Diolch yn fawr i’r Aelod am y sylwadau yna, a diolch yn fawr iddo fe am ddweud wrthyf i fod yna bethau anodd i’w gwneud fan hyn, ond ddim cweit fel trial ei wneud e yn ystod rhyfel hefyd.

A series of very important questions from Adam Price, and our starting point is the one that he began with, too—that democratic answerability is very much caught up in organisations that spend money being responsible for raising money as well. However, getting the right set of agreements for Wales is absolutely essential. Otherwise, that basic principle of democratic answerability is fatally eroded if we are held responsible for the consequences of decisions that do not lie within the hands of this National Assembly. In that sense, the Member is absolutely right to say that the methodologies that will underpin the fiscal framework are absolutely essential, that we will have to wrestle with questions such as those that were addressed within the Scottish agreement about population changes and be clear that, as I believe, we cannot be held responsible for population changes that are driven by decisions that don’t belong here in the National Assembly.

I agree with him that a form of independent review of the system is very important. Scotland have secured an independent review in 2021 to make sure that the system there is working in the way that was intended and I would expect nothing less for us here in Wales.

As far as where discussions with the Treasury have got to, I have had one discussion so far directly with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I have a meeting with him planned for 21 July, and in my original discussion with him, we agreed that we were likely, to me, to meet monthly during the autumn in order to thrash out some of the detail on which a proper fiscal framework will rely. I hope it will not take the same length of time as it took in Scotland, and we are lucky to be following Scotland around this track and have been very fortunate to have had very high levels of co-operation from Scottish colleagues, giving us the benefit of their experience and some insight into the discussions that went on.

I think there’s a lot in the Scottish agreement that provides us with a very good starting point for our discussions as we go into them in the autumn. It’s essential to me that the National Assembly has an opportunity to continue to scrutinise the evolving picture in those negotiations, partly because I want to make sure that I’m able to answer any questions that Members have, but also because of the point that I made in my statement that, in the last Assembly, where we were able to agree on some important core things that were important across the whole of the National Assembly, then that materially strengthens our chance of conducting those arguments that we will have to have at the other end of the M4.