Can I thank the Chair for his statement? You've covered most bases there, actually, Simon, and we considered this in-depth during our short inquiry on the Finance Committee, so I've only got a couple of questions, a couple of areas I'd like to highlight.

This probably isn't the subject over dinner tables across Wales, but it is, certainly—[Interruption.] Well, maybe yours, Simon. [Laughter.] It's certainly important to the way that this place operates and, indeed, a lot of the issues that we look at on the Finance Committee—maybe some of the minutiae that other people and other committees don't look at, but they are, nonetheless, important to efficiency and making sure that our structures and procedures here are, not just fit for today, but fit for purpose for the future as well—the next Assembly and beyond. As you highlighted, key to our recommendations in the report is that there should be greater clarity over how underspends are utilised and used in future. Clarity and transparency are words that we often return to in this Chamber and in committees in this Assembly, which are equally as valid and important in the case of the spend of the Commission as they are in other areas. 

I think there's a part of the report that says that, relative to spend of the block grant, 1 per cent of the Commission budget probably looks a lot smaller. But, of course, in terms of the efficiency of the Commission and ensuring value for money, it's just as important that £100,000 or £200,000—whatever the buffer that's been identified might be—is spent as wisely as the millions and the billions that we talk of when it comes to talking about the wider Welsh Government budget.

That issue of clarity and transparency is key, so I suppose one of—it seems strange asking questions to my Chair in this context, but key to my questioning of you is: are you confident that this report will indeed result in that greater transparency and clarity, and not just now, but that it will be responsive to the future when this place becomes a Parliament in name and goes on to get further tax powers as well and further powers in the future? Will this report be just as relevant then in ensuring value for money?

There have been some major concerns that the Commission has been overtly reliant on underspends, as you said, to fund key core investment priorities. This can't be a sustainable way to proceed. I think the committee appreciated how that had developed over time and over a number of Assemblies. Perhaps in the past it wasn't such an important issue, perhaps it could be explained away, but, clearly, if you're going to be relying overtly on underspends to fund some of our key commitments or some of the Assembly's key commitments as an organisation, then that does leave the door open in future for a pretty major problem should there be issues or should those underspends not develop in the way that's foreseen. 

I only briefly looked at the forecasting aspect of the report, and I think that that's obviously an area that, across the board, we really need to get a lot better at. We've looked at the forthcoming tax powers on the Finance Committee as well, and the setting up of the Welsh Revenue Authority, and we've said that the Welsh Government needs to have a far better forecasting function when it comes to anticipating economic growth within Wales over the years to come. I think, in its own way, the Assembly itself and the Assembly Commission also needs to have a more robust forecasting mechanism. That doesn't mean always getting it right, as we found on the committee. Actually, forecasts are normally wrong. But it's the forecasts that actually give you that base level by which you can then evaluate progress in the future and you can say, 'Actually, the Commission did do everything that was necessary, it did take the steps necessary, and although we might not have got it quite right, we did do what we could for the people of Wales, to make sure that there was value for money in the money that we were spending and the Assembly was overseeing.' 

The Commission approach in terms of dealing with underspend—I'll close on this—should be more closely aligned to Treasury guidance. That does seem to be common sense, but, of course, common sense doesn't always operate naturally, unless someone gives it a push along. So, I do hope that the recommendations of the Finance Committee in this short, niche but interesting report will be taken on board and it will end up with a Commission procedure and Commission budgeting over the years to come that will be not just ft for today but fit for the future as well.