Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee and our first evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary in relation to the Development of Tourism and Regulation of Visitor Accommodation (Wales) Bill. This is the first session that we'll be taking from the Minister and his officials. 

I'll ask for apologies first. We don't have any. I'll ask for declarations of interest, please. Sam.

Thank you, Chair. Just for the record, my parents run self-catering holiday lets.

Okay. Any other declarations of interest? No. The meeting is bilingual and the translation is through the headsets on the desks in front of people. All proceedings are broadcast live, they are.

I'll begin the questions first of all. I'm sure you're familiar with the pattern, Minister, and your officials are: each Member will ask you a series of questions, and, hopefully, that will inform our ongoing evidence for compiling the report on Stage 1 proceedings.

So, Minister, why have you chosen to bring this Bill forward, and what are you hoping to achieve by it?

Thank you, Chair. So, the purpose of the Bill is best captured in its title, really. The Bill is there to support development of tourism in Wales. It does that in a series of different ways, and, as with many Bills, there are a series of objectives that the Bill seeks to deliver. It aims to support the development of tourism through a licensing regime, in the first instance for self-catering and self-contained accommodation. It aims to develop that scheme in a way that is as simple and straightforward as possible, automating processes as much as we can, using contemporary forms of technology. It aims to align the registration requirements of the Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Act 2025 with the licensing requirements of this Bill. It aims to secure a proper balance between the needs of the industry and the communities within which the industry operates. It aims to create a more level playing field between the obligations on an individual who chooses to rent a property on a long-term or a short-term basis. It brings Wales into line with other UK nations in creating such a licensing scheme in order to provide reassurance to visitors. And it creates a code of tourism law for Wales, making the law more accessible, easier to understand and use, and available bilingually.

Thank you for that, Cabinet Secretary. I got ahead of myself in the opening procedures. I was so excited to hear your words this morning, that I forgot to ask you to introduce yourselves, and our worldwide audience are now shouting at their screens wondering who's in front of us. So, just to interrupt proceedings, if I could first of all start with Hannah from my right and work across, so that for the Record and proceedings we know who everyone is. Hannah, could you introduce yourself and your role in the preparation of this Bill, please, and then we'll go to Dylan, and then Mark and Helen and Robbie?

Hannah Starkey. I'm a Government lawyer. 

Helen John. I'm the deputy director leading this Bill team.

Robbie Thomas. I'm head of licensing of visitor accommodation in the Welsh Government.

Thank you for that. Cabinet Secretary, obviously you undertook a consultation into the Bill, and that consultation concluded in 2023. To say that there were not many supportive comments from that consultation from the sector would be an understatement, I think, from our briefing notes. Considering the comments that came back from the sector and that consultation, why did the Government carry on pursuing bringing this Bill forward?

Well, I suppose, Chair, because the biggest consultation on any item in the programme for government was the manifesto on which the Government stood in an election. And the proposal to bring forward a licensing scheme was in the manifesto of my party; it was in the manifesto of other parties that stood for election. Because it was in the manifesto, it was translated into the programme for government. It was further endorsed in the co-operation agreement. The consultation is not designed to overcome the democratic process, it's designed to make sure that the views of people who are more closely interested in this particular idea are well canvassed and well understood.

I don't know that I would completely sign up to your characterisation of the results of the consultation. Inevitably, you will get a variety of views, but there were supportive comments in that consultation as well, particularly from established businesses, who believed that the rapid growth in self-catering accommodation in Wales, and the change in market conditions that makes it much easier for people to become a market entrant, meant that there were people entering the business who weren't as aware as they needed to be of the obligations that they need to discharge if they are to let accommodation on a short-term basis, and that the licensing scheme would be helpful to the industry in making sure that there was a genuine level playing field—that all people who offer short-term self-contained accommodation would be operating to the same standard. So, while there are always voices in the consultation that take a different view, I don't think it was uniformly hostile to the idea, and there were positive views of it as well.

There was the option to go just for a register rather than a licensing scheme. I hear what you say about the manifesto commitment, and that should never be taken out and just tarnished—if it's in the manifesto, you have to take that very seriously. But, given the responses you had to the consultation, was there any thought in your mind at one point just to go for the registration rather than just going straight for the chosen route that you took in the end?

Yes, I think that was a proper debate, and there were proper points made about it. I think, in the end, the reason why we decided not simply to go for registration is that registration in the system we have in Wales is simply a self-certification scheme. All you have to do to be on the register is to provide the basic details of who you are, what you do and where the premises that you let out are to be found. It tells you nothing at all about the standards of that accommodation and whether the basic things that a visitor would have a right to expect are actually being discharged there. If you want to secure that second set of objectives, then you end up having to have a licensing regime.

I was interested in that debate. We engaged in it inside Government. But, in the end, our conclusion was that, if you're going to give confidence to visitors to Wales that the accommodation that they have booked is going to be accommodation that has within it the things that they have a right to expect, a licensing regime was the way to deliver that.

You chose not to consult on the draft Bill. Obviously, you did have a consultation some two years ago, which I referred to a little earlier. Do you think it would have been helpful to have consulted on the draft Bill in the first instance? Maybe just the parliamentary timeframe has conspired against that, because, obviously, we have a fixed-term five-year Parliament and then we go to the country again. So, would it have been beneficial to have had a consultation on the draft Bill?

Well, there would have been advantages, quite definitely. But I think the point you make, Chair, is probably one of the two most—. There are two reasons why I think we've ended up without a draft Bill in this instance, and you've identified probably the more important one, which is that this is a Bill that comes right at the end of this parliamentary term. That's inevitable. Governments have programmes for government, you have to phase them over the whole of the time available to you, and where this Bill comes in the timetable means that it's simply not feasible to have a draft Bill. We would end up without a real Bill, and, in a choice between a real Bill and a draft Bill, if that's what you have to choose, then I'm of course going to choose a real Bill.

I think it's important to say that there has been consultation on these proposals not just in the 2023 consultation to which you referred; there's been consultation in every single year of this term. In 2021 we had a consultation exercise carried out by an independent consulting firm on our behalf. The Government has consulted not just once, but has had a series of consultations of various sorts, not just the conventional sort, but additional consultation directly face-to-face with the sector. The consultation over the visitor levy Bill regularly talked about a licensing Bill as a companion piece of legislation that would follow later and would be closely aligned with one another. So, I think the second reason why the case for a draft Bill is less compelling in this case, as well as the timetabling issues, is that the issues have been so very well rehearsed over a five-year period.

My final point to you, Cabinet Secretary, is: obviously other Parliaments and legislatures have passed similar Bills. I'm assuming officials and your good self looked at the experiences that they went through. What have you learned from their experiences in compiling their own legislation, and what lessons learned were actually put into this Bill to make it as good a Bill as possible at this stage?

Yes, thank you, Chair. I think in a way the clearest lesson from experience elsewhere is that this is something that everybody is going to do. It's been done in Northern Ireland for a very long time. The Scottish licensing scheme is now fully operational. Colleagues in England are planning a scheme in England. I do not think myself it would be in the interests of the industry that Wales would be the only part of the United Kingdom where visitors didn't have the assurance that they would have everywhere else.

I think there are specific lessons that we have learnt from the Northern Irish and the Scottish experience—sometimes very positive lessons. We've learnt from the things they've done well. Some things we've decided to do differently. So, in the Northern Irish context, to get a licence, every premises has to have a physical inspection. That is resource intensive, and it means that the process is a long one. The Northern Ireland Executive are consulting at the moment on a move away from that regime to what they refer to as a sort of intelligence-led form of operation, and our Bill is much closer to that. We do not expect to have inspections as the first call in operating a licensing scheme. So, I think we've learnt from the Northern Irish experience in that way.

Scotland has a locally based scheme, so it's up for each local authority to run their own licensing regime. I visited Edinburgh within the last 12 months to talk to them about their visitor levy Bill, which also operates on a local authority basis, and one of the things that they said to me that the industry was telling them was that they thought there would be advantages in a national scheme where the rules are the same everywhere, rather than the industry having to get used to different rules in every local authority. Lots of operators in the area have properties in more than one location, more than one local authority area, in Scotland. If you do that, then you have to learn the rules wherever you are. Now, I think we've taken a view that, given the fact that Wales is significantly smaller in any case, a national scheme where the rules are the same everywhere is simpler for the industry and will place less of a burden on them.

So, those, I think, are two of the lessons we've drawn from elsewhere, where we are doing things differently in Wales because we think we've been able to benefit from other people's experience and design the scheme in a way that meets our own needs and circumstances.

Thank you. Alun.

Can I just add to that as well? It may be worth mentioning that, in working out some of the detail, we were looking at our own legislation as well. So, we have licensing regimes already that apply in a different context, one of which is very similar, which is regulating housing. So, we have legislation that dates back to 2014 in relation to the private rented sector, and we also have a licensing regime in relation to social care. So, a lot of the detail was produced with that experience in mind. We looked at that legislation to see what would be appropriate in this context. We were not just looking at elsewhere; we were looking at our own experience, and I think that's been quite helpful as well.

Okay, thank you for that background. Alun.

Yes, I'm grateful to you, and thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your time today. It was very useful to have the technical briefing with your officials the other week. I'm grateful to your officials for their time, and I certainly found it very useful. In many ways, you've characterised this as a Bill coming at the end of a parliamentary session, and the rest of it, and I think I agree with that characterisation. We've discussed these matters on a number of different occasions, and I don't think that I'm one of these people who believes we need a draft Bill on every occasion. When we deal with a major piece of legislation, with major reforms, I think that's the case; that doesn't feel to be the case here.

My first question to you, Cabinet Secretary, is about the tension, I think, that the Chair outlined. A lot of people did respond to the consultation saying, 'We don't actually like this, we don't want more regulation', and lots of these different things. I was reading through some of those responses and thinking, 'Well, actually, I'm one of your customers, and I want it.' Quite often, I'm thinking—we had this conversation during COVID as well, when we were talking about opening up a sector—I'm thinking, 'You're asking me to spend money with you, you're asking me to take my children to stay in this place of accommodation, so I want certain assurances and I want to know that my children are going to be safe, and I want to know that there's a certain base, if you like, a foundation there.' So, as a customer, I actually strongly support this sort of legislation, and I'm glad you've gone for a licence and not simply a registration. So, do you think you've got the balance right? Are you confident about that tension and that balance as to where the Bill currently sits?

Well, Chair, the reason why I have confidence in that is because my belief is that what is good for customers is also good for the industry, because this is an industry that depends upon its reputation. My own view is that the future for Welsh tourism lies in it demonstrating that it is a quality industry, that it is an industry in which the experience you get if you come to Wales is one that matches all the fantastic natural advantages we have, when you go away from Wales thinking that you've had a genuinely quality experience. When the industry delivers that, then I think the industry is delivering its own successful future, and this Bill is part of that quality agenda.

It gives assurance to the public that if you come to Wales and you book a holiday in short-term, self-contained accommodation, you can be confident that the things that you would expect to be there will be there, because that's how you've ended up having a licence. And that's why I think the Bill is good for the industry. The Bill is about developing tourism. It's about making a positive contribution to that quality future. While of course I completely agree with all the points that Alun Davies has made about how it gives the consumer confidence, I don't think that the interests of consumers and the interests of the industry are in competition with each other. What's good for the visitor is good for the industry, and that's why I am confident that the Bill delivers on its objectives.

That's right, because there are accommodations we've all stayed in where we leave thinking, 'We're never going to darken your door again', and there are other places where we come back year after year. And I think, in Wales, we want that return tourism because people have enjoyed a quality experience, and I think that is really essential to the future. A 'pile it high, sell it low' approach to tourism is something that I hope is in the past.

But there are, nevertheless, limitations in our knowledge base and in our ability to understand, first of all, the cumulative impact of the legislation that has been through this Senedd, all of which I think have been powerful and strong and good for the sector. How do you see all of these different pieces of legislation fitting together to create a holistic system of regulation that works for, as you've said, both the consumer and the sector?

Chair, first of all, I want to recognise the fact that this has been a relatively busy period for the sector in terms of policy changes and legislative changes. That does pose challenges for people who run businesses, to have to absorb the changes that have been brought about. But those changes have been a response to the rapidly changing nature of the industry, because we have seen a very strong growth, a very rapid growth, in self-contained accommodation here in Wales. Most obviously, and in terms of news headlines and so on, it was during the COVID period, when there were lots of people who sought to come and get away from other places by taking properties and holidays in Wales, but actually the growth in self-contained accommodation precedes COVID. It was already strong from around 2019—just before 2019, onwards. So, we've seen a very rapid growth, a 60 per cent growth, in the number of self-catering properties on the non-domestic rating list: a 60 per cent increase, from 7,000 to over 11,000, in a four-year period. And that's an underestimate. It's an underestimate because those are the businesses that—. They're on the non-domestic rates list and many businesses operate without doing that.

So, that's the context within which the changes have taken place. That context is felt most strongly in those communities where tourism is concentrated. Because when properties are put into the short-term let market, they're not available for people who live in those communities all year round, who might have wanted to buy those properties or to have been able to rent them on a long-term basis. So, lots of what we have done during this Senedd term is to try to help the industry find that balance, where it has a harmonious relationship with the communities that it depends on, and very often those communities depend on tourism as well. Our aim is to create a mutually supportive relationship. The cumulative impact of the actions we've taken—the 182-day rule, some of the changes we've made in planning, and so on—are designed to support that type of relationship.

