A gaf i ddweud gair o ddiolch i Adam Price am yr hyn a ddywedodd wrth gyflwyno ei gwestiynau?

I will go immediately to the specific questions that Adam Price raised. He’s absolutely right to point to the fact that we are having to lay our budget before the Assembly in advance of the autumn statement, where the Chancellor promises a fiscal reset, and where we have to make our judgments without knowing exactly how that reset is to be brought about. As a result, I have had to make a series of judgments with Cabinet colleagues.

As far as the capital budget is concerned, I have made a judgement that, based on what we are able to read from the various statements that the Chancellor has made—most recently, perhaps, in Washington—that he has an intention of not reducing capital investment in the UK economy and that we may even see some modest investment—welcome as it would be—taking advantage of historically low interest rates and so on to give some boost to infrastructure spending. For that reason, I feel confident in laying a four-year capital budget.

The uncertainty over revenue is why I've been confined to a one-year revenue budget. When Members have an opportunity to study the budget in more detail, they will see that, in the draft budget, I propose to take a higher than usual revenue reserve into next year. That is there as a precaution against the autumn statement reducing the level of revenue available to the Welsh Government next year. And if people think that that is just a remote possibility, there’ll be Members here who’ll recall that only last year there were £50 million-worth of in-year revenue cuts that the Welsh Government had to absorb. What I am anxious to avoid is having to reopen the very detailed discussions that I've had with Cabinet colleagues over the summer, and, indeed, with Plaid Cymru, to be able to lay the budget that I'm able to today. If there are to be further cuts to the Welsh Government's revenue budget next year, I'd rather be able to deal with those through the reserve than by asking colleagues to absorb further reductions. If we don't face such a reduction next year, then I'll look to make some further adjustments to that reserve in advance of the final budget.

Adam Price drew attention to the forward work programme that's been agreed for the finance liaison committee. I thought it was an important part of our agreement to be able to identify that forward work programme. There are some very significant and long-term matters that we have agreed to address jointly, and I look forward to the opportunity to be able to move beyond the inevitable dealing with the detail that we’ve had to do over recent weeks to grapple with some of those matters.

Finally, I was asked a question about capital, and Adam Price is absolutely right to point to the fact that the capital available to public services in Wales will have reduced by a third between 2009 and 2019, and we have had to work hard to find ways in which we can bridge that gap. The budget in front of Members today deploys to the fullest extent the new borrowing ability that we have agreed with the UK Government. It builds on the work that my predecessor, Jane Hutt, did in taking advantage of the borrowing ability of housing associations and local authorities where we provide the revenue consequences of that borrowing. I look forward, as well, to the development of further innovative financial instruments to take forward, as I said in my statement, the new cancer centre at Velindre and the complete dualling of the Heads of the Valleys road.