9. Will the Minister make a statement on how financial statements accompanying new Bills compare to the actual realised costs? OQ55760

The Welsh Government publishes a table showing the implementation costs of enacted legislation alongside the draft budget. The table includes an explanation if costs have changed significantly from the regulatory impact assessment estimates. Guidance states that, where feasible, the actual cost of legislation should be considered as part of the post-implementation review.

Thank you very much for that information, because we don't get a huge amount of time for post-legislative scrutiny here in this Senedd, and tracking the ongoing costs attributable to a piece of legislation can be very difficult, particularly at the moment when we get no chance for pre-legislative scrutiny of the cost of regulations. Can you confirm for how long consequent costs attract after various parts of the statutes and regulations come into force? And when do you plan to publish a comprehensive statement on the costs of the coronavirus Act and the COVID regulations brought in beneath it?

Thank you for raising that particular question. In terms of when we publish that detail, we publish detail alongside the draft budget every year in terms of legislation that is being enacted. We would normally stop providing that information once the Act has been implemented, because then the costs of that and delivering that just become business-as-usual costs and are absorbed either by the departments or have some additional particular funding attached to them. So, that's the normal way in which we would provide the detail of that. I'm always keen to explore what more we can do in terms of transparency and providing the information that people need, both before Bills are voted on, but then also afterwards as well. So, yes, I'd be more than happy to have that discussion with Suzy if there are some particular ideas that she has or some particular concerns that she'd like to discuss in further detail, because as I say, transparency is really important in helping people to understand what the cost has been of the Bills that we've enacted.

Thank you, finance Minister.