easing pressure on social services by at least retaining your level of support for the Family Fund? Don’t you think that the impact that this will have on the carers of severely disabled and seriously ill children—primarily women, of course, talking of gender impacts—let alone the children themselves, is likely to increase their assessed needs? More work for social services. And what are your grounds for limiting payments from the third sector grant scheme? Have you done an impact assessment on what is likely to happen to social services, which will be required to take on more work directly as a result of such a decision? The transfers within the MEG for communities and children—how are we supposed to follow the money there to ensure that social services won’t be having to meet even greater pressures? If we are to be—and this is all of us—positive contributors and critical friends on the Government’s health and social care integration agenda, then don’t dazzle us with the coloured lights, just make it easier to see what’s not actually being illuminated.

Well, as a Member who is still comparatively new to this place, I hope I’ll be forgiven if I haven’t fully understood the conventions of the budget debate, although I think I’ve grasped the pattern over recent years. I haven’t myself been here to witness at first hand the cut, cut, cut to the Welsh Government’s budget over each successive year; I haven’t seen at first hand the tightening of the grip by the UK Government on the budgetary windpipe of this Assembly. And we arrive at a situation where, by the end of this decade, we’ll have not more, but £1.5 billion less for vital public services. This will lead to an 8 per cent reduction in real terms in the Welsh budget since 2010. Do we have 8 per cent fewer patients in the NHS, 8 per cent fewer students in the classroom, 8 per cent fewer young people wanting an apprenticeship, 8 per cent fewer people in need of social housing or social care? No, we don’t. Against a declining budget, we’re not even standing still. The very opposite is true. Demand is going up. Social need is going up. Social need is going up precisely because of the austerity agenda at the root of this. The reality is that the UK Government is cutting the budget, and the Welsh Government is carrying the cost.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has described Wales as facing 11 years—an extraordinary 11 years—or more of cuts in public service spending. Extraordinary. Well, there are people in this Chamber who have other words for that. We talk, don’t we, of hard choices and difficult decisions? And the Government does that here in Wales. And whilst I understand that, we all know that the real difficult decisions are being taken day by day by those people actually bearing the brunt of this austerity agenda—making the difficult choice between eating or heating, making thousands of difficult choices that people should not have to make in a country like ours.

And now we face a further £59 billion taken out of the economy—a sum equivalent to four times what the Welsh Government spends each year. If you’re wondering about the cost of Brexit, now you have a number. And, believe me, much of that cost is going to be borne by communities here in Wales. So, we’re told by the Conservatives that we must tighten our belts, told that we need to do more with less. So, let’s turn to the Conservative amendment.

‘Delete all, and replace with’, oh, there’s nothing there. No alternative, no ideas, nothing; just a hole where a competing vision should be. So, I commend the Welsh Government on this budget. More money for health and care, more money for education, the best local government settlement in years, money for childcare, money for apprenticeships. Making good on our commitments. Would I have liked to have seen more for some areas and less for others? Of course I would. I dare say all of us can say that. We all have our own set of priorities. But, is it a budget that, despite the continuing efforts of the Conservatives, reflects our Welsh Labour commitment to social justice, and to raise and meet the aspirations of our communities? Yes, it is.

It’s important to discuss two areas where Plaid Cymru has had an influence on this budget: first of all the Welsh language, and additional funding for Welsh for adults, and funding to establish a national language agency. We secured an additional £5 million for 2017-18. Plaid Cymru believes that the Welsh language belongs to everyone in Wales, and we are committed therefore to ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to learn the language if they wish to do so. The additional funding for Welsh for adults will assist in enabling this programme to provide more language training for teachers and workers in the public sector, and will provide more support for parents who want to use the Welsh language more at home. Funding was also allocated for the establishment of a national language agency, which will be an arm’s length body, and will offer an opportunity to provide a new and firm foundation for Welsh Government policy of regenerating the Welsh language and creating a truly bilingual Wales, including the aim of creating 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050.

Our vision is an agency that will lead policy, will be responsible for a strategic overview in the area, and will have a high status among Welsh Government departments and other agencies, such as NRW and the arts council, and I very much look forward to working with the Minister to achieve that aim. In the meantime, I will continue to keep a close eye on the Welsh in education strategic plans provided by local authorities. These have to be robust, effective and ambitious, with milestones and clearly set targets. Therefore, we will be holding you to your word in that regard.

