I'd like to add my few poor words to the eloquent encomiums of those who have spoken in this debate hitherto, and they're very genuinely meant. It would be very easy for a debate of this kind to degenerate into empty formality, but this is very much the opposite. I think that Huw Vaughan Thomas has been an outstanding public servant, not only in this office of auditor general, but in the many other roles that he's performed in the course of a long and distinguished career of public service.

Auditing, famously, is for those who find accountancy too exciting, but to be auditor general is a different thing altogether, and Huw famously started his time in office by saying, 'I'm not an accountant, but I have experience of being an accounting officer', and the two roles, of course, are very, very different. He has been, I think, an outstanding success as auditor general, starting on what we might have called a bit of a sticky wicket. He had to sort his own office out before he could start on anything else, and after a very unfortunate series of errors in his own department before he took office, he had to impose the kind of financial rectitude upon the audit office that he has tried to impose on all other arms of Government ever since.

He has been a firm hand on the tiller, and has steadied the ship, and in the course of the last seven or eight years, I think that he has transformed the audit office in Wales, and I think he has shown a depth of vision here as well, not just in the sense that he's applied a minute scrutiny to the accounts of Government departments, but also because he has exercised his power of choice in a very good way, and has concentrated upon, I think, some of the bigger issues that needed to be drawn out of the way that a huge amount of public money is spent in Wales, to the lasting benefit of the taxpayer and, indeed, good government in general.

Because I was running out of interesting reading material, I actually read the 2011 report of the Public Accounts Committee, when Darren Millar was the Chair of it, on the problems of the Wales Audit Office itself. That said, right at the very beginning of Huw's tenure of office, he was forthright, open and transparent, and that is the principle upon which he has conducted himself in his great office in the whole time he's been there. He has spoken truth to power, and there is no task, I think, more vital in a democratic system, because all Governments of whatever persuasion at times think that they have a kind of inviolability and that they can do no wrong, or little wrong. It is very important that the cross-party consensus that Nick Ramsay referred to should sometimes cause them to think again and to draw themselves up.

It would be tedious to go through the long list of public offices that Huw Vaughan Thomas has held, but I think it's an important element of his experience that he was the chief executive of two local authorities before he became the auditor general—in Gwynedd and Denbighshire. He chaired the Big Lottery Fund in Wales as well, and he had experience in Government departments in other parts of the United Kingdom. He's served on organisations like the Parole Board for England and Wales. He's got a vast breadth of experience, as well as a depth in the areas that we're talking about today. So, I think that we should salute him for his success in his office, and for the inheritance that he is handing on to his successor. He is a hard act to follow. Nobody is, of course, indispensable, but nevertheless I think he will be remembered as one of the great auditors, not just of Wales but also of the United Kingdom, and the whole people of Wales thank him for his service.