, Plenary
Group 1: Duty to consult (Amendments 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17)
Thank you. Before I speak to the amendments in this group, I’d just like to outline for Members the importance of this legislation and the purpose of the Bill. We’re bringing consistency, flexibility and progress to ensure that local taxes continue to be…
, Plenary
The Land Transaction Tax and Anti-avoidance of Devolved Taxes (Wales) Act 2017 (Amendments to Schedule 5) Regulations 2024
Just to say thank you very much to Mike Hedges, particularly for those final comments made in that more personal capacity, but then also to him and his committee for the work that they've done, particularly in identifying that minor drafting error. As I said…
, Plenary
The Land Transaction Tax and Anti-avoidance of Devolved Taxes (Wales) Act 2017 (Amendments to Schedule 5) Regulations 2024
Diolch, Llywydd. The regulations before the Senedd are subject to the draft affirmative procedure. If the Senedd approves them today, I expect them to come into force on Friday. I’m grateful to the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee and the…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Great. Diolch yn fawr.
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Yes. We chose that as a particular one because it's not controversial, it's relatively small, it's geographically defined. It was the ideal tax to 'take the test around the track' I think Mark Drakeford used to say, when he was responsible for this. But…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Well, I'm looking forward to a more positive hearing on this. And also we've done so much work over the years. And indeed, actually, it's less about the policy itself at this point, the vacant land tax—
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Well, it's certainly on my list of things that I think would make a good dispute. I think that it will be important to try and engage a new UK Government on this particular issue. We were making some progress up until around February 2019. I think that's the…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
I might ask officials to come in on this point as well. Generally speaking, we would get consequentials when reserve funding is provided to UK Government departments in areas that are devolved. I think that's largely because we're facing the same pressures in…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
And to be fair, I'm grateful to the Welsh Conservatives on this, because I know that you've said in the Senedd that you would support that capital-to-revenue switch as well, just to put that on record.
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Definitely.
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
We didn't really get to the bottom of that, but I think it's partly about the relationship between Treasury and Whitehall departments and us as a Government. So, quite understandably Treasury will want to sit down with the Minister and officials will discuss…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Last year we made our first ever request for that switch, but it was denied by Treasury, so it's not something that we've been able to do. All we get is what comes out of the agreements that Treasury has made with Whitehall departments. So, for example, in…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Yes, so it's lost 23 per cent of its value since—. So, both the Wales reserve and our borrowing powers have lost 23 per cent of their value since they were originally set.
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Yes, we're asking, actually—. And the borrowing point as well. Local authorities have that prudential borrowing. That's something that we would, ultimately, like to see. In the first instance, I think even just increasing the limits in line with inflation…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
So, one thing I'd really like to pursue is the point about late funding. So, anything that comes through very late in the financial year, we should be able to carry that into the next year without this kind of—. At the moment it's 10 per cent of the reserve…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
I do have some sympathy with Treasury Ministers, in the sense that they will need to get all of the figures from Whitehall departments before, for example through the supplementary estimate processes, they're able to provide us with our final figures. So, I…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Well, we haven't yet raised a formal dispute, so in that sense the process itself hasn't been tested. That's partly because of the lack of engagement by the UK Government on some of these issues and the lack of consistent presence in the Treasury to have…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Yes, there's no way of knowing how much of that is going to be new money. There have been other examples as well where we've been told that there would be additional funding; for example, the £600 million boost for councils in England. We were told that the…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
That's part of that challenge, really, about not having that independent arbiter as well. But one thing that we would want is a review of the Network Rail processes underpinning project investment decisions so that there is greater transparency. We think that…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
That's kind of after the event, in many ways.
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Shall I perhaps bring in Julian on the information that we get and when we get it, and particularly, for example, the transparency tables and so on?
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
And also local government and others, the third sector. They tell us, 'If we don't know what things are looking like before Christmas, then we are going to have to start sending out redundancy notices.' That's absolutely not the place that we would want to be…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Yes, we'll always try and do things as quickly as we can.
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Standing Orders, as you know, require us to write to the Business Committee and yourselves ahead of the summer. I suppose that might have been a relic from the day when we had spring budgets. We always write with our best guess as to what might happen and…
, Finance Committee
Fiscal Inter-governmental Relations: Evidence session 8
Before the general election was called, we were working through all the possible scenarios that we could find ourselves in this year, and some of them were potentially not even being able to finalise a budget in this financial year. We looked at every…
