I warmly welcome the statement itself and the constitutional innovation that it represents, which also reflects the development of this institution as a parliament and takes us to the core of the statement: the need to review and amend the process of agreeing the budget, which, in comparison with many other Parliaments in the world, gives far too much power to the Executive and too little to this place. As I understand it, the Finance Committee has a right to make recommendations, but the Assembly has no power to amend the final budget motion, although this power does exist in unlimited ways in some Parliaments—I’m thinking of Congress in the USA, but, even in Westminster, there is a right to cut expenditure and, of course, to vary the tax recommendations through a finance Bill or a fiscal Bill, and, in Sweden, of course, the committees have the right to decide on the allocation of funding within particular areas of spend. Will the committee look at some of those options as we assess changes to Standing Orders?

And, secondly and finally, Presiding Officer, to what extent will the committee be able to look at the issue of the information provided to the Assembly so that we can achieve our scrutiny role successfully? The information is a little bit thin and a little bit superficial at present—that is, headings rather than spending at an individual programme level, and there’s no information about the expected performance against spend. We could look at best practice internationally in terms of budgetary transparency, for example, published by the OECD, and, in order to allow this Senedd to achieve its role effectively, shouldn’t we invest in specialist capacity similar to what Congress has—the Congressional budget office—that is independent of Government and accountable to us as an Assembly, which would be a basis for us to make our decisions based on more expert advice?