I’ve got an intervention from the Conservative side who’s saying that it wasn't quite like that. So, far be it from me to interfere in a dispute between the two of you.

The lowest paid in Caerphilly council actually have the living wage, and it was the first local authority in Wales to introduce it, which further reduced the multiplier between the lowest paid and the highest paid. The Localism Act 2011, building on the work of the Hutton review of fair pay in the public sector, recommends the use of multiples as a means of measuring the relationship between pay rates in the workforce. What Will Hutton said—by no means a right-wing journalist—was that comparisons to the pay of the Prime Minister are unhelpful because they don’t give you an indication as to the kind of multiples you should be using. Hutton recommended that no public sector managers should earn more than 20 times as much as the lowest-paid person in the organisation. In the private sector it’s 88:1. I think 20:1 is too high, if you ask me, and it’s significant that very few, if any, local authorities in Wales actually have a 20:1 multiplier. In Caerphilly the multiple between the highest and lowest paid is 9.4:1, putting it towards the lower end of the scale for relative differentials in the UK public sector workforce pay.

Now, you could go to a system where we say, unilaterally in Wales—as Neil McEvoy’s advocated previously in this Chamber—we go below £100,000 for all chief executives in Wales. Now, the danger is that you’re fishing in the same pool for talent as chief executives elsewhere. There is a danger that you immediately, acting unilaterally, start to lose that talent. We must have a serious, grown-up conversation about that risk and not engage in the populist right-wing politics that is taking hold in this world today, and which the Member has engaged in.

Those reforms introduced by the Welsh Government in the local democracy Act have ensured there will be greater transparency in assessing public sector pay, and this balances public interest and will do so in the future. It is a serious examination of the issue, not something that you can put straight on to Twitter. The recommendations of the Hutton review—we’ll need to attract the best staff in the Welsh public sector.

So, on that note, I urge, actually—let’s put this nonsense behind us. Neil McEvoy, give back your £13,000. I’ve done it. I support the amendments to the motion tabled in the name of Jane Hutt.