Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. We heard from several small-business owners who are telling us, as politicians, to listen to them, and organisations such as the Federation of Small Businesses and the Welsh Retail Consortium have also joined in calling for fundamental reform of what I would say is an outdated business rates system. Megan in Newtown talked about the potential of having to move her business to Shropshire, where she’d be able to get full rate relief, and Alex in Wrexham talked about borrowing money off family in order to pay the business rates. And Chris and Katia questioned the immediate imposition of business rates on start-up businesses, which are, of course, playing their important part in reducing shop vacancies in an attempt to reverse the trend on high-street decline.

Now, a tax cut for small business was a much-touted pledge by Labour candidates before the Assembly election—a pledge that has been, I would say, broken in the first year. The Labour Member for Mid and West Wales, Eluned Morgan—I appreciate she's not in her place today—went to the Hours cafe and bookshop in Brecon promising that businesses would, and I quote a Labour press release,

‘breathe a sigh of relief if Labour is returned on May 5’ because a Welsh Labour Government would cut the amount of business rates paid by small businesses in Powys. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The Welsh Government has broken this promise of a tax cut to SMEs and claimed that continuing with a scheme that's already been in place for a number of years is the tax cut. Now, this is what the FSB has said about this, and I quote them:

‘to describe such a move as a tax cut for small businesses is blatantly misleading and the worst form of spin-doctoring.’

Instead of the tax cut they promised, rate relief for small businesses in 2017-18 would remain exactly the same as in 2016-17, and many small firms now face a dramatic rise, of course, in their bills following rates revaluations. This is in contrast to the situation in England, where the UK Government has announced plans to increase rate relief for small businesses to ensure that no business with a rateable value of under £12,000 would pay rates at all. Now, I’d like to say to the Cabinet Secretary, please follow and take the lead of the UK Government, but, actually, I'd prefer to say, please let's have a better system in Wales to increase and support small businesses in Wales. Let's be ambitious. Let's have the best system of all the nations of the UK to support small business.

I appreciate the Cabinet Secretary and I will have different views on what a tax cut is, but I do appreciate that the Cabinet Secretary is open to reform and I look forward to hearing his comments. I hope that there will be areas of common ground on which we can agree, and I do look forward to contributions from other Members during the debate this afternoon.