You make some very powerful points. I just want to conclude this section of questioning with a question on data. The explanatory memorandum supporting the Bill does say that there's a paucity of data available to sustain some of the arguments that you're making this morning, and that are made in the legislation itself. So, I'm anxious to understand, first of all, the process of developing the legislation and the balance of the legislation, the balance that you found within the Bill, given that paucity of data, and how you intend, or what your intention would be—. I recognise that we're coming to the end of a mandate here, so there are certain things that you can't answer about the future, clearly. But the balance in the Bill is as it is. It's based on a context where there is not enough data, as is my understanding of the Government position, in terms of the explanatory memorandum. So, how would you see the Bill in its current form being able to respond to changes in the data availability and our knowledge base, which will come through the Bill being implemented? Is this really futureproofed legislation?

Thank you, Chair. So, I think the limitations in the data are more about its specificity than they are about the general patterns that the data reveals. Because, yes, there are lots of different estimates of how much self-contained accommodation there is, how many people visit it, and so on—different surveys give you different answers—and that does make construction of the regulatory impact assessment particularly challenging in some ways, but the underlying patterns in almost all of the data tell you the same story. They all tell you about the rise in the amount of self-contained accommodation that we have seen in Wales. They've all told you that that is concentrated in particular tourism hotspots and so on. So, while there are limitations in the data, actually, I think the patterns that the data exposes are pretty powerful and consistent across those data sources.

But colleagues here will remember that, at the very beginning of this Senedd term, the Government's intention was to come forward with a single Bill dealing with the matters that were, in the end, severed into the visitor levy Bill and the register that it creates, and the matters in this Bill too—they were all to come together in one package. Part of the reason why we severed the two Bills—and this was in discussion within the context of the co-operation agreement—was because we wanted the register to go first. Because the register is what will solve the data problems for us, because when we have a register—and the register will be completed, we think, in 2027—we will have a completely different level of knowledge and assurance about who owners are, where accommodation is to be found, and so on. All of that will be available before this Bill, if it succeeds at Stage 1, and then further in the process of Senedd scrutiny, if this Bill reaches the statute book at the very end of the Senedd term, its operational impact, and some of the operational detail through regulation, will not happen until after the register is complete. So, we will be in a much better position as a result of the combination of these two Bills.

Sorry, to add a tiny bit of technical detail. I'll try not to—

It's a quarter to 10. [Laughter.]

I'll be very brief. I'll go as quickly as I can, because I think it helps to answer Alun's last point.

The visitor levy Bill places an obligation on the Welsh Revenue Authority to create the register. This Bill places an obligation on Welsh Ministers to produce a licensing regime. And then there is a joint responsibility in this Bill, on both the WRA and the Welsh Ministers, to produce a directory, bringing the licensing data and the registration data together in a single document that users will be able to access, because it will be publicly available information. And when we've managed to do that, then I think many of the data dilemmas that you will have seen rehearsed in the explanatory memorandum and the RIA, we will have solved them as a result of these two pieces of legislation.

Thank you.

Sorry. Does it have the flexibility, therefore, to deal with particular issues that might occur?

Well, the two big pieces of flexibility in the legislation, Chair, are these. We start with self-contained accommodation, and we think that about 75 per cent of accommodation providers are covered by that definition, so we're starting with the bulk of accommodation in Wales. But the Bill is futureproofed because it allows a future Government to add other forms of accommodation into the licensing regime, should a Government choose to do so. And, secondly, we start with, I would describe it as, a fairly basic set of standards that will have to be met in order to get a licence. A future Government could choose to augment those standards to include, for example, some quality standards in them, and the Bill is futureproofed because it provides a power to allow that to happen. At this stage, we're focused on self-contained, self-catering accommodation and the standards that you've seen—the five specific standards—that are most relevant to that sector. But the Bill is futureproofed, because it allows a future Government to add to and extend the repertoire of actions that this Bill currently puts into practical action.

Just before I ask Luke, Cabinet Secretary, to come in with his question, there is a tension there, isn't there, by creating this licensing system, because you highlighted the growth in the sector, and that growth needs to be fuelled, in some instances, by a bit of entrepreneurial zeal, and so someone thinking, 'I'll give this a go and try it, and if it works, great, I'll stay in it and keep in it for the medium to long term; if it doesn't work, I'll pull back.' But all of a sudden now, you're introducing an element with this legislation that they'll have to have the licence first before they give that entrepreneurial zeal, shall we say, to their desire to try a part of the economic boom that's going on in the tourism sector in certain parts of Wales. So, do you recognise that tension and that dampening effect that, potentially, this Bill could have?

Well, I think we have recognised that. I think there would be two points that I'd make, Chair. It's why we have, in the specific things that you will have to do to get a licence in the sector that we're starting with—. Four of them are things you've got to do now. So, the additional requirements we are making at this stage are pretty modest, I think. If you're going to open, if you have that entrepreneurial zeal and you decide to operate in this area, even now, you've got to have an electricity certificate and you've got to have a fire certificate and you've got to have a gas certificate. So, it's not that we are introducing major new obligations on businesses. We very deliberately brigaded together things that you ought to be doing already, and then we add the fifth, which is public liability insurance, which a huge number of businesses already have in this sector.

So, I don't think that the Bill acts as a major inhibition to people entering the market. But I think the other side of the coin—. I think you said, you know, someone might decide, 'Let's have a go'. Well, I don't want visitors in Wales to be in a position where, when they book accommodation in Wales, they're thinking, 'Well, let's have a go. Maybe this place is okay, maybe it's not okay. I don't know. There's no licensing here.' And I don't think that would be good for the industry, would it—that people booking accommodation in Wales were taking a chance that some entrepreneurial person had cut corners and not understood what they needed to do? And you could end up in the position that Alun Davies set out, where, you know, you're visiting somewhere where those basic things are not in place. So, I think the Bill supports the good actors in the system, and that's what we should be trying to do, as a Government. In a market, you want to support those people who do the right things and make sure that they aren't disadvantaged by people who, by having a go, don't necessarily understand the obligations that they're taking on when they enter an industry.

Thank you. Luke.

Diolch, Cadeirydd. If I could move to the powers in the Bill for Ministers to make regulations, starting from the perspective of saying that I accept that not everything is going to be on the face of a Bill and some things are more suitable to be simply just in regulations, and if you were to take on board everything that everybody was asking to be on the face of a Bill, it would be a pretty chunky Bill. But if I could just focus in on a couple of parts, starting with section 16, which provides Welsh Ministers with a regulation-making power to impose a training requirement on visitor accommodation providers, what would this requirement look like in practice?

Well, Chair, the reason why part of this is in regulation—although the Bill, on the face of it, sets up the training obligation—is because we've listened carefully to what the industry has told us during some of those consultation exercises. Now, my starting point is that training is a good thing. Training is not just a burden. Training is a good thing for the industry to make sure that people who operate within it are as well equipped as they need to be to discharge the obligations that they have. And this Bill itself has, or brigades together, obligations in a new way. And I think it is right that people in the industry are properly equipped to discharge those responsibilities. But the message from the sector was that people are in different places in relation to the training that they will need. A completely new entrant who has never operated as a tourism operator before is likely to need a greater degree of assistance to make sure they are properly equipped than, shall we say, someone who has been successfully running a business for the last 20 years and has got all the things that you would expect already in place.

So, the reason that we've gone for the requirement on the face of the Bill and then the detail in regulation is that I want training to be proportionate. I don't want people who are highly experienced and already have a strong track record having to go through training that really adds no value to them. So, what we will do, in continued conversation with the industry, through regulation, is to make sure that you get the training that is worth you having and will add to your ability to do that job effectively. You can't do that on the face of the Bill. There are too many variations here, including some unusual forms of ownership—partnerships, corporate bodies, and so on. I want to make sure that the training is aligned to the needs of the industry and, for that reason, I think regulations are a better way to have that rather more subtle set of obligations than just a blanket obligation there on the face of the Bill where everybody has to do the same level of training, whether you need it or not.

So, in essence, to provide that flexibility.

It is, and this was a point that was made quite strongly to us in consultation. Lots of people focused on the training element, saying, 'Well, look, I've run a successful business for a long time, and now you're going to make me do a training exercise for things I know perfectly well.' Well, I don't want that to happen. I want people to have the training that will be useful to them. But I do think training is a good thing for everybody, and everybody has something new to learn, particularly when the law changes, but I do want it to be calibrated to the needs of the industry, and that's why regulation is a better route.

So, the points around flexibility apply to section 38, where there's regulation-making powers to set the fees for visitor accommodation licences. Was there any point where the Cabinet Secretary might have considered putting that on the face of the Bill?

Well, we'll be doing the explanatory memorandum, and the RIA sets out our estimate of what the cost for the fee will be. We think it will be £75 for a property. The problem with putting that on the face of the Bill today is that this Bill is unlikely to put a bill in somebody's hand that they have to pay until 2029-30, by which time £75 will probably not be the right figure, and you don't want to have to amend primary legislation every time you change a fee of that sort. So, we are clear in the Bill that there will be a fee, and we provide, I think, quite a strong illustration of how we come to the £75, but I think this is not the sort of thing you would want on the face of the Bill. So, it's a different reason and a slightly more technical mundane reason. You want a figure that you can keep up to date, and you don't want to do that by having primary legislation having to be returned to every time.

Sticking with the licences for a moment, then, is there a particular reason why the Cabinet Secretary has chosen not to specify on the face of the Bill the circumstances under which Ministers could amend licences that have already been issued?

Chair, there are a couple of instances in the Bill where we've chosen not to put things on the face of the Bill and leave them to regulations. You can argue it in more than one way, and I will be very interested to hear what the committee has to say when you come to write your report, having heard others on this point. The reason, in the end, that I felt that we should leave this and a couple of other things to regulations is that I think that, by putting things on the face of the Bill, you might inadvertently be creating more difficulties for the industry rather than assisting the industry. And this is a Bill to assist the development of tourism.

So, we expect that the most times that licences will be amended after they've been issued will be when a visitor accommodation provider asks for the licence to be amended. It's much more likely to be responding to what the accommodation provider wants than it is the Welsh Government requiring a licence to be amended. And if you set up on the face of the Bill those circumstances in which that can happen, then those are the only circumstances in which it can happen—the Bill has defined them, and I don't think that's necessarily in the interest of visitor accommodation providers, because they may have other reasons why they would want a licence to be amended, and you'd have to say 'no' to them now because, on the face of the Bill, you've already defined the circumstances where that could happen.

There will be circumstances in which the licensing authority requires a licence to be amended, and that will be where there is evidence that things have gone wrong and you now need further requirements in a licence in order for it to be allowed to continue. But that is not an open-ended power. There will be public law principles that limit the ability of a Government to make those sorts of amendments.

So, as I say, it’s a closely balanced argument for me, but I think, in the end, regulations provide a more flexible way of being able to respond to the needs of the industry, and that’s why we’ve chosen to take those issues through that route rather than putting them on the face of the Bill. Those regulations are subject to Senedd approval, because you’ve seen that they’re one of the ones that would have to come in front of the Senedd for a vote. But, as I say, you will hear views from others—you’ll be taking evidence, I’m sure, on these points—and I will be very interested to see where you think the balance of argument lies.

So, would you say that that balance is the same for the regulation-making powers around the renewal of licences as well?

Yes. I think, in a way, it’s probably even stronger in relation to the renewal of licences. I could solve the problem of why it isn’t on the face of the Bill very easily indeed—I could simply say, 'If you want to renew a licence, you must do everything you had to do when you obtained the licence in the first place. All the documentary evidence that you must provide when you get a licence, you have to provide it again when you renew the licence.' That would be very straightforward. It would be on the face of the Bill, but it would be a very blunt instrument indeed. Because, Chair, I do not want people who’ve already demonstrated to the system that they’ve got a certificate that lasts for five years to have to show that they've got it again next year when they come to renew the licence. I want the renewal of the licence to require as light a touch as possible, in which people only have to demonstrate the things that need to be demonstrated. So, I could solve the problem of the on-the-face-of-the-Bill issue by just saying, 'Just provide everything again. It’s very easy, very straightforward. That’s all you’ve got to do.' But I think that puts a burden on the visitor accommodation provider that we can help to lighten, because, as I said to you, I’m very keen that this process is as automatic as possible, that we use all the modern techniques that we have, and if people have already demonstrated that they’ve fulfilled that requirement, I don’t want them to have to do it again, simply to get the licence for another year. Now, if you’re going to do that, then I think regulations are the way that allows you to do that more flexibly and to design a system that responds to the needs of the accommodation provider, rather than, as I say, having something that is there on the face of the Bill, but which is inevitably blunter and puts the burden more on their shoulders.

Diolch. 

Sam. 

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for that, Cabinet Secretary. To bring it back a stage, what’s the difference between this and the Visit Wales grading system that currently exists?

Well, I suppose the most fundamental difference is that that system is voluntary, and this will apply to everybody.

