5. Statement by the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd: Progress on Devolved Taxes

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:57 pm on 2 February 2021.

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Photo of Alun Davies Alun Davies Labour 4:57, 2 February 2021

I'm grateful to you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and grateful to the Minister for her statement. There are two issues I want to raise with her this afternoon. First of all is the place of tax, not simply as a means of raising revenue, but also as a tool of policy to deliver and to shape policy. I'm disappointed that the Government does not include sustainability as one of its key principles for taxation. I believe that we should be looking towards using tax to limit, potentially, or to penalise if you like, the use of resources and to shape a response to climate policy, which is more profound than we do at present. Some of the issues we've discussed this afternoon, in terms of plastics and in terms of return charges, do play into that sort of field, but I do think that the Government should use tax as a means of delivering on its sustainability principles as well, and I would like to see that within the overall suite of principles that the Government use.

The second point is on what you call new taxations, and the process that has failed with the United Kingdom Government. Those of us who were victims of the legislative competence Orders never ever want to see one of those come in front of us again. It was a painful process that was well meaning but collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy. I think MPs and AMs, as we were at the time, collectively hated the process, and we certainly don't want to go back to those days. But we need a process that works. It's no surprise that the current United Kingdom Government has no interest in working with the devolved administrations on anything realistic at all, but we need a process that works.

Like others this afternoon, I've got no issue with a tourism tax or a tax on vacant land or anything else. You pay a tourism tax in most states in the world, as far as I—