, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 1
The purpose, Chair, of making the target a statutory one is to underline its importance and to safeguard the target for the future. It's in the legislation, so we will all know in future what the target will be. In putting it on the face of the Bill and…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 1
Of course, Chair, I can see the argument there, and I know that officials have worked very hard with people in the sector through the White Paper process and so on to find the correct wording to describe what we want to do through this Bill. I’m happy to…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 1
Thank you, Chair. The point I should probably start with is that, of course, the Bill is very important for Welsh-medium education, that great success story of Wales in the last 30 years—the fact that we have a sector that is both growing and produces such…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 1
Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd. Thank you very much for the opportunity to be with you this morning. It’s probably important just to remind Members that when the Bill was in its formative stages, the Minister responsible was Jeremy Miles and he was Minister both…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Diolch yn fawr, Cadeirydd. If I could make one very final point, because I don't think I made it at all, we focus a lot on the constraints, but the Welsh Government is absolutely interested in whether there are any ways it can be improved, and, in that sense…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Well, by definition, Chair, any purpose that is pursued through financial transactions capital has to be recyclable. If it can't be repaid and, therefore, recycled, then it can't enter the scheme. There are lots and lots of things that the Welsh Government…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
It would be interesting to see if they thought the same.
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Well, Mike, looking at the list in front of me, I've definitely got social landlords on the list, so they have benefited from it. My guess would be that there are more straightforward ways in which they are able to raise the capital that they need, because in…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
I'm often told that you need a more strategic approach to something. I'm not often sure what the person saying that has in mind by that, because I think I've explained our strategy this morning as best I can. When I was preparing to come in front of the…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Yes.
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
I think we consider every—. There's no part of Government that's excluded from FTCs. Any part of the Government that can put forward a scheme that operates within the rules is entitled to do that, and over time, as I said, we have had more parts of the Welsh…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Because it's recyclable, yes. We have £1.4 billion, but because it's coming in and out of the door, actually, the amount that we've deployed will be larger than that initial quantum.
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Barnett applies in this area in exactly the way that it applies to everything else. English departments, for this purpose, make decisions about the extent to which they are going to use financial transactions capital, and we get a Barnett consequential of…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Sharon has told me that this is very simple. [Laughter.] Even though she told me it was very simple, she will give you a more reliable account than I would.
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
I'd say we're at the start of such a journey with the new Government. I think the previous Government probably wasn't much open to—. It had a system, it had its pluses and its minuses and they were going to continue with it. I’ll try and answer one other…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
We think DBW is actually very useful to us and would continue to be. It has that expertise. I think it's got lots of demonstrated success in being able to get the money back through the door and reuse it again, so I don't think that—
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Chair, I think there are two different avenues of reform. There's how can we make the current system, if the current system stays as it is, work better, and Andrew will say a bit about that, and there's what sort of reform would we look for if there was more…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Yes, the disaggregation of it.
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
I'm not quite certain I'm following the question exactly, because we do identify at the budget the quantum of financial transactions capital—
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
That's a fair thing for people to say, because the development bank is having to operate within the rules that are provided to us, and it is a lengthy process. It's not an easy process. It's a fairly off-putting process, we know, for some potential…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
A change of classification of DBW does affect our ability to manage the annualised nature of financial transactions capital. Under the previous classification, it was possible for money to leave the Welsh Government’s accounts and be used by DBW, not on an…
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
We can see. If there is any example, we can—. But I think it's the sort of thing Ministers would certainly know about had that happened, and I don't know of any immediately.
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
I don't know.
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Failed?
, Finance Committee
Financial Transactions Capital: Evidence session 3
Well, for me, the first criterion of success is that we're using the money, because, as I say, this is money that, if you don't use it, then it's lost for public purposes in Wales, and getting it used at all has not been easy. So, my first criterion of…
