When launching the mutual investment model, the First Minister, when he was finance Minister, said:

'The mutual investment model includes important obligatory long-term provisions to secure community benefits, to create apprenticeships and training places for Welsh workers and for sustainable development, in which the private sector partner supports delivery of the well-being of future generations Act. It incorporates our commitment to an ethical employment code and allows us to maximise the benefits of our sustainable procurement practices. The model also enables the government to exert influence over the chosen private partner to ensure that the public interest is protected. Where we invest in schemes, this influence will be exercised by a public interest director, and this is an important advance on what has been secured in other public-private partnership models in other parts of the United Kingdom. This ensures robust transparency in terms of access to board-level information, alongside a range of reserved matters to protect public funds and the public interest.'

I don't think anybody can find any problems with any of that. It is, however, a means of bringing private finance into public services that keeps it off the public sector borrowing requirement, so that keeps the Treasury happy, and is not PFI, which keeps the rest of us happy. But I have concerns about the future revenue cost of capital under this model. I always have concerns about the future revenue cost of any money that's borrowed, my own included. We know it is more expensive than using Welsh Government capital or using the Public Works Loan Board.

I have three questions: do you accept that bonds are only there to keep the Public Works Loan Board rates low, and that you would not expect the Welsh Government to use them, but they hang over the Public Works Loan Board as if you increase your rates, as they did to local government, then local government starts saying, 'Well, we can issue bonds', and they keep putting the rates back down? You talked about a return of 15 per cent on what our investment is, but isn't that just having our own money back, in that if we've invested it, the money comes back, and it's only our money going in, so aren't we just getting our own money back? And, really, the key question is: what is mean rate of return being achieved by those providing private finance through this model? We know that money being borrowed can be borrowed relatively cheaply, but we also know that we're capped on what we can borrow. If we could prudentially borrow, all of these innovative ways of doing things would be unnecessary. We'd use, as local authorities can, the innovative model—instead of an innovative model, we'd use our ability to prudentially borrow, and all this would be done by prudentially borrowing, it's the Public Works Loan Board, which would be cheaper. If the Minister's going to tell me that wouldn't be cheaper, I'd like to see the figures. So, really, just to come back to those three questions, the main one is: what is the rate of return being achieved by those lending?