I just want to say a few words on the funding allocated within the budget to a pilot scheme to reduce town-centre parking charges. Now, it’s a very small amount of money, a total of £3 million for a pilot scheme in 2017-18, but it is a scheme that has engendered a great deal of debate in this Chamber and outwith it. Of course, we must bear in mind the purpose of this pot of funding. Its purpose is to assist small businesses on our high streets.

Plaid Cymru is committed to assisting small businesses the length and breadth of Wales who have faced challenging times over the past few years. This funding for the pilot scheme will assist in attracting more people to our town centres. The final details and the practicalities of the pilot scheme are yet to be decided, but I have been clear that we do need a specific, allocated pot of funding so that councils can bid for funding to support reducing town centre car parking charges. In my view, distributing it through the RSG isn’t going to work, and it’s not acceptable. We need an allocated pot of funding for this. The proposals will then give a crucial boost to small businesses in Wales and provide a level playing field for our town centres that have been in competition with larger developments on the outskirts of our towns. How exactly this scheme works is an issue for discussion among councillors too, and it is being discussed. The details should be decided as soon as possible, and Plaid Cymru is happy to contribute to that debate.

In moving on to the next period, having three-year budgeting will certainly be beneficial for our county councils so that they can make plans for the future. I’m certain that they would welcome that development. In terms of the budget and the lack of transparency within it, I agree entirely that we must move to a situation where we have an entirely transparent budget where we can scrutinise line by line. That’s what someone from a local authority background is used to, and to be honest, I can’t believe that such a situation can exist in this place—that we can’t actually see the details that we need in order to provide a better budget ultimately, and a budget that will deliver real improvements for the people of Wales. Thank you.

Before discussing the finer details of this budget or, in fact, any budget, it is important to look at the context. The context for this budget are the years—endless years, it seems—of cuts and cuts, and cuts again, from the Westminster Government to Wales, and it’s been driven by twin fetishisms of deficit abolition—not reduction, but abolition; it’s been the defining policy of the last Conservative Government, and it has spectacularly failed—and an ideology of smaller and smaller Government and shrunken public services. This has resulted in a strangulated UK economy from 2010 onwards. It didn’t have to be like that.

As well as choking off economic growth, this policy has attacked public services bit by bit, day by day, month after month, and it’s been a sustained onslaught. It is a remarkable testament to our communities, and to our policy defence in Wales, that we are still standing, but let’s not pretend there have not been casualties. This has been traumatic; it’s been devastating and unnecessary.

The food bank I was collecting for on the weekend is not some aberration. It’s not disconnected from this. It’s a direct result of asking those with the narrowest shoulders to bear the greatest burdens of austerity, and this is the context against which successive Ministers in Wales have had to set difficult budgets and to share some of those difficulties with local authorities and other public sector agencies, and with the third sector too. To pass over this hard, enduring reality is to ignore the fact that many of the difficulties that we now have are self-imposed or, more accurately, imposed on us by a dogma of disinvestment from the UK Government. That was, and remains, a UK policy choice.

So, whenever we discuss health, education, transport, any public services or the voluntary sector, this is the context in which it is discussed. A choice was made in 2010, in No. 10, to squeeze the country. This weight was not borne by the broadest shoulders; it was borne by ordinary people who have been, quite frankly, extraordinary in their resilience to this deep and lasting unfairness. But many have been hurt and many are still hurting very badly indeed. But despite this, the successive Ministers in Wales have tried their best—their damnedest—to protect, to the best of their ability, the economy and the public services that we value in Wales, to maintain the integrity of local authorities and the voluntary sector organisations and, at the same time, to bring forward innovative devolution bonuses from the policy differences we can make in Wales—the choices we can make in Wales. This budget, carefully thought through by a very thoughtful Minister, who pays careful attention to the detail and the nuances, is also doing the very best for the people we represent by making difficult, still, but intelligent choices on what we should prioritise when faced with continued austerity. Now, the uncertainty of Brexit is added to it, and the potential future loss of European funding.

