I'm grateful to Mark Isherwood for those questions this afternoon, and I welcome him to his new portfolio. So, Mark Isherwood began by talking about the Welsh Government's general approach to taxation, and we have a very firm foundation for our Welsh tax policy, which is set out on the basis of five principles. That is that taxation should raise revenue to support public services as fairly as possible—I'm not sure that there's much that could be disagreed with there. Taxation should help deliver wider fiscal and policy objectives, including jobs and growth. Taxation should be simple and clear and stable. And taxation should be developed through engagement with taxpayers and stakeholders. Finally, taxation should contribute directly to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 goal of creating a more equal Wales. And I do think that those are strong foundations upon which to be basing our tax policy.

My statement this afternoon was in relation to the devolved taxes, which are generally known to be landfill disposals tax, land transaction tax and Welsh rates of income tax, but I know that Mark Isherwood was particularly interested in our approach to local taxation, including council tax and non-domestic rates. In terms of council tax, over the course of this Senedd term we have made significant steps forward in terms of making council tax fairer. We've exempted young care leavers from council tax to the age of 25. We've removed the sanction of imprisonment for the non-payment of council tax, because in our party we don't believe that being poor is a crime, and we've improved access to discounts for people with severe mental impairments and implemented a citizen-focused protocol for managing council tax collection and arrears, and also encouraged the take-up of all council tax support, and we've done so providing local authorities with significant financial support in order to enable them to undertake that work.

In terms of the specific concerns relating to council tax premiums on long-term empty and second homes, local authorities in Wales do have that discretionary power to apply those premiums of up to 100 per cent on the council tax bills for long-term empty and second homes in their areas. Those powers have been available since 2017. Local authorities asked for those powers, and we were pleased to provide them. Now, it is for each local authority to decide how they will undertake their—what decision they will make as to whether or not they will use that power locally.

In terms of land transaction tax and the impact on business, well, the decision that I announced alongside the draft budget is that businesses now, in the main, will be paying no tax on purchases of non-residential property costing less than up to £225,000. This will provide a small but material amount of additional support to businesses by reducing the capital required to invest in new business property, and those changes will result in fewer non-residential transactions paying tax on the acquisition of a property when entering into a new lease, and it will provide a tax saving to all of those businesses who buy property on which there will still be a tax liability. The largest savings as a proportion of the tax payable will impact most on small and medium-sized business. So, I took this decision being very mindful of the difficult period in which small businesses particularly are finding themselves in, and understanding that we have many entrepreneurs who are keen to set up a small business, and I want to create the right climate for them to be able to do so.

And then finally, on new taxes, you'll see from our tax work plan that we've been exploring very diligently the various types of new taxes that could be introduced in Wales, and the four that we chose to explore in the first instance were those that came through very strongly in the public consultation that we undertook. The First Minister, when he was in this role, led on that consultation, and actually I think around 200 ideas for new taxes came forward from people across Wales. And we undertook to explore the tourism tax, a potential tax on plastics, for example, but, in the first instance, we determined that we would take forward the potential tax and seek to devolve the powers for tax for vacant land, and, as I said in my statement, that really has fallen at the first hurdle. We've had a very difficult time engaging with the UK Government meaningfully on this, and it's a great shame that we haven't managed to make a success of what is a relatively uncontroversial and simple request.