Diolch yn fawr, Diprwy Lywydd. I just wanted to begin by reminding Members why it is that we are having this debate at all. We are having it because the Wales Act 2014 provides the National Assembly with a power for the first time to propose new Wales-only taxes. The process is untried and untested, but I have always believed, since becoming finance Minister, that it’s a possibility that we ought to explore in order to see the potential that this power might bring to Wales. The question, Dirprwy Lywydd, is how to go about the process. We well know the tradition we inherit from Westminster. I’ve no doubt that, when I meet the Chief Secretary to the Treasury tomorrow, she will explain to me and my Scottish finance Minister colleague that budget secrecy and budget purdah means that there’s very little she can share with us. Indeed, UK Cabinet members will only hear of what’s going to be in the budget on the morning of 22 November. The results of this closed and secretive way of conducting business are often deeply unsatisfactory. The sugar tax, if newspaper reports are to be believed, the health Secretary of the UK Government heard about for the first time when he was listening to the Chancellor’s speech on the floor of the House of Commons. Certainly, in an area that is wholly devolved to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, there were no prior discussions of any sort with any devolved administration in advance of that announcement. The result is that many, many months later the results of that announcement are still unclear.

The apprenticeship levy, sprung on industry and everyone else, has been even more pernicious in its effect. UK Government figures published earlier this month show that the number of people starting apprenticeships in England in May to July of this year has plunged by 61 per cent compared to the same period in the previous year. Taxation developed without debate and without proper engagement is inevitably vulnerable to unforeseen and unintended consequences, and it’s because of that deeply unsatisfactory history that we have tried to embark on our new fiscal possibilities in a very different way. We have published for all to see our tax principles and our tax work plans. In July of this year I published the approach we intend to take to the new powers to propose new Wales-only taxes. I said then that I would announce in my budget statement of 3 October the shortlist that had been drawn up for what I hoped would be serious and sober investigation during the autumn.

The reason that today’s debate is so disappointing is that it attempts to fly in the face of developing a new approach. Far from wanting to open up possibilities for Welsh citizens and Welsh policy making, the Conservative Party seeks only to close those possibilities down. Far from wanting an open exploration of the evidence in which anyone with an interest could make a contribution, they want to conclude a debate just as it has begun. Now, of course they are entitled to their view that a tourism tax is not something they would want to see taken forward in Wales, and if the motion on the order paper was for us to note the Conservative Party policy, there would be no objection to that. But that’s not what we’re asked to note. We are asked to agree that a view that one political party has come to should be imposed on the rest of us without a chance to have a debate of any proper sort.

Steffan Lewis was absolutely right in his original contribution when he said that what his party was in favour of was what Adam Price had said back in July: that there was merit in looking into the proposal. And that is the proposition that is in front of the Assembly at the moment. We simply say that a tourism tax is an idea that is worth having a proper exploration, and we say that because, as other Members here have already pointed out, it is an idea that is common in many parts of the globe, in cities that many of us will have visited: Paris, Brussels, Rome, New York, Berlin, Barcelona and so on, and in places that are the regular destinations of Welsh people taking holidays abroad. A tourism tax in France, in Majorca and in Portugal—