We have had 8 per cent cuts in real terms since 2010. The lack of clarity on revenue streams means that the Cabinet Secretary can only set a one-year revenue budget, probably anticipating worse to come from Westminster, while hoping for better. The extra capital spend announced by the Chancellor in the autumn statement is welcome—of course it is—but ultimately, it only goes a little way to make up for the strangulation we’ve had over recent years. Taking your foot off the victim’s throat for a moment doesn’t instantly make the victim recover and certainly doesn’t make the victim grateful. But the Cabinet Secretary and his colleagues have, once again, provided the very best of a defence against continued austerity.

So, let’s look at some of the detail in the measures in front of us in this draft budget. There is £240 million extra investment to meet the growing costs and demands in the Welsh health service. There is £16 million that the Welsh Government will provide in 2017-18 for the new treatment fund and £1 million funding for end-of-life care services. These are significant policy choices and budget choices. On the delivery of the manifesto commitment of 30 hours of free childcare a week for working parents of three and four-year-olds for 48 weeks of the year, £10 million is allocated within this budget for 2017-18 to push that forward.

If you look at the local government settlement, it’s still going to be tough, but for the first time in many years, there will be an increase of £3.8 million in its funding for 2017-18, compared with 2016-17. This is the first increase in the settlement for local government since 2013-14. It all goes back to that agenda of austerity and what we can do to withstand it.

If we look at affordable housing, there’s a crying need for—I can see, Presiding Officer, that I’ve just gone over time—the investment in social housing.

Let me just say, in closing, before dealing with the infrastructure investment that we can still do, these are just some of the defining priorities of this Welsh Labour Government, after support, I have to say, in dialogue with others who share a progressive agenda for Wales. I commend the Cabinet Secretary for his deft footwork. It would be worthy of ‘Strictly’.

With no interest in ‘Strictly’, but with a huge amount of interest in this debate on the draft budget, may I thank all those who’ve contributed, almost, especially from this side of the Chamber? But I will focus my attention on this agreement between Labour and Plaid Cymru that has delivered what we have to study before us today.

I would agree with those comments that we do need greater transparency in this budgetary process so that we can get to grips with where exactly—. If we decide to promise that we are going to spend on something, we must ensure that we can find out to all of our satisfaction—all of us, from every party—to prove to ourselves, before we can vote, that the promises have been fulfilled and that we see the development in this budgetary process of much greater transparency, to reflect the words that we’ve heard from Sian Gwenllian and Adam Price this afternoon.

Of course, this agreement between Plaid Cymru and Labour is just part of the budget. We are naturally supportive of our work and the hard work done by Adam Price and the team in that regard, and that’s enough to ensure that we, as a party, will be abstaining when it comes to a vote on this draft budget.

I was going to focus briefly on my portfolio, namely heritage and culture. Of course, this agreement between Plaid Cymru and Labour has ensured around £3 million in additional to the arts. This means an increase in the budget for the Arts Council of Wales, an increase in the budget for the National Museum Wales, the National Library of Wales and the Welsh Books Council—an increase in their budgets on top of what they would have been allocated already.

Of course, this agreement of £3 million also means funding for feasibility studies for a football museum in Wrexham and of course a feasibility study for a national contemporary art gallery. That leaves some funding for us to support the Welsh music industry and the performing arts.

There is a great deal for us to welcome as a party in this agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Labour Party. Of course, as I’ve already said, this is only part of this entire budget—it’s one part of the wider budget. I’m not going to repeat some of the statements that have already been made, but I would agree with many of the words that have been said this afternoon not just about the transparency of the process but of course with the priorities set for us as a nation when we face a funding crisis such as this one.

But, on these benches, we are very pleased with what we’ve managed to agree following very hard work done by Adam and the Cabinet Secretary. We’re very pleased that we’ve been able to amend what was before us. There would have been less work without us. We are very pleased with that work and that’s enough to lead us to abstain when it comes to the vote. Thank you.

I thoroughly enjoyed the high-level debate that took place between Nick Ramsay and Adam Price at the beginning. I would say that, as an undergraduate, I was taught by Patrick Minford and I remember the time he drew on the board a number of mathematical equations and he said, ‘This, my friends, is a Rolls-Royce theory of the money supply and it’s all you really need to know about macroeconomics’. Well, I didn’t understand it then and I don’t agree with it now.

