Taxation exists to pay for public services. Too many people believe that we can have the same quality of public services as Scandinavia when our taxation system is more akin to that of the USA. The Conservatives oppose increasing any taxes or bringing in new taxes. We need a debate on what public services we have and how to pay for them. When you look at the cost of private education and private healthcare, it puts into perspective the value for money we get from our taxation system. It is not by random chance or serendipity that those countries with the highest tax levels have the best public services and those with the lowest tax levels the poorest. It's because taxation is necessary to raise the money to pay for the public services we all need, services like the roads we travel on, the safety of people at work, the safety of food, education and the health service—which we all depend on—policing our streets; they're all paid for out of taxation. If people want quality public services, then taxes are needed to pay for them.

Whilst nobody likes to pay taxes, some rich individuals and multinational companies are experts at reducing their tax payments. For a multinational company, corporation tax is an optional payment that's value can be reduced by things such as intra-company charges, paying for intellectual property rights, transferring charges for goods and services, or making the point of sale outside Britain. Each ensures business profit occurs in a low-tax or no-tax country. Providing quality public services means that if some people do not pay tax or their fair share of tax, then either public services suffer, or others like us have to pay more.

Every time tax cuts are made, they're shown as beneficial—they appear to be to those who are paying less tax and have more money in their pocket. The effect that the introduction of the Government income tax cuts has on public expenditure, on services such as health, local government and education is completely ignored until the cuts start affecting people. The more difficult the tax is to avoid, the more unpopular it is with the rich and powerful. By far the most difficult taxes to avoid are the property taxes, non-domestic rates and council tax. Land value tax is a tax like those. There are no tricks such as internal company transactions or having non-domiciled status to avoid paying the tax; the land is not movable, and the tax becomes liable and must be paid.

There are various ways of raising taxes, and whilst with an expenditure tax such as VAT what I pay on an item is the same as anyone else living in Great Britain, it's not true of tax on income, for example. Take somebody earning £30,000 a year, then if they're under retirement age, they pay income tax and national insurance. When that person reaches retirement age, they cease to pay national insurance. A graduate on the same income pays back a student loan as well as income tax and national insurance. Someone who receives their income via dividend will pay a 7.5 per cent tax rate on income over £2,000. This to me appears very unfair.

What tax needs to be is fair and difficult to avoid. Vacant land tax meets this requirement. I also think the Government recognises the potential for a vacant land tax in Wales to contribute to increasing housing supply and bringing idle land back into productive use. There's too much land that could be being used being banked for the future. Vacant land tax will apply to land that's been granted all necessary planning permission, and other consents for development, but where there's been no development. Tax will apply to all landowners of both commercial and residential property development, private developers, but also local authorities, housing associations and yes, the Welsh Government itself. If there are genuine reasons for the lack of development that are outside of the landowner's control, the tax wouldn't apply. Land value tax has been described as the perfect tax, and the economic efficiency of a land value tax has been known since the eighteenth century. One of the major Conservatives, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who thinks we are still in the eighteenth century, may well actually accept that as something from then that is useful. A land value tax is a progressive tax in that the tax burden falls on the title holder in proportion to the value of the location, the ownership of which is highly correlated with overall wealth and income.

This would not be unique to Wales. I think sometimes we have the Welsh Government often saying, 'This is Wales leading the way', and the Conservatives say, 'It's experimental'. Both would be untrue. A land—[Interruption.]. Sorry. I'll give way, Peter.