Can I thank the Chair of the Finance Committee for his statement today? As one of the three members of the committee who visited Edinburgh, and the only one who unwisely took the train and ended up taking a lot longer than everyone else, I found it extremely useful when I got there, particularly the meetings with the Scottish Parliament’s Finance and Constitution Committee, the Scottish Fiscal Commission and Revenue Scotland. I think it’s worth stating as well that the Chair and myself—I think we were the only ones—also visited the Auditor General for Scotland, Caroline Gardner, who had an invaluable insight and oversight into the way the different organisations worked together in the new fiscal landscape that is developing.

As you said, Simon, Scotland demonstrates the importance of building expertise in devolved fiscal arrangements and we can learn from both good practice and, indeed, mistakes that have been made north of the border.

So, turning to my main question: what role do you see the Finance Committee being able to play in aiding in this process over the rest of the Assembly term as fiscal devolution progresses? It strikes me that, never in the history of the Assembly has the Finance Committee really been potentially in such a pivotal and influential role in terms of deepening devolution and I think there’s a chance for the committee to really come into its own during this process.

In terms of the development of the Welsh Treasury and economic forecasting capacity, these are huge areas, and although Dafydd Elis-Thomas would say that these are issues for the Welsh Government primarily to be concerned about, I think it’s a huge task for any Government to have to deal with. So, I think there is an important role both for this Assembly and the Assembly committees, including our committee, to do what we can to influence, to provide guidance and to feed back to the Welsh Government on where we think that good practice can be built upon.

The Chair mentioned Revenue Scotland and the importance of stakeholder engagement in framing the system to the benefit of the Welsh taxpayer. Our committee has a wealth of experience in stakeholder engagement, so, again, it can play a valuable role in engagement and pressing for what I think we need, which is a bespoke Welsh tax-raising framework that people in Wales can feel comfortable with and can be proud of. We’ve spoken about this in committee, Chair, but we don’t want an adequate WRA; we want a world-class Welsh Revenue Authority. We want something that really can pave the way—not an easy goal, I know, but I think that’s what we should be aspiring to. Personally, I would have preferred the organisation to have been ‘revenue Wales’, a point that I made in the previous Assembly. I think I was outvoted by every other Member in this Chamber. But I think that, certainly looking at the way that Revenue Scotland has developed, then ‘revenue Wales’ can certainly learn from that organisation north of the border.

Just briefly, Deputy Presiding Officer, and turning to the Scottish Fiscal Commission, I tend to agree, the evidence that we took seemed to suggest that it wasn’t necessary for Wales, or it wasn’t the best value for money for Wales to necessarily go down the route of having a fiscal commission. However, we do need to make sure that the Welsh Government does have access to the best possible and timely data. That has not always been the case in the past, but in the case of fiscal devolution, it’s going to be really important that we get up to speed on that area as quickly as possible, and I know that the Chair of the Finance Committee will say that the committee wants to assist the Welsh Government and the finance Cabinet Secretary as much as possible in this process.