Indeed. Well, Llywydd, I look forward to bringing forward proposals for debate here in the Senedd on a tourism tax, an idea, as I heard my colleague Mike Hedges say, that has taken root, and very successfully, right across the globe, and has been put forward by a series of local authorities of very different political persuasions in recent times. Whether it’s a Lib Dem-controlled Bath and North East Somerset Council, whether it’s a Labour-controlled Liverpool City Council or whether it’s a Tory-controlled Aberdeen City Council, there are proposals for tourism taxes at that level, and that is what the proposal in my party’s manifesto is about. It is about giving the power and the authority to local authorities in Wales to make a decision for themselves as to whether or not a tourism levy would allow them better to go on investing in the circumstances that make those areas attractive to tourism.

I’m very clear in my own mind, Llywydd, that a tourism tax, properly done, will benefit the industry because what it will allow those local authorities to do is to invest in the things that make those areas attractive to tourists in the first place. At the moment it is those local resident populations who pay for everything. They pay for the toilets, they pay for the car parks, they pay for the local museum, they pay for the local festival—anything that is put there to attract people into the area, it is those local residents who bear the cost in full.

A tourism levy, charged on people who choose to go to those areas, in a very modest way, when you add it all up, could be a significant opportunity for local authorities to invest in the conditions that make tourism a success. Where local authorities don’t believe that it would be a tool that they would seek to use, they’d be under no obligation to do it, but I’ve had many encounters on the floor of the Senedd with the leader of the opposition when he urges me to devolve—not simply to Cardiff, but onwards to local authorities to strengthen their ability to make decisions for their local populations—and that is what we will bring forward when we talk about a tourism tax. More powers for local authorities to make decisions that are right for their local areas and populations.