I'd like to contribute only briefly to this debate. Like others, I warmly welcome the motion that the Government and opposition parties have placed before us this afternoon, and I'm very happy to endorse and support that. I think we should also welcome the work of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. Now, I accept I have somewhat of an interest in this matter, but it is one of the instruments of the House of Commons and of the Westminster system that has been consistently supportive of the work of this place and which has recognised how we need and can develop institutional scrutiny and democracy across the United Kingdom.

Now, I believe that we should be devolving this particular tax because I believe that we should ensure that we have a coherence of structural devolution. I'm not one of these people who believes that we should devolve any particular matter unless there's something we especially want to do with it that is different to that which is done in England. I've never been one of those devolutionists who simply want to define what we are here in Wales as being different to the other side of Offa's Dyke.

I believe that we should have coherence in the settlement. I believe that, at present, the settlement is a broken settlement. You only have to listen to any debate on transport to look at that. You have the issues that I have with the railway from Ebbw Vale to Cardiff, which are matters that are ignored by the Department for Transport in England, and the Government here do not have sufficient powers to progress matters as we would choose to do. There is a structural issue there with the settlement, and I believe there's a structural issue here with the settlement as well. I believe that, if the Welsh Government—and the Welsh Government is the only authority that has the ability to properly manage transport policy in Wales, so if it is to do that in a coherent fashion then it must have the powers available to it to deliver that policy, whatever that policy happens to be. And air passenger duty is a part of that. It's part of a suite of different powers that should be available to the Government to enable it to deliver a holistic policy.

So, I believe that we should support the work of the select committee in this matter, and I believe we should support the long-standing view of the Welsh Government that this is devolved as part of a wider fiscal framework, which will establish a very different financial relationship between the different institutions of the United Kingdom. We've already seen this argument made coherently by both Silk and by Holtham. Both have been very, very clear that, if we are seeking to devolve issues of taxation then we should do it, not on a piecemeal basis but in order to deliver a stable settlement where both Governments in England and here in Wales are able to deliver their policy in a holistic manner. We've already seen this failure with the judicial system, where criminal justice again represents a part of a broken settlement.

I hope that, in resolving these matters, we may reach a point whereby we have a stable and coherent settlement before either I retire or my constituents decide it is time for me to retire. I hope that, in taking this matter forward, the United Kingdom Government will take a more rounded view on these matters. I'm not sure if I share the optimism of Andrew R.T. Davies and Nick Ramsay that a new Prime Minister later this year will lead to such a happy outcome, but what I hope we'll be able to do—and the former First Minister has spoken clearly about this, our new First Minister has spoken very convincingly about this as well—is to arrive at a point where the settlement works and the settlement no longer becomes the point of debate but how we operate the settlement and the policy options that we have become the area of debate, and that is how any democracy should properly operate. So, I don't wish to enter into a debate, and I hope we don't cloud the debate this afternoon with questions about how the Government would operate this taxation. That is a matter for manifestos, election and political debate in this place. What this place has a responsibility to do—and we failed with the last Wales Bill or Wales Act process because of the lethargy in Whitehall in delivering a devolved settlement that enables us to take these matters forward. I hope now that through this report and other reports we'll be able to ensure that we do have a devolved settlement that enables both Governments to deliver their policy.