Can I also thank the Cabinet Secretary for bringing forward this debate today? I also want to thank my friend and colleague here, Dafydd Elis-Thomas, for telling me all about King Henry VIII rules, which I didn’t know much about until before this debate. I probably know marginally more about that now than I do about landfill. But it’s good to take part in this debate today, and I’m delighted, Cabinet Secretary, that you’ve taken on board our concerns about domestic pet cemeteries, or simply pet cemeteries as it was in the Welsh—there was an issue with the drafting of the translated version of the draft Bill—and that was an interesting sideline of our whole discussion on how you form legislation, particularly in the area of taxation, which is a new activity for this Assembly, and which is one that we really do we need to make sure that we get right.

As with the new land transaction tax, we know that the UK landfill tax will be switched off in April 2018 and the block grant reduced accordingly, so the Welsh Government has no real option other than to develop its own. As Mark Reckless has just alluded to, the infamous Lamby Way landfill site visit—I was also fortunate enough as a member of the Finance Committee to take part in the visit to Lamby Way. I had originally planned to visit the CERN institute in Geneva that day. That was planned a few months before, but I clearly got the better end of the deal. [Laughter.] How jealous I was of those people who visited Geneva, as we, at the top of Lamby Way—. I think my hat blew off at one point, didn’t it, Mike Hedges, and you kindly caught it. But it was a fascinating visit. We learnt a lot about rubbish disposal and also had a discussion, as Mike Hedges mentioned, about how existing landfill sites can be seen not just as landfill sites but future resources, as some of that landfill, particularly in the older sites from a number of years ago, is now itself recyclable and will be recyclable, probably, in the future. So, there are possible retrieval opportunities for the future. I think on the Lamby Way site they refer to them as mining opportunities, which raised a whole new set of issues and considerations for us.

Many of the areas I was going to talk about have been covered, but if I can turn just briefly to the recommendations in this report. I would say this, but I think this is an excellent report from the Finance Committee—well done to the Chair for chairing over the sessions that led to this. It’s a straightforward report and, indeed, the Bill is a lot shorter than the stamp duty replacement tax Bill was. It’s good to see that, in the case of this tax, I think the evidence sessions were well advised, witnesses were listened to and the Cabinet Secretary has taken on board many of our recommendations.

Recommendation 3 in particular calls for the rates of taxation to either be evidenced on the face of the Bill, or as a minimum—a compromise—for them to be published before 1 October 2017. I will agree with the calls that other Members have made for those rates of tax to be more evident. I do think we need to be balanced about this. I’m not saying that the Welsh Government’s hands should be tied and that everything should be specified on the face of any finance Bill, and that you shouldn’t leave anything to regulation—I think that would be daft. But in the case of taxation and in the case of this tax, as with land transaction tax, we are all trying to achieve a smooth transition to the new taxation regime as soon as possible. That means the industry having confidence in the new regime and confidence that it will be as similar, at least in the early phases, to the existing UK model as possible. So, I think that having the rate specified on the Bill or having the rates announced at least at some specified point in the future, Cabinet Secretary, will help us all to agree with the tenets of this Bill.

If I can just mention that lovely term ‘waste tourism’, this was a key concern of the committee—well, it became a key concern—and we all had associated mental images of lorries of waste crisscrossing the border, and this clearly has to be avoided. We did learn, and it’s important to remember, that the cost of transporting waste is a proportionally small part of the overall cost of landfill disposal. So, a relatively small differential in landfill rates could potentially have a large effect on behaviour. So, that did need to be dealt with.

Key to the creation of this new tax is the need to maintain the revenue stream, so this legislation must prevent landfill once again becoming the cheapest waste management option. As Mark Reckless said, I do believe that the Cabinet Secretary has got the best intentions when it comes to this Bill ensuring a smooth transition and making sure that we do have the most efficient land disposal tax system here in Wales in the future. I and the Welsh Conservatives are happy to support the general principles of this tax Bill.