Okay. So, why, then, do you think this has been kept just for self-contained, self-catering accommodation in its infancy, in its birth?

Two reasons, I think, Sam. One is that this is 75 per cent of accommodation providers, so we are dealing with the bulk of the industry in Wales, and parts of other accommodation have licensing regimes of different sorts already in place. So—

Can you give us an example?

Yes—caravan sites, camping sites. There is already a licensing regime in place for them. It’s a different sort of licensing regime, and this Bill makes provision for how you would transfer from that regime to this sort of regime in future, if caravan and camping sites were to be brought within the licensing regime.

So, we’ve started with the biggest slice of the sector, and we’ve left, for now, those parts of the sector where there are already regimes of different sorts in place that give some assurance to visitors.

A criticism from the self-catering industry would be that they feel like they’re being singled out in this legislation. You’d say to that, 'Well, actually, as there is a licensing scheme existing in other spheres, they’re not being singled out; they’re just the largest sector that are currently unlicensed.'

I think that would be a fair way of putting it.

Okay. Thank you. And then, building on Luke’s questions around determining a licence, and, obviously, his questions were around renewals, evidence can be collected from the fire and rescue authorities, Rent Smart Wales, but how would local authorities go about getting that information, and how would the Welsh Revenue Authority get that information? What’s the link there between accessing that information and GDPR rules and compliances, so that there’s clear transparency as to where information is shared?

Chair, I might ask my colleagues to help me with some of the detail of Sam's question, but, in a way that maybe I haven't made sufficiently clear so far, what I expect is that the considerable majority of licences will be issued very straightforwardly through the licensing body by organisations providing evidence of the five tests that we set out. You'll be able to do that in a whole variety of different ways. You'll be able to upload it, submit it, there'll be a system that will scan it, identify that it's all in the right order, and the licence will be issued.

Where seeking information from those other organisations comes into play is in the minority of cases where there are issues identified that mean that you have to have a closer look at that application. In the local authority sense, you might know that a premises is subject to an improvement notice. Remember, there are two sorts of conditions; there are general and specific conditions. The general condition means, for example, that the premises must be fit for occupation, it mustn't be falling down. A local authority may have information about a property that's already subject to an improvement notice. Rent Smart Wales may have evidence that a landlord has previously had their licence revoked. The fire and rescue authority may know that a premises has been subject to previous fire safety Order notices. 

In that minority—and I think it will be a small minority—of cases where there are other concerns, then the Bill allows data to be shared for those purposes. My colleagues will be able to tell you how the GDPR and other aspects of that data sharing have been navigated in the Bill, but I just want to be clear with the committee that these are not things that I expect to happen in the majority of very straightforward cases. There will be cases where there are more complexities, and the Bill allows for that.

I think that's really important. We don't envisage routinely going out and asking for every application, but if you think about the alternative that says, 'We are aware that there's a problem because Rent Smart Wales have told us, and we're not allowed to pay any attention to it', that feels quite scary—that we'd have to issue the licence regardless of knowing that there's a problem there. Robbie, do you want to cover the GDPR?

Section 39 sets out the kind of information sharing gateways that are in the Bill, and highlights that that has to be read with reference to the Data Protection Act 2018. So, it doesn't supersede existing data protection obligations. All the information will need to be processed lawfully, and as the scheme is operationalised, the licensing authority and the WRA and other regulators will need to make sure that their privacy notices and data-handling procedures are in line with the requirements of data protection legislation. They wouldn't be able to share the information unless they were doing so lawfully.

How does that relationship work? Is it an automatic flagging, or is there a proactive—? In those minority of cases that the Cabinet Secretary has outlined, is it an automatic system that would say, 'We might have a problem here with this licence application', or is it more proactively going out to search for information that's pertinent to the licence?

It would depend on how operational procedures are developed in practice. The most efficient system would probably be one in which you have integration of digital systems so that one of the bodies in question can put a flag on the system where they have concerns about a property. So, if an application is made that is already under investigation by the local authority or a fire and rescue service, then the licensing authority is aware of that. Obviously, it requires a certain element of development of systems along a wide range of bodies. It's one of the things that we'll need to explore as we develop those systems, but that would probably be the ideal way of trying to get it to work.

So that's to come, in some regards. Okay. And then moving on—

Can I just invite Jenny to ask a supplementary?

I just want to find out what information the citizen is going to be able to access. If they've got a problem with a property being rented out further down the road, how can they check that it is licensed?

The Bill places an obligation on all accommodation providers, not simply the self-catering sector, in all advertising to have the registration number clearly displayed. When somebody books with you, you have to give them that information directly. When you arrive at the property, there must be a notice there that shows you the registration number. And it's through the registration number that you will then be able to access the directory that I mentioned earlier. The directory will be the publicly facing piece of information that tells you that that registration number is genuine, that it reflects the property that you are visiting and that it has a licence as well. So, that's how you will know as a citizen whether or not you're going to somewhere that has everything in place that it should have in place. And the obligation is on the WRA and the Welsh Ministers to create that directory and to do it in a way that is as easy as possible for the citizen to check.

But that directory will be available to the public generally. It isn't purely to the visitor. So if you're worried about one down the road—

Okay. So No. 25 in the street, you'll be able to see that that is or is not registered. Thank you. 

Thank you. Sam.

That leads nicely on to enforcement. I raised some concerns yesterday in reply to your statement on entry to properties et cetera. On the proportionate nature of enforcement around this, can you give a little bit more of an explanation as to where the Bill currently is and why you think that is such? 

The Bill is not designed to have enforcement as its first port of call. Enforcement is the last port of call, not the first port of call in this Bill. The Bill is designed to make it as easy as possible for accommodation providers to meet the standards that are required of them and to demonstrate that they've done so. And so the Bill very much proceeds on the basis that you start with information—that's why the training component is important—to make sure that people know what's expected of them. You educate, you encourage, you escalate before you ever get anywhere near the prosecution end and the use of the powers that Sam Kurtz just referred to. And that's the spirit of the Bill. The spirit of the Bill is to help the accommodation provider to do the right thing on the basis that most accommodation providers want to do the right thing. They know it's in their interest and in the interest of their visitors, and the Bill aims to help them to do that.

In the end, if there are persistent and repeated failures, you have to have a system. In order to protect the integrity of the system, you have to have a way of dealing with that. But even there, the Bill starts with remedial notices, then goes into a penalty regime, and prosecution is the very end of that as well. So, even when you begin to move into the enforcement side of the Bill, it aims to have a series of proportionate steps that warn people, inform people, give them chances to put things right, give them opportunities to demonstrate they've done that. That's how I want the Bill to happen. I want the Bill to be an enabling Bill that helps people to do the right thing, while in the end having to have some fallback mechanism for that minority of cases where there is a persistent, you might say a flagrant, determination not to comply with the obligations that everybody else is complying with and having to meet the costs of doing so as well. 

The burden would fall on local authorities in that regard, and that's 22 local authorities in Wales. Coming back to your previous answer around making sure it was a 'one Wales' approach after your visit to Edinburgh, is there a slight contradiction in how enforcement might be determined in the 22 local authorities, if there's then a Wales-wide scheme and 22 potential interpretations of enforcement?

Maybe I could just take one tiny step back, because these things are not determined in the Bill, but I'm going to give you an indication of where I think the choices will be. The Bill doesn't identify the WRA as the organisation that will take the applications, but I think that is very likely where it will end up, because they are the body responsible for the register, and I think it will make sense for them to be responsible for the licence as well.

The WRA is very well set up to deal with the vast bulk of applications that will be dealt with in the automatic way that we described. The WRA is not, I think, a body that is equipped to deal with the minority of cases where you need a physical visit—a more direct set of relationships with accommodation providers. There, there are two choices, it seems to me. Local authorities I will probably put in the lead at the moment, but Visit Wales is also a possibility as well, because there's an organisation that is also used to being out on the ground, making physical visits to properties, dealing directly with people who provide accommodation. So, it's not inevitable at this point that it would be the local authority that we would look to, but I think it is more likely. It's what we do in Rent Smart Wales, and remember that part of this Bill has been constructed around having a more level playing field between the rules an accommodation provider letting on a long-term basis has to fulfil alongside people who do it on a short-term basis.

Sam, you are right there that that is a responsibility that is carried out 22 times. There will be a case for local authorities doing it on a regional basis, particularly in those parts of Wales where there are concentrations of visitor accommodation. All these are things to be worked out with the industry as the Bill matures and we get into its operational and implementation phase. But for those minority of cases—Sam Kurtz is right, Chair—you will need a different sort of body to deal with those cases than you will for the vast majority of ones that will be dealt with on the basis of papers and evidence submitted.

Thank you. And then finally—

Just for clarity, I'm assuming the national parks would play a role as well, because they're planning authorities in their own rights.

You stole my question, Chair.

Sorry. [Laughter.]

They have a role in the planning part of the system. The obligations as part of the licence on the face of the Bill are not really related to the planning status of the accommodation. So, if the licensing authority were to work with local authorities to undertake enforcement action, we'd be probably more looking at officials from environmental health and/or housing teams that have the kind of experience of undertaking investigations of the kinds of issues that breaches of licence conditions would represent. But as the Cabinet Secretary said, there is a lot there that is up for discussion to work with local authorities locally and regionally—

So, TBC—to be confirmed. 

Yes.

Sorry, Sam.

That's okay. That was my final question, Chair.

I was just going to say there are clear parallels here with Rent Smart Wales. With Rent Smart Wales, the majority of the administration is done by Cardiff Council, but then on the ground, obviously, Cardiff Council officials aren't going to look at a tenancy in Anglesey. So, there are arrangements with each local authority and housing officers, and potentially environmental health officers then get involved.

We'd envisaged that kind of arrangement, because probably someone central will have to decide whether something ought to be investigated. So, the bit we're talking about on the ground is the investigator or not. Well, who's making a decision about is there something to be dug into here and can we get more paper evidence first and can it be resolved without going out? That's probably a once-and-done thing centrally.

Can I just ask about the appeals mechanism? We've talked about the utopian world where everything works well, et cetera. I think we're all conscious that sometimes there is a clash of personalities, shall we say, and an overzealous interpretation of some rules and regulations could act to the detriment of parties involved in this. So, what are the appeals mechanisms so that someone doesn't end up just going into a vortex of bureaucracy and administration and their business collapses around them?

Chair, we can talk about the mechanism for making appeals, but one of the ways in which the Bill seeks to make sure that people are not disadvantaged while that is happening is that there will be a power to issue a provisional licence. So, people will be able to continue to operate while those appeals are being worked through. I was very keen that we didn't have a position where if there was a dispute and your licence ran out, it then automatically meant that you couldn't continue to trade. So, there's provision in the Bill to allow people to continue to operate in those circumstances. The appeals system, I think, is a pretty standard one really, isn't it? It has all the protections for the individual that you would expect them to have. But we've created the Bill in a way that makes sure people are still allowed to continue to run businesses while those things are being worked through.

I think it's important to distinguish between the circumstances. There will be things where someone's applied and their licence hasn't been determined, for whatever reason. Honestly, if we had real concerns that a thing was unsafe and visitors were at risk, it wouldn't be right for people to say, 'Well, let's just let them all carry on' and put people in danger. So, we are going to have to work through some of that: when is it right to let people carry on versus actually saying, 'No, you can't'?

The bulk of circumstances, we expect, will be where people just need to regularise things—they can't find the certificate, or the certificate has to be renewed, and they can get on and do it quickly, and it will be sorted out easily. Those people, they're not going to have to stop operating while they do those simple things. In the extreme cases—and we've all seen them over the years—where something very badly goes wrong, then, of course, you're not going to say to people, 'Well, you can continue while you—

Appeal against—.

—while those things are—'. So, Helen is right to distinguish between the two, but I was referring to the bulk of cases, where we expect that it'll just be a matter of people being able to regularise their circumstances and then they'll have the licence to continue.

But just to confirm what Helen just offered us as evidence, there is still a big piece of work to be done to narrow this down and get more information over circumstances that might pertain to certain enforcement action and closure.

Yes, all our operating processes and things are yet to be developed, and a lot of it will come out in the regulations. So, there will be a lot more clarity. Obviously, Ministers are obliged to publish guidance on the scheme—all of that will come. But, at the moment, we don't have the IT system, and rightly so—you know, it would be wrong for us to already have spent public money building an IT system on something that the Senedd hasn't yet said, 'We want to do this.' So, this stuff is to follow.

Okay, thank you. Jenny.

Thank you. I want to look at the fitness for visitor accommodation and the specific standards that you outline as option 2. First of all, if you could put any sort of figure on the numbers of newcomers into visitor accommodation that are posing a threat because of the commercial disadvantage with others who have a higher standard of accommodation.

