—and HMRC would have been able to tell you, really early on, you would have thought, that it was—. I don't really want to go into it, because I think we've got to the crux of why HMRC was dropped. I think it's been dropped because Julie feels that the offer needs to be more flexible, and I can understand why you would say that.
If we bring in training and education, for example, we wouldn't be able to do that via the HMRC, it would have to be done by the local authorities. Foster parents have to be done via the local authorities. Any people of immigration status of no resource from public funds, that would have to be done via the local authorities. And with the local authorities also wanting to do it—. I mean, there are other things with using HMRC—if any changes were made with the English offer, for example, because this would be delivered via HMRC with the English offer, that would cause difficulties for the Welsh offer. So, we wanted something more flexible. I don't know if there's anything more you want to add on that.
The only thing I'd add is that—and, again, I think the Minister has referred to this—the costs that HMRC presented us with at the end of the discovery phase were significantly higher than the costs that had initially been outlined and that we outlined to the committee in the regulatory impact assessment. So, our conclusion is that we can deliver a cheaper system and a system that has the flexibility that the Deputy Minister has referred to by working with local authorities rather than HMRC. So, there is an important issue around value for money as well and making sure that the investment that we're making into developing the national system is one that—that, in a sense, that investment stays in Wales. So, obviously, the money that we're paying over to HMRC to run the system would be supporting HMRC and their employees wherever they may be based, many of them not based in Wales; investment in local authorities to administer the system means that we're retaining more of that investment here.
Well, I congratulate you on persuading local government and WLGA to change their minds, because they actually told this committee that they favoured the HMRC option—and this is only going back a few months—because it will remove—and this is quoting them— 'it will remove the administrative burden of receiving applications and checking eligibility from local authorities'— blah, blah, blah, blah. So, they've obviously changed their minds as well, which is, you know—. I congratulate you on that, but it does present us as a committee with a little bit of a problem, really, because, if we're told one thing a few months ago and then we're told something completely different today, you know, evidence—we have to go on evidence that we've heard, and the evidence has changed now.