I will be mainly focusing on business rates, but if I could just follow up on what Jenny Rathbone has just said, no-one is making the case that city centre parking is a panacea in any way. But they should be recognised by their actions, and I notice that the Labour council in Rhondda Cynon Taf have just announced free parking over the Christmas period in order to promote town centres in that area. So, you must take action yourself if you are to criticise others.

But I want to focus on business rates, and the opportunities provided by reforming business rates to regenerate many of our town centres. I will be spending Small Business Saturday visiting small businesses, and I hope to be in Narberth, one of the towns which has succeeded and demonstrated how changes to business rates can regenerate the centre of a small town. There was a business rates holiday over a long period in Narberth in order to allow new businesses to be established and to actually break that link that you would have to commit for a long period to take over a property. Anyone who’s visited Narberth will now realise that that approach has led to a number of small businesses establishing, from butchers to craft shops to food outlets, but also everyday shops. So, you can go to Narberth and find what you need for your weekly shop and pay very little to park, if I may say, for an hour or two.

But it’s also true to say that the Government hasn’t responded to the increase in business rates in an appropriate manner that actually learns lessons from towns such as Narberth and other towns in Wales. We are at risk of creating a business rates system that could be among the highest in Britain, and I don’t think that that puts the local high street in an ideal position by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t think that the Government is demonstrating that they want to see the kind of local market establishing itself, as Adam Price outlined in opening the debate. We’re about to move to a system where, in terms of the rates, we in Wales will be the most expensive in that regard in Britain. That doesn’t give us that edge, and it doesn’t show support for businesses, and it doesn’t actually put businesses in that competitive position that we would like to see in promoting our small businesses on the high street.

That, of course, is a pledge broken by the Government. They pledged to have an improved system in their manifesto, and of course we saw the greatest spin possible that continuing the current regime was in some way a cut in business rates. Well, the small businesses have seen through that spin and have seen that the devolution of business rates hasn’t benefitted them in the most appropriate way. I do hope that this will be a temporary system, because if we are serious about developing the economy, we must use all economic tools possible. We have very few of these tools, and there aren’t many provided by the Wales Bill either. But we do know that business rates are one of the most powerful tools that we have in our armoury—outwith the block grant, of course. So it’s one of the things where we can make a difference.

One thing that we can do and consider in earnest here in Wales is to change the multiplier to the CPI, rather than RPI. Another thing that we could look at is why on earth we have one multiplier across the whole of Wales. Not all areas of Wales are the same; not all businesses are the same. In Scotland, they have different multipliers for small businesses and larger businesses, and I would like us to look at that—[Interruption.] In just a second, yes. But I would hope that we could look at regional multipliers, too. For example, I’m always banging on about the Cleddau bridge being tolled, and that is a toll on small businesses in an enterprise zone. We can consider how we could use the business levy to respond to the toll in that area. I will give way on that point.