Diolch, Llywydd. I’ve listened carefully to what Nick Ramsay has said this afternoon. I have to admit that my reading of the amendment was slightly different as to its primary purpose and the one that we’ve just heard. This is an amendment that provides for Welsh Ministers to provide guidance to the WRA on the administration of land transaction tax. I’ve said many times during the passage of the Bill that I am wholly in favour of the WRA providing robust guidance to its taxpayers, their agents and the WRA itself. It’s clearly best practice for a tax authority to ensure that its customers and staff can comply with their obligations.

I’m not able to ask Members on my side to vote for this amendment, however, because I am anxious that it trespasses into the very important clear operational independence that the WRA needs to have from Government. This will be our first non-ministerial department. Members of the Finance Committee are very rightly pointing to the need for an arm’s-length arrangement between the Government and the WRA as an organisation that will be dealing with the individual tax matters of private citizens. For the Welsh Government to be providing guidance to the WRA, I think, has the effect of undermining the independence that needs to be there. I want to act in a way that is consistent with the points raised by the Finance Committee during the passage of the Tax Collection and Management (Wales) Act 2016. There, as a result of Stage 2 discussions, the TCMA ensures that Welsh Ministers have the ability to give strategic direction to the WRA on their tax policies and priorities, but they do not have powers—the Welsh Ministers do not have powers—to provide any specific direction to the WRA in order to ensure that independent arm’s-length relationship.

What I can say to the Member this afternoon having heard him, however, is that I’m happy to commit on record to the importance of clear operational guidance for this tax. I’m happy to say that I will write to the chair of the Welsh Revenue Authority once that appointment is confirmed to set out my expectations that the provision of robust guidance must be a key priority for the WRA, and having heard this afternoon the points the Member has made about efficient administration and the sharing of back-office services, I’m very happy to make sure that that point is also raised in the letter that I will write to the chair of the WRA, which is, in a sense, providing a remit to the chair to make sure that the WRA focuses on the priorities that the committee and the Government wish to set for them during the coming months. I’m happy to provide those assurances to the Member this afternoon, although, if the matter comes to a vote, we will be voting against it.