I thank Nick Ramsay for those questions. To start with his first point, I’ve set out in front of the Finance Committee, I think a number of times, my view that there is a hierarchy of how you deploy capital. My first ambition will always be to use whatever conventional capital comes our way. When we’ve deployed all the conventional capital, then we would look to use our borrowing powers, but we know that even when we’ve done all of that, there still will be important public purposes that we need to fund in Wales. Under the models my predecessor Jane Hutt developed, we’ve supported capital spending by housing associations and local authorities with revenue from the Welsh Government. A mutual model takes that the next step forward.

Nick Ramsay is absolutely right to point to the anxieties that hang over our participation in the European Investment Bank as a result of Brexit. I raised this directly with the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the last meeting of the JMC on European negotiations, where I pressed on him the Welsh Government’s view that we should look to remain a subscribing partner of the EIB even after Brexit. There certainly are a range of projects, beyond the ones highlighted in the statement, but certainly including Velindre, where we would hope to interest the European Investment Bank in continuing to provide for projects here in Wales.

The two specific issues that Nick Ramsay raised—the issue of the public interest director and the cap on profits—were, as I understand it, exactly the two central reasons why, in a series of accounting decisions between July 2015 and October of last year, the Office for National Statistics ruled that their model fell foul of the European system of accounts and therefore had to be classified through the public sector books rather than through the private sector.

As far as a cap on profits is concerned, the ONS concluded that having a cap on profits altered the balance of risk and reward in a manner incompatible with a private sector classification, and having a public interest director who is able to exercise a power of veto over any decision of the project company amounted to a degree of state control incompatible with private sector classification.

It’s because of our awareness of that—and I should say that we have had excellent co-operation from the Scottish Government and from the Scottish Futures Trust in helping us to understand the arguments that they had had to mount and helping us to avoid some of the difficulties that they have experienced. It’s as a result of that that we went to the European Investment Bank over the summer to get expert advice on our proposed model. We recalibrated it in the light of some of that advice, and we put it directly to ONS over the autumn so that we could get a classification decision in principle from them.

We had to make two sorts of compromises in order to come within the classification model. Our public interest director will not have a power of veto, but if we take an equity stake in the company, the project company, of between 15 and 20 per cent, then that public interest director will inherit a series of powers that they will be able to exercise on behalf of the public on that board. Now, I expect that we will want to appoint a public interest director at the very least for the Velindre scheme during the period of this Assembly, and I will want to give some thought to the best way in which that can be done. No doubt, this will be discussed, I’m sure, in the Finance Committee on future occasions.

Our model means that the public in Wales will have a share in profits, although we cannot cap profits. By taking a 20 per cent equity stake, for example, in the Velindre scheme, over the 25 years that the scheme is due to run, any profits that accrue we will get a 20 per cent share in them, year on year, returning to the public purse as a return on our investment. I think that securing those two things means that our mutual model can be recommended to the Assembly.

Because we went to the ONS in advance, we know that in principle our scheme meets their classification criteria. They will, nevertheless, want to look at every scheme in its own detail to make sure that they can apply those classification rules, and it will be for the Welsh Government to go on working to make sure that we don’t find ourselves in some of the difficulties that occurred north of the border.