Thank you very much, acting Deputy Presiding Officer. As Chair of the Finance Committee, I'm very pleased to be opening this debate today in relation, of course, to our inquiry into a legislative budget process. I would like to thank all of those who contributed to our inquiry and, of course, to the Minister, too, for her response to our report.

Now, the Wales Act 2014 gave the Senedd powers over stamp duty land tax and landfill tax, the power to vary the rates of income tax in Wales by up to 10 per cent, as well as providing the Welsh Government with wider borrowing powers and new powers to borrow for capital expenditure. At that time, the Senedd and the Welsh Government worked together to create a new budget process that considered the best way to alter the existing budget process to accommodate the new powers. Now, as six years have passed and as our Parliament has evolved in the meantime, we felt it was the right time to undertake an inquiry to establish whether the Senedd now needs to move to a legislative budget process.

Now, due to the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, work on this inquiry was halted and our evidence session with the Minister for Finance was cancelled. The Minister has subsequently provided us with written evidence, and we're very grateful to her for that information. As it will be for the next Senedd and the next Welsh Government to take work forward on a legislative budget process, we took the decision, as a committee, to push ahead and to publish our report rather than take oral evidence from the Minister. We have made 20 high-level conclusions, and we hope that these would form the basis for any future work on a legislative budget process. And given the time available to me today, I will focus my comments on the main issues.