I’ve seen as a councillor the direct effects that cuts have. What’s happened in my experience is, you get a cross-party seminar, you sit down, you look at the budget and you’ve got to decide where those cuts are going to fall. It’s one of the hardest things you can do. After 10 years as a councillor—it’s my last year this year—I would say it’s not why we went into politics. The recent UK autumn statement showed that there’s not much coming Wales’s way that way either.

So, my ambition for a Welsh budget is one that brings prosperity and jobs and growth to Wales and for my constituents in Caerphilly, but that means difficult choices. It means what we learnt as opportunity costs, which was more of a microeconomic concept, and something that we have to deal with. It gives a great many opportunities for party political division, and I suspect we’ll see more of that, but some of those choices have to be unpalatable. We need to decide what is in the box of choices that we’re going to make.

So, I’m pleased to see that the draft budget sets out plans for £6.9 billion of capital funding from the Welsh Government’s capital settlement, making full use of capital borrowing powers. Of great importance to my constituents is the shared £1.2 billion city deal for the Cardiff capital region that was agreed in principle between the UK Government, the Welsh Government and the 10 local authorities—and they’re working so well together to try and bring that to fruition. But the key issue in the city deal will be the benefit to the northern Valleys, areas that have huge potential. A city deal that doesn’t bring prosperity beyond the Caerphilly basin is no deal at all. This is why the £734 million of the deal allocated to the south Wales metro is of such significance and it should be noted that the proportion allocated from European funding should go ahead and not be threatened despite Brexit. Brexit does offer us a big threat.

We need, as a result of our budget, a reliable system of cross-valley public transport, making connections between communities with limited contact, enabling people to access work in a range of locations other than Cardiff. I’m therefore pleased that the Welsh Government has allocated the majority of the capital funding available to it in setting out a four-year capital plan to provide confidence and assurance to the construction sector, businesses and investors, because when we’ve cut in the past in local government, we’ve seen the private sector suffer. This budget commits £369 million towards the metro, which I assume will at least partly cover the cost of electrifying the Valleys lines. I’d like the Cabinet Secretary therefore to clarify if he knows whether the UK Government is still committed to its £125 million funding pledge for Valleys lines electrification to ensure that this goes ahead. When his colleague, the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure, came before the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee last month, he said the metro was built on flexible foundations and would be an ongoing piece of work similar to what happened in Manchester. Therefore, I would also ask whether this will provide flexibility in the budget allocation so we can meet new requirements as an when they come up. I’d like, for example, to see a metro stop at the proposed new specialist critical care centre in Cwmbran, and Nick Ramsay has already raised his preference for stops elsewhere. I’d like to see the budget being flexible enough to contain that.

It’s good to see the Welsh Government is keeping to its part of the Cardiff city deal and is determined to see this ambitious project through uncertain economic times. I’d say myself that, in my last year in local government as a councillor, I will find it slightly easier this time than we have in the past. It’s vital now that we work together to see this through so that we can no longer rely on European Union money in the longer term.

I think what we’ve done here is make the best of a bad job, really. We all know of the situation from Westminster with the cuts coming from London, but I think people here have to realise that you over there are elected to be the Government, and you need to take responsibility. What I find ironic, really, is that people in the lead administration don’t even want the authority to change Wales that we do on this side of the Chamber. The treatment fund is welcome. Safer ways to school—welcome. More funding for mental health—very welcome. Feasibility study for the football museum is welcome, as is the feasibility study for Lôn Rhiannon, the cycle and broadband and walking way proposed to connect Wales—a good idea.

I think the biggest problem, though, with this budget is the one-party state that has been created over the last 17 years, because we’ve got a new quangocracy, new quangos, millions of pounds spent on commissioners, for example. I’ll maybe just focus on one. We have the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, costing £1.5 million. I met with the commissioner two weeks ago. She’s not even looked at local development plans in any detail, and there seemed to be a lack of interest in doing anything about protected species, which will be destroyed by that local development plan. If we go back to the budget and look at LDPs themselves, we’re talking tens of millions of pounds wasted—wasted—on a system that is not fit for purpose. So, when you come here and you talk about the difficult choices and there’s not enough money, what I’m doing here now is flagging up to you how you’ve wasted money. Lisvane: £39 million; Rhoose: £7 million; Pontypridd deal on the shops: £1 million; Kancoat: £3.4 million. This is the money that this Labour Government throws around like confetti. Now, we all know the situation is—

Will you take an intervention?

