, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
Thanks, Guto. David, sorry, I cut across there—you were in mid flow.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
Hang on. Can I ask Guto: do you just want to comment on that particular bit?
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
And then it adds into the conversation around whether or not it should be a legislative process that allows amendments to the budget through the process, rather than, as you say, a more final draft and scrutiny of that draft. So, yes, there are quite a few…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
David.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
And that will help, I'm assuming, the stakeholders and everybody—yourselves, but also everybody who’s affected by this, the third sector and all the rest. Guto.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
Thank you. And, Guto, anything to add to that, or David, any thoughts? No. That's great. Thank you very much. So, looking at—. We’ve talked about presentation, but what about timing? On the timing of the publication of the Welsh budget, we were talking just…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
Thank you very much for that. Coming back to the—. And that's particularly interesting when it comes to scrutinising the budget, and we had quite a lengthy discussion with the Cabinet Secretary when he was giving evidence to us around presentation, and we've…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
David, maybe you could comment on that and maybe—. You've been commenting a bit about the Scottish Government experience as well, so maybe if you could draw that into it as well.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
So, what challenges does that have for scrutiny? I'll bring David in after that, if I can.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
We'll dive into questions. We always find your sessions very interesting, so we'll try and keep things as tight as we can. We've got you for an hour and we've got a lot of ground to cover. But we'll start with understanding the economic context around the…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
Fantastic, thank you very much. A warm welcome to you all this morning.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
And then—.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
Excellent.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
Can we start online with—? If you could introduce yourself and where you've come from. Diolch. David.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 3
Welcome back to this session. This is our second session this morning on the draft budget. We have our witnesses here this morning. We'll start online.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
Wow, okay. [Laughter.] Thank you so much. There will be a transcript available for you to check for accuracy, but thanks again for your time. And we'll take a short break now to reset the room. Thank you.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
We'll let you get off to bed. There we are.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
Thank you very much, and thank you so much for your attendance this morning. It's always interesting to have you here and to go through your analysis. Thank you very much to Professor David Miles from the other side of the world as well this morning. Thank…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
Thanks for that diversion. Sorry, it was just interesting to query that. Back to Sam.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
There may have been. Okay. Sorry, you were about to say something, Richard.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
Has any analysis been done on the border with Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland? Because, obviously, there are two different tax regimes there as well. Just out of interest.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
Sorry, do you do much analysis or forecasting around that behavioural aspect of taxation—so, cross-border behaviour, maybe? Because it's something that we as a committee are interested in, especially with Welsh rates of income tax, compared to maybe Scotland…
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
Okay. Thank you.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
Right. So, otherwise, you try and smooth out the curve, and, if they happen, they're nearly a bonus, in effect, in income, rather than trying to forecast that volatility.
, Finance Committee
Welsh Government Draft Budget 2025-26: Evidence session 2
Because it's predicting one event sometime in the future.
