I’d like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement this afternoon. I think we are all agreed that the economic realities that we find ourselves in mean that we do need to look at more innovative ways to fund public investment in Wales, and particularly the capital spending that the Cabinet Secretary has spoken of extensively in his statement today.

Can I particularly welcome the commitment to make use of the new capital borrowing powers that are going to be made available to the Assembly and the Welsh Government, and specifically the new limit of £1 billion that was agreed with the UK Government in December as part of the very welcome fiscal framework? That’s good news for the Welsh Government, good news for the Assembly and I think I agree with the Cabinet Secretary—it’s good news for Wales as a whole.

Can I also welcome the news that the Cabinet Secretary announced of the loan application to the European Investment Bank? Not before time, I would say to the Welsh Government. I’ve long called, and in fact made calls to the Cabinet Secretary’s predecessor, for more to be made of the European investment bank—too long a missed opportunity. It’s a particularly useful tool for infrastructure. I would be interested to know—although, of course, there are issues now with us leaving the European Union—whether there are any other proposals to try and access that funding. Other countries in the European Union have long since made use of the European Investment Bank, as the Cabinet Secretary will know, for road projects, rail projects—far more so than the UK has in the past. So I’d be interested to know whether there are any further intentions in the time that we have to make further approaches to the European Investment Bank.

Turning to the substantive part of the statement and the mutual investment model, and the extra funding for the projects outlined, we know that the Scottish Government has tried to develop a similar mutual model and I understand and recognise the Cabinet Secretary’s issues with previous PFI projects, which, as you say, we didn’t have to the same extent in Wales as elsewhere. The Scottish Government has tried to develop their own mutual model, but with little success. What lessons have been learned from the Scottish experience, what were the failings of that model, and how are you planning to safeguard the Welsh model against some of those failings? I appreciate that the model was specific to Scotland and you’ll be developing your own model—I know from my welcome discussion with you about this previously. But there must surely be some lessons that you would hope to learn.

Can you elaborate on the role of the public interest director that you mentioned in your statement? How will that person be selected? What sort of length of time will they be expected to play their role in the new mutual model? I’m trying to weight up the relative powers of the public and private aspects of this. Can you confirm that the public interest director will not have a power of veto? I think that was one of the stumbling blocks with the Scottish model that I think you’re keen to avoid.

In terms of the share that has been agreed from the mutual models in question, can you clarify that this share is instead of a cap on profits and it’s not as well as a cap on profits or a limited cap on profits, but that that part of it has been jettisoned and that this will now be a model that the Welsh Government will receive an ongoing share of, proportionate to the profits as a whole? I think that’s a good idea in principle, so I’ll look forward to hearing you clarify some of those aspects, Cabinet Secretary.

Finally, I understand that the profit cap was a large part of the reason that the Scottish model was declared invalid, leading to the Scottish Government ultimately covering, if not all the costs, then certainly a large cost of the schemes they embarked on. Clearly, if the Welsh Government ended up in this position, then a lot of the good work that has been done would itself fall and we would end up with the Welsh Government having to shoulder a large chunk of the cost, defeating the whole object of us going down this path.

You have in the past said, Cabinet Secretary, that the Welsh Government does not have access to the river of gold—which I think is how you described it—of funding that often winds its way to the border counties, in the north of England, and the Scottish Government and they have access to. They were able to fill the gaps that appeared when their scheme defaulted. I don’t think that you would be in a position to do that. As I say, this would run counter to the reasons for you bringing forward this mutual model in the first place. So, can you explain a little bit about the safeguards in place there and are you 100 per cent confident that the Welsh mutual model will succeed and that there is no risk that the taxpayer will end up footing a very large bill?