I will, yes.

It’s a simple question. I’ve asked it before and I’ll ask it again. You can save £13,000 straight away by giving back your councillor allowance for the last year. I’ve done it; why don’t you do it? It would be a great example.

Well, you could easily have asked the same of your colleague who is the finance Minister, when he did three jobs at the same time—Minister, AM and also a further education lecturer. My position on my allowance is quite clear: next year, it’s going to my community. But, to return to the throwing away of millions of pounds—millions of pounds—I’ve just flagged up to you where you have wasted tens of millions of pounds on the grant procedures, your land deals and local development plans. Let’s look at the micro. I’ll give you one example of how you guys do business in local government. One decision made across the way was to close my local youth centre through political choices. The council has done two things over there: rather than protect services, as we want to do here, they spent £30,000 on newspapers and—[Interruption.] I’ve given way once and I’m not giving way again. They are spending £30,000 on newspapers. [Interruption.]

It’s up to the Member whether he gives way or not and he is not, and he is finishing his contribution.

Thanks. I’ve given way once.

[Continues.]—£30,000 on newspapers and they spent £60,000 on a conference called Core Cities. Those political decisions taken by your colleagues, with silence from you, have closed my youth centre. So, I’ve given you £90,000, which we would’ve spent differently. It’s the same principle with what is happening here. You have decided to spend tens of millions of pounds on a planning system that is not fit for purpose. In fact, it will destroy our environment. So, my message to—. Are you listening? I think some of you are listening as well as heckling. Certainly, my message to the public is that what we need in Wales is a Government that will take responsibility and a Government that seeks to change Wales and that will be found on this side of the Chamber. Diolch yn fawr.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government to reply to the debate.

Diolch yn fawr, Lywydd. It’s been a wide-ranging debate and, until the last five minutes, a debate that was well worth listening to. I hope you’ll forgive me, Llywydd, that I’m not going to be able to reply to all Members by name, but what I’m going to try to do is to respond to what I think have been the essential themes of the debate.

Let me begin with what seems to me to be, at least for the most part, the fundamental dividing line that runs down this Chamber. On the one hand, you have Mark Reckless and Mark Isherwood who want to explain to us why austerity is a necessity. Mark Reckless set out, in the way with which I’m sure he is very familiar, the neoliberal case for that form of economics. On the other side of the Chamber, you have Mike Hedges, Huw Irranca-Davies and Adam Price who set out—and surely this is a fundamental point of politics—that even if you believe in the neoliberal case and you can make the case for it, there is always a choice in politics. The argument that we are obliged to accept the dogmas of austerity because there is nothing else available to us is one that is absolutely right for us to reject, because those of us who do not accept those dogmas believe simply, as Adam said, that you cannot cut your way to recovery. There simply is no economic pathway to a future if you believe—

Would the Cabinet Secretary give way?

Yes, of course.

I just wonder, we’ve heard a lot about the context we’re in for these particular budgets now, but let this wicked Tory observe that what happened between 2010 and 2015 with the coalition Government was not a million miles away from the Darling plan.

Well, I can assure the Member that what we are recovering from today is something very different from what would’ve been in place in other circumstances. The only recipe that George Osborne had was to be a practitioner of medieval medicine. As the patient weakened in front of him, his only response was to go on bleeding it further and further and further. And that’s why we’re in the position we are in today. That’s why, on this side of the Chamber, we say, again, as we did all along, austerity is a political choice. There is an alternative and had that alternative been followed, then, the impacts on individual people’s lives, in the way that Hefin David set out, would not be as they are.

The second big theme in the debate has been that of uncertainty. The uncertainty created by Brexit, as Lynne Neagle set out; the uncertainty created by not yet having a fiscal framework in place, as Nick Ramsay reminded us; and the uncertainty created by the real-terms reductions in our budgets. These are not fictions; these are not things that you can simply evaporate by demanding more money for this and more money for that. Our budgets will be 9 per cent lower in revenue terms, and 21 per cent lower in capital terms at the end of this Assembly term. That is a real impact on what we can do and creates that extraordinary decade of austerity.

