Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:40 pm on 17 April 2018.
Mark, thank you very much. Probably one of my failings is due to my upbringing: I'm overly polite about what I describe as minor glitches or teething problems, but we are confident—and we have been in discussions with HMRC, both in terms of their tax offer, but also in terms of the childcare offer—that these problems are being ironed out, and will indeed be totally ironed out by the time we come to our use of their mechanisms for delivering our childcare offer. We are aware of these issues with the childcare service in recent months, both in relation to tax-free childcare and the England offer. Now, HMRC are addressing these. We're confident that these troubles will have been resolved by the time we come to use this system. We will also, by the way, have this advantage in that we can learn the lessons of these initial problems from HMRC in how we design and how we commission, and there is an important part here in how we commission our offer through HMRC, and also the issues that they've had with the HMRC and the Department for Education as well, to avoid the problems that they've had. So, we will put in place appropriate governance arrangements to oversee the development and the implementation of this approach and the digital solutions inherent in this.
In terms of the legislative basis, this Bill provides the legislative basis for Welsh Ministers to make the arrangements for the administration of the childcare offer. Whilst we're proposing we engage with HMRC in the short to medium term, in that design and the commissioning, it could well be, and I'm pleased that we have put the flexibility within the Bill to provide the Welsh Government with the flexibility to change the delivery agent in the future, if we so wish. It's as a delivery agent acting on behalf of Welsh Ministers—as a delivery agent acting on behalf Welsh Ministers—that HMRC will be subject to the scheme that we commission with them, and also the Welsh language service standards that we will make sure are within there, and we will work closely with them to ensure compliance. We are marking the glad situation that with the early problems that they've had, both in the tax aspects and the free childcare offers in England, they've experienced them early and they are now overcoming them, and when we roll ours out we're confident that we won't experience the same problems.
I realise that I've been remiss in not responding to a specific point in the question as well to do with formal consultation.