It's absolutely not possible to put a figure of that sort, because of all the issues we rehearsed when Alun Davies was asking me questions about data. What we have, though, are sources of information about all of this. It is certainly a theme of the industry; I've met the industry a number of times in the preparation of this Bill and the visitor levy Bill and there is a very definite view in the industry that the change in the nature of the industry—. I think we rehearsed a bit yesterday on the floor of the Senedd that, to operate as a short-term landlord, all you really have to do is put your name on one of the internet sites and you're open for business. There's a view in the industry that some people who enter the industry in that way, very often probably because they just don't know what they are expected to do, but sometimes because they avoid what they have to do so they can have a market advantage—. That's definitely the view of the industry, and it is borne out, to an extent, by the experience in Scotland where, when they actually operated the system, there was a surprisingly high percentage of applicants who weren't able to produce the basic information that we will require in Wales easily. People had to find things that they couldn't find, they had to check that they were actually in date, that it hadn't run out, the certificate, and things like that. And I think Scottish colleagues feel that there was a higher level of that than necessarily they had expected, given that what people were being asked to produce are the things that they should have anyway.

Okay, thank you for that. Some of the things that are not listed in the explanatory memorandum are, for example, the energy performance certificate, which, for somebody renting a property in the coldest six months of the year, might be significant.

Yes. I'm interested in the committee's view on this, whether the five things we've identified are the right five things or whether there should be more. Of course, every time you add another condition, you add more obligations on to the accommodation providers. My view has been, and this was extensively discussed with colleagues during the co-operation agreement period, that, because this is a new regime, and we are allowing in the Bill for it to be developed over time, we should start simple.

Fair enough.

But if there is a case of the committee exploring where you believe that there are other things that someone would have anyway, should have anyway, and that they should be able to demonstrate that, then I'm interested to hear that. The five things we've identified, as I say, were things we think that people ought to have reasonably readily to hand.

So, is the legislation drafted in such a way that it would be possible to raise the standards in relation to energy performance by regulation, or would it require fresh legislation?

It would not require fresh legislation, Chair. I said that there were two ways in which the Bill is a starting point and allows for development in future. One is to bring other forms of accommodation within the regime—caravan sites, camping sites, hotels, whatever that might be—but the other way is to build on the requirements. Now, I think the requirements are likely to be sector specific. What you might require in a hotel will be different to what you would require in a campsite. But the Bill provides powers through regulations that have to be approved by the Senedd to do that in future.

Okay, thank you for that.

Robbie.

It's possibly worth drawing out here the role that the general fitness condition plays as well. For the kinds of circumstances you're talking about, where over winter you have very cold accommodation, it is a requirement of the general condition that there is adequate heating in the accommodation. We didn't want to go too far with specific fitness conditions that were requirements for everybody, where you might say, for somebody who only operates in the summer months, having a specific requirement might not be appropriate in the same circumstances. But the general standard does intend to capture the principle that the accommodation should be fit for visitors to stay in, whenever it's offered. And if that is in the middle of winter, then it does need to have appropriate heating for it to be fit for a visitor to stay there.

Thank you. The other thing where the explanatory memorandum is silent, and on which I get a lot of complaints in my constituency, is the obligations on the licensee to ensure that appropriate recycling and rubbish collection is compliant with the local authority. I just wondered what consideration you've given to that. Typically, in Cardiff, you'll have weekend lets, they leave on a Monday, they dump the rubbish on the street, and then the collection isn't until Thursday or Friday, and meanwhile the rats have had a good go. So, I wondered how would we ensure that residents weren't being disadvantaged by having all this rubbish flying around the streets and everything that goes with it.

Well, Chair, I think you'll have the same answer from me as to the last question: I think these are really interesting and useful points. I absolutely recognise the phenomenon that Jenny Rathbone identifies, and we're having some broader discussions to see whether an amendment might be possible further down the Bill in the balance between people who live permanently somewhere and people who come and visit on a short-term basis. Certainly, from a constituency perspective, I know of streets in my constituency now where there's a significant amount of short-term letting alongside people who live there all year round, and the interests of those two groups of people are not always identical—noise, people coming for a good time for a weekend, and all of that. But the way in which people then deal with rubbish that has been accumulated while people stay there, I don't think we have specifically accounted for that in the Bill, but I'm interested to pursue it.

We haven't specifically accounted for it in the Bill, but it's one of the things that we've discussed in policy development and the role the register will play in helping local authorities to deal with these sorts of issues. It is a legal requirement, where you operate a short-term let commercially, to have commercial waste collection arrangements in place, but it is obviously quite difficult at the moment for a local authority to know where all the short-term lets in their area are. We've talked about some of the data deficiencies. I think our last bed stock survey suggested there were 33 operators of self-catering accommodation in the whole of Cardiff. I don't think we think that's the case. The register will give the local authority a lot more information about where those short-term lets are and allow them to take more of the kind of enforcement action that they are already able to in respect of commercial waste arrangements. But, certainly, as the Cabinet Secretary says, it is something that we have thought about in the context of this scheme as well.

Thank you for that; we may come back to it. In the explanatory memorandum, you talk about the licensing arrangements, and you've developed this in consultation with stakeholders. You talk about

'including consideration of accreditation for experienced providers.'

Could you just explain exactly what you mean there? Is it large-scale professional providers of accommodation across various places? Would that make them then liable to ensure that all their employees were compliant with the licence themselves, or how does—? What do you have in mind here?

So, that reference there was in the context of the training requirement. So, as the Cabinet Secretary explained, we haven't determined on the face of the Bill what the training requirement is. He talked about the experienced providers already operating, who are fully aware of all their obligations. So, that accreditation is one of the options we want to explore. Are there ways that we can accredit, for instance, either qualifications or experience or whatever, to mean that we're not imposing a training requirement on people who actually could run the training courses themselves?

Clearly, if somebody is running a larger scale operation and has staff, it is incumbent on them, as the licensee, to make sure that all their staff and all their premises and things comply. If we were to expand the scheme, for instance, to cover hotels, we would have to look completely differently at what are some of these requirements, because the set-up is just so different from the typical self-catering cottage, where it might be a family business or whatever. But, yes, that accreditation was in the context of training.

Okay. Thank you very much for that. We talked earlier about the situation in Northern Ireland where they are moving towards intelligence-led licensing, and you've identified the sort of proactive monitoring that you might do by looking at negative customer reviews et cetera that might suggest the licensing conditions might not have been met. All that seems entirely sensible. What powers would you have, or would the licensing authority have, to inspect where it felt as if a physical inspection was required but the licensee was not making themselves available?

The Bill does provide rights in the end for authorities to make those inspections, even when the person holding the licence isn't co-operating with that regime. As I said in my earlier answers, Chair, I really think these instances are going to be very few and far between, and the Bill is focused not on a regime that relies upon those sorts of powers, but on the powers of people recognising that this is in their best interests as business holders. But, in the end, if you did have to, the Bill provides for that to happen.

If I could just pick up on one point Jenny just made, I think the policing of the Bill will be done very largely by citizens. We've talked much more about public authorities and everything like that, but actually, the way this industry operates, if you're not doing what you should be doing, people tell everybody else about it very quickly. One of the ways in which we will monitor the impact of the regime is to be able to collect intelligence from all of that citizen feedback that this industry now surrounds itself with, and there are ways these days that you can do that very rapidly and very successfully. So, the role of the citizen in making sure that the standards are the standards that they need to be will be made easier by the Bill, and I think that that will have as big, if not a bigger, an impact on the industry than the sort of fallback powers that we provide for formal agencies to get involved and make visits and insist on things happening. 

Lastly, will the general fitness standard required for a prospective licensee be the same as for the Rent Smart Wales licensing system, or lower, or how—?

Thank you. Well, you’re right, the regime draws significantly on the regime for Rent Smart Wales. There the standards are about fitness for human habitation. Here the standards are fitness for visitor accommodation. We translated the ones from the others. It was Dylan's job to do that in terms of words on the page, so he's probably better equipped to give you the detail of it. But the basic approach was the one that Jenny Rathbone set out.

Yes, essentially, fitness for human habitation is a long-established principle, so it's not unusual for us to have a legal test of this nature. It actually goes back to the nineteenth century. It was a common law concept that was put in statute a long time ago. We looked—. This is again another example of us looking at other legislation for inspiration. We hope to have made this a little bit clearer in this context by expressing in more specific terms what it means. The equivalent in housing legislation simply says that it has to be fit for human habitation, and in considering whether it is fit, you have to have regard to a number of matters or circumstances. And then there's a long list of really quite odd things, including explosion, which was one of the things that tickled me. So, exposure to various gases and all sorts of things like this. So, we've gone, we think, for something that is more straightforward for people to understand, and this goes back to what the Cabinet Secretary was saying—that if the citizen understands what this concept means, the basic fitness that is required in relation to visitor accommodation, most other things should work.

Thank you. 

Alun Davies.

The Cabinet Secretary has answered the questions with such startling completeness that I think he's actually covered all the areas that I was actually going to cover about complaints and contract terms. So, I won't pursue those matters now, given the time available to us.

Okay. Hannah. 

Diolch, Cadeirydd. I'll turn, then, now to financial implications and the wider impacts. Cabinet Secretary, are you able to set out the consideration that will have been given in developing the legislation to any potential impact on the supply of visitor accommodation and any unintended consequences you could foresee?

Well, I think the impact on the supply of accommodation will be marginal. I was interested in what Sam Kurtz was saying yesterday about the Edinburgh experience. I've asked my officials to be back in contact with the city council to see whether the impact there was something that they thought was generic to the licensing regime, or whether it reflected the very particular circumstances of Edinburgh and the extent to which it deals with a visitor population. But my belief is that the number of people who will leave the industry as a result of this bill is very, very small. And if they leave because they don't have in place the basic requirements in relation to gas and electricity and fire and so on, then I'm not sure that that's a tremendous loss, really. I think what that will mean will be that visitors will go to businesses who do do all of those things. But I think the experience we've seen elsewhere is that the impact is marginal, and most people are able to do what we ask them to do reasonably readily.

So, is that where you foresee—? I think we touched on the training and support earlier in questions. So, for those that do want to get up to that standard, that's why that is there, so they are able to continue.

Yes, I think Helen said earlier, Chair, that the Bill provides for a statutory code of guidance that we will produce alongside the Bill. The aim is to be as helpful as possible to people to make sure they know what's expected of them, and that they can find ways of complying with that as easily as possible. The code will be one of the ways we do that. But that's the aim of the Bill—to be on the side of the industry, helpful to it, and allow the industry in Wales to demonstrate that it operates to those standards and will attract visitors to it.

Thank you. In the papers you have it says the Bill will create compliance costs—sorry, I can't speak anymore now—compliance costs for visitor accommodation providers estimated at around £4.5 million a year. What assessment has been made of the potential impact this could have potentially on the prices charged to visitors, or on the profit margins of any businesses that may be impacted?

Chair, just to be clear, not all of those costs are what you might think of as real costs. Some of them are opportunity costs. People will have to spend some time uploading the certificates and so on, and they could be doing—

Human resource, the time. 

—something else with that time, so we have to cost that into the RIA. The single biggest figure in that is the assumption that we have made in relation to the one of the five requirements that is not at the moment an obligation, and that is public liability insurance. So, we've made assumptions about the percentage of businesses that have it already. We assume about 50 per cent.

We think about 75 per cent do, partly because some of the online platforms—. Well, a lot of the more traditional agencies will require their operators to have that, even though it's not legally required—it'll be one of their terms and conditions. Quite a few of the online platforms also require—. Some even give some level of cover as part of their membership fee for being on that platform. So, we've estimated—it's our best estimate, but it is only an estimate—that 25 per cent of providers might not have that insurance, and we've estimated that it might cost £500 a year if you've got two properties. Some people will be able to get it as part of their home and contents insurance and that kind of thing.

But, yes, as the Cabinet Secretary said, that is the biggest element, because if you haven't got that, that's potentially £500 a year for two properties. Otherwise, the biggest components are the licence fee itself and your own time, and then obviously getting your property up to compliance if you are not already meeting the requirements, but you should be anyway. So, that's not part of the regulatory impact assessment because those are existing requirements.

Chair, if I may just supplement this, as I have a bit of a specific interest myself—I think you talk about the administrative costs that will be met by the Welsh Government, and I think the paper says—. The explanatory memorandum states that the Welsh Government will examine the scope to reduce these costs through the use of artificial intelligence, and synergies with registration and visitor accommodation. Artificial intelligence is something we talk about a lot at the moment, and it can mean many things. Sometimes, it's a good thing when it is used perhaps to supplement the data collection, but sometimes when a bot replaces a human, it doesn't always work in the way that is envisaged. I was wondering if you could expand on that.

Yes. Chair, what I am keen to avoid, if I can, is that when an accommodation provider uploads a gas certificate, let us say, that it's a human being at the licensing authority that has to scan it, look at it, go away, check that it's the right certificate with the right number on it. That will be very intensive in human costs and they're not costs we have at the moment, so they will be expensive costs as well. Whereas these days, I think there really are systems that would allow that to be done automatically for you by machine scanning and machine reconciliation of those things. So, that's what I am—. Hannah is right, we use the term 'artificial intelligence' in a very broad-brush way, often with not a great depth of understanding, on some of our parts, anyway. But when I refer to it in this context, what I mean is using that ability that machines now have to do some of that mechanical checking work that in the past you'd have had to rely on a human being doing it for you. It would be done therefore much more quickly, probably more accurately, and certainly more cheaply.

