Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:02 pm on 2 February 2021.
Finance Minister, I agree with much of what you said about the Welsh Revenue Authority and how well it's doing as an organisation. I've also enjoyed at least one of the tax conferences you've had. I don't think the success of the WRA is because it's done on a Welsh basis rather than a UK basis, but I do think it goes to show how much more efficiently public services can be delivered when you start with a clean slate and you don't have the legacy IT systems. I think moving all the IT to the cloud and the way they've managed that has been a real success.
You spoke very shortly about Welsh rates of income tax. Clearly, we're unhappy that they've been devolved without the referendum that was previously promised. However, can I ask you to update us about what the revenue loss is because of this devolution of these Welsh rates? Clearly, they haven't been changed yet, so it hasn't had the level of public interest that it would if they were changed, certainly if the taxes went up. But is it not the case that the yield from this 10 per cent of the Welsh rates is less than was expected? And although there's still a degree of protection, do we not know from the Office for Budget Responsibility that we're now having substantially less money because of that level of devolution? Can you confirm how many million that now is?
Finally from me, you say that the process for new taxes has failed in its first test. I would say that it has succeeded in that it's stopped new taxes being devolved. The Welsh Government has looked at this mechanism and seems to have assumed that its intention is for lots more taxes—additional taxes that people might like to have for whatever reason—to be devolved. Actually, the process has stopped that, and that is something that we welcome. The First Minister, in his previous role, said he wants to test the machinery. That's now been done; it isn't leading to the new devolution of taxes, thankfully. Therefore—