Thank you very much, and today is a historic day, of course, because we will vote today to set the Welsh rates of income tax in Wales for the first time in many centuries. Now, the powers in question expand on the tax-raising powers devolved in April of last year, and these powers, as we’ve already heard, should provide the Welsh Government with the ability to make important decisions and to have greater influence on the needs of Wales and the Welsh people, and so we need to effectively scrutinise these decisions. And the Welsh rates of income tax, as the Minister has said, will raise around £2 billion, so effective scrutiny has never been more important in terms of this institution.

So, as we scrutinised the draft budget as a committee, we did hear about the forecasting problems in Scotland on the Scottish rate of income tax. Whilst we recognise the protection afforded to Wales in this first year of Welsh rates of income tax, the committee does believe that we must learn from what happened in Scotland. We received assurances from the previous Cabinet Secretary that he was working to learn lessons from those experiences. But, as a committee, this is something that we will be monitoring in future as well.

Now, the final budget shows a reduction of £40 million on the income tax forecasts due to personal allowance changes in the UK budget. And the protection measures afforded to the block grant this year do, of course, protect the Welsh Government from this reduction, but we must be mindful of these types of changes in future years. Now, one of the differences between Wales and Scotland in terms of income tax is the dynamic nature of cross-border movement between Wales and England, with around 100,000 people migrating back and forth each year. Now, we heard references to some comments that Steffan Lewis had to make on this particular issue in the previous tributes, and it's entirely right, of course, but the committee does believe that it is essential to ensure effective monitoring of the number of Welsh income tax payers in-year. The committee recognises that HMRC have been contracted to ensure accurate taxpayer identification, but we would urge the Welsh Government to undertake continual and robust oversight to ensure that the flagging system is fit for purpose on an ongoing and long-term basis, because this isn't a temporary measure. This will be an ongoing process. And the way that the system will work is that anyone who is not identified as a Welsh taxpayer or a Scottish taxpayer will be, by default, an English or Northern Ireland taxpayer, and the result of that, of course, is that income tax from anyone falling between the gaps will be allocated to Westminster.

I welcome the Welsh rate resolution before us today, and, as a committee, we are pleased that this motion links to the annual budget motion, to ensure, of course, full accountability of revenue raising and doing so side-by-side with the spending plans.