Diolch, Llywydd. I recognise that taxpayers and businesses will want certainty about the amount of tax they will pay under land transaction tax in advance of April 2018. However, it’s my view that to include rates and bands on the face of this Bill, at this stage, still 12 months before the tax will be devolved to Wales, would, I believe, be to offer a potentially misleading appearance of certainty without the necessary substance.

Mark Reckless believes that the legislature is somehow abandoning its prerogative to the Executive by not placing written rates and bands on the face of the Bill, and I think that’s mistaken for two reasons. Firstly, to require the legislature to set rates and bands at this point would be to invite Members to make such a decision in the absence of the information necessary to take that decision in an informed way. Secondly, his argument implies that future decisions have been surrendered unchecked to the Executive. In fact, what will happen will be a proposal by the Government, which this National Assembly will scrutinise and determine.

Now, Llywydd, I was persuaded by arguments made at Stage 2 to make a commitment to publish the Welsh Government’s proposed rates and bands by 1 October 2017. In the circumstances we are in—and I fully accept the points that Simon Thomas has made about the need to devise a different system for different circumstances in the future, but, in the circumstances we are in in this year, I repeat the commitment this afternoon that Government will bring forward and publish our proposed rates and bands by 1 October 2017. These proposals can then be scrutinised in a manner informed by all the other information that will be part of the budget-making process. Such timing also allows any changes required as a result of the Chancellor’s autumn budget to be reflected in the regulations that will come before this Assembly for this Assembly’s consideration and this Assembly’s determination. This, I believe, provides a certainty that is real and reliable for stakeholders, and ensures the rightful oversight and decision-making responsibility of this National Assembly. I therefore ask Members to reject amendments 30 to 42 in the name of Mark Reckless.

Amendment 33, tabled by Nick Ramsay, has the effect of handing full control over rates and bands to the UK Government until April 2019, without any scope for Welsh Ministers to propose any changes or for the Assembly to approve them during that period.

Now, Llywydd, securing fiscal powers for this National Assembly has been a protracted process, stretching back now through a commission, a St David’s Day process, an Act of Parliament, an Act of the fourth Assembly to establish the Welsh Revenue Authority, the negotiation of a fiscal framework in the autumn, and the Bill before Members this afternoon. That the first decision we should take in 800 years on rates and bands of Welsh taxes would be to hand that decision back to the body from which those responsibilities have just been devolved does not seem to me to be a course of action that would commend itself to many Members here this afternoon. And I have to ask Members—