Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. As the Cabinet Secretary has said, these regulations provide for various provisions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 to be applied to the investigation of offences conducted by the Welsh Revenue Authority, and they include obtaining entry to premises under specified circumstances and seizing relevant items.

There were only really a few points that the committee wanted to raise. The regulations give substantial powers to the WRA, and we felt that the explanation provided was reasonable, but that the instrument was worthy of reporting on grounds of being of legal or political importance or giving rise to issues of public policy that are likely to be of interest to the Assembly. 

We decided at our meeting to include another point for reporting, relating to an anomaly between the regulations and the explanatory memorandum. The explanatory memorandum states that the revenue authority must comply with statutory codes of practice made under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, but our understanding is that they need only have regard to the code and, in particular, the relevant parts of the code. There is an important difference between having to comply with something and having to have regard to it. In our report we therefore said the Welsh Government should clarify the position and, if necessary, ensure that all the relevant documents related to the regulations are corrected accordingly.