Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:17 pm on 29 November 2016.
I thank Andrew R.T. Davies for both those questions. It’s not the purpose of the Bill to extend the scope of capture, other than in illegal dumping of waste, which will now be brought within the tax. It’s a point that hasn’t been raised so far this afternoon, but it may be important for me to say that, of course, this tax is captured by the fiscal framework, so, as the amount of tax that we raise in Wales goes down, the block grant adjustment will take account of that, because this will be a falling tax on the other side of the border as well. It is not automatically the case that, as the tax goes down, the revenue available to Wales will go down as well. The fiscal framework and the block grant adjustment will come into play in that case.
I’m very keen to respond to his second point, because while illegal dumping of waste will be captured by this rebuttable presumption that those involved in it knew what they were doing, I’m acutely aware of the fact that there are landowners who have stuff dumped on their land with no prior knowledge of their own, and it is nothing but a headache to them as well. So, we set out, in documents accompanying the Bill, the way in which that presumption can be rebutted. I think when he has a chance later on to look at the detail of that, he will find that the circumstances that he described are very carefully defended against in the Bill and people wouldn’t find themselves vulnerable to prosecution when something had happened completely beyond their knowledge or control.