Llywydd, my preferred route to paying for services in Wales is to grow the economy so that there are more buoyant receipts from an economy so there is a bigger cake for us all to be able to use to pay for services. So, that's where I start. I don't start, as he does, with asking about taxation; I begin by asking the questions about what we can do and what contribution the Government can make to growing the Welsh economy and providing, therefore, the investments that are necessary. There is no mention in my party’s manifesto of a levy for education, and that has no part in this Government’s plans. We did, in the last Senedd term, when we debated it extensively here, work on the Holtham proposals for a social care levy to help pay for the demographic changes that we are going to see in Wales. All of us here know that the future in Wales is of an ageing population, we have a higher proportion of our population over 65 than any other part of the United Kingdom, we’re the only part of the United Kingdom where people move into Wales at the age 65 to retire, and we have to think together about how that is to be paid for in the future. The Holtham proposals for a levy were a serious contribution to that debate, and we’ve done a lot of detailed work to see how that might work.

It will only be able to work when we know the proposals of the UK Government, signalled, briefly, in the Queen’s Speech, and promised by UK Ministers before the end of this calendar year. Then we will be able to see the interface between any proposals of the Holtham variety, or other ways of paying for social care, and the benefit system, which remains reserved to the United Kingdom. Only when we can see all parts of that complex jigsaw will we be able to make the most effective decisions about the way Welsh money can be used to pay for the social care services we will need in the future.