Thank you. Just in terms of implementation, the explanatory memorandum states that the implementation is still being developed, but the Bill will allow the Welsh Government to work with the Welsh Revenue Authority to support the processing of applications via the same online platform as registration. Are you able to give us an update on work that has been carried out to date?

Yes, thank you, Chair. So, I've taken the same approach in this Bill as we did in the visitor levy Bill. When the Bill was introduced, we didn't identify on the face of the Bill that it would be the WRA that would be responsible for the creation and the maintenance of the register. I think I've given as clear an indication as I can to the committee today that, although we don't name the WRA on the face of this Bill, my expectation is that the WRA will be the licensing authority as well. I don't want people to have to deal with two different organisations when they've got used to dealing with one, because, by the time this Bill is in operation, people will have already completed their registration with the WRA, they'll have some form of relationship with that organisation already, and I want this to be as easy and as seamless for the operator as I can. So, while we haven't identified the WRA on the face of the Bill—and in the case of the visitor levy Bill, by the time the Bill reached Stage 4, we had, through amendment, named it on the face of the Bill, and I'm open to any views that committee may have as to whether that would be sensible in the passage of this Bill—that's how I expect it to happen in practice.

But another Minister, obviously, given the time frame we're on, which we touched on earlier in the meeting, or a future Government, might take a totally different approach and actually say it's another organisation, like the Scottish model say it's the local authorities that are the—.

That's an important point, Chair. I myself, to be clear, am very convinced that the WRA should do both things. That is the simplest, most straightforward way, and the way that will work best. If the committee thinks it's better to secure that on the face of the Bill rather than to leave that to a different view in the future, if you're convinced of the merits of it, then I'll look carefully at what you say in your report, of course.

Hannah.

Finally from me, Chair, are you just able to clarify the proposed timescale and process for undertaking the post-implementation review of the licensing scheme, as set out in the explanatory memorandum?

Yes. We would expect there to be a post-implementation review in the normal way. We use the five-year horizon, the same horizon that we have in the visitor levy Bill. You'd expect that work to begin from the first year that the licensing regime is fully operational. As I said I think in answer to Alun earlier on, I don't anticipate that to be until 2029-30, given the amount of implementational detail that will be required should the Senedd decide to endorse the Bill as it stands. But once the licensing regime is up and operating, Chair, then there will be a post-implementation review of it all, and the five-year horizon is the one that we use as standard. I think it is sensible to align it with the visitor levy Bill because these are companion pieces of legislation.

Okay. Hannah.

Oh, yes, sorry; I've got a final question. Thanks for the prompt, Chair. [Laughter.] I think it goes back to what I think the Chair said in terms of what's on the face of the Bill and what isn't, and where we are in terms of the electoral cycle as well, and the implications that may come from that, because there isn't a provision on the face of this Bill that requires Ministers to undertake that post-implementation review. I don't know whether you have any final thoughts on that, Cabinet Secretary.

Well, I have my own view, Chair, and it's not a view I've persuaded many committees of, but I'm happy to give it another go here, which is that I myself do not think that it is a sensible approach, in making legislation, to make something obligatory that Governments are going to do anyway. I'd be interested to see if anybody could point to me a Bill where the Government has not committed to a post-implementation review. It's absolutely standard. It's what we always do. It doesn't need to be on the face of the Bill every time. I think, myself, a mature approach to legislation is that you put things on the face of the Bill where you need to be confident you need to do that to secure an outcome. I'm making a commitment now that there will be a post-implementation review on the terms set out in the explanatory memorandum. You don't need it on the face of the Bill to secure that. I've made that point successively to committees, who always conclude that they'd rather it was on the face of the Bill, and you may well come to the same conclusion. And when committees have come to that conclusion, I think the Government has always decided to take the advice of the committee. But my own view is as I set it out, that it isn't necessary, and the law shouldn't continually do things that aren't necessary.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your evidence, and to your officials as well. The record will be sent over to you to have a look at, because, obviously, that'll form the official record of today's meeting. If there are any concerns or observations you wish to make on that record, please liaise with the clerking team. But I thank you for your evidence, and we'll see you in three weeks' time, I think it is.

Thank you very much for today.

Cheers. Thank you all. We now have a commercial break for 10 minutes before we have the next panel in. So, we'll break for 10 minutes and go into closed session.

Good morning and welcome back. We're now entering our second evidence session into the legislation the Government are proposing in relation to licensing of short-term lets and holiday accommodation. We have the Welsh Revenue Authority before us. I'll ask you to introduce yourself, and then we'll ask you a series of questions, which, hopefully, will inform our inquiry into this legislation at Stage 1. So, if I could ask Joseph to introduce himself first and then we'll go down the panel.

Thank you, Chair. My name's Joseph Dooher, I'm head of visitor levy and national registration delivery for the Welsh Revenue Authority.

I'm interim chief executive officer for the Welsh Revenue Authority.

Bore da. I'm Anthony Pritchard, I'm the chief digital officer for the Welsh Revenue Authority.

Thank you, all. Could you give us a taste of how you've been involved in the preparatory work and build-up to this piece of legislation that's before us today, as the revenue authority for Wales?

So, as you know, we've been working with officials for a number of years as this has kind of been building up, but our primary focus, I guess, has been on the registration. So, the registration of visitor accommodation providers is a service that we're going to offer, and it is going to be delivered and designed in a way that that service will then support the visitor levy, and also the licensing Bill. So, our primary engagement with them has been around that registration element and how that will work.

Is the development of the register on course, and when will it be operational?

Yes, it absolutely is. We'll be doing a private beta in the summer of 2026—so, in about eight months' time—and that's kind of a phase to allow us to robustly test that with select numbers of the public. And then we will be going live with it in the autumn of 2026, so in just under a year.

And from experience that you might have looked at elsewhere, what have you managed to be able to gain from that experience, looking at where this type of legislation has come in and been implemented, from a revenue point of view and a revenue enforcement point of view?

So, I think one of the main things we've learned is that having a single source of data and a single source of truth is absolutely key. So, to try and have the register underpinning both of these services and not duplicating them off in different independent services, and having a single front door for customers to come into to make it as easy and as simple as possible for them. So, everybody we speak to who's involved in this process is absolutely committed to ensuring that we do that and deliver on that.

The Government obviously chose to do a licensing Bill rather than just having the register. Have you got anything to say on your role in actually developing the licensing side of it from a revenue aspect? Because, obviously, it's quite different from just having the register to actually going for a full licensing scheme.

So, I'll probably hand over to Joe to give you a bit more in a minute, but the actual register, we are developing so that we can adapt. So, that if—when—licensing comes on, assuming it's passed, we can then adapt that register to reflect elements of, 'Do they have a licence? Tick', et cetera, so that it can be one thing. And we have made sure that we work with them to understand what they need. They have been involved in our programme boards, so that they know what we're developing and how that's going to look and how that can interact. But I don't know, Joe, if you want to add anything to that.

So, yes, I would agree entirely with what Becca said there in terms of that interaction between the two services. We're very much building the national registration service so that it does serve all those other things it needs to do. From a visitor levy perspective, somebody who will be paying a visitor levy will be able to just port over from the national registration service, but equally into the licensing world as well. Those people who own self-contained, self-catered accommodation, once they're registered, it's really easy then to move on to that licensing process and to the licensing world. And the register will be able to serve as the directory as well, in the licensing Bill. So, there will be that one single point of truth that Becca mentioned earlier.

In our earlier evidence session, the Cabinet Secretary touched on that he thought it was the desire, from his point of view, that obviously the revenue authority be the controlling authority of this piece of legislation and what flows from it. Do you see that as a logical journey, that it sits with you, rather than maybe other areas that have obviously either gone for local authority control or other organisations? Because it's all about simplification, is it not? It's trying to keep it as simple as possible.

Absolutely. From the customer point of view, we just want to have one front door where they can come in, and it doesn't matter if it gets a bit more complicated behind the scenes, we just try and keep that from them. So, one front door in, and we're offering a registration service to be used for multiple services, so visitor levy and licensing, and it absolutely makes sense from our point of view that that would be done by one authority. All the other elements, enforcement elements, et cetera, where that sits best, we're still having discussions, and we're going to do a bit of discovery work to map out the service design. I'll pass over to Anthony to tell you a bit more about that. But, in terms of that single front door, making it easy for customers, we absolutely support that there's a role for us in registration, maybe the initial uploading of documents, that sort of thing, to make it simple. Anthony, do you want to add anything?

Yes, sure, Becca. As Becca said, we see it as registration is doing all the heavy lifting in this, in that it's collecting all the information, it's setting up user accounts, it's setting up the businesses. The licensing function is relatively simple in comparison, in that all you're collecting is the specific licensing information for each of those accommodation providers, where we've got all the information, we know who they are, we know their properties, we're just adding on the specific licensing information. There are lots of common elements there. There's a common element in how you manage customers, how you might take payments. We've just got to ensure that the accommodation providers have a single view of all of that, even though behind the scenes it might be a lot more complicated than that. We're determined that it needs to appear very simple.

Now, when it comes to the enforcement element, obviously that's still to be decided how those things will work, and multiple agencies could be involved in that as well, but I think the principle that we're going to design the system on is that, if we need to allow other bodies a view of the licensing element of it, we'll build it in such a way that they can do that.

Would you have the capability to do enforcement as well, or is it a logical journey that that part of it gets transferred to the local authorities?

We're doing some design work on what that looks like. As you can imagine, enforcement across the whole of Wales might involve inspections and that sort of thing. Our footprint is in south Wales, in Cardiff at the moment, and there might just be other people who are best placed to do that enforcement. Of course, the Bill is not introducing any new requirements, it's checking that fire and safety, the existing elements that people should have are working and are applied correctly. So, I think there's a lot of thinking to be done. Ministers and Welsh Government all need to make decisions around that, but we're committed to working with them and making this as easy as possible for people.

Okay, thank you. Jenny.

[Inaudible.]—the alphabet soup of regulations. Have you had specific discussions with the Welsh Government about the WRA taking over as the licensing authority, if this Bill were to become law?

We have had discussions with the Welsh Government and with the Minister around us doing that registration and that front door. We have been asked to do some discovery work around mapping out a service design for the end to end of licensing, which will allow them to make some further decisions off the back of that.

Okay. As you said earlier, the only issue is who's going to be the enforcer in the event of non-compliance at the moment. But the actual process of ticking the boxes on the explanatory memorandum requirements would be done by yourselves, just by amplifying the registrations that you've already got. Okay. Could you just tell us a little bit about the information sharing that's in section 39 of the Bill? How would you, for example, liaise with Rent Smart Wales or local authority regulatory officers about whether this particular property has a registered licensee, and if so, who?

So, it's really early days at the moment in terms of getting really specific about how we would do some of that stuff. We already handle, in our existing work, a significant amount of sensitive data, and we manage to share data we need to in appropriate ways with the care and prudence that you'd expect, I suppose, from a public body. We will continue with those kind of principles, but as it becomes firmer as to what the service design looks like, exactly what information we will have, how we can involve third parties in that, how we share that data, who we might need to share that with—all that detail and the technicalities as to 'how' need to be worked through. So, not to skim over the question, but we're not quite there yet in terms of exactly how it would work. I would just try and reassure you that we are used to handling sensitive information, we are used to sharing that information, and we would apply that. We'd be happy to come back and talk, as this develops, and give you more information on that.

There will, of course, be the public register, which will be public, and there will be elements of licensing on that as well. So, there will be a public document, but, of course, there will be underlying, more specific information that we might want to share. We just don't know the technicalities yet.

So, once you've completed the registration process—the Cabinet Secretary said it'd be completed in 2027—would I as a citizen be able to see whether the property three doors down from me was registered, and if so, by who, and how I can contact them, because of the trouble visitors were causing? 

So, when the register is live, there will be a public register with details on it, and you as a citizen would be able to look at that register and find information. Exactly what we publish on that register—I'll pass over to Joe, who will have more details. But we wouldn't publish, for example, 'Rebecca Godfrey' and my home address. There are—

Not your home address, but the contact, the e-mail address of this—.

We'll just make sure that we didn't put anyone at risk with the information we share, but we will share information so that you can see if that property is there. Joe, do you want to add anything? 

I can happily write to the committee. I can't remember exactly what's going to be on the register, but it will absolutely be—. The idea is to make it user-friendly, so anybody can look up and find information. There are obviously some sensitivities around sharing personal information in this way, and I think the policy team in Welsh Government were very mindful of that when drafting the legislation. It is specified on the face of the Act, I think, the visitor levy and register Act, what must be published in the register. So, I'll happily write to the committee afterwards with that detail. I think the name of the person who is responsible for the property will be there, as well as, I'm pretty sure, a way of contacting, should the need arise. But we'll write to the committee to confirm that.

Okay. We'll need this information. 

Can I just bring Alun in, please, Jenny? 

It just follows on from Jenny's question, really. The purpose of a register and a licence is to provide public information and to provide that regulatory environment, and I'm just wondering, therefore, what happens when somebody—. Jenny makes that complaint about the house three doors down and the rest of it. I presume then there's an investigation as to whether the terms of the licence or the registration are being maintained by the provider, and then, if they are not, there needs to be a process of deregistration and de-licensing.

