Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 10 October 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:54, 10 October 2018

Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, the Member knows that I don't share his starting hypothesis. I'm not, myself, convinced at all that tax competition, in which we drive down Welsh tax rates in the hope that that will somehow lead to people coming into Wales to take advantage of it, is something that would be very likely to happen. But in answering his questions at the Finance Committee, I said to him that in Welsh Government we believe in evidence-based policy making, and therefore we are always open to evidence from other parts of the world. I'm familiar with the Swiss canton study that he mentioned, and the fact that it's there cited in Welsh Government information shows that we are willing to look at things that happen elsewhere, and see if there are lessons to be learnt.

There are many countervailing examples that would demonstrate the opposite to you. When I put this question to the tax Minister in the Basque Country, which has significantly higher tax rates than those parts of Spain that are immediately adjacent to his border, I asked him: didn't he have tax leakage and didn't he have people leaving the Basque Country to take advantage of lower tax rates immediately adjacent to them? He assured me that that was absolutely not a feature of the way that people behaved in that tax regime.

So, to answer the question directly, in terms of all the many things that I have to ask my officials to attend to as we take on new fiscal responsibilities, as we face the challenge of Brexit and so on, I don't have an intention at this time to divert their energies into an exploration of the sort the Member suggests.