3. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance: Tax Policy Work Plan 2018, including New Taxes

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:41 pm on 13 February 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 3:41, 13 February 2018

Can I thank Jane Hutt for all those questions? Many of these debates began during the years in which she exercised the responsibilities as finance Minister here in the Assembly, and I know how familiar she will be with them.

I can give her an assurance that I have discussed all four tax proposals with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, particularly in relation to the social care tax, to get doors open for us to discuss this idea with other parts of Whitehall, and in relation to the plastics tax to make sure that Wales is as much involved as we can be in the call for evidence that the UK Government is taking forward. The fact that we have offered to help make sure that that call for evidence is widely publicised in Wales will, I hope, open doors to her constituents and others to take part in it. She is absolutely right when she points to the fact that the public are ahead of this debate and are already taking actions in their own lives to address the detriment that plastics can have on the environment that we all have to enjoy.

As far as any mapping or pilots are concerned, I can say this to her, that in a sample survey of land identified in local development plans for housing development purposes, 25 per cent of all those sites turned out to have no activity taking place on them at all. It is a small survey, and it's a sample survey, so I wouldn't want to place enormous weight on it, but it's indicative, I think, of the scale of the issue.

In another development, the Welsh Government recently announced a project using £32 million-worth of financial transaction capital and £8 million of conventional capital on a stalled sites fund to bring forward sites so that they can be used for proper public purposes. There are over 400 sites in Wales identified as potential beneficiaries from that fund.