Yes, so that is the intended—. Yes, when we're in the licensing world, if someone has a licence and then someone contacts us because they don't think they meet one of the conditions, or some information comes to light, then, yes, there would absolutely be some kind of process for looking into those. Who would do that comes back to who's the enforcement body. But, yes, it's the process there, and then should they be found, we would have to remove the licence from them, or someone would have to remove the licence, be that—

You don't sound very sure about your answers to these questions.

I think it's because it's still—. We haven't worked out exactly who's going to do what roles and exactly what's going to happen. So, there is no—. I don't want to say something that, actually—

Yes, I accept your answer, but what it betrays, of course, is that we've got the legislation, we’ve put it on the statute book, we then hand it over to yourselves and to Welsh Government and the rest of it to actually deliver, which is all fine, but what happens? It needs to bite as well, doesn't it, and it needs to have force. We don't want the statute book full of law that isn't being enforced. I’m interested, therefore, in that enforceability area.

Yes, so there will be enforcement and there will be revocation of licences, but who will do that and how that will happen, I don't have the answer today.

Okay, but we need to follow that up.

We need to follow that up. I think, in fairness, in the earlier ministerial session they indicated that there was a lot of 'to be confirmed' on this type of stuff to come later, which isn't ideal from a scrutiny point of view because it leaves a big deficit there, then. Jenny.

I think I'm done, actually. Thank you. 

Hannah. 

Diolch, Cadeirydd. Just to turn to the plans for a visitor accommodation directory as outlined in the legislation, have you as an organisation had any initial discussions or begun any planning in relation to the requirements set out in that aspect of the Bill, which obviously will require WRA and the Welsh Government to publish an electronic directory of visitor accommodation?

Joe, shall I hand that to you?

Yes, we're working closely with Welsh Government. Our plan, very much, for the national register, which I think is confusing—there are two names, almost, for the same thing here, so I’m trying to order my thoughts in my own mind. So, our plan for the national register is almost to morph into the directory, essentially. Because every visitor accommodation provider will be required to be on the national register, and there is a subset of people, registered people, who are required to be on the directory as well. So, the intention very much is—and that's been our conversation with the Welsh Government officials—that, actually, the national register will just morph into the directory. It may well be that when we get into the design of the directory, we just have almost an additional column there that says, ‘Yes, this person is a self-catered, self-contained accommodation provider—tick’, and, ‘Yes, this person has a licence’, so you do have that one source. What we don't want is to have two public documents that, with the best will in the world, would probably almost be slightly out of sync just because of the nature of these things. We are trying to bring it all together into one place.

That's helpful. So, where would I go? Once that's up and running, if I was to be looking to check where I was going to book to go away, that it was registered and had the licence, where would I find that in practice?

I think we're still working out the best place to put that. It's likely to be on the Welsh Revenue Authority's website, essentially, as the registration authority, and that's the most sensible place to put it, but I think it's still quite early doors at the moment. But the register will definitely be on our website. Whether there needs to be some linking across—. It would make sense to me, potentially, to do some linking across with Visit Wales, because people may well be looking at Visit Wales for information on where to stay, and just to make sure that people, when they're looking for a particular holiday cottage, can easily find out that it is appropriately registered and licensed as well. But we will definitely have one place, one source of truth.

Do you want to—?

Yes, Sam.

Yes, it was just on that point, and I raised it with the Cabinet Secretary yesterday, about those booking platforms who advocate, and have the wrong details on them, with the licensee's number. How do you see the symbiotic relationship happening with the advertising of those registers? Are you seeing a hyperlink being taken across? How do you see it? It may be more of a digital question for yourself, Anthony.

Yes, sure. We've had some good discussions with the online travel agents and they're keen to help, and they've done this throughout the world, so it's not—. What we're suggesting isn't anything new and they're quite comfortable, I think, with having a registration number. There's a number of things that we can do to help them validate those numbers to make sure that somebody isn't passing off as somebody else, because, obviously, they've realised that once licensing is in place, then it's mandatory for that number to be displayed when they're advertising. So, we can put things in place where they can check that that's correct, they can validate it.

Possibly we could pull through some of the information for the address et cetera, so not only does it confirm the registration number, but it also confirms the property. It's not as simple as that, because the licence may apply to multiple properties. We'd have to work through how practical that would be, but, certainly, we're looking for online travel agents to use some technology in order to validate things. But also we can provide QR codes or links to the register, so that accommodation providers can use it in adverts or give it to booking agencies to say, 'This link shows that I'm validly licensed', and anyone can click on the link and come and see what they're actually licensed for, and what properties the licence is held under.

So, you're quite content, then, within the digital sphere, that that integration and understanding—that those licence numbers are easily accessible, that it's quite easy to do from a digital standpoint and it's already being done on these platforms through different licensing schemes, so it shouldn't be a big outlay for the Welsh Revenue Authority.

No, I think this challenge is more about getting all of the online travel agents on board with it. Some of them are very tech-savvy organisations and this would be really easy for them to do. The smaller ones—it's more of a challenge for them, and we've got to find ways of making it easy for them.

Okay, thank you. 

Okay, Sam? Hannah.

Just to pick up, Chair, really, on Sam's point. I think it's relatively early days in the development of this, but, as you said, it will need a clear strategy and communication plan to actually make sure that people can look for this, and then also that providers can use it as something they could promote as well and sell to potential customers. 

That's a good point, and I think, from where we are now, it can feel like quite a leap, but next year we will have the register—the absence of licensing, just the register—then the visitor levy will come on. And then we'll be starting from that place to then promote the licensing element on top of it. So, I think that that kind of sequencing is going to help drive up people's awareness, people's realisation that there is a register there, and then it'll just become even more useful, I suppose, as it gets more and more information added to it.

Thank you, and that leads me nicely to my final question. When would you envisage the directory of licensing would need to be up and running in order to fit in with the Welsh Government’s aim to have the licensing scheme in operation by early 2029?

The register will be—. As we say, there are two—. The register will be up and running from next year, and then we'll just have to do some tweaks and put on the elements for licensing. So, the register will be there a good few years before licensing comes on board, and then, as I say, we'll do whatever tweaks we need to do to fit in the extra licensing elements of that register. We're confident that we've got enough time for that.

Great, thank you. 

The Cabinet Secretary in his earlier evidence emphasised AI, in particular, which was interesting to hear from the Cabinet Secretary because he is, like I am, pretty AI illiterate, I would put it, and I don't think I'm being unkind—he's said that on the floor of the Senedd, he has. But he was using that as an example about keeping the costs down, because one of these things is that costs creep up all the time, when this stuff is progressing through this place, or any other Parliament—'Oh, yes, we're going to keep costs down, it's not going to cost much', but within a couple of years, there's a significant cost element to it. Could you give us a sense, from the revenue authority's point of view, of the ability to use AI to keep the costs in administration down, rather than—? And the example he used was, obviously, people having to deal with a lot of this application process and that people are expensive when they're involved in a process, then. 

I'm going to hand straight over to Anthony for that.

There you are. Anthony. [Laughter.]

One of the things we're looking at is that when we do the service design, we do a proof of concept about how we can use AI to help with that admin process, because, potentially, there are a lot of documents that accommodation providers might have to upload to us. If they have to upload documents—if they're safety certificates, if they're insurance documents, all of those types of things—it can be quite weighty and quite hard for humans to read through and check. But, obviously, AI is quite good at that sort of thing. So, we're going to do a proof of concept, to see how good the AI could be at doing that type of thing, to help with us almost immediately deciding on that. We can check that as good as a human would check it, or to a reasonable standard—because no-one can check something to 100 per cent—but we can take a judgment call on how good the AI could be, to help us with the heavy lifting of some of the document scanning.

The other thing that we want to look at, and it's not AI, it's more about what data sources are out there, things like what data sources for insurance companies that we can access, what data sources for—. A lot of gas safety and electric safety organisations, electricians, do it all online. They complete the certificate online and it's in some database. It's about whether we can look at, well, can we access those things beforehand, and, rather than asking somebody for their documents, we can ask them permission to go and look for it, and say, 'Can we go and look that up for you, and save you having to upload it?' So, we want to try and investigate the opportunities for doing those things, so that, firstly, they're not having to send us loads of documents, and we're not having to check lots of documents, but we can automate as much of this as possible. And—

And you're confident that that automation and AI is there to assist you in doing that, then? It's not going to be something that, if this legislation were to pass, as legislators, we look back on in a few years time and find an horrendous bill landing on people's doorsteps and we're the ones in the firing line for it?

No. I'm fairly confident that the sort of thing that we're looking to use AI for—. Pattern recognition for documents, that's used an awful lot at the moment. It's used for job applications, it's used for applications to universities, all the qualification certificates. There are a lot of good examples of AI being used for that, to filter out the risky cases. Because that's all we'll be doing, is we'll be—. Potentially, there are hundreds of thousands of documents that we might have to look at, and we want to narrow that down to the ones that we think are at the highest risk.

And just a final point from me, I think a fee of £75, £76, is talked about, when the Cabinet Secretary was talking to us earlier. I appreciate that might not be the fee by 2029, when this legislation comes into force, but, given the best estimate at it, would you stand by that fee being around the £76 mark as things stand today, as the revenue authority? What work have you done to justify that?

Joe, have you been involved in those discussions?

Yes. So, I think that fee has been predicated on the assumptions that Anthony has set out, in terms of, actually, you can reduce the amount of human interaction required by getting the AI technology to filter out the difficult cases, so you're not having to need an army of humans to review tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of documents, as Anthony says. That means you can keep the amount of people required to the right amount, giving people opportunities to do more interesting work as well in that process. So, I think the £75 feels right to us.

So, it feels right to you?

Yes.

Fine. Okay. Well, thank you for the evidence. I'm looking at Members. Any other questions from Members? No. Thank you for your evidence this morning. We'll send a record over to you of your evidence. If you'd have a look at that, and, any concerns, please raise them with the clerking team; otherwise, that will be the official record of the evidence given, and I thank you for your attendance today. Thank you.

Thank you. Just to say, as we finish, it is really early days, so, if you'd welcome us coming back to give more evidence as our work progresses on this, or, indeed, if you'd like to come to our office and look at prototypes of the register that we're designing, we'd be more than happy to do that. So, just let us know.

Thank you. That's very helpful. Thank you.

Okay. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you very much. We'll now go back into private session while we await panel three, making their connection from Scotland.

Okay. Welcome back for panel 3 of the evidence session of the committee this morning. It's a pleasure to welcome Marc and Fiona from the Scottish Tourism Alliance. I look forward to hearing their evidence. Committee members will ask various questions of you over the next 35 minutes, and we look forward to hearing your answers informing our discussions. Sam Kurtz.

Thank you very much, Chair. Good morning, both. Thank you for joining us.  Obviously, the Scottish Government brought in a licensing scheme back in 2022 and the Welsh Government here are looking at bringing forward their own scheme. Is there anything from the experience in Scotland that we should be aware of, and just an overview of the process in Scotland, north of the border? Marc, you're on my screen, so we'll start with you.

Well, good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for inviting us to share our experiences of this policy, which, sad though it is, we're here to, hopefully, advise you on how not to follow suit where we've had, and continue to have, serious concerns and, obviously, evidence of negative impacts to the tourism industry.

So, I guess our opening position, from our perspective—and a call out to everybody—is, when policy is developed without a clear objective and without reliable data, it fails, and Scotland, obviously, unfortunately, is that case study. So, we would urge that, before anybody proceeds, there are some key questions that need to be answered, and one is: what's the policy objective and what are you trying to address? And if the objective is health and safety, those regulations already exist, as we made clear to the Scottish Government, and, if the objective is housing, like Scotland, you already have the tool, and that's the planning system. So, we've gone through a process that has caused a huge amount of distress, upset, both in the mental state of people, loss of business, and, I guess, we've ended up with a variation of 32 different interpretations of a policy that hasn't landed well. Obviously, we're now suffering the consequences of it and have, as I said earlier, seen some fall away from accommodation stock, which is in demand still, a creation of a black-market product, and, obviously, it's forced price, as well, in the wrong direction for the visitor, making us a destination that is now uncomfortable, many would say, in terms of the price points we're charging to the visitor.

Thank you, Marc. Fiona.

Thanks very much and, again, thank you very much indeed for this opportunity. Just to confirm, we will send a brief note afterwards, just to confirm some of our points. So, I hope that's helpful.

I think what's really important to start off with is that industry is not against regulation, but that regulation needs to be proportionate and fit for purpose. We do absolutely support a national registration, and we do support that being associated with mandatory health and safety concerns. Now, just to reiterate Marc's point, those health and safety regulations already exist. So, going back to Marc's comment: what is the actual object of the scheme?

Regulation has to be legal in Scotland. Regrettably, they couldn't—. They had to delay the implementation of the scheme by a year. They've also, unfortunately—. We've had two successful judicial reviews against the City of Edinburgh Council from both Averbuch and Muirhead against the legislation, because it is now evidentially contrary to and in breach of the Provision of Services Regulations 2009. Also, we now have evidence from a key senior KC, King's Counsel, lawyer, to show—. We now have evidence that, actually, the entire scheme is in breach of article 1, protocol 1, of the Human Rights Act 1998, as well as the Provision of Services Regulations 2009. So, I would just urge the Welsh Government and policy makers to really take heed of these warnings from Scotland. As Marc says: don't do it as Scotland has done it, or you may well end up in court.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. That's quite clear.

