I warmly welcome the statement made by the committee Chair, and, as he said, I think it’s important, as we consider the changes that are to happen over the next few years, that the work of the Finance Committee isn’t restricted to that committee but is part of a national debate even outside the Welsh Parliament. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the opportunity and the honour to visit our colleagues north of the border with the committee, but as a former Scottish citizen, I follow developments there very closely. It’s clear, having spoken to fellow committee members who did go on that fact-finding mission, that the visit had been very worth while.

My questions today will focus mainly on participatory budgeting. Now, perhaps it’s an area that Scotland hasn’t been in the vanguard on, on the international level. As part of the agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government on the budget, the Government did commit to carrying out research on participatory budgeting and looking at other models and, also, as I understand it, to have a pilot scheme following on from that. Unfortunately, as a committee, we can’t make decisions on behalf of Government—I’m sure that’s not unfortunate for the Government, however—in terms of the process that they use in drawing up their budgets. We can only make recommendations for improvements. I am very grateful that the Cabinet Secretary is open to new ideas. In terms of our work as a committee, we can adopt the principle of participative budgeting in terms of our scrutiny process of Government budgets, and this is perhaps something that the committee Chair might be eager to look at.

As part of our scrutiny process of the budget, we as a committee already invite organisations and stakeholders to provide evidence and there’s also an opportunity for organisations, businesses and individual citizens to provide written evidence. But we could be more proactive in including citizens in the process more and more effectively. So, my question to the Chair is: how can we enhance the opportunities for individual citizens, and communities too, to participate in that process of drawing up budgets in a more proactive way? In terms of good practice from other committees in the Assembly, for example, the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee held a survey into what they should inquire into, with 2,700 people participating and voting for their preferred option from a list of different options. This is important, because given the pressures that we face in terms of the Assembly’s budgets because of the way Wales is funded at the moment, there are some major questions that we as a nation will have to face in terms of prioritisation of the block grant. Even with the partial devolution of some taxation, that block grant is central and there are restrictions in terms of the options. Perhaps the model of participatory budgeting gives us an opportunity to have a real debate with the people of Wales on what the reality is, because many of them perhaps don’t consider that once the funding has been passed from Westminster to the Welsh Government.

Also on this issue, the Scottish Government is funding Glasgow Caledonian University to lead on an evaluation process over a period of two years to look at the impact of participatory budgeting on communities and democracy, with a specific focus on the relationship between these budgets and equality. Now, would the Chair consider carrying out a similar study through the Finance Committee, perhaps looking at legislation in Wales related to equality and the well-being of future generations, perhaps? Just to echo what Nick Ramsay has said on the importance of data, as the nation matures as a democracy and as new powers are accrued and new fiscal powers are accrued, then it’s crucial that we do have economic data in order to consider the link between fiscal policy and economic policy. So, I’d appreciate the Chair’s view on how we can enhance the data available at the moment.