Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm delighted to follow the finance Minister. I always enjoy his donnish humour—and his reference to A.J.P. Taylor, a great historian. A.J.P. Taylor was fearless in championing unpopular people and unpopular causes, so I'm sure he would have been more sympathetic to me than the finance Secretary. His books contain many great truths; I remember once he said, when asked what the future was going to be, that historians have difficulty enough in predicting the past, let alone predicting the future. That's something that the finance Secretary, of course, will have to do in respect of the effects of the UK budget and the changes that he might make in consequence, if any. 

But it was an interesting point that Mark Reckless made, and it's an interesting illustration of the possibility of tax competition within the United Kingdom, which should, in my view, have a depressing effect upon tax rates. And I think the other point that Mark Reckless made that is worth remembering is the Lawson dictum that we should concentrate upon broadening the tax base and then reducing tax rates. The experience of the 1980s certainly was one of massive increases in public revenues on the one hand whilst we had substantial reductions in the rates of taxes, particularly personal taxation. So, the great boom at the end of the 1980s, which was wrecked by the exchange rate mechanism, of course, was entirely the result, in my opinion—[Interruption.]—entirely, in my opinion, as a result of the tax reductions in the Howe and Lawson budgets in the 1980s. If only Nigel Lawson had not got fixated upon Britain's membership of the exchange rate mechanism, the Government's economic policy of that time would not have been undermined.

We've had an interesting debate. Nick Ramsay took me to task for the colourful language of the motion, but I recall that Steffan Lewis not so long ago wrote an article in a newspaper saying about how the Senedd was rather too boring, so I think he ought, actually, to applaud my colourful language in the motion today. Just to go back to Nick Ramsay's speech as well, I didn't say that I accepted the Conservative amendments; I did say that I agreed with them. Acceptance and agreement are two totally different things, of course.

But there is a broad agreement around the Assembly on devolution of taxes. I'm, personally, as I've said before, strongly in favour of them. Of course, we do have the opportunity to experiment—I'm not against experimentation per se. What I'm against experimenting with are taxes that are likely to do damage to the Welsh economy and the prosperity of our nation. So, it's the nature of the use that is made of the freedoms that we now have, and which I hope are going to be extended in due course, that is the essence of this debate.

Mike Hedges made some interesting points in his speech with which I couldn't disagree. Of course, if we want quality public services, we have to pay for them, but you can design a tax system that is going to maximise the public revenues on the one hand or minimise them on the other, and what we need is a tax system that is going to do that. Of course, we're not talking about privatising the health service or education, and therefore they will have to be funded by taxation in some shape or form. But if you look at the history of taxation in Britain since the war, in spite of massive differences in tax policies under successive Governments, the tax take as a proportion of GDP has remained remarkably constant at around 35 per cent, even in the years of high-taxing Labour Governments and relatively low-taxing Tory Governments. That should tell us something—that if we are to succeed in future in making the country more prosperous then we should go for simpler taxes and lower taxes.