That's a strong warning to put up. Thank you for that, Fiona.

Sorry about that.

In my eagerness to begin the evidence session, I kicked off this morning without asking you to formally introduce yourself and the organisations that you represent. So, before I ask Luke to ask his questions, could I ask you, Fiona, first, to say your name and organisation, and then ask Marc to do the same, for the record, please? Fiona.

Indeed. Thanks very much indeed. My name's Fiona Campbell. I'm the chief executive of the Association of Scotland's Self-Caterers. I'm also the vice-chair of the Scottish Tourism Alliance policy group.

Marc.

Yes, thanks. I'm the chief executive of the Scottish Tourism Alliance and I'm also the co-chair of the tourism and hospitality industry leadership group, which is the strategic think tank that drives Scotland's national tourism strategy.

And, just for clarity, the make-up of the Scottish Tourism Alliance is very different to that of the Wales Tourism Alliance and also the English Tourism Alliance. We have circa 80 per cent of every tourism and hospitality enterprise under our umbrella of membership, plus a wide, broad church of suppliers to industry—finance, banks, insurance companies et cetera. So, as a representative voice of the sector, we are considered to be very much those with the best evidence base and that can provide the best evidence. And, as Fiona said, she's vice-chair of our policy group; we have an industry council that's made up of all of the—

Thank you, Marc. It's just the official recognition we need for the record, we do. Thank you for that.

No problem.

Luke.

Diolch, Cadeirydd. If I can touch on the impact of what you've seen in Scotland, then, on the tourism sector, I'll start by just touching on a couple of the points that you've both alluded to in your opening remarks.

It was mentioned—I think it was by you, Marc—around the ongoing uncertainty faced by the sector, that it has led to a loss of some experienced and excellent operators. Is this something, then, that you expect to be a permanent part of the ecosystem when it comes to tourism in Scotland, or do you see that as being something where people will return to the industry once things have settled down and so on?

I think that's a very good question. I would say that there are a number of factors that have resulted in businesses withdrawing themselves from the industry. Some of them have, actually, subsequently sold their properties for private dwellings and have just withdrawn the product altogether. The appetite to acquire a property where you've got licensing schemes that still remain a bit uncertain—. And, obviously, the cost of that licensing scheme is very different to what was originally indicated at the outset of the legislation.

So, you can never say never. Clearly, Scotland, thankfully, is still an in-demand destination, but, in the capital city of Edinburgh, where we've seen this most significant shrinkage of product, it is concerning because it has a wider knock-on effect, as I say, to the likes of the festivals and things in that short-term market. But there is a black market that's appeared, and that's obviously no good for anyone, because the very likelihood is that those operating in that space will be doing so illegally and not compliant, as the professional self-catering sector was.

Okay. Fiona, did you want to add anything to that?

Yes. I think what's really clear and what's come from Scotland is that, without a clear purpose and policy objective, Wales risks doing exactly what Scotland's done, and it's harming the wrong people and regulating the wrong thing.

So, if it is about basic health and safety, the problem in Scotland is that professional operators already complied with existing health and safety regulations, but suddenly—. And I'm an operator, having operated a self-catering property for 23 years. I'm having to spend thousands of pounds jumping through all sorts of hoops to do exactly the same thing that I've been doing for 23 years. And the reality is that, for small and micro businesses, they cannot afford that extra business expense to continue operating in exactly the same way.

Now, in Scotland, they did talk about fees of between £234 and £436 per annum. The reality is that the smallest fee in Scotland is £205 and the biggest is £5,698. And, just referring back to one of your earlier speakers, that £76 may be the fee, that is entirely uncredible on the evidence that we have had from Scotland. So, I would urge extreme caution that you model that correctly.

And looking at Anthony—he was talking about using AI and investigating things online, automating administration—the evidence from Scotland shows that's entirely unrealistic. And, actually, the impact on local authorities, which is where Scotland is administering this, whereas in Wales, we're talking about a national scheme—which, I would just say, we fully support, so congratulations on going down that route—but it is entirely unrealistic to think it's going to be not a huge administrative burden, because that is the reality and lived experiences of both operators and local authorities that have to administer it.

Going back to the point about are people leaving, people have left in droves. We now have villages across Scotland with no short-term accommodation and no hotels. Therefore, that’s going to have a direct impact on the tourism in that area—the onward supply chain, the cleaners, the laundry providers, the attractions and the pubs and restaurants and hospitality. This is a lived reality. And they’re not going to start opening up again, because now the bar to enter the market is too high.

Just on the—

Can I just ask—? You highlighted how it was totally unrealistic to expect AI to keep costs down, and we heard the previous witness. From your experience, Fiona, could you give us an example of how the bureaucracy starts to spiral out of control, and the efficiencies that maybe Governments and officials give as assurances at the outset don't bear up to scrutiny when they touch real life? Have you got examples?

I think that's such an important question. I think local authorities are under the assumption that this might be quite a simple process—people would upload their documents and they would just give a brief glance over it. The suggestion was using AI. That's just realistically not going to happen. That's not the lived experience of people that are administering the scheme on the ground. I've still got people where the consideration of their licences took 18 months. We've still got people that don't have licences, which is against the law in itself, and that's not on the part of the operators; it's on the part of the fact that there's not enough resource in local authorities to administer it. So, unless Wales has come up with amazing AI that I'm not aware of, I just don't think it's credible.  

Thank you. Luke.

The gist of what I'm getting here is that the availability and the types of accommodations that are now available in the different areas of Scotland have been drastically reduced by what you're saying here. And I imagine in the briefing note that you'll be sending after this meeting there'll be some statistics to back that up as well, which will be very interesting to see. What I'm quite interested in here is a statement that's on the tourism alliance's website around prices having gone up quite significantly. I was wondering if you could expand a bit on that as well.

Obviously, when you've got a shrinkage in provision, supply and demand starts to drag price points up. In particular, when you look at the capital city of Edinburgh as an example, in high season, you have, for the fringe, hundreds of artists looking for self-catering accommodation, the fact there are fewer properties available, and prices, obviously, have gone in the wrong direction.

To Fiona's point earlier, we've seen shrinkage in villages in rural parts of Scotland, where a lot of that tourism is travelling tourism. And whether it's through golf tourism operators, et cetera, there's that limitation of stock. Obviously, it has forced price points up, and, in turn, that price is then loaded into any tour operator or golf tour experience, to a point where the country becomes an exceptionally expensive country. And we are now obviously contesting with a visitor levy, which is obviously modelled very differently to your own. And, again, I applaud you for taking the approach that you've taken with the visitor levy, something that we certainly don't entertain in the way in which it's currently being modelled in Scotland. 

Just on the point there about the availability of accommodation in some of those villages in areas of Scotland, one of the things that we've discussed as part of this Bill in the Senedd, and one of the points that's been raised consistently within the Chamber, is that, in the case of Wales, a number of these villages are largely dominated by some of these accommodations, which is pricing out local people, and you need local community and tourism to be working in tandem to be able to provide a good tourism experience.

So, where you made the point that, in some of those villages now, the types of accommodations, or the amount of accommodations are no longer available in the same number that they were before, was it an objective of the Scottish Government to address what we are also trying to address in Wales, which, basically, is making sure that there is more availability of property for those who want to live permanently within their communities?

Perhaps I could jump in there. I think that one of the things that the Scottish Government regrettably didn't do prior to licensing was to introduce any kind of registration. So, there was actually a complete lack of credible data. All of the data was from scraped data, which as far as I'm concerned doesn't exist. Unfortunately, you are also using scraped data in terms of your numbers, so I think that what's really important is that there is a narrative that is going on throughout the world—indeed, it's not just Wales and it's not just Scotland—that the number of self-catering units is taking away from properties, taking away from housing stock. The reality is that, across Scotland, 0.8 per cent of housing stock is self-catering units, and they represent £1 billion to the Scottish economy. Now, 0.8 per cent is not enough to demonstrate a need to close those businesses down. In Wales, that's 1 per cent. That's 1 per cent of housing stock. 

Again, I'm going to ask the committee a question: what is the policy objective of this? Is it health and safety or is it housing? You cannot do the two things, and Scotland is absolutely evidencing that. There is no evidence of an impact from self-catering units on housing supply. What your problem is is that you’ve probably, like Scotland, got three or four times more empty homes and significantly more second homes. And when I say second homes, I mean those ones that are economically not viable and non-contributory to the economy. Self-catering units drive local economies. They protect against tourism leakage. These are things that we really need to think about when we're regulating against our specific sector.

Also, don't forget, and this is an extraordinary one, if we're talking about basic health and safety, which we fully support, of course, why aren't spare rooms and bed and breakfasts included in this? Because that would absolutely mean that the policy is failing at the first hurdle. Why on earth wouldn't a spare room be included in this if this is about health and safety? Which makes me think it's more about housing. So there's a kind of duplicity in the policy objective that really concerns me, and it concerns me because we've lived it and breathed it in Scotland. And it has done absolutely zero positively. It has not improved health and safety. It has not ameliorated the housing crisis and it has not reduced anti-social behaviour. What has it done that's positive? What I always ask is what is the measurable output of this policy at the end of the day.

And also, just one thing to really flag is that the EU absolutely does not support licensing for our sector. It supports health and safety alongside registration. You're already bringing in registration, which I commend and congratulate you for, then you're bringing in a visitor levy, then you're bringing in licensing. Why? Why are you bringing in licensing? And for those that don't understand—I'm sure everyone in the room understands—registration is a notification scheme. You are saying, 'I do this and I comply with this', much like private residential tenancies, as we call them in Scotland. A licensing scheme is an authorisation scheme: 'I've been operating for 23 years, please may I continue operating?' You're asking if you may. That's when people shut their doors. It's too high a bar, it's too high a test.

For so many of these microbusinesses that are absolutely underpinning our tourism sector and our rural economies, they are lifestyle businesses. They are simply not going to go through this. And therefore, the difficulty is, and what we're seeing in Skye and all sorts of other places across Scotland is we're not seeing them returning to housing stock, we're definitely not seeing them becoming affordable housing for local people, we are seeing more and more second homes across Scotland, which does nothing for our economy whatsoever and nothing for our communities. Second homes do not generate jobs. They do not generate anything positive. So please look to Scotland and please see what we have done wrong. And we're never going to get those properties back into tourism. That's a fact. The number of new starts is absolutely negligible. So it is a real horror story in Scotland.

Marc, did you want to come in there?

One stat that Fiona hasn't referred to or referenced is the shrinkage in her own membership, that of her association—quite sizable—despite all the great stuff that she does. That, in itself, is a measure of businesses that have withdrawn themselves or are no longer in the marketplace. And on second homes, I think my last count was that 230 properties on Skye, I think it was, have actually now not taken out a licence. So, they remain purely second homes for second-home usage. And 35 weeks of the year, that's no revenue coming into our local economy, because people aren't staying there. And that then has a further knock-on effect into the supply chain as well. I think there are other—. Obviously, it's not just for leisure use; again, you need to remember that these properties are also used for tradespeople who go and do projects et cetera around the country as opposed to staying in hotels. And again, that only puts further prices and on-costs onto a business of any different type if the tradesmen are having to pay a premium or not able to stay in the locality where they would normally be able to stay because the property has disappeared. 

Could I possibly jump in on that, because I think that's a really vital point? What is missing in all of these conversations, not just in Wales but internationally, is the demand analysis: what is the demand for our sector? And it is as Mark says: it's workers across the whole of Scotland; it's also people who are displaced by fire and flood; it's people relocating to different areas, who don't have anywhere permanent stay, but they want to stay somewhere that is self-catering; it's people like me, who've got six children, who simply can't afford to stay in a hotel—let's be realistic. So, I think it's really important. So, what we need to avert and avoid is the worst possible outcome, which is that we lose tourism accommodation, but homes still aren't being released into housing stock. And certainly a lot of my membership is made up of housing that will certainly never be affordable housing—they're beautiful houses, they're vintage houses, they're houses that won't even work on long-term rental, because in the coming years we're going to have minimum standards for energy efficiency and so on. These are heritage properties that provide amazing accommodation for whether it's tourists or workers or anybody else who wants to stay with us. So, I would urge the Welsh Government and other stakeholders to look at the demand analysis on this, because I think that's really frequently overlooked. 

The final question from me, then, Chair. We've talked a lot about the negative impacts of the experience in Scotland, so I suppose that leads me to the question have there been any positive impacts in Scotland, or are there any expected positive impacts later down the line. Marc.

You would hope that the process has flushed out some of the bad eggs, although we don't know if they've gone underground and they're actually operating in the black market. But there will be one or two that have decided to abstain and not license themselves and maybe abandoned a property, and maybe got rich with it in terms of selling on for something else. So, it's difficult to quantify, but there is far greater harm than good, I think, that's come about as a result of this process. A lot of learning needs to be taken, and it's about reputation for us as a country. I wouldn't want to be sitting here and having to tell you, 'Don't follow the route of Scotland', and Fiona has obviously been extolling the same message and has been invited to share similar tales across Europe as well.

