5. Will the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on progress with developing the Welsh Revenue Authority? OAQ(5)0099(FLG)

I thank Nick Ramsay for that. Good progress has been made in establishing the Welsh Revenue Authority. Tomorrow, the Finance Committee will conduct a pre-appointment hearing with the preferred candidate for the post of chair of that authority.

I think there’s an echo in this Chamber today, Cabinet Secretary, but it’s an important subject, so I will emphasise. Monday, as you said, was another landmark day for Wales’s tax journey: the announcement of Kathryn Bishop as the Welsh Government’s preferred candidate to become the first chair of the WRA. As you know, the Finance Committee will be holding a pre-appointment session hearing tomorrow. When I attended one of the embryonic meetings of the WRA at the Millennium Stadium, I remember you saying, in your official statement, that the nature of the chair’s role would have to finalised before the appointment, i.e. whether it’s a transitional chair or a permanent chair, whether or not it’s a chair with experience of management and setting up bodies like this before or fiscal experience, and whether it’s a chair that’s going to take the lead public role or the chief executive. As we approach this appointment, can you shed a little light on what kind of chair we can expect Kathryn Bishop to be? She is going to be, I assume, in one of the most important roles—we will be discussing this tomorrow, as Simon Thomas said—one of the most important roles in Welsh public life. I think we do need to know the nature of the position that was decided on before the recruitment process started.

Well, I thank Nick Ramsay for that. I’m very anxious not to trespass on the territory of the Finance Committee, who I’m sure will want to explore just these issues with the particular candidate involved. If he’s asking me what I thought I was particularly looking for, then I felt it was really important to put some emphasis on attracting a candidate who would have a real enthusiasm for the work that needs to be done in establishing a new body. I think there are skills that people bring to a body that’s already in a steady state, and where your job is to make sure that it continues to run in an effective manner, and I think there might be slightly different set of experiences and enthusiasms for someone whose job it is to get a very important new Welsh institution up and established. When I was with Revenue Scotland yesterday, Llywydd, I met the chief executive and the chair of the authority, and they said to me, ‘Whatever plan you have at the start of the Welsh Revenue Authority, you have to face the fact that you will be changing that plan regularly during the first year because experience and anticipation will not be the same.’ You need somebody, therefore, who is sufficiently fleet of foot and attuned to that to make a success of the job. I hope that the candidate the Finance Committee will hear from tomorrow will meet that bill, and I look forward to seeing what the Finance Committee has to say as a result of its scrutiny.

Cabinet Secretary, are you able to confirm that the running costs for the Welsh Revenue Authority remain within the estimates published last year?

Well, Llywydd, I signed a letter earlier today to the Chair of the Finance Committee—one of a number of letters I’ve sent to the Chair today—in which I set out the latest position in relation to costs for the Welsh Revenue Authority. I make a commitment to provide a further update while the Land Transaction Tax and Anti-avoidance of Devolved Taxes (Wales) Bill is in front of the National Assembly, and in that letter I say that we remain confident that the set-up costs for the WRA will remain within the £4.8 million to £6.3 million set out in the regulatory impact assessment, and that we continue to expect the Welsh Revenue Authority to run in steady state somewhere between £2.8 million and £4 million annually.