On a more positive note, Llywydd, there have been a lot of contributions this afternoon that have talked about participation. I particularly wanted to refer to the work that the Finance Committee did during its scrutiny of the budget, in going out and gathering views from our fellow citizens about what they think our priorities should be. I’m very glad that our agreement with Plaid Cymru has a commitment to a pilot participatory exercise on the Welsh Government’s budget next year, and I look forward to working with the Finance Committee to learn from their experience.

There has been a range of questions this afternoon, understandably, I know, about the effect of the autumn statement on capital investment and where we may be able to act. As I explained in my opening remarks, I’m not in a position yet to make those announcements, but I will as soon as possible. Because the Chair of the Finance Committee and others referred specifically to flooding issues, I’ll simply go as far as to say again what I said in front of the committee, which is that my first priority in looking at any additional capital that came our way would be to respond to those places in the budget where cuts have had to be made.

We’ve heard some very interesting things this afternoon, I believe, Llywydd, about the budget process—lots of ideas about what we can do to reform that process, as we know that it must be reformed. I admitted in my opening remarks that this has not been an ideal set of conditions for us to create our budget in. I would just remind Members that the Scottish Parliament is yet to see a draft budget at all from the Scottish Government; they’re not going to lay their draft, even, until 15 December.

A gaf i droi, jest am funud, at y cytundeb rhwng y Llywodraeth a Phlaid Cymru? Fe wnaeth Mark Reckless ofyn a oes pethau penodol yn y cytundeb rhyngom ni a Phlaid Cymru ac, wrth gwrs, mae rhestr hir o bethau penodol, fel rydym ni wedi clywed y prynhawn yma. Roedd Rhun ap Iorwerth wedi cyfeirio at bethau yn y cytundeb ym maes iechyd: £1 miliwn ychwanegol i helpu pobl ar ddiwedd eu hoes, ac £20 miliwn ym maes iechyd meddwl. Rydym ni’n mynd i roi’r arian yna y tu mewn i’r ‘ring fence’ i helpu pobl sy’n dioddef o broblemau iechyd meddwl. Fe wnaeth Sian Gwenllian gyfeirio at y pethau ar y rhestr o ran yr iaith Gymraeg ac ar y peilot rydym ni’n mynd i’w redeg ar barcio ar y stryd fawr. Ac roedd Dai Lloyd wedi cyfeirio at y celfyddydau, ac nid jest y pethau rydym ni’n gallu eu gwneud yn y flwyddyn yma, ond y pethau sydd yn y cytundeb rydym yn mynd i siarad â’n gilydd amdanyn nhw—y pethau y gallwn ni eu gwneud yn y dyfodol. Wrth gwrs, rydw i’n cydnabod, ar ôl gwneud y gwaith, y bydd Plaid Cymru am ymatal ar ddiwedd y prynhawn yma.

The last thing, Llywydd, for me to refer to—and it’s the only one I’m going to be able to in the time available, in terms of specific policy issues—and I do so because, again, it just, to my mind, exposes a fault line in the Assembly: there are those of us who believe that health and social care go hand in hand, that you cannot allow one to compete with the other for resources, that, from the point of view of the user and the patient, it is a single system on which they need to be able to rely, and there are others who continually make the assumption that you’ve got to make choices between those two aspects of somebody’s life. In the budget that we present, we have the £60 million intermediate care fund preserved, which sits right at the cusp of those two services, driving newly integrated forms of planning and providing between them. It is no use at all, as we’ve always said, to a person stuck in a hospital bed, to believe that money is being artificially provided to the health service when they cannot find any way of being looked after at home or in their community.

Thus it is, Llywydd, that you have a budget in front of you—a budget of stability, but a budget of ambition as well, that will help to create a Wales that is more prosperous and secure, healthy and active, ambitious and learning, united and connected. It’s a budget that I hope the Assembly will endorse this afternoon.

The proposal is to agree amendment 1. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will therefore defer all voting on this item until voting time.

We now move to voting time, and the first vote is on the draft budget for 2017-18. I call for a vote on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Paul Davies. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 14, abstentions 9, and 29 against. Therefore, the amendment falls.

I now call for a vote on the motion tabled in the name of Jane Hutt. Open the vote. Close the vote. For 27, 10 abstentions, 15 against. Therefore the motion is agreed.

That brings today’s proceedings to a close.