We're not proud about the way we've done it and there should have been a much healthier level of engagement and a far greater consideration of working the system up from the ground with the industry, and again, looking at that demand analysis and looking at future trends and behaviors of travellers of today and tomorrow. That type of accommodation is very much still required to ensure that we have a thriving tourism economy. So, harm-wise, it's difficult to quantify, but we will have got rid of some. But the good side is that it has also highlighted the importance of the sector in a fairly bizarre way, and we just now need the policy to correct itself before it's completely too late. 

If I might come in, Marc mentioned a really important point earlier, which is the mental health impact on the sector. Bear in mind that 70 per cent of the self-catering sector in Scotland—and I would wager that that's fairly similar in Wales—is women over 55-years-old. These are the people that you're harming in terms of the uncertainty, the worry, the concern, the cost, and all of those things. So, it's really important to remember who we're regulating against. 

The other thing is that, unfortunately for the Scottish Government, it's been one thing after the other. I have challenged and we have challenged and continue to challenge. We've changed the law twice already; we're about to change it again. We're changing the guidance over a matter of 23 different points because it was not proportionate. It's not fit for purpose and they will end up in court again. If they do not address the planning and licensing conflation, we have absolute grounds to take a huge legal action against the Scottish Government, East Lothian Council and Edinburgh council on this matter. We don't want to do that; we would rather it got fixed. This is a complete waste of our resources and our money as well, because it's cost an awful lot of money to take them to court, and this is why I would absolutely urge partnership policy making. Talk to the industry that you're regulating against, talk to us; I'm more than happy to try and help you create a scheme that will be fit for purpose, that is proportionate and that is legal. Otherwise, you will face another me in Wales and you probably don't want that.

We understand the rationale behind regulation, we understand health and safety, for sure; we understand the issue of housing, but housing is not going to be fixed by trying to reduce the number of self-catering units in Wales. And don't forget also that this is one of 22 regulatory interventions that our sector is facing at the moment. Twenty-two. That is untenable. If you want to get rid of the entire sector, this is one wonderful little stepping stone in getting there, but I'm not sure that that's what Wales needs. So, it's kind of like, 'Let's look at this holistically; what are we trying to achieve, what is the mischief that we're trying to address?'

Okay, thank you. Jenny.

Where to start, really? So, were you not involved in the legislation in Scotland before, whilst it was under consideration?

Absolutely, I've been involved in the legislation since 2016, and they unilaterally ignored the whole lot. So, if you look at the 2021 'Short-term lets: licensing scheme and planning control area legislation—Draft Business and Regulatory Impact Assessment (BRIA) for consultation' at Annex E, you will see all of the concerns of the Association of Scotland's Self-Caterers, and every single one of those concerns has become a reality.

Okay. Which is this local authority that's charging £5,098 for you to register?

Edinburgh. To license, rather than register, but, yes, Edinburgh. That's obviously—

Okay. But how do they get away with that, given that there has to be a proportionate—? You know, in our Bill, the local authority will only be able to charge the cost of registration, rather than use it as a way of raising money.

Well, it's interesting that you say that, and I can obviously send you the report, but we did a freedom of information request against all the local authorities in July of this year, and very few of them can evidence that it's on a cost-recovery basis at all. Indeed, 90 per cent of them can't. So, whilst we absolutely appreciate the concept of cost recovery, absolutely, the evidence from Scotland shows that it is not the case.

Now, why do they get away with it? We have been encouraging working constructively with the Scottish Government to ensure that they do rein those fees back, however, they're finding that difficult to do. We haven't taken any legal challenge on this as yet.

Okay. I'm having difficulty understanding why decent tourist accommodation providers like yourselves would find it so onerous to provide electrical maintenance certificates, fire prevention certificates, gas maintenance certificate where relevant, carbon monoxide, and public liability.

We wouldn't. That's—

So, the purpose of our Bill is to protect the good name and the level playing field required for self-catering accommodation, so I don't understand how in Scotland this seems to have had such a detrimental effect.

If I might answer that one, I think the issue is that as a professional self-catering operator, I have had all of those certificates for the last 23 years. 

Of course. 

That is not the problem. That is part of the cost of doing business. That is absolutely not a problem, and we support that entirely. The point is that in Scotland, on top of that, it's a little bit like if you and I go into Tesco's—there are other supermarkets—every single week, acting exactly the same way, buy exactly the same food, and next week they're going to charge you £300 to go through the door. That extra licence fee cost is, in Scotland, disproportionate, especially when it comes to, for example Perth, £1,066 et cetera, et cetera, for a licence. But, again, going back to the draft Bill as it stands right now, we can't understand, if we are having to be licensed on the basis of things that we already comply with, why on earth that would not extend out to spare rooms and B&Bs and other such accommodation. Because they are more likely to not be knowledgeable or compliant with existing health and safety provisions, and it's more difficult to monitor and also more difficult to abuse.

So, going back to the point around the black market, if this is about ensuring existing health and safety, what we are now seeing is a thriving black market, not just in Edinburgh, but across rural parts of Scotland as well, which undermines the entire purpose of the legislation. Actually, rather than levelling the playing field, you're making it completely worse. We have evidence of the black market, it's horrifying, and the problem is that the enforcement is simply not happening.

And in Scotland, the other thing, to reference your question specifically, local authorities were asking for all sorts of non-statutory additional requirements. So, for example, one is meant to say that your maximum capacity, maximum occupancy is, say, for example, 10 in a five-bedroomed property. But Argyll and Bute have, for example, asked for a 1:50 site plan, property floor plan, which was costing some of my members £2,500 to do and was completely unnecessary. So, they were asking for additional requirements that weren't part of the original Act, but they decided might be a nice idea. So, for example, in Edinburgh, they're asking for annual emergency lighting certification. Whilst that might seem like a good idea, that's already covered by existing fire safety regulations. So, there's an over-creep of the regulatory requirements in the different local authority areas. I hope that answers your question.

Well, it tells us about the inefficient working of the Scottish system, and obviously that's not our remit. So, were there to be a national licensing system, as we are proposing in Wales, how much of this freelance activity would be done away with, because you'd then have the national Government saying, 'You can't do that, you've only got to stick to what's in the law'?

Are we avoiding black market here?

No, I was talking about—

I'll ask Marc to come in and address that.

Yes, please do.

Yes. I mean, your proposal is really asking for a registration scheme. And again, we're not actually opposing that. We would encourage you to invite every operator who is professional to upload all of the certifications that they've already paid for, on an annual basis or biannual, or whatever the requirement would be in terms of getting that renewal into the system, so it is visible, it's transparent, and that then removes some of those black-market operators.

Again, to Fiona's point earlier, we should be inviting the same from all of those who operate accommodation of that type. It's no different. The hotel sector have to do it, and that's why the point of registration, the proposal, it seemed fair, and it's only right for the consumer as well. So registration, yes, and that shouldn't come at a great cost. But when you are, as Fiona says, for example, being invited to produce all sorts of other information, which then requires further costs being spent to get plans and drawings, and uncertainties around that to the point of some people even saying the specifications of cutlery drawers—it was extreme. Unfortunately, the guidance that was issued to the local authorities was not statutory, and therefore it resulted in multiple interpretations by individuals in the different authority council areas, which has caused great confusion, and particularly where you've got operators who maybe have multiple properties across different authorities as well, which further added to that confusion.

But simplicity and the uploading of documentation that is already held by the professional operators is something that we would certainly not have anything against whatsoever, quite the opposite; we would actually encourage it, because it just reassures the consumer, but also demonstrates the professionalism of the industry.

Okay. Just a final question from me. I represent a Cardiff constituency, so similar to Edinburgh, a capital city and all that goes with it. One of the major problems that residents have is that these short-term lets are not then complying with the rubbish collection regulations around presenting the rubbish the night before the collection and such like. Is that something that's covered by the Scottish legislation, or is this something that still occurs with some of the providers?

It is covered by the legislation, but more importantly it is covered by our code of practice. Good managers have a duty of care to their local residents and the entire community to make sure that the rubbish is put out at the right time. It's also covered by the non-domestic rates legislation as well. So, it's actually got multiple layers of regulatory intervention on that one, which we fully support, again, absolutely fully support.

Okay. So, it doesn't appear to be sufficient in Wales, to ensure that the people who are operating through online platforms—. At the moment, we don't seem to have a handle on them, on who they are and how we get hold of them. So, that's why we're going for registration and the licensing to go with it, but the licensing is coming after the registration.

As I say, and this goes back to your first question, we proposed to the Scottish Government registration with mandatory health and safety. We have always supported that approach. It is a completely proportionate and sensible approach. My question is: why do you need licensing on top? Which bit is that trying—? Because if you have registration with mandatory health and safety, you would get a handle on all of the different properties, where everybody is, who everybody is. We fully support that approach. That is a really sensible approach. Then, once you've got all of that reliable data, that's when you can look at, 'Okay, now we've got the numbers, now we can work out that, actually, what we're trying to address is housing', and then look at how to address that housing issue. So, I think once you've got the reliable data, empirical data, then you can start addressing all of the other issues and get a handle on people who aren't leaving their rubbish out. And if there are bad operators, we absolutely support getting rid of them. We do not support bad operators at all. This should be about making sure that the sector is really professional. But, again, this goes back to the fact that the scheme as it stands excludes spare rooms and B&Bs and so on, and I think that is a real negative.

Okay, I've heard you saying that. In our proposals, it will be 2027 when all operators will be registered, and then the licensing will not come in for a further two years. Does that feel like a proportionate way of doing things? Because the registration system is not capturing important things like the gas and electric certificates.

I suppose, in an ideal world, I would have suggested that registration should capture the health and safety stuff in the first instance. Therefore, you wouldn't necessarily need the next step. If I were a policy maker in Wales, I would wait until I had all the data, with statutory health and safety, from everybody, and then look at what the next steps were, rather than looking at the next steps too early—it feels premature.

I would echo that. You will potentially see a change in the behaviour of those who are possibly not conforming as you would want them to, but don't bleat too soon. Certainly, where there is already certification that the owner or the operator should have, ask them to upload it. I don't think anybody would have any objection whatsoever if it's a simple process to upload and share it, as we do with so much data these days. I would encourage that all the way. But I would be fearful—going back to the knock-on implications—of wiping out what is a product offer that is significant in terms of its contribution to the economy, and globally is in demand. We've seen a change in the behaviours of leisure and business tourism, with people wanting these extended stays. So, this type of accommodation is definitely something that is here for the future, so the risk of actually removing it and trying to recover from that removal at a pace and a time where you would want it to be available is—[Inaudible.]

Thank you.

Okay, Jenny? Thank you very much, both, for your evidence this morning. The clock has beaten us. It has been illuminating, to say the least, and the force of the way you've delivered that evidence I'm sure has left an impression on committee members in the deliberations that we'll have going forward from this. Obviously, you've got the personal experience of it being enacted in Scotland for some years now, and, obviously, you're involved in the sector that is affected by it.

A Record of Proceedings will be sent to you for you to have a look at. If you've got any concerns or observation about that record, please raise it with the clerking team. Otherwise, that'll be the official record of your evidence today. Once again, I thank you both very much, and I look forward to receiving that supplementary evidence, which I think Fiona alluded to, which she said she would be sending to the committee. Thank you all very much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Papers to note—any observations or comments on papers to note? 

It was good to get the information from Unite about the amount of money they charge to people who become unemployed or are looking for work. I thought that was useful. And they gave some figures that about 200,000 tonnes of Welsh steel being used from Wales—useful information for our ongoing discussions.

Our discussions on it, yes, without a shadow of a doubt. And Luke.

Just on 5.4, the invitation to the Secretary of State for Wales, has there been a response to that invitation? 

No, we await a response. It went two weeks ago, the letter, I think—I'm looking over at the clerk. Two weeks ago the letter went. So, we await a response from the Secretary of State. Are there any other actions you think that we should be doing to try and gee up—? 

Well, I think the person we really want to hear from is the person in charge of steel policy at the UK Government level, because, clearly, this is something that has international implications. Therefore, could we extend the information to the relevant Minister?

Peter Kyle, I think that is, isn't it? I think I've got that correct. 

I propose writing to the Secretary of State and cc the Secretary of State for Wales in as well, who hasn't responded. 

So, just to be clear, we write directly to Peter Kyle and then cc the Secretary of State.

Yes, okay. We'll undertake that action. Some—[Interruption.] Sorry, Sam.

Sorry, just to thank EDF for their correspondence following the previous session on the Welsh impact on—

Hinkley Point.

—Hinkley Point. I thought it was quite helpful for us in our wider discussion.

Okay. And just on the Office for National Statistics, they've requested input from the committee on their view about the national census that is coming up. I think it would be sensible for us to respond to that as a committee, and I've asked the clerking team to put a draft letter together for the committee's consideration.

The other ask in the papers to note is from the Presiding Officer in relation to Bill legislation. They've asked various committees for their views about the process of introducing Bills, and, obviously, we'd look to comment on that. If colleagues have any observations, could they liaise with the clerking team, and a comment will be put back to the Business Committee? Okay. Thank you all very much.

Could I have a motion to move into private session, then, please? We'll move into private session. Thank you.