5. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance: Vacant Land Tax

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:40 pm on 15 May 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 5:40, 15 May 2018

I thank David Melding for what he said. He's absolutely right that there is a fundamental public interest in all of this. I give him an assurance that, when we come to do the detailed work on how a tax might be designed, we do not start out with the intention of penalising anybody who is making every effort to bring land into productive use. And there will be some quite sophisticated thinking that will need to be done to make sure that, as market conditions vary—and they vary in different parts of Wales already; it's not just the cycle, is it, it's the geography as well—we design any tax in a careful way to make sure that it captures those people who we want it to capture and it doesn't, in an unintentional way, end up penalising people who, in the way that you put it, have every intention of bringing that land into productive use.