First of all, I’d like to thank the finance Secretary for his statement and for sharing it with us prior to making that statement. There’s been a great deal of talk over the past few days, and some excitement, even—at least amongst some—about the historic nature of this Bill that will, along with the Tax Collection and Management (Wales) Act 2016 and the Bill on landfill disposals tax, as has been said, mean that Wales will now levy some of its own taxes for the first time since the days of Dafydd ap Gruffydd, the real last ruler of Wales in 1283.

We welcome this Bill and take pride in its historical significance, but the real significance of these powers will become apparent as they are used and as they are formulated, as the Secretary said, to meet the specific needs of Wales. So, it’s an important duty for this place to ensure that we make full use of these powers, and the starting point for that is the scrutiny for which we will be responsible, in order to show the people of Wales that they can trust in this Assembly to safeguard their interests when it comes to the issue of taxation.

It’s a very technical Bill, and we therefore welcome the fact there was a draft Bill. That gave various organisations across Wales an opportunity to respond to that Bill, and I’m pleased to see that the Government has tried to incorporate within the Bill much of the response to that consultation. On this question of the balance in it between the need perhaps for consistency and stability in moving towards a Welsh framework, and of course then creating a platform for policies that are made to respond specifically to Welsh needs, and policies that may be radical from time to time, there is reference in the statement to the treatment of second homes, and that’s one example of that, and, of course, there’s a consultation ongoing in England on that issue at the moment.

But to what extent should we ensure that this Bill provides sufficient freedom for future Governments to make use of that power to differentiate—for example, looking at the possibilities of regional banding in order to reflect differences in housing markets at a local level, which can be a factor; certainly, it is one of the reasons for this suggestion in terms of buy-to-let homes, particularly because of problems in London? To what extent can this tax be used to meet the objectives of other policies, for example, reflecting the quality of housing in terms of energy efficiency or build quality? That is, I’m asking the question: to what extent can we enable future Governments, not necessarily thinking that we are going to implement that immediately through secondary legislation, but providing as much freedom as possible for future Governments to ensure that we have that range of powers available to us?

In terms of negotiations with the Treasury, of course, the question of the fiscal framework is an issue of great importance that does actually impinge on a wider debate on taxation powers that will go hand-in-hand with the scrutiny of this Bill. Now, if the Cabinet Secretary could tell us where those discussions have reached, that would be very beneficial, specifically if he could respond to the Wales Governance Centre’s report on this particular Bill, looking at the question as to whether the south-east of England and London should be exempted in terms of assessing the changes to the block in estimating the impact on the block of any changes in this tax.

More broadly still, may I tempt the Secretary onto some dangerous ground, perhaps? Because most of the economists looking at this tax and at stamp duty in England have come to the conclusion that it is an exceptionally inefficient tax. Indeed, it is very difficult to justify it. Of course, it is also true that the range of taxes that relate in one way or another to land or property that we’ve inherited—council tax and also, of course, business rates—are all less than satisfactory in one way or another. Is it not time now, perhaps, for us to have a broader inquiry into this whole question of the land and property tax framework for Wales? Because this would be an opportunity to actually discover real Welsh solutions, I think, that would certainly give us a framework that would